By Helen Bamford, Lenore Oliver and Sapa-AP
To his neighbours in the leafy Cape Town suburb of Claremont, Charles William Pape was an amicable, reserved man who kept to himself, played soccer and cricket with his two sons in the yard and held down a respectable job as a researcher at the University of Cape Town.
But "Charles William Pape" did not exist.
The grey-haired, balding American was really James Kilgore, 55, one of the FBI's most wanted men for more than a quarter of a century, accused of murdering, stealing and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress, in the 1970s in the name of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).
Police arrested Kilgore outside his home on Friday night.
The arrest came a day after four of his former comrades in the SLA pleaded guilty to murder. Authorities plan to extradite him to the United States.
Kilgore was part of the radical group that committed politically-motivated crimes in the US, including a string of bank robberies.
The kidnapped Hearst later became a member of the movement and photographs of her cradling a machine-gun during a bank robbery shocked the world. It was a photograph that personified a time of hijackings, bombings and young anti-establishment terror groups.
Hearst, who was jailed for her role in the movement, was pardoned by former president Bill Clinton when he left office last year.
Kilgore, who arrived in South Africa five years ago with false documents under the alias Charles Pape, worked as a senior researcher at UCT. His wife, Terri Barnes, is a senior researcher at the University of the Western Cape and the couple have two young sons.
Kilgore, who also used the alias John Pape, was a well-respected academic and his work was published widely.
On Saturday his colleagues said they were stunned by the information that Kilgore was a wanted terrorist. They said he was a friend and a mild-mannered family man.
But on Friday his new life, which he had built meticulously over many years, came crashing down. At 7.15pm the police tracked him down to his Dunluce Road home, ending his decades-long run from the law.
Mary Martins-Engelbrecht, a police spokesperson, said Kilgore had been on the run from the FBI for the past 27 years. He was wanted for murder, armed robbery and illegal possession of homemade bombs.
It was thought that Kilgore was in Zimbabwe before he moved to South Africa. South African police began searching for him at Interpol's request three months ago.
Martins-Engelbrechts said Kilgore would not be returned to the US unless Washington gave a formal undertaking that he would not face execution, which is outlawed under South Africa's post-apartheid constitution.
South Africa's justice department was censured by the constitutional court last year for handing fugitive Khalfan Mohamed to the US for trial in connection with the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam.
The most notorious of the SLA's crimes was the kidnapping of Hearst in 1974. The SLA brainwashed her into joining them and she was convicted of bank robbery committed while a member of the SLA.
The SLA thought of their crimes as revolutionary justice on behalf of racial minorities in the US.
Kilgore's former partners in crime were convicted this week of the shotgun killing of Myrna Opsahl who was gunned down in the hold-up of a bank near Sacramento in 1975.
Opsahl's husband Trygve said Kilgrove's arrest was good news.
"When you are dealing with a fugitive who is overseas, anything could happen but I understood there was something in the wind."
The FBI had offered a $20 000 (R200 000) reward, unveiled a bust and released computer-enhanced photographs of what a clean-shaven, grey-haired Kilgore might look like today.
He was featured on television's America's Most Wanted and authorities have received more than 200 tip-offs about his whereabouts over the past two years, but there had not been a single confirmed sighting of Kilgore in more than two decades.
He is in custody at Bellville police station and will appear in court in a Wynberg court on Monday.
It took three months for the police to track Kilgore. Police worked day and night, following up leads in a joint operation with crime intelligence, the special task force and the serious and violent crimes unit.
Martins-Engelbrecht said that although Kilgore seemed surprised, he did not resist arrest.