Air Force Escapee Pou Decides to Surrender After 2 Weeks on Lam

SAN DIEGO — Well-known deserter James Douglas Pou said he thought about sneaking back into his jail cell at March Air Force Base but instead decided to surrender Wednesday to Navy officials.

Pou, 33, escaped June 1 from the Air Force stockade in Riverside, where he was awaiting trial on bank robbery charges and serving an 18-month sentence for bigamy and desertion convictions stemming from a previous disappearance in 1987 from another Air Force base.

Earlier this month, red-faced March Air Force Base officials said they had no idea how Pou was able to escape from his cell, which he shared with other prisoners. His escape was particularly embarrassing to military officials because he had repeatedly warned them that he would simply walk away from the stockade whenever he felt like it.

In a telephone interview with The Times on Wednesday, Pou said: “I thought about just walking back into my cell (at March) unannounced.” But, he added, “I don’t think the Air Force would have liked that.”

Instead, his Orange County civilian attorney Paul Nestor said he told Air Force authorities that Pou would surrender at the Navy brig at Miramar Naval Air Station, just north of here.

Pou and Nestor, speaking over a car phone, said they were en route along the San Diego Freeway to Miramar on Wednesday night. But it could not immediately be confirmed late Wednesday night whether they had arrived.

Nestor said he preferred that Pou be held at the Navy brig because it has the facilities and staff to help with “Doug’s psychological problems.”

Pou offered few clues about where he had stayed during his two weeks on the lam or how he was able to escape from the Air Force stockade.

“I was kicking back in the (Southern California) mountains and woods. I was camping and fishing. . . . I had a little problem with (poison ivy). I got it on one arm and the whole arm swelled up. But I rubbed some other plants on it and got it under control,” Pou said.

Pou said he talked by telephone Wednesday with his Los Angeles therapist, Barbara Friedman. She had testified at Pou’s court-martial about his mental instability, which she said resulted partly from living with an abusive father.

“Barbara was very instrumental in convincing me to come back. After I talked with her, I called (Nestor) and I asked him to come pick me up,” said Pou during the car telephone interview as he was being driven to Miramar by Nestor.

“I’m doing all right. I’ve had some pretty tough mental problems and spent much of the time (since the escape) thinking about my life. The big thing is that I want help so I can put everything behind me and live a regular life. I’ve never really lived a regular life,” Pou said.

He added that he hopes to eventually be reunited in Buffalo, N.Y., with a woman who had his daughter out of wedlock. Pou said he had an affair with the woman, who was his neighbor, while he was living in San Diego and married to Monica Marie Joyce.

Pou, a former member of an elite Air Force search-and-rescue unit, staged his own death in May, 1987. In an elaborate deception, Pou made it appear that he vanished in the Rio Grande near Albuquerque, N.M. The Air Force declared him dead 10 days later after failing to find a body.

He left a wife and two young sons behind and traveled to Chula Vista to find Joyce, whom he had met the previous October when he was training with an elite Navy unit in nearby Coronado. The couple married in a church wedding that September and had two sons. Friends say they had a rocky marriage strained by Pou’s infidelities and financial problems.