"Escaped Killer Has His Say on Winnipeg Radio Show"

WINNIPEG - Cameron Kerley is no angel but he's not dangerous, radio talk show host Peter Warren said Wednesday, shortly after the escaped killer surrendered to police at a radio station.

Kerley, the Manitoba Indian jailed for the 1983 beating death of his white, adoptive father in Kansas, escaped from custody Tuesday and was described by police as dangerous.

The 27-year-old was on escorted leave from Stony Mountain penitentiary, north of Winnipeg, where he had been serving a 20-year sentence for the killing.

Warren, host of CJOB's Action Line, said Kerley decided to give up after hearing his editorial Wednesday morning and consulting with lawyer Kenneth Young. Police arrested him at the first commercial break.

Kerley was 19 when he killed his adoptive father, Dick Kerley. He said he had been sexually abused for years before beating the older Kerley over the head with a baseball bat while in a drunken rage.

Kerley, a former resident of the Sioux Valley Indian reserve, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Kansas and was originally sentenced to life. The federal government and governor of Kansas then allowed Kerley to serve his sentence in Manitoba. His sentence was later reduced to 20 years, which made him eligible for parole more than a year ago.

Kerley was eight years old when he saw his father beaten to death in a fight with a fellow laborer on a Saskatchewan farm.

Two years later, the rigid body of his alcoholic mother was found on a Brandon, Man., street. She had frozen to death two months after her four children became permanent wards of the Childrens' Aid Society of Western Manitoba.

Kerley was one of about 3,000 native children sent out of Manitoba for adoption before the practice was stopped in 1982.