Michael Florentino's U.S. criminal charge started as a fight with father
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Florentino was serving time in El Dorado County for assault with a deadly weapon when, in 1971 he escaped with another inmate. The two took off into the hills. Florentino's accomplice was caught. He was not. Decades past, with this mug shot of a young Florentino, as the last look, investigators had to work with. Until a tip led investigators to Vancouver. Turns out he's been living a quiet life under a fake name.
The incident that landed Michael Florentino in a California prison camp nearly four decades ago -- a volcanic argument with his father in which both men threatened each other with guns -- wasn't enough to hurt their long-term relationship.
Over the years, Florentino would leave his North Vancouver home with his wife Karen and son Tino, and drive to Pittsburg, Calif. to visit his parents, James and Rose Florentino.
Several times, his parents made the trip to Canada and Florentino would take his father fishing at lakes north of Squamish.
The fight, precipitated by Florentino hanging around with the wrong crowd, was, in hindsight, "a hell of a way to get to loving your pa," Florentino said Friday. What passed between the two men that night in 1969 became a reason to accept one another, even if they lived in two countries thousands of kilometres apart.
But the fight has come back to haunt Florentino in a way he knew it inevitably must, but hoped would not.
And it has come back in a way that has peeled back or unravelled every part of his life since he walked away from the Growlersberg Conservation Camp near Sacramento in 1971, where he was serving an "indeterminate" sentence of six months to 10 years for assault with a deadly weapon.
For the last 35 years, Florentino, 60, has lived as Michael Capuano, a name he borrowed from a willing cousin in New York. He hasn't led a double life -- he simply built a new one. He married, had a son, bought a house, paid taxes and lived a pledge to make his new name as honourable as he could.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation didn't forget about Florentino.
Last month, Judy Foster, a special agent with the Corrections Department's cold case apprehension team, tracked Florentino down to an address in North Vancouver, where cooperative RCMP officers got his photograph and confirmed he was wanted as a fugitive.
It's not clear how Foster found him, but Florentino thinks it could have been from fingerprints he gave to the RCMP 20 years ago when they arrested him in a mistaken identity case involving a marijuana growing operation at the wrong address. Florentino wasn't involved and the case against him was dismissed, but his fingerprints have languished in police records since.
Now California is seeking his extradition and wants him to serve at least some time of his remaining sentence.
On Monday, he will face an admissibility hearing in front of the Canada Immigration and Refugee Board to determine if he should be returned to the U.S.
But even that prospect is clouded in uncertainty; California corrections officials said the charge of unlawful flight to avoid confinement has probably exceeded the statute of limitations, and that Florentino was prosecuted for assault under an old law that is no longer used. They also say he's an escaped convict who led a "disciplinary-free incarceration".
Michael Castro, acting chief of operations for corrections safety, said Florentino faces an administrative review before a prison board once he is extradited from Canada. He said California no longer gives "indeterminate" sentences, and that Florentino could be released after a few months.
He said Florentino is hardly the dangerous criminal corrections officials usually spend time trying to locate. But he also says the department couldn't let him go unapprehended.
"He still escaped, and he has to account for that," Castro said.
But that's really the least of Florentino's troubles. On Friday, he sat down with The Vancouver Sun in an interview agreed to by his lawyer, Zool Suleman, to explain how he came to Canada and how he hopes to continue to live here despite being unmasked as a fugitive from U.S. justice.
Time has worn Florentino down. Once a big bear of a man whose muscles were hard from heavy manual labour and working as an autobody specialist, his shoulders are now stooped. His hair is greying and his eyes have deep bags under them. But there is still power in his big hands, and his deep voice booms with the language of a school-of-hard-knocks labourer. He talked candidly about the troubles in his past and future, and the good life he's lived here.
The irony of all this, Florentino said, is that his parents, who are now dead, helped finance his escape to Canada, and he was admitted by a sympathetic border agent who suspected he might be dodging the Vietnam draft.
"Basically, my folks just wanted me to get help," he said.
Florentino said he walked away from the camp one night in August 1971, after the parole board continued to reject his application for parole even though he had stayed out of trouble from the moment he got there. His parents sold his motorcycle and gave him the money, and he went to New York for a month, where a cousin told him to take his name. Corrections may not have known where he was, but Florentino's family sure did.
Florentino said he used another cousin's draft card to come across the border in eastern Canada. At the time, lots of Americans were dodging the draft, and the border guard looked at the card, looked at him, and said "go on in," he said.
Florentino took a Greyhound bus west. At a post office he applied for a social insurance card. Within two years he'd met his wife, settled down, and learned a trade making leather goods. He worked for an autobody shop, and is now doing maintenance. "I've always been good with my hands," he said, describing himself as "a beer-drinking lunch-pailer."
And he stayed out of trouble. A couple of parking or speeding tickets, and that case of the mistaken growing operation address. That was it, he said.
But Florentino said his duplicity has deeply harmed his family. His wife Karen is in deep shock and his son is confused about his own identity. At times they had wondered why his parents had a different name, but he simply told them his father had died and his mother remarried.
He said he told Karen years ago that he had some trouble in his past, but never explained it.
Now, he said, she's rightfully mad at him. "Right now she'd want to shoot me, there's no doubt about that. My wife has had about enough of everything right now. But I am hoping she can get over it.
"My son said what do I do now, change my name to Florentino? I told him use Capuano. I did my best to keep that name as clean and clear as anything. There is nothing wrong with it."
Florentino started to cry as he talked about the impact on his family.
"Anybody who knew is devastated. They have distanced themselves. They don't want to know anything. Nobody wants any part of this," he said. It has been hardest on his wife.
"I told her 'you have nothing to be ashamed of.' They don't have anything to be ashamed of. I want them to walk tall," he said, choking on his words. "The hell with it. I am sorry for what I have done, and what is worse is the damage that has been done to them."
He said it's been tough living a lie. "In my heart I've been living this life so long that I believe it. But all of the sudden, nobody else does."
Florentino said he never really thought he would be caught, especially since he's suffering from health problems, including hypertension and diabetes. "I thought I'd die first. Maybe I'd hoped I'd die first, put it that way."
But he also has no doubt he will now have to go back to California and serve time. "They want something out of me, it won't be a cakewalk," he said.
And yet he is also hopeful his adopted home will see fit to let him return.
"This is the only home I've really known. I want to change things and use [the name] Capuano. I made it good."
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
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