Kim Avis’s desperate bid to escape justice was foiled with the help of a woman he befriended while on the run.
The former Inverness busker was due to stand trial in 2019 for a string of sexual offence against four women.
But he fled to America where he was hunted down by police and US marshals after pretending he had drowned.
Arrest ended manhunt
While fleeing the law, he met a woman called Angie, telling her he was a US citizen named Cameron MacGregor.
But when she became suspicious of his story, she alerted police – who later arrested him and ended a months-long manhunt.
Angie’s role in the capture of the fugitive is told in a BBC Disclosure programme to be shown tonight.
Avis was jailed in 2021 for 15 years after being convicted on 14 sexual offences including rape.
The Inverness street trader had carried out a series of attacks over a number of years, his victims including his former partner Jade Skea.
After a police investigation, which saw more women come forward with complaints, he appeared in court charged with multiple rapes and sexual assaults.
He was released on bail pending trial in March 2019.
But he fled the country to California having sold his house, known as Wolves’ Den, for £245,000.
Rapist on the run
There he tried to fake his own death at Monastery Beach, Carmel-by-the-Sea.
A missing person search quickly became a manhunt when it became clear the drowning was a hoax and a serial rapist was on the loose.
Months later, he surfaced with a fake name at a stall selling rocks and gemstones in the mountains near Colorado Springs.
Although he looked scruffy, Avis spent about $3,000 at the stall, which was run by Angie who thought he was “elusive”.
The stranger seemed to have plenty of cash: “He was always throwing money around,” she tells the programme.
“He’d buy everybody food and he might have been buying friends.”
She became suspicious about identity and decided to alert police.
“I took a picture of his car licence plates. I had a police friend and I said ‘will you run these plates’.”
She then got a call from the US Marshals, a government agency that hunts fugitives across state lines.
“They said ‘Stay away from him, he’s dangerous,’,” she says.
Tip-offs led to arrest
Armed with information from Angie and other tip-offs, the marshals traced Avis to a low-budget motel where he was arrested.
At the time, Avis had more than $50,000 in cash in a backpack, plus gold coins. He also had a brand new van he’d bought in the US.
Angie says they could not release the money back to him and so she was granted power of attorney.
She sold the van for $20,000 and said she sent most of the other cash back to Avis, although he claimed not to have received any of it.
While he was in federal prison, Angie visited him three times without revealing she helped secure his arrest.
She later visited him in jail in Edinburgh after he had been extradited and then told him her secret.
“He was pissed. I said ‘you lied to the wrong American girl’.”
Disclosure: Dead Man Running, 9 pm BBC One Scotland, Wednesday 27, March, also available on iPlayer today.
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