ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — Applying for a job.
Hitchhiking.
Eating a hot dog at a voter registration event.
And possibly hiding in sewers.
Those are some of the ways St. Louis County Police say Tommy Wayne Boyd spent his 16 hours on the run Thursday.
Now, investigators are working to fill in the gaps on their timeline, said St. Louis County Lt. Col. Jason Law.
“What he was in prison for is a very serious crime,” Law said of Boyd’s child sex crimes convictions dating to the early 1990s. “And we want to make sure if there's any victims out there, that they contact the St. Louis County police and let us know their story.
“We're still trying to hammer out the timeline for sure.”
It began at about 4 a.m. Thursday when state and local law enforcement sources tell me 45-year-old convicted felon stole a handcuff key from one of two guards who were supposed to be watching him at Mercy Hospital South.
The sources tell 5 On Your Side the guard fell asleep while the other one went to the bathroom.
Boyd then stole the guard’s jacket and walked out. The sources say he later told police he thought about stealing the guard’s gun, but feared it might wake him.
Where he went for the next four hours is still a mystery.
Law says he may have hidden in a sewer.
“What we’re trying to do is confirm that by either camera or by passerby that somebody may have seen him getting out of the sewer,” Law said. “He did some peculiar things along the way.”
The next sighting happened at about 8 a.m. when Law says Boyd hitched a ride from a stranger at the Phillips 66 gas station across the street from the hospital.
“He had no idea,” Law said of the man who gave Boyd a ride. “That Good Samaritan called us later with all the details of what transpired.”
The man told police he dropped Boyd off in south St. Louis, and Boyd was then spotted along Arsenal Street.
“He walked into a quick shop and attempted to apply for a position,” Law said.
Then, at about 10 a.m., police saw a selfie of Boyd with a woman appear on social media.
“We did identify her,” Law said. “But right now, the relationship with her is unknown.”
At around 1 p.m., he went to a voter registration event at Tower Grove Park.
“He apparently answered a couple of political questions and got a free hot dog,” Law said.
Police missed him by about 15 minutes.
The trail seemed cold until just before 8 p.m. when a woman called police saying she was following Boyd as he was walking in Shrewsbury – about a four-mile walk southwest of Tower Grove Park and just over the city-county border. They arrested him at the Dierbergs grocery store there.
His hair had been almost entirely shaved off his head.
A law enforcement source told 5 On Your Side he was almost bragging about his escape to officers as he was being processed through the St. Louis County Justice Center, explaining how he pulled it off.
Missouri Department of Corrections officials confirmed the guards did not follow proper procedures and protocols while guarding Boyd at the hospital and that “appropriate discipline” had been given. Then, later Friday afternoon, the department confirmed the guards “no longer work,” for the state.
Law said more than 100 officers and multiple agencies were involved in the manhunt.
“I just think that the public is the one that cracked the case for us, along with the media,” Law said.
Law said his department is planning to apply for additional charges against Boyd soon, including escape from confinement. It could likely extend the amount of time he spends behind bars.
He’s been incarcerated since 2007 serving a 30-year term for enticement of a child, which means he was trying to convince a child younger than 15 to engage in a sex act with him when he was older than 21.
Before that, he served a 10-year prison sentence for statutory sodomy involving an 11-year-old boy who he assaulted when he was 18 years old, according to court records.