An escaped Iowa prisoner recaptured this (Friday) morning in Missouri may have put law officers back on his trail by committing the same kind of crime that got him sent to prison in the first place.

Robert Legendre was captured this (Friday) morning about 8 A.M. on Interstate 55 by the police chief from Steele, Missouri, is accused of stealing a vehicle about 25 miles north of there in Marston.

Gene Meyers, head of the state Department of Criminal Investigation, says the chief spotted that stolen vehicle, pulled it over and arrested the suspect without incident. Legendre will be held in the Pemiscott County jail in Carruthersville, Missouri, and Meyer says Legendre’s also under investigation by authorities in St. Louis, in the assault and robbery of two cab drivers, one around 5 P.M. and another at 11 P.M., both in the city of St. Louis.

There’s been some confusion about early reports that Legendre, transferred from Arizona, had been convicted of murder. “Interestingly enough,” says Meyer, “what he was charged with in Las Vegas was attempted murder and kidnapping of a cab driver — the same kind of incident that he’s alleged to have committed twice in St. Louis last evening.” Legendre won’t be coming back to Iowa any time soon, though the state’s filed paperwork to extradite him. First he’ll remain jailed in Missouri while prosecutors in St. Louis decide whether to charge him there.