Convicted Baby Killer Arthur Buckel Has Been Captured

Authorities had been searching for him since he escaped from the grounds of Ancora Psychiatric Hospital last Tuesday.

Convicted baby killer Arthur Buckel has been captured, nearly a week into the manhunt.

On Monday morning at 11:30 a.m., police took Buckel into custody near northbound mile-marker 76.6 of the Garden State Parkway, reports the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.

Last Tuesday, Buckel, 38, escaped from the grounds of Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Winslow Township. Buckel was not a patient of the hospital but, rather, an inmate of New Jersey’s Bayshore State Prison, which houses some low-risk convicts at Ancora, where they perform work detail. Buckel was a janitor there.

After escaping from Ancora, Buckel fled to Barnegat in a stolen vehicle, and he was spotted on surveillance video at a CVS in that shore town. Police flooded the streets of Barnegat last Wednesday and Thursday, eventually determining that he had left the area.

Buckel’s family contacted police, explaining that he wanted to surrender to authorities on Sunday at a service area near exit 77 of the Garden State Parkway. Buckel did turn up at the service area, but he did not surrender, somehow managing to elude authorities. Here is a surveillance image of Buckel at the service area:

Investigators believe that Buckel fled on foot from the service area, and on Monday morning, police and K-9 units scoured the woods along the Garden State Parkway. He was arrested without incident.

At the time of his escape, Buckel was just a few weeks away from being eligible for parole on recent convictions for aggravated assault and burglary, among other offenses. In 1996, he was found guilty of slapping a 10-month-old child to death because she wouldn’t stop crying. Originally charged with murder for the baby’s death, Buckel served 14 years on a manslaughter conviction, gaining his freedom in 2010.

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