NHP arrests love on the run

Karen Zekan

Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1999 | 10:47 a.m.

An Ohio couple's plans to wed in Las Vegas quickly blossomed into a federal affair Monday when Nevada Highway Patrol troopers who stopped the pair on a traffic violation discovered the driver was an Ohio prison escapee and his bride-to-be, an accomplice, police said.

Marriage, it seems, is at the root of the couple's problems.

Both Ransom Bradly Staley, 51, and Becky Wolfe, 48, are believed by investigators to still be legally married to other people.

And it was during a bitter custody battle over the five children he had with his estranged wife, Deborah, in 1986, that Staley shot his wife four times in her head in a Hocking County Courthouse.

Deborah Staley lived, and Staley was sentenced to seven to 15 years for felonious assault.

Police said the arresting troopers on Monday found wigs, fake identification cards and stolen Indiana and Texas license plates in the trunk of the car Staley and Wolfe were allegedly driving when they were arrested about 6:40 a.m. off State Route 161, near Interstate 15.

Also impounded as evidence was a plastic bag filled with about $10,000 in cash -- believed to be the couple's savings -- from the front seat of the car.

Nevada Highway Patrol Troopers Bruce Roper and Eric Kemmer were citing several commercial vehicles illegally parked in a dirt lot that was recently posted for no parking when they noticed two people apparently waking up in the front seat of a dusty white Plymouth Sundance with a Kansas license plate.

The driver began to pull out of the lot, but stopped after the troopers activated their patrol car's lights and siren, said Trooper Scott Flabi, NHP spokesman.

Roper ordered the driver out of the car when he could not produce a driver's license.

Flabi said the driver told Roper his real name and admitted having escaped prison in Ohio. The troopers arrested the couple after running their names through a federal crime database and discovering that both were wanted out of Ohio. The Kansas license plate came back as stolen.

The couple were able to provide the troopers with the title for the Sundance, Flabi said.

Staley and Wolfe were booked into Clark County Detention Center and are expected to be extradited back to Ohio. Neither is believed to have any other criminal charges.

"They planned to be married," Flabi said. "We're not sure where they were headed next or what path they took to get here."

Staley, formerly of Rockbridge, Ohio, had been on the lam almost a month. Police said he walked away from a Madison Correctional Institution work detail near London, Ohio, about 8 a.m. on Jan. 5, the day before his 51st birthday.

Within 48 hours of Staley's disappearance, Ohio authorities charged Wolfe with aiding in his disappearance. If convicted, she could be facing a two- to eight-year sentence in addition to federal charges that could stem crossing state lines with Staley, authorities said.