#Former Denver cop tracks down escaped convict who shot him in 1971

A former Colorado cop shot as a rookie in 1971 spent nearly 50 years tracking down the escaped convict who pulled the trigger — a hunt that paid off this week with the jailbird’s re-arrest in New Mexico.

Larry Pusateri, now 77, was nabbed Wednesday in the town of Española on charges of escape and unlawful flight, according to the FBI — 49 years after shooting Denver Police Officer Daril Cinquanta, and 46 years after busting out of custody in Colorado.

“I don’t know of anybody who has tracked anyone for 46 years and caught him,” Cinquanta, who helped find Archuleta, told the Santa Fe New Mexican.

The saga began in October 1971 when newly-minted cop Cinquanta spotted Pusateri, an escapee from a California prison, sitting in the passenger seat of a car, the New Mexican reported, citing a letter Cinquanta wrote to long-running true-crime show “America’s Most Wanted.”

When Cinquanta approached the car and asked the escapee to get out, Pusateri, AKA Luis Archuleta, blasted the cop in the stomach and fled, the report said.

Pusateri made it to Mexico, but was nabbed in a gunfight with local authorities and extradited back to Denver, Cinquanta told the outlet.

Pusateri was convicted in 1973 of shooting Cinquanta, and sentenced to nine-and-a-half to 14 years for the attack.

But just one year into the sentence, in 1974, Pusateri claimed he was sick and was taken to a hospital in Pueblo, CO, where he and another inmate overpowered a guard, took him hostage and escaped into a waiting vehicle, Cinquanta told the New Mexican.

A federal warrant was issued for Pusateri’s arrest, but he remained below the radar.

Cinquanta went on to have a long career with the Denver Police Department before leaving the force to run a private investigation agency.

All the while, he never forgot the man who shot him.

“I have been making phone calls all this time to family, friends, acquaintances. I have been calling people,” Cinquanta told the New Mexican. “Of course, I have met stone walls, but on the 24th of June, I get a call from a person I had talked to previously.”

The lead took him to Rio Arriba County, NM, where Pusateri — now going by a new alias, Ramon Montoya — was arrested in 2011 for DWI.

That case was dismissed when the arresting officer failed to show up in court.

Cinquanta was unable to find Pusateri’s fingerprint card from that bust, but he did have a photograph, which he gave to the FBI and local authorities, according to the report.

After an approximately monthlong investigation, Pusateri was arrested Wednesday at the home he and his wife shared in Española — where he’d been living as Montoya for some 40 years, just 330 miles southwest of Denver.

He denied his true identity, but cops were able to peg him as Pusateri by tattoos he bore over 45 years earlier, according to the New Mexican.

“The Denver Police Department is grateful to our law enforcement partners for their tireless commitment to bring this suspect to justice,” said the city’s police chief, Paul Pazen — who, according to ABC News, was two-years-old at the time of Pusateri’s 1973 conviction.

“This arrest should send a clear signal to violent offenders everywhere,” added FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider, of the Denver field office. “The FBI will find you, no matter how long it takes or how far you run, and we will bring you to justice.”