Police hunt intensifies for would-be Bonnie and Clyde

An American couple who have fashioned themselves as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde are thought to have escaped across the Canadian border after leaving a trail of murder and mayhem in the United States.
 
Escaped convict John McCluskey, 45, and his 44-year-old fiancee and cousin Casslyn Welch - who is suspected of helping him escape from prison - were last spotted at a restaurant in Montana on Sunday, close to the Alberta border.
 
The pair have been on the run since July 30. They are wanted in connection with the murder of a 61-year-old couple, Linda and Gary Haas, whose charred remains were found last Wednesday in their burned-out trailer on a remote ranch in New Mexico.
 
US Marshal David Gonzales said that McCluskey and Welch view themselves as a present-day Bonnie and Clyde, the 1930s outlaws played by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the 1967 movie. There is a $40,000 reward on their heads.
 
"They joke about it and I think they've taken the persona that this is some type of a movie and some kind of a joke that they are living,” said Gonzales. "But it is not – this is a very, very serious business."
 
The hunt began late last month after Welch allegedly helped McCluskey and two other men escape from Arizona state prison. She is thought to have thrown wire-cutters over the fence of the medium-security compound.
 
McCluskey, who was serving a 15-year sentence for attempted second-degree murder and aggravated assault, made a break for freedom, accompanied by two convicted murderers, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick.
 
The trio kidnapped two lorry drivers at gunpoint and used the vehicle to get away. The drivers were unharmed, authorities said. Renwick, 38, was picked up in Colorado on August 1. Province is then thought to have accompanied Welch and McCluskey to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, before being captured in the state on Monday.
 
New Mexico state police say they have forensic evidence linking McCluskey, Welch and Province to the murders of the Haases.  
 
After receiving several recent sightings of McCluskey and Welch in St Mary, Montana, US marshals are now focusing their search for the couple in the nearby Glacier National Park which sits alongside the Canada border. Canadian police in Alberta have joined the search.
 
Police say they have received several tip-offs from the areas both east and north of the national park. "There has been a lot of activity [there]," said deputy US marshal Fidencio Rivera.

The real Bonnie and Clyde died on May 23, 1934, shot dead in Lousiana by a posse of six police officers led by Frank Hamer, who had been hunting the pair and studying their behaviour for more than three months. ·