For more than a decade, F.B.I. special agent Richard Knudsen led the hunt for Margo Freshwater, a convicted murder who outran a prison guard, hopped a barbed wire fence and escaped from the Tennessee Prison for Women in 1970. He tracked her down to Baltimore, Md., and when the trail turned cold, he sent informants to Ohio to cozy up to her family. Having no small amount of admiration for Freshwater, Knudsen admits that he pulled out all sorts of tricks to apprehend the surprisingly wily fugitive.

But in the midst of his investigation, the agent learned more about the woman's plight and the dubious evidence used to convict her. He felt empathy toward Freshwater and started to sympathize with the young woman, who was sentenced to 99 years in prison for a shooting death in which her demented lover admitted to unloading the gun. Without the F.B.I.'s support, he approached state authorities for clemency or some sort of deal he could deliver to the family in exchange for her capture. Today, now that she has been returned to state custody, he still believes that the case against her needs to be revisited--and that, most of all, she doesn't belong in prison."