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On a Monday in March 2012, detectives with the Moore, Oklahoma, police department were called to a bloody scene at a Super 8 Motel. They arrived before dawn to find a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase and a path of bloody footprints heading toward an ice maker. Lying face up underneath the bottom stair rail – almost as if it had skittered away during a struggle – was a Super 8 employee’s name badge. Police said it belonged to a man named Anthony Lennon. And that, officers would later tell CNN, made the entire crime scene feel suspicious. Mere days before he disappeared, prosecutors had charged Lennon with eight counts of possession of child pornography. But now, he was missing. Had Lennon been attacked and abducted? Or, as law enforcement would come to suspect, did he stage his own kidnapping and vanish into the night? Uncovering the truth would lead Moore police detectives and the US Marshals Service on a manhunt that would span 13 years. “It was a cat and mouse game,” Moore Police Chief Todd Gibson told CNN. “When you commit crimes – when you victimize children – the full resources of (the law enforcement) community are going to come after you, and it’s never going to stop.” A crime scene ‘made for TV’ Moore Police Detective Jason Landrum still remembers getting the 4 a.m. call to respond to the Super 8. When he arrived, he said officers were treating the crime as a robbery with a possible kidnapping. But as he walked through the scene, Landrum said something felt off. The placement of the evidence was suspicious, he said: The name tag was face up, so Lennon’s name was visible; the shoe print; the blood it tracked. Even the blood splatter itself stood out to the seasoned detectives investigating the scene. We “worked numerous crime scenes – and have since then – and it’s definitely not normal the way the blood was on the ground,” Landrum said. But subsequent testing, he added, confirmed the blood was indeed Lennon’s. The TV was still on in the motel’s office, Landrum said, and what appeared to be Lennon’s dinner – a sandwich and some potato chips – was sitting on the table. The register was also left open, he added, and papers had been scattered. All the signs pointed to a violent robbery and a possible abduction. But Landrum said the timing felt questionable. This was not the first time Lennon had been charged with possessing child pornography, more commonly described by law enforcement as child sexual abuse material. In 2010, Lennon pled guilty to five counts of aggravated possession of child sexual abuse material. He was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, but a judge suspended that sentence and ordered the then 29-year-old to register as a sex offender as one of the conditions of his probation. By 2012, Oklahoma prosecutors felt they had amassed enough evidence that Lennon had violated his probation that they – once again – charged him with felony possession of child sex abuse material. But, according to officials, Lennon disappeared on the same day a $100,000 felony warrant for his arrest became active. “That was pretty coincidental to us,” Landrum said. Coincidence or not, Lennon had indeed vanished – and he would remain missing for more than a decade. “It reads and sounds like a made-for-TV movie,” Gibson said. And it was only just beginning. ‘I hope he’s captured before I leave’ Within hours of responding to the crime scene, Landrum said he called the US Marshals Service to request assistance on the case. “I was afraid that he was going to try and flee the country,” Landrum said. “So, I contacted them to help me get word out to the borders.” But the days after Lennon’s disappearance dragged into months, and eventually, years. “It would have been really easy for us to just put this in the deactivated file … ” Gibson said. “But there was never a time that we stopped looking.” To balance their regular caseload, Landrum said Moore police detectives passed the baton to the US Marshals, who specialized in tracking criminals across state lines and solving cold cases. In 2020, Johnny Kuhlman, US Marshal for the Western District of Oklahoma, instructed his team to reopen the case and begin tracking new leads. Over the years, he told CNN, marshals have filed numerous search warrants, conducted multiple interviews and logged hundreds of miles on road trips as they investigated Lennon’s disappearance. “We’ve been to several different states looking (for Lennon), following up on leads that turned out not to be true,” he said. Earlier this year, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office added Lennon’s name to the state’s 10 Most Wanted list. Landrum said he’s been haunted by the thought that Lennon could escape justice for more than a decade. “I’m getting closer to the end of my career, and this was one that stayed with me,” he said. “I always said that I hope he’s captured before I leave.” Then, two weeks ago, Landrum got the call he’d been waiting for. After more than a decade, officers finally make an arrest US Marshals had been following leads on a man named “Justin Phillips” who was living in Canton, New York – roughly 20 miles from the Canadian border. After months of investigating, marshals now believed “Phillips” was, in fact, Lennon, who’d been living in the state under an alias. Both the Moore police and the Marshals Service declined to share additional information about how they located Lennon, saying it could lead to additional charges. Within hours of receiving the call from the US Marshals, Landrum said he’d booked a flight to join investigators working the case about an hour outside of Canton. “It’s a small town,” Landrum said. “We knew our presence would be known fairly quickly with a large amount of us in that area, so we didn’t want to be anywhere close to him because we didn’t want to tip him off.” Landrum said he joined surveillance teams that trailed Lennon as he left his home in Canton and spent the day at the local college where he was enrolled under the alias. SUNY-Canton confirmed to CNN Monday that an individual using the name Justin Phillips was a student at the school studying in the Engineering Science program. Investigators followed him to his neighborhood grocery store – and swooped in to make their arrest. “We still hadn’t 100% confirmed it was Anthony, even though I knew it was because I’ve been staring at his pictures for 13 years,” Landrum said. But he waited to call Gibson and inform the rest of the Moore Police Department until a fingerprint analysis conclusively revealed what he knew to be true: After 13 years on the run, law enforcement had finally arrested Anthony Lennon. That night, as he was driving back to his hotel room, Landrum said he called former detectives who’d worked on the Lennon case and had since retired to share the news. “They haven’t forgot about this case,” he said. “And they were very, very excited.” He preyed on the ‘wrong community’ But even with the fingerprint evidence, Landrum said, Lennon has continued to stand by the alias “Justin Phillips.” CNN reached out to Lennon’s attorney, who confirmed she represents “a man alleged to be Anthony Lennon,” but stressed he is entitled to a presumption of innocence. She did not offer additional comment on the alleged probation violation and possession of child sexual abuse material charges that her client faces. Lennon holds a master’s degree in computer science, according to the US Marshals, and was working toward a doctorate at the time of his disappearance. Gibson said he believes Lennon was able to remain hidden for so long, in part, because of his extensive knowledge of computers. But he credited the tenacity and dedication of dozens of officers, detectives and US Marshals for the apprehension of the man who he said has eluded justice for years. “Mr. Lennon has been living in multiple parts of the country on the run from the law for over a decade,” Gibson said. “He is a person that decided to prey on children in the wrong community.” “You may think, for a while, that you’ve gotten away with it, and you may get relaxed, and as soon as you let your guard down, you’ll have strong men (and) strong women, knocking down your door to bring you to custody and bring you to justice.”
