Texan arrested on 1993 warrant
Toolbox
By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER - Published: November 3, 2009
BRATTLEBORO — A Texas man who had disappeared from the Green Mountain State while on probation for a Vermont grand larceny case 22 years ago was back in court Monday.
James Kalwowsky, 45, of Conroe, Texas, was arrested in Wyoming on Oct. 21 on an active Vermont arrest warrant dating from 1993.
Kalwowsky, who was convicted of grand larceny for stealing $990 from a woman's purse after a Wilmington party in 1987, was sentenced to an additional six to seven days in prison, with credit for time served in prison since his October arrest.
Kalwowsky had served about six weeks of a two-month sentence back in 1993, but then disappeared from the court's radar after he left an alcohol treatment program at the former Canterbury Farms facility in Cavendish.
Kalwowsky was arrested in Wyoming, where he was visiting a sister. She locked him out of her apartment and he was sleeping on a couch in the lobby of his sister's apartment building when police caught up with him, he told acting Judge Dan Davis.
The Texas man said the apartment building's security had asked for identification, and when they ran him through the national crime statistics clearinghouse, up popped his 1993 arrest warrant.
Kalwowsky was arrested by the Natrona County, Wyoming, Sheriff's Department and then transported to Vermont.
Appearing in leg chains and manacles, Kalwowsky told the judge he was glad to finally have the old case finally resolved.
"I'm glad I can get home to Texas and get home to my kids and grandkids," he said.
According to Kalwowsky's 1987 file, he had originally fled to Texas for four years before he was sentenced, and in a 1993 memo, current Probation and Parole chief Rick Bates wrote that "the likelihood of flight amounts almost to a certainty in this case."
According to court records, Kalwowsky stole the money from a woman's purse after they had met at a party earlier in the day in Wilmington. He was later arrested at a Bennington motel and he had stashed some of the cash in a safety deposit box.
Bates was back in court again Monday, and he endorsed the plea agreement worked out between Ellen Kryger, Windham County deputy state's attorney, and Kalwowsky's court-appointed lawyer, Joanne Baltz of the Windham County Public Defender's office.
Kryger said technically Kalwowsky was guilty of three probation violations, failing to notify his probation officer of a change in address, not completing the Canterbury program and not making full restitution to the victim.
After he was re-sentenced, Kalwowsky scrambled to find a way to cash a check from Wyoming and get home to Texas.
While the state paid for his trip from Wyoming, said his attorney, it was only a one-way ticket.
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