- A tip from a viewer watching an old America’s Most Wanted episode led to the arrest of a suspect in a 29-year-old Iowa vehicular homicide case.
A television episode that first aired nearly three decades ago has helped breathe new life into an Iowa vehicular homicide case. Des Moines Police say a rerun of an old America’s Most Wanted episode generated the tip that eventually led investigators to a suspect who had been out of their reach for nearly 29 years.
The case began on September 29, 1997, when 64-year-old Leslie Ruby was killed by a hit-and-run driver outside his home on the east side of Des Moines. Police recovered the vehicle involved and said evidence gathered by the department’s Traffic Unit identified then-28-year-old Gerardo Garcia-Michel as the driver.
Investigators didn’t get the opportunity to arrest him at the time, as police say Garcia-Michel fled Iowa before he could be taken into custody. Law enforcement efforts to locate him yielded no results, and investigators eventually exhausted the available leads…