Fugitive Finally Sentenced

A man who fled before he was sentenced for killing a couple in a 1970 car crash, in Harrison Township, in which he was driving drunk received a three-year state prison sentence on Friday.

Jamie Thomas, 50, disappeared before his 1971 sentencing and lived first in nearby Chester County, Pa., then in Woodbine, N.J., about an hour from the site of the fatal crash in Harrison Township.

His life over the past 33 years was a normal one, although he hid his criminal conviction from even his wife and grown children until last month.

He became a Pentecostal minister, raised two children, and worked for several years for the state Department of Transportation before a car wreck shattered his hip and forced him to live on disability since then.

More than 20 years ago, Thomas also worked for about two weeks as a corrections officer at a state prison.

His lawyer argued that because Thomas lived a normal and decent life for more than 30 years, he should be granted leniency.

Prosecutors and relatives of his victims, who packed the courtroom Friday, said that he should get a harsh sentence because he was able to have that normal and decent life while Richard Cancglin and Lynn Nicolaisen did not.

"To even go as far as to become an ordained minister is a very big slap in the face," Richard Cancglin's brother, Kenneth, told the judge during the hearing.

Afterward, Assistant Gloucester County Prosecutor Lloyd Henderson said justice was not served.

"If you owed a debt, after 32 years the interest would probably have tripled it," Henderson said.

Superior Court Judge John Tomasello gave Thomas the maximum penalty under 1970 laws. Prosecutors had asked for a six-year sentence, arguing that both deaths were listed under a single count of an indictment when they could have been handled separately.

Thomas' lawyer, V. James Milita, said his client should be eligible for parole in less than eight months and could be released to a house-arrest program even sooner.

As part of the sentence, Thomas must also pay the families of the victims, who were senior sweethearts at Pitman High School, a total of $3,266.50 to reimburse them for funeral costs.

Milita said his client had considered turning himself in over the years. "You just procrastinate and put it off and put it off and hope it will go away," Milita said.

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Author: NBC10/AP