Wednesday, Jan. 28, 1998 | 10:08 a.m.
Amy DeChant, 49, was being held without bond at the St. Lucie County Jail. She arrived at a friend's house in Port St. Lucie on Tuesday night and was dressed in her bathrobe when police arrived at 10 a.m., said Mark Weinberg, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.
"She was quite surprised that we knew where she was so quickly after she got here," Weinberg said.
DeChant is charged with murder with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and/or murder, robbery with a deadly weapon and accessory to murder all in the slaying of her former live-in boyfriend, Bruce Weinstein, 46, in the Las Vegas area.
Weinstein, an illegal bookmaker and professional gambler, disappeared in July 1996. A month later, his body was discovered in a shallow grave in northern Clark County, Nev.
St. Lucie County authorities got a call early Wednesday from someone who had seen DeChant featured on the Jan. 3 episode of "America's Most Wanted." DeChant is the 500th fugitive featured on the show to be captured in the show's 10 years, spokesman Michael Molnar said.
DeChant had been hiding out in a nudist colony in Ft. Pierce, the show said in a news release. She had been living at the Sunnier Days nudist campground under the alias Sandy Wade. Just days before her profile on "America's Most Wanted," she fled the nudist colony, telling her friends that "things were about to get hot for her," the show said.
When Weinstein disappeared, DeChant first told investigators she remembered him saying he had to meet someone the day he disappeared. Later she claimed he had been abducted from their home.
But blood traces indicated he likely was killed in his house.
DeChant and Robert Wayne Jones, 58, an employee of her carpet-cleaning company, were indicted on murder charges in September. Jones was arrested in October in New Mexico.
DeChant had been taken into custody during a narcotics operation in Maryland shortly after the slaying but was freed by police.
Florida authorities say they now know DeChant had been working at bars in St. Lucie County and traveling back and forth between Florida and Bayville, N.J.
archive
