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Jailed Man Gets Brief Taste Of Freedom

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By KEITH MORELLI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 13, 2008

TAMPA - Thinking he had been released from jail legitimately, Michael Hess went back to the restaurant where he had worked and asked about getting his job back.

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

After Hess' brief taste of mistaken freedom Friday, he is back serving the final 10 years of a sentence initially handed down when Richard Nixon was president. The longtime cook at The Press Box in South Tampa lived on the lam under the assumed identity of a dead man for nearly three decades.

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," Walter Hill, owner of The Press Box, said Saturday. "He was a good employee. We never had a problem with him. We probably would have hired him back."

Inmate Thought It Was His Lucky Day
Hill said Hess came in between 9 and 10 a.m. Sheriff's detectives 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 thought 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 about 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.

Decades Living In Fear
Hess had worked as a cook at The Press Box, a popular sports bar and eatery on Dale Mabry Highway just south of Kennedy Boulevard. He used the identity of Charles Swiger, who died in 1972.

Last year, his life as a cook ended when his fingerprints betrayed him.

Hess had been imprisoned in 1972 for armed robberies of convenience stores. In 1979, he absconded from a job in Lake Butler and took on Swiger's identity.

Over the next 28 years, he eluded recapture.

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. "Because of that, I would keep myself in line. I reminded myself there was always a chance."

After he walked away from prison in 1979, Hess said, he went to took a bus to California from Tampa but returned two weeks later.

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

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

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