Staying at any job for 34 years is amazing these days. Jim Wilkins did it and made a mark.
By GORDON DICKSON
Ft. Worth Star Telegram
FT. WORTH, Tex. — Jim Wilkins’ 34-year FBI career included an important but little-known footnote in America criminal history.
Wilkins was the agent who recaptured American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who was serving two life sentences for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota when he escaped from a California prison in 1979.
Peltier fled to the Santa Maria hills. But his run from the law ended after four days, when Wilkins spotted Peltier’s white tennis shoes in the brush and took him into custody.
