By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Holbrook

Roger Dale Holbrook, on the run since November when his ex-wife Barbara was found slain at her Dearborn County home, was behind bars just hours after his story appeared Saturday night on America's Most Wanted.

But Sunday afternoon, Dearborn County sheriff's officials weren't willing to say where Holbrook was jailed nor how he was captured.

"All we can say now is that he is being held outside this jurisdiction," said Bill Ullrich, spokesman for the sheriff's office in Lawrenceburg.

The 56-year-old Holbrook's capture - wherever and however it happened - ended a nationwide manhunt that produced few clues over the past six months. .

The hunt began on Nov. 5, when the body of 52-year-old Barbara Holbrook - a professional horse trainer, as was her ex-husband - was found by a delivery person at her home. She had been shot and killed by a bullet from a large-caliber handgun.

Police say the shooting came the day before a court hearing on Barbara Holbrook's request for a protective order against her ex-husband, whom she had accused of making threatening phone calls.

Earlier in the year, according to the America's Most Wanted report, Barbara Holbrook was suspended from racing horses for 60 days by the Kentucky Racing Commission after syringes full of illegal performance-enhancing drugs were found in her horse's stall at Turfway Park in Boone County.

Police said she suspected her husband of planting the syringes.

Along with a dramatization of the events surrounding her death, the Fox network program broadcast personal information about Holbrook that could help viewers identify him.

The information was supplied by police in Indiana.

Besides being a frequent visitor to horse racing tracks, the show described him as a man who "likes to drink - beer, bourbon and scotch (likes Crown Royal)."

America's Most Wanted's Web site described Holbrook as a gambler known to tell "fantastic tales" about his background, including that he was once a mortician and a guitar player in the 1970s rock band Exile.

One of the last solid clues as to Holbrook's whereabouts came in January, when police in Memphis, Tenn., found his gold 2000 Ford Contour in a parking lot with its license plate removed.

It is not known whether Holbrook's capture Saturday night came as the result of a call from a viewer of America's Most Wanted.

More information on Holbrook's arrest will be released today, Ullrich said. Meanwhile, arrangements were being made to extradite the West Virginia native to Dearborn County.

"It's a capital offense, and that gets complicated sometimes," Ullrich said.

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com