'Bonnie and Clyde' Lead U.S. Marshals on Cross-Country Chase

Aug. 12, 2010 — -- An escaped convict and his fiancee, last seen in Montana near the Canadian border, have led authorities on a two-week cross-country manhunt, leaving in their wake a string of robberies and two suspected murders but few clues as to their current whereabouts.

The search for the most wanted couple in America, a 21st-century Bonnie and Clyde, has baffled authorities who have crisscrossed the country from Arizona to Arkansas and points north, looking for escaped inmate John McCluskey and his cousin-cum-fiancee Casslyn Welch.

Law enforcement officials scoured the area around Gentry, Arkansas after a beauty shop owner said she had been robbed at gunpoint by a couple Wednesday morning.

By evening, authorities said there was "no reason to believe" the couple had held up the Kut & Kurl salon and could be virtually anywhere.

"They could be in Las Vegas, Nevada, they could be in Akron, Ohio," Benton County Sheriff's Office spokesman Doug Gay told the Associated Press, giving voice to the frustration of federal, state and local authorities around the country whom the couple have eluded again and again.

The couple, believed to be white supremacists, are considered by law enforcment officials to be extremely dangerous. They have been on the lam since Welch helped McCluskey and two other men escape from a medium security prison in Arizona on June 30.

McCluskey was serving a 15-year sentence for attempted murder and other charges.

"Based on information we're receiving from interviews, we believe they have no intention of being taken alive, information that indicates that they're willing to commit suicide," U.S. Marshal Chief Deputy Fidencio Rivera told "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "So we are extremely concerned for public safety and for the safety of our law enforcement personnel."

Authorities said the couple was last spotted in Montana and was believed to be heading towards Canada.

They are suspects in the murders last week of a New Mexico couple in their 60's.

Manhunt is "Serious Business"

The couple, authorities said, has taken to seeing themselves as a true-life Bonnie and Clyde, a moniker picked up by the media.

"I think they've taken the persona that this is some type of movie and this is some kind of a joke that they are living, but it is not," said David Gonzalez, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals. "This is a very, very serious business."

On Monday, the second of the three escaped inmates, Tracy Province, a convicted murder was arrested outside a church in Meeteetse, Wyo. Province had previously been spotted with McCluskey and Welch the week before in the area around Yellowstone Park.

Convicted murderer Daniel Renwick, who also escaped with the two men, was arrested Aug 1 in Rifle, Co.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.