James Edward Daniels

Little is known of Daniels's early life. A native of Brooklyn born in 1940, he was first arrested in early 1960 for assaulting a man in Queens with a zip gun, for which he served two years in prison.^[1] Less than a year after his release, he and five other men were charged with the second-degree murder in relation to the March 1963 death of Calvin Dean, who was running a craps game in Ozone Park.^[2] Daniels was convicted for his role in the crime and was given a 50-years-to-life term, which he served at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Beekman.^[3]

While incarcerated there, Daniels undertook vocational training to become a barber, played on the prison's football team and enrolled in black studies and political science courses. He befriended students from the nearby SUNY New Paltz who had come to work as prison volunteers, including some who were originally from Oregon.^[1]

After serving 13 years of his sentence, Daniels was paroled on February 8, 1976, due to changes in the state's penal law that affected mandatory minimum sentencing.^[2] In September 1977, he moved to Portland, Oregon, in an attempt to rebuild his life. Whilst living there, he married, had a daughter and worked as an aide to an alcohol detoxification facility, which did not run a pre-emptive background check.^[1]

During his tenure there, some people started complaining that Daniels was stealing their money. Due to this, several sheriff's deputies disguised themselves as drunks and attempted to catch him in the act, and on August 11, 1978, Daniels was arrested on charges of stealing $91 from one of them. He steadfastly denied responsibility and was tried twice for the crime – after the first trial resulted in a hung jury and the second in a mistrial – the charges were dismissed on the conditions that he voluntarily return to New York.^[1]

Daniels eventually moved into a flat in St. Albans. While his parole was not revoked due to the fact that he had not been convicted, he soon absconded from New York without permission and an arrest warrant was issued for him. While the authorities were unable to determine the exact reason why, Daniels's brother and his friends alleged that he had become so embittered with the authorities that he vowed to "go hard" and never spend another day in prison.^[1]

On the early morning of March 19, 1984, police in Queens received a report from a concerned citizen who said that he had found the body of a man, who had apparently been shot to death, inside a parked U-Haul truck.^[4] A quick check determined that the truck had been stolen, and that the deceased man was 29-year-old Ira Adams, a local criminal who had repeatedly been arrested for burglary and grand larceny. After finding a note with an address written down on it, the officers determined that it was only six blocks away, so they decided to check it. Once they entered, they found the body of 21-year-old Karen Jefferson, Adams's live-in girlfriend, who had been shot in the head and chest.^[4]

Less than a week after their murders, both state and federal authorities issued an arrest warrant for Daniels, who had become the prime suspect in the killings after being identified by a witness.^[3] According to the detectives, he and Adams had been part of a burglary ring that specialized in stealing various household items around Queens, but the pair got into a dispute over money that resulted in Adams being killed, with Daniels supposedly killing Jefferson to get rid of any potential witnesses. As he was now a wanted fugitive, stake-outs were set up in Brooklyn and Queens in an attempt to catch Daniels, but their efforts proved fruitless. Unbeknownst to authorities, he was living in an old van he owned and had temporarily traveled to Durham, North Carolina, to evade arrest, but would later return to Queens.^[3]