The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

them, they had lost their shirts and shoes. “They were actually happy to see me,” he says. Probably the most gratifying cases to resolve for both Oster- hout and the Belizeans are the pedophiles. “These guys are horrible,” says Westby. One convicted child molester, named Frederick Schaefer, was arrested in Belize in 2003 on immigration charges. But by the time Osterhout learned of his criminal past, a local religious group had bailed him out. A year later, police began hearing new rumors about Schaefer allegedly hanging around with children and planning to start a day-care business. No U.S. authorities were pursuing any warrants for Schaefer, so Osterhout asked a DS colleague in Washington to find someone to take on the case. Officials in California agreed to do so, and Schaefer was ordered expelled on the same day his child-care business was set to open. Still, not all fugitives get caught. Belize’s most famous fugitive is probably Joseph Ross, who once ran an aviation firm in Oklahoma. Ross was indicted for tax fraud in 1986 and even- tually found his way to Belize. After procuring Belizean citizenship, he now runs a luxury jungle resort there. When Osterhout left Belize (to return to a job with DS headquarters back in Washington, D.C.), he had more than a dozen open cases, ranging from wanted murderers to child pornographers to an investment fraudster. But what sticks in his mind are the words of one fugitive he caught after a two-year chase. The man told him, “You guys have no idea how many other fugitives are here.” Osterhout doesn’t disagree: “We’ve always had the suspi- cion that there are more out there.” n F O C U S S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 T HE R EMINGTON The Bureau of Diplomatic Security has traditionally been extremely press-shy.