The arrest came only one day after Austin was charged with murder in San Bernardino County.
San Bernardino Sheriff’s deputies contacted Middletown police earlier this week, with information Austin was living here.
Officer Ken Mynhier said he immediately recognized Austin as “one of our regulars downtown.” Mynhier started checking bars Austin was known to frequent, eventually finding him at Legends.
Mynhier said Austin has probably lived in Middletown for a few years and was occasionally seen walking between Buck’s Sports Bar & Grill and Legends. “He’d usually get more beer and go back to wherever he was staying for the night,” Mynhier said. “I was quite familiar with him before this.” He was arrested in 2008 for criminal trespass, according to Middletown police records.
Mynhier said Austin was cooperative. “At first I don’t think he thought much of it,” Mynhier said. “When I told him he had a warrant out of San Bernardino, his head just dropped.”
Prosecutors claim Austin smothered his daughter, Kelly, in 1983 while visiting the home he shared with his parents in Highland, Calif.
Austin told investigators he discovered the girl in his bed with a pillow over her head. At the urging of Kelly’s mother, Joyce, investigators revisited the case in 2001 and 2003. They concluded the girl was smothered but couldn’t find Austin until this week.
Austin is in the Butler County Jail, pending an extradition hearing.
This story contains information from the Associated Press.
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