According to a March 1963 article in The Sun, Parker was found guilty of helping to grow $100,000 worth of marijuana at a farm on the Eastern Shore and trying to start operations in Delaware and Virginia.
At the time, Parker's attorney said that his client had been assaulted and not told of his constitutional rights when he was arrested.
But a federal jury did not believe him and he was convicted, along with another man, on drug charges. That trigged a parole violation and Parker was sent to a newly constructed minimum-security prison on the Eastern Shore to serve 31 years.
He didn't want to be locked up, and to this day he says that he wasn't really involved with the drug ring.
"I'll tell you why I walked out," Parker said yesterday. "The charge they had me on. ... I didn't do it."
Parker served two years of his sentence working in a field, paired with a farmer who was not a prisoner. He charmed the farmer, spinning a tale that he had lots of money in Baltimore. If the farmer helped him escape, Parker said, he would pay a large reward.
The man agreed and drove Parker all the way to Baltimore. Once they got to the city, Parker told the man to wait.
"I told him, `Stay right here I'm going to go and get the money, and I'll be right back,'" Parker said. "And then I left to go catch a Greyhound and I was off to New York."
From there Parker was on the run. He first went to New Jersey and nearly was caught by police there. Next it was New York, then Chicago, then Seattle. In yesterday's interview, he admitted to using fake names to avoid the police in the 1960s and '70s.
He got into more trouble in Washington state - he was caught driving a getaway car after an armed robbery around 1972 or 1973. "They gave me 20 years for that," he said.
But Parker said he was released after serving two years in Washington and put on parole.
Parker said he changed his behavior after Washington authorities released him. He stopped using fake names. He moved to New York, met a woman and got a job driving a cab. It was 1975.
"So everything was clear," he said yesterday. "I haven't been in anything since that time. I've got a different life now," he said, working in farms and driving trucks. He stayed with his New York girlfriend for the next three decades. He was too late to help raise a son that he had from an earlier marriage - his boy is locked up in a Connecticut prison on a murder conviction, he said.
In 1989 Parker moved to North Carolina, back to where he grew up. In recent years, his health has become frail after suffering a stroke, he said.
His voice cracked yesterday when he talked about the people whom he wants to see and the things he wants to do before he dies.
He said: "I don't want to die in jail."
annie.linskey@baltsun.com
Sun reporter Gus G. Sentementes contributed to this article.
