Fugitive believed to have faked own death off Alabama coast will now face sex crime charges
Published 12:04 pm Tuesday, February 4, 2020
A Mississippi man accused of sexually assaulting a teenager then faking his own death days before he was set to appear in court is being extradited from Oklahoma back to Mississippi.
Jacob Blair Scott, 43, was arrested Thursday at an RV park in Antlers, Oklahoma, where he’d been hiding out under a false identity for months, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement.
He was added to the agency’s most wanted list 24 hours before he was captured.
On Friday, Scott was ordered to be extradited back to Mississippi.
When he arrives in the state in the coming weeks, he’ll get a public defender and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department will continue its investigation, news outlets reported.
Scott was indicted on 14 counts including sexual battery, touching a child for lustful purposes and exploitation of a child.
Before his capture last week, Scott had been last seen in July 2018. That was days before he was set to plead guilty in Mississippi to the charges.
Alabama authorities said early-on they felt Scott had faked his own death when they found his abandoned dinghy about a mile offshore in Orange Beach on July 30, 2018.
A weeklong search failed to produce his body and authorities learned he had withdrawn $45,000 from his retirement account before his disappearance.