On the night of May 12, 1975, a 30-year-old White male named David Lee Lilly, a Sergeant with the Beckley Police Department in West Virginia, was on duty. Shortly before midnight, he conducted a traffic stop at the intersection of the Route 19/21 bypass and New Raleigh Road. The man he pulled over was a suspect in a coin store robbery that had occurred earlier that day.
During the interaction with the driver, Sergeant Lilly was shot twice with a. 32 caliber pistol. The 32-year-old suspect then fled the scene in Sergeant Lilly's own patrol car, sparking a significant manhunt. For twelve days, the assailant managed to evade capture, but he was ultimately apprehended in Wayne, New Jersey.
Following his arrest, the suspect was returned to West Virginia to face charges for the murder of Sergeant Lilly. He was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. However, the story did not end there.
On November 7, 1979, he and several other inmates escaped from the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville. During the escape, he shot and killed West Virginia State Trooper Philip Kesner with a gun stolen from a prison guard.
The escaped convict remained at large for two years, during which time he committed other crimes, including the murder of an elderly man in Arizona. His time as a fugitive came to an end after a shootout with federal agents in New York City. He was then returned to West Virginia to continue serving his multiple life sentences. As of the summer of 2023, the man, then 80 years old, was incarcerated at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex. Sergeant Lilly, a U.S. Army veteran who had served in the Vietnam War, had been with the Beckley Police Department for six and a half years and was survived by his wife and child.
