MILFORD, Pa. — For 48 days, Eric Frein was everywhere and nowhere, supposedly sighted again and again, only to melt back into the woods in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.
So on Friday, as state police paraded the gaunt and battered-looking former fugitive in front of a courthouse, residents were relieved to see him in the flesh.
It was proof that the harrowing seven-week manhunt in the Pocono Mountains for the suspected cop-killer was finally over, and things could start getting back to normal.
“It’s just been nerve-wracking, not knowing where he was, what his next step was, what he was going to do,” said Jody Welsh.
Onlookers shouted “Are you sorry?” and “Why did you do it?” as the survivalist and marksman was led from court the morning after his capture near an abandoned hangar. Hundreds of local, state and federal law officers had taken part in the manhunt.
Frein, 31, had a gash on the bridge of his nose and a scrape over his left eye as he listened to charges that he killed Cpl. Bryon Dickson and critically wounded Trooper Alex Douglass in a sniper attack outside their state police barracks Sept. 12. U.S. marshals who took him into custody said he suffered the injuries while they had him down on the pavement.
He did not have a lawyer and was not asked to enter a plea to first-degree murder and other charges, including possession of two pipe bombs discovered during the search. He remained jailed without bail. A preliminary hearing was set for Nov. 12.
Pike County District Attorney Raymond Tonkin, who said he would seek the death penalty, told reporters that Frein’s capture Thursday evening brought a measure of comfort to the region after an “unimaginable loss of unspeakable proportions.”
“We have now started to find the answers that the community desired in this case,” Tonkin said.
Troopers questioned Frein, but authorities would not disclose what he told them or discuss a possible motive. Authorities have said Frein had expressed anti-law enforcement views online and to people who knew him.
Joe Fagan was the first in line to enter the courtroom.
“To be honest, I just wanted to see what evil looked like,” he said. “He had zero emotion.”
Until his capture, Frein had some people beginning to wonder if law enforcement was up to the task, given the rugged terrain and the evident skill with which he eluded dogs, thermal-imaging cameras and teams of heavily armed officers.
Sporadic sightings of the fugitive kept entire communities on edge: A woman claimed to have seen him outside a high school. A local cop spotted a mysterious man in green, prompting an intensive search that came up empty. There were other sightings in which Frein supposedly made himself visible to law enforcement, then vanished.
“To see him just walk past me was just a sigh of relief that he’s not in the woods,” said Welsh, who made sure she was on hand Friday as state police led Frein from his arraignment. “That everybody can continue on with their lives.”
In fact, with Frein behind bars, plans for trick-or-treating in Barrett Township were back on, and hunting and trapping were given the go-ahead to resume.