Through cunning, killer escaped time and again

updated 3:54 a.m. ET Nov. 11, 2007

MINOT, N.D. - The first gunshot glanced off Richard Kitzman's head, knocking him to the floor of the grain elevator where he worked.

Curled in a fetal position, he glimpsed the man looming over him, holding a snub-nose .38. As the man squeezed off four shots, two of which missed, Kitzman stared at the gun.

"I saw more of the revolver than I saw of him," he said, standing recently in the spot where he was shot in the Farmers Union grain elevator office the night of Nov. 17, 1987.

"When the man finished shooting, he could see that I was bleeding. I lay there and didn't move," said Kitzman, plant manager of the grain elevator today.

"He thought I was dead."

When the shooter walked out, Kitzman crawled under a desk and called 911 — and during the call, he heard more gunshots.

"I think he's shooting Jerry," Kitzman told the operator.

He referred to a friend of many years, Jerome Theis of Circle Pines, Minn., who was shot and killed as he sat in his truck outside, eating ice cream while awaiting a load of grain.

Series of escapes
By the time police arrived, the shooter had vanished. But who was he? And why did he do these terrible things?

The why question is hard to answer, but investigators soon established the who.

Richard Lee McNair, originally from Oklahoma, came to Minot with the Air Force and was in the military at the time of the killing. He had worked as a military police officer and as an informant for the Minot police.

McNair was arrested several weeks after the Minot shootings when police found stolen goods in a storage locker he had rented under a false name.

Among the most damning evidence were 10 shell casings from the grain elevator shootings, Ward County Sheriff Vern Erck said.

"He kept them as trophies," Erck said.

McNair, 48, was sentenced to life in prison for the 1987 shooting. He escaped three times — the last time from a federal prison in Louisiana more than a year ago.

‘Deadly combination’ of intelligence, cunning
The escapes fit with qualities many who knew McNair describe: He's smart and wily and personable when he needs to be.

"He was good," said retired Minot Police Sgt. Mike Knoop, who had worked with McNair when he was an informant. "He contributed to at least one sizable cocaine bust."

He described McNair as "the kind of guy who would steal your car, sell it back to you, and you'd think you got a heck of a deal."

Psychological tests in prison determined that McNair has "above-average intelligence," said Deputy U.S. Marshal Glenn Belgard, in Alexandria, La., head of the latest manhunt for McNair.

"Intelligence with an ability to con is a deadly combination," the marshal said.

McNair grew up in the Duncan, Okla., where his brother Phil McNair, who owns a tire and car lot, said he idolized his big brother "until he made bad choices."

He continued in a phone interview: "He always thinks he's too smart — and he is about the smartest person I've ever met but he's used it to his disadvantage and not to his advantage."

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