A 64-year-old man living quietly in Santa Cruz was arrested by federal immigration agents after they say he spent more than three decades evading Canadian authorities who wanted him on child sexual assault charges. Charles Peter Billone had been wanted since 1991, when he vanished after failing to appear in court following his release on a promise to appear.
Billone was located and arrested in Santa Cruz by agents with ICE's San Francisco Field Office, according to the New York Post, which first reported the arrest and identified him as a Canadian fugitive accused of sexually assaulting a child more than three decades ago. Per ICE San Francisco, Billone was wanted in connection with the sexual assault of a child in Canada, and his capture ended a decades-long manhunt that had stretched from Hamilton, Ontario, all the way to the California coast.
According to the Post's reporting, Billone was arrested in 1991 on two counts of sexual assault and two counts of sexual interference, attributed to CBC. Under Section 151 of the Criminal Code of Canada, sexual interference is defined as touching any part of the body of a person under age 16 for a sexual purpose, and it carries a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment upon conviction by indictment, according to Justice Canada. The Toronto Sun reported in March 2016 that the Canadian charges stemmed from allegations that Billone sexually assaulted his 9-year-old stepdaughter over a three-year period and also assaulted her friend, before the stepdaughter reported him to police.
A Warrant That Followed Him for 35 Years
After his 1991 release, Billone failed to appear in court and vanished, per CBC's reporting cited by the Post. Under Section 145 of Canada's Criminal Code, failing to appear or breaching a recognizance release order is a separate criminal offense that can carry up to two years of additional imprisonment, according to Justice Canada. That breach, layered on top of the original allegations, triggered a Canada-wide warrant that let police forces across every province, along with international law enforcement partners, arrest him on sight without needing a fresh local warrant.
Hamilton Police renewed public efforts to publicize the case in 2014, hoping someone would recognize Billone or come forward with information. At the time, Hamilton Police Det. Paul Henderson said that Charles Billone no longer exists, and told reporters that police believed Billone was still at large. Hamilton Police believed Billone was likely hiding somewhere in Canada and suspected he had family connections in Manitoba, New Brunswick and Hamilton, while acknowledging that traditional police methods had failed to locate him and that he had likely changed his identity entirely.
How the Case Reached Northern California
ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division prioritizes the interior arrest and administrative removal of noncitizens wanted for serious violent or sexual offenses in foreign nations, and typically uses administrative removal proceedings to return fugitives without lengthy extradition court hearings. U.S. authorities are now pursuing Billone's removal from the United States, according to the Post's reporting, and ICE officials say he also has prior convictions for stolen property, assault and drug offenses. Any formal cross-border surrender would fall under the U.S.-Canada Extradition Treaty framework, originally signed in 1971 and amended in 1991, which allows transfer for offenses punishable by more than one year of imprisonment in both countries — a threshold serious sexual offenses against children clearly meet.
It remains unclear whether Billone will be handed directly to Canadian police through an administrative removal or whether his case will require a formal extradition hearing, an open question that hinges on how U.S. and Canadian authorities coordinate his transfer. Billone is currently being held in ICE custody as that process unfolds.
Neighbors Stunned by Decades-Long Secret
News of the arrest rippled through Santa Cruz's online community, where residents expressed surprise that an internationally wanted fugitive accused of a child sex offense had apparently lived undetected in their coastal town for decades, according to posts on Reddit. For a community that prides itself on knowing its neighbors, the revelation that someone wanted across two countries for more than 30 years had settled in without raising alarms has left many local residents unsettled.
Billone's arrest marks one of the longest-running fugitive manhunts originating from Hamilton to end with a capture, and it closes a case that Canadian investigators had publicly struggled with for more than a decade. For now, the exact details of how he built a new life in Santa Cruz remain unknown, leaving federal authorities and Canadian police to sort out the next steps in his prosecution.
