A Detroit man who had been on the run for more than 30 years after being charged with murdering the lead singer of a local punk band was arrested in Panama late last month, the authorities said.
The man, Richard Werstine, fatally shot his roommate, Rodney Barger, the 23-year-old frontman for the band Cold as Life, in Detroit in September 1993, according to local prosecutors and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Mr. Werstine, who was 24 at the time, was arrested soon after the shooting and pleaded not guilty to felony firearms and second-degree murder charges, according to court documents. But he failed to appear at his trial, and in June 1994 a warrant was issued for his arrest, the Marshals Service said in a statement on Sunday.
In the years after the shooting, Mr. Werstine was arrested “multiple times” under various aliases, but his true identity remained unknown to the authorities, according to the Marshals Service, which assumed responsibility for the case in 2022.
Over the past year, the authorities came to believe that Mr. Werstine, 56, had made his way to Panama’s capital, Panama City, where he was arrested “without incident” at a dog park on April 29, the agency said. Mr. Werstine, who was carrying a fake ID, admitted his true identity and acknowledged that he entered Panama illegally in 2005, according to the Marshals Service.
The arrest “sends a message to fugitives that there is no place you can hide that the U.S. Marshals Service won’t find you and bring you to justice,” Owen Cypher, the U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement.
Mr. Werstine is in Texas awaiting transfer to Detroit, where he will be prosecuted on the original murder and firearms charges, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, Maria Miller, said.
He has not yet been assigned a lawyer, according to Jimmy Allen, the chief deputy U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Officials have not given a motive for the killing. The Detroit Police Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Mr. Werstine’s aliases over the years included Joseph Alan Stavros, Richard Michael Brennan and Anthony Joseph Maceo. He faced concealed weapons and arson charges in the late 1990s, Mr. Allen said in an interview on Thursday.
In 1999, Mr. Werstine, using the Joseph Stavros alias, suffered serious gunshot wounds to his abdomen and an arm during a confrontation with the police at an industrial building in Flagstaff, Ariz., Mr. Allen said.
According to a synopsis of police reports from January 1999 provided by the Flagstaff Police Department on Thursday, a “Joe Stavros” refused to drop his gun after officers commanded him to do so. Instead, he pointed the weapon at the officers, saying, “You will never take me.”
One of the officers then opened fire, the synopsis said. Mr. Werstine was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and disorderly conduct.
Mr. Allen described Mr. Werstine as a “con man” who “absorbed other identities.”
For the last two decades, Mr. Werstine was living in Panama as Anthony Joseph Maceo, the name on his fake ID at the time of his arrest, Mr. Allen said. He had gotten into acting and the theater in recent years, according to Mr. Allen, who said Mr. Werstine described himself as a tool salesman when he was detained last month.
Mr. Barger, who went by the stage name “Rawn Beauty,” helped found Cold as Life in Detroit in 1988. The band quickly established itself in the city’s gritty, working-class hardcore scene, with a reputation for thrillingly chaotic, sometimes violent shows. In 2023, Revolver magazine lauded Mr. Barger, one of the group’s principal songwriters, as a “belligerent vocalist and underclass poet.”
The group had yet to record its debut album when Mr. Barger was killed, leaving behind a fiancée and a daughter, according to a short obituary in The Detroit Free Press.
The band would go on to release two albums, along with early recordings featuring Mr. Barger, and has continued to play sporadically.
Over the years, Mr. Barger’s death has haunted the band. “Promise,” a song from the 1998 album, “Born to Land Hard,” swears revenge on his killer: “You’re 23 and dead/ That promise will be kept.”
A representative for Cold as Life did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Three years ago, Revolver asked Jeff Gunnells, a founder of the band, a guitarist and its current lead singer, if he still sought to avenge Mr. Barger’s death after all these years and considering his own struggles with the law. (Mr. Gunnells spent time in prison for armed robbery.)
“In my heart — because I’ve been in need of forgiveness, grace, mercy — I would love to extend that to Werstine,” he said. “But I also know that other side of me.”
“I would love to forgive the dude, but I know that I can’t,” he said.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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