Convict planned suicide by bear

A CONVICTED killer who escaped from an Arizona prison said after his capture that he had planned to overdose on heroin at Yellowstone National Park and let bears eat him to end the fear and panic he was experiencing on his escape.

Tracy Province told Mohave County sheriff’s Detective Larry Matthews that he had wanted to go up on a mountain, shoot up a gram of heroin and “be bear food”. As he was preparing the drug, a voice told him not to go through with the plan, and he changed course in favour of trying to hitchhike to Indiana to see family.

Authorities say Province asked fellow convict John McCluskey and their alleged accomplice, Casslyn Mae Welch, to take him to Yellowstone, so they drove him to the Wyoming park from New Mexico. The trio face capital murder and carjacking charges in New Mexico, where they’re accused of killing an Oklahoma couple and burning their bodies inside a camping trailer.