SC fugitive killer Price hopped from state to state, eluding FBI and SLED, document says

For 77 days after the S.C. Supreme Court ordered his arrest, fugitive killer Jeroid Price roamed the country, one step ahead of the FBI and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

Around April 26, when the Supreme Court ordered him taken into custody, Price, 43, was in South Carolina, according to a law enforcement document.

Then he vanished.

Price’s movements during the 11 months that local, state, and federal officers searched for him were detailed in an FBI complaint filed in federal court. The document was unsealed Thursday afternoon.

“It is believed that Price then went to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and from there boarded a bus to Atlanta, Georgia. Telephone tracking then indicated that Price continued from Georgia back to the state of New Mexico, specifically, Albuquerque,” according to the complaint.

Telephone tracking is commonly-used by law enforcement to determine the location of a person’s cell phone. Most cell phones emit global positioning data that enables their whereabouts to be pinpointed.

The manhunt ended Wednesday morning when Price was taken into custody by the FBI and New York City police at an apartment complex in the Bronx, according to law enforcement. A tip to the S.C. Department of Corrections and forwarded to the FBI led to his apprehension, according to prison officials. Whoever provided the tip is eligible for some $60,000 in reward money.

The FBI complaint, secretly authorized on June 7 by South Carolina federal Magistrate Judge Paige Gossett, charged Price with “the crime of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution by knowingly and willfully moving or traveling in interstate or foreign commerce with the intent to avoid custody or confinement after conviction for a state felony (murder),” the complaint said.

The federal charge of “unlawful flight” gave the FBI formal jurisdiction to pursue Price on a federal crime.

Ever since mid-April, when 1st Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe disclosed to news media that Price had been released after serving only 19 years of a 35-year mandatory prison sentence, the affair has caused “an uproar from the victim’s family, law enforcement and lawmakers,” the complaint said. Pascoe had prosecuted Price in 2003 and won a murder conviction.

Price was released under a secret court deal between now-retired state Judge Casey Manning, 5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson and Price’s lawyer, state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland.

“This matter not only threatens public safety but also implicates the public’s confidence in the judicial system and the Rule of Law,” wrote Gov. Henry McMaster in an April 25 letter to corrections officials. “The early and unsupervised release of this inmate under the circumstances... was seemingly contrary to law and obviously at odds with common sense.”

Manning’s order allowed Price to get out of prison 16 years early. In 2003, Price — a member of the Bloods gang — was convicted of murdering a college football player in a Columbia night club and sentenced to a mandatory 35 years in prison.

To engineer Price’s getting out of prison, Rutherford and Gipson used a little-known procedure to persuade Manning to issue a court order. The procedure allows for a judge to take time off an inmate’s sentence if the inmate has helped law enforcement inside prison. Rutherford asserted that Price had done just that on several occasions.

But in April, when it became known that Manning had secretly lopped off nearly half of Price’s sentence, Attorney General Alan Wilson successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to void the order and mandate that Price be put back in prison to finish out his sentence. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials such as Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said they were shocked. Supreme Court justices at an April 26 hearing said they were astonished that no public record existed of Price’s release.

At the time of Price’s release, he was being held in a New Mexico state prison. South Carolina officials, asked why Price was transferred out west, have said only, “Price was moved as part of the Interstate Corrections Compact, which is a national agreement between states to house inmates in the situation best suited for them to spend their time.”

FBI complaint: Price in “hiding”

“Price is aware that law enforcement is looking to take him into custody, and he is actively hiding,” said the FBI complaint, . , sworn out on June 7 by FBI agent Kevin Conroy. The complaint had been sealed since then.

SLED had been actively searching for Price under the direction of the agency’s Lt. Al Stuckey, the complaint said.

SLED “requested FBI assistance in the investigation as many of Price’s family and friends, all of whom they would like interviewed, reside outside the state of South Carolina. Price has relatives that live in New York, North Carolina, and Georgia,” the complaint said.

“Law enforcement conducted interviews with Price’s family members living in New York, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina,” the complaint said. “None provided information concerning Price’s whereabouts. Lt. Stuckey has also attempted to track multiple cell phones and has investigated numerous Crime Stoppers tips related to Price’s whereabouts,” the complaint said.

A law enforcement source said late Thursday that Price will not fight being brought back to South Carolina.