Delbert Henry Linaweaver (FBI.gov photo)
FLOYDADA – For a brief moment 60 years ago, the eyes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were on Floydada. On February 5, 1962 a man who had moved into the community a few months before was arrested after his wanted picture went up at the Floydada Post Office.
Delbert Linaweaver, who at the time was going by the alias John Edward Thomas, was described as a cook and farmhand. He had even married a woman he had met at a café in town. But it was his life before arriving in Floyd County that gave him his notoriety.
In June 1960 Linaweaver was in the Saline County, Kansas jail awaiting his extradition to a state prison having been convicted of burglary and forgery. According to the book The Encyclopedia of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted He and two other inmates beat a guard and sheriff’s deputy before escaping the jail. Linaweaver then traveled the country as a migrant farmer before settling down in Floyd County.
Various contemporary reports from the Amarillo Daily News (now the Globe-News) and Hutchison (KS) News say Linaweaver had become part of the community, and was in the process of moving to Silverton to run a café there with his wife when he was named to the FBI Most Wanted list on January 30, 1962. As the story goes someone at Floydada’s post office noticed Linaweaver’s photo among the 10 most wanted and contacted the FBI.
Linaweaver was arrested without incident and taken back to Kansas to serve his time. Following his release he returned to his wife, and lived a crime-free life until his death in Plains, Kansas at the age of 85 in 2017.
