Escaped ‘Survivalist’ Murder Suspect Apprehended

A manhunt for a murder suspect who escaped from a Pennsylvania jail on July 6 by tying bedsheets together to climb down from a roof ended on Saturday, the authorities said.

The suspect, Michael Burham, 34, who escaped from the Warren County Jail in Pennsylvania, was captured on Saturday, said Myles Snyder, a spokesman with the Pennsylvania State Police.

It was not immediately clear where Mr. Burham was taken into custody.

At the time of his escape, Mr. Burham, who had been in jail since May, was being held in lieu of $1 million bail on kidnapping, burglary and related charges, according to the Pennsylvania State Police, who said he was also a suspect in a homicide investigation.

The authorities said Mr. Burham had climbed on top of exercise equipment and then out a metal gated roof. Then, they said, he used bedsheets he had tied together to climb down and get away.

The authorities believed he might have been hiding in the steep, rugged wilderness near the city of Warren, which is about 20 miles south of Jamestown, N.Y.

Warren borders the Allegheny National Forest, which covers more than half a million acres of rural Pennsylvania.

More than 200 law enforcement officers from various law enforcement agencies had been combing northwestern Pennsylvania searching for Mr. Burham, Lt. Col. George Bivens, a deputy commissioner for the Pennsylvania State Police, said at a news conference on Thursday.

Mr. Burham had last been seen wearing a denim jacket, an orange-striped prison jumpsuit and orange Crocs.

The police have described Mr. Burham as a self-taught survivalist who had military training. They also said that they had found stockpiles of supplies and camp sites that he might have used.

Col. Bivens said at a previous news conference that as a survivalist, Mr. Burham “tried to be ready, if you will, to spend time in the woods.”

In May, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Burham in South Carolina after a separate dayslong manhunt for what it described as a “spree of alleged crimes,” including a sexual assault in Jamestown, and the kidnapping of an older couple in Pennsylvania.

The couple told the authorities that Mr. Burham had kidnapped them from their home, drove them in their own vehicle to South Carolina, then released them without injury. The authorities credited an observant citizen who spotted Mr. Burham and called 911, leading to his arrest.

Orlando Mayorquin and Eduardo Medina contributed reporting.