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Watch: Man who escaped Puerto Rico prison in 1987 arrested in Fla. under false identity

A fingerprint match led Lee County deputies to arrest the 63-year-old, who had evaded capture for nearly four decades

By Olivia Lloyd
The Charlotte Observer

LEE COUNTY, Fla. — A fugitive living under a different identity for nearly 40 years has been caught after Florida law enforcement learned he was the same man who broke out of a Puerto Rico prison in the 1980s, authorities said.

Jorge Milla-Valdes was serving a robbery sentence when he escaped prison in 1987, according to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.

He moved to Florida and began living under the name Luis Aguirre with a different date of birth, as law enforcement said he racked up more criminal charges.

In 1999, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Monroe County on aggravated battery and robbery charges after he was previously convicted of robbery in Miami-Dade County in 1989, only two years after he’s accused of eloping from prison in Puerto Rico, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.

A corrections official in Puerto Rico reached out to Lee County authorities March 6 to say that a wanted fugitive under the alias Luis Aguirre was living in the area, according to an arrest report.

A latent fingerprint supervisor pulled Milla-Valdes’ prints from Puerto Rico and Luis Aguirre’s prints from Monroe County and found they belonged to the same person, authorities said.

When deputies arrested the 63-year-old in the Fort Myers area March 7, he told them he went by the name Jorge Milla-Valdes “about 40 years ago.”

They informed him he was being arrested on the warrant out of Puerto Rico, and he responded, “They told me they don’t want me about two times,” according to footage shared by the sheriff’s office.

“Now they do. They changed their mind,” an arresting deputy replied.

Records show the Department of Justice in Puerto Rico issued a detainer for him that was canceled in November.

He’s currently in custody in Lee County.

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