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Fugitive Cook's Mistaken Taste Of Freedom Ends Quickly

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 12, 2008

Updated: 01/12/2008 10:27 am

TAMPA - Thinking that he had been released legitimately, Michael Hess, the longtime South Tampa cook who lived on the lam under the assumed identity of a dead man for nearly three decades, went back to the restaurant where he worked and asked about getting his job back.

But his release from jail was a mistake and short-lived. Within eight hours, Hess, 57, was back in handcuffs. And within 10 hours, he was in a van headed for prison.

Michael Hess

After Hess' brief taste of freedom Friday, he's back serving the final 10 years of an 18-year sentence initially handed down when Richard Nixon was president.

Hillsborough County corrections officials released Hess by mistake at 3:20 a.m. Friday and the cook did what he has done for the past three decades: he went to work in a kitchen.

"He came by to check to see when he could come back to work," said Walter Hill, owner of The Press Box this morning. "He was a good employee. We never had a problem with him. We probably would have hired him back."

Hill said Hess came in between 9 and 10 a.m. Deputies showed up an hour later.

"He was completely surprised," Hill said of his former kitchen worker. "He was a good employee. He was always on time and volunteered to do extra shifts. I wish we had more employees like him."

Hess believed that good fortune, in the form of courtroom mercy, had smiled on him, said sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter.

"He assumed there had been a change of heart in the judiciary system," she said.

Carter said the jail discovered the mistake around 9 a.m., and detectives were notified. They went to The Press Box where they found Hess applying for a cook's job about 11 a.m.

He was arrested without incident and by 12:30 p.m., "He was on his way back to state prison," Carter said.

Hess worked as a cook at The Press Box, a popular eatery on Dale Mabry Highway just south of Kennedy Boulevard. He used the assumed identity of Charles Swiger, who died in 1972.

Last year, his life as a cook came ended when his fingerprints turned him in.

He had served eight years of a 35-year sentence for armed robberies of convenience stores. He absconded from a carwash job in Lake Butler in 1979 and took Swiger's identity.
In a November jailhouse interview, he said he always feared getting caught.

"There was not one day that I didn't think about it," Hess said at the time. "Because of that, I would keep myself in line. I reminded myself there was always a chance."

After he walked away from prison, Hess said he went to downtown Tampa and took a bus to California, but returned two weeks later.

Hess said he worked 16 years serving breakfast for Radisson Bay Harbor on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. He then slung ribs and chicken at Jimbo's Pit Bar-B-Q on Kennedy Boulevard before he settled in at The Press Box, a South Tampa sports bar known for its wings.

"I worked at the Press Box for five years, and I was never late," he said. "I made a few friends, not a whole lot. And I didn't tell anybody."

Hess grew up in Robles Park and served in Vietnam for 11 months as an Army cook.
Florida Department of Corrections records show Hess' release date is set for December 2018.

Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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