The nearly five-month hunt for Derrick Groves, the last of ten inmates who escaped a New Orleans jail in a daring May breakout, ended not with a dramatic shootout, but with a fugitive squeezed into a crawl space beneath an Atlanta home. For weeks, he had been the sole name left on a most-wanted list, a convicted murderer whose freedom represented a lingering question mark on a massive manhunt. His capture on October 8th closed a turbulent chapter, and it was a powerful financial incentive—a $50,000 reward—that finally helped authorities turn the page.
The story of the reward money is a tale of modern crime-solving, where community tips and digital leads converge. It underlines the public’s role in pursuing justice, proving that even the most elusive fugitive can be found when law enforcement and citizens team up.
The Price on a Fugitive’s Head
From the moment ten inmates squeezed through a hole behind a toilet and scaled a barbed-wire fence at the Orleans Justice Center on May 16th, the manhunt was on. While nine of the escapees were rounded up within six weeks, Derrick Groves remained at large. His case was particularly concerning for authorities; at 28 years old, he had already been convicted of second-degree murder for a 2018 Mardi Gras shooting that killed two people and injured others, and he was facing a life sentence without parole. Law enforcement considered him the most dangerous of the escapees, and to accelerate his capture, they put a hefty price on his head.
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The total reward for information leading to Groves’ arrest was set at $50,000. This wasn’t a single pot of money but a combined effort from multiple agencies. Crimestoppers of Greater New Orleans offered $20,000, the FBI contributed $20,000, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) added another $10,000 to the pool. This significant sum was designed to motivate people to come forward with any scrap of information, no matter how small it seemed.
The public responded in force. According to Darlene Cusanza, the President and CEO of Crimestoppers GNO, the organization received a flood of tips—ultimately, nearly 500 were submitted specifically about Groves’ possible whereabouts. These tips, which came in through the organization’s app, email, and phone lines, created a digital trail for investigators to follow, suggesting the fugitive had moved between several cities while on the run.
The Tip That Brought Him In
Ultimately, it was one of those anonymous tips called in to Crimestoppers that broke the case open. That crucial piece of information, combined with diligent follow-up investigative work by a special task force, led authorities to a house on Honeysuckle Lane in southwest Atlanta. The U.S. Marshals Service’s Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force and the Atlanta Police Department’s SWAT team moved in.
What followed was a tense standoff. Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian Fair recounted that a seasoned SWAT team spent hours searching the property. They deployed gas into the house multiple times, struggling to locate the fugitive. It was only after a police dog was brought in that Groves was finally discovered, hidden exceptionally well in a crawl space beneath the home. The difficulty of finding him suggested Groves had planned to stay there for a long time.
With Derrick Groves now in custody at the Fulton County Jail, the focus shifts to the anonymous tipster who made it happen. Crimestoppers emphasizes that it goes to great lengths to protect the identity of its sources, communicating only through tip numbers to ensure complete anonymity. The process for paying out the reward is now underway. Before the cash payment can be made, Crimestoppers must first receive official written confirmation from law enforcement that the tip directly led to the arrest.
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This process takes about two weeks, after which the tipster can collect the reward at a bank at a designated time. The separate FBI portion of the reward will be distributed through a similar process. For the law enforcement agencies and the community of New Orleans, the money proved to be a wise investment. It brought a definitive end to a manhunt that had stretched across state lines and ensures a convicted killer will finally face the justice he long evaded.
