Back to the UConn Huskies Newsfeed

Florida authorities capture fugitive drama instructor who disappeared from Connecticut after rape conviction 44 years ago

Authorities in Florida have captured a former Mount Holyoke College drama instructor who fled and disappeared 44 years ago after being convicted of a brutal rape, robbery and kidnapping in Wethersfield.

A U.S. Department of State security officer investigating passport fraud tracked Douglas E. Bennett, now about 76, to his home in Clearwater, Florida, where he was arrested Wednesday.

Federal authorities in Florida said they were alerted to Bennett after he applied to renew a phony passport he had obtained previously in the name of a 5-year-old boy who died near the college in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1945.