It has taken nearly a decade to bring an Indian-American man back to this country to serve his 23-year sentence for murder. In a sometimes dramatic case, Amit Livingston, who escaped to India in 2007, with his father’s help after murdering his girlfriend in 2005, has finally been extradited back to the U.S. July 13. It took years of coordinated detective work by local Indian police and the State Department’s diplomatic security wing to get Livingston back into the jail cell in Culver County, Texas, where he will remain for the next 23 years.
When Hermila Hernandez, a married mother of three children, was reported missing in southern Texas on a fall day in 2005, her body was found four days later, on October 4, 2005, on a sand dune in a remote part of South Padre Island. Livingston, an American medical billing specialist, was arrested and later admitted to having killed her because he believed she was about to end their brief relationship. He pleaded guilty to the crime and was sentenced in Cameron County, Texas, to a 23-year prison term on February 13, 2007, according to a release from the State Department.
“What should have been the end of that case turned out to be the beginning of a seven-year manhunt for an international fugitive,” the State Department noted. Livingston was obviously not seen by prosecutors and courts as someone who would abscond. He was granted 60 days to get his affairs in order. He did not come back. His father, a Chicago anesthesiologist was arrested for helping Livingston hide his car used to transport Hernandez’s body, and with cash to escape. The father also gave authorities false information.
The case turned cold even though Livingston was on Interpol’s list and the popular show America’s Most Wanted featured him in June 2007. In 2008, the U.S. Marshals Service then appealed for help from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service on suspicion Livingston was probably in India. The DSS officers assigned to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi worked closely with India’s law enforcement officials through the U.S. Diplomatic Security Criminal Investigative Liaison Branch to finally nab Livingston in a dramatic turn of events.
What followed was a long drawn effort starting in 2008, when the U.S. officers worked with a locally hired criminal fraud investigator at the U.S. Embassy, to meet repeatedly with local government authorities. In spite of targeted record checks, local officials were not able to find substantive information, hence no action was taken.
For the next several years local Indian police identified a few of Livingston’s relatives but couldn’t get any credible leads until 2013. They managed to track a person, unnamed in the State Department release, who gave them Livingston’s cell phone number. Using extensive analysis that may have involved forensics, and reviewing Livingston’s employment history, the local investigator at the U.S. Embassy was able to figure out the murderer was working in Hyderabad at a transcription under the assumed name Sanjay Kumar.
Local Indian police linked the phone to a three-story apartment in Hyderabad on May 6, 2014. An hour later, the inspector arrived at Livingston’s residence. He knocked on the door. Livingston opened it and calmly identified himself as Sanjay Kumar. But when the inspector asked for Livingston, he became violent, according to the release. It took both the inspector and his partner to subdue and arrest him.
Local authorities charged Livingston with having used a false identity. That pending case held up Livingston’s extradition back to the United States for more than a year.
Finally, the false identity case was dropped, and he was cleared for extradition and brought back July 13, where U.S. Marshals escorted Livingston back to Culver County, Texas.
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