'Bonnie and Clyde' pair run rings round their pursuers

They fancy themselves a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde after pulling off a brazen prison escape in Arizona and finding themselves as prime suspects in a bloody, multi-state crime spree.

Over the past two weeks, John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch have become two of the most wanted fugitives in America. Investigators thought they had trapped McCluskey and his fiancée Welch – who is also his cousin – near Glacier National Park in Montana. Federal, state and local authorities began checking vehicles at the Canadian border and patrolling tiny towns near the park on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were also notified.

But the leads that suggested the couple were in Montana grew stale, and their last reported sighting in the state was last Sunday.

On Wednesday, the hunt to track them down shifted from the wild, open lands of northern Montana to a tiny town in Arkansas, hundreds of miles to the south, where the pair were briefly suspected of robbing a beauty salon. The owner of the store was robbed at gunpoint and tied up by two people matching the couple's description. But investigators later said they believed someone else had carried out the heist.

The saga began on 30 July, when McCluskey and two fellow inmates broke out of a medium-security prison in the Arizona desert. Authorities believe Welch, 44, threw wire-cutting tools over the prison fence, allowing the criminals to slice their way out.

Two of the inmates have already been caught. One was captured after a shoot-out with police in Colorado; the other after he was spotted singing hymns at a church in Wyoming.

McCluskey, 45, was serving 15 years for attempted murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm. He had also served 14 years in Pennsylvania state prisons for a string of convenience store robberies in April 1992.

Since Wednesday's disappointment, photographs of McCluskey and his lover have become a daily fixture in television broadcasts across the country. Police have spent a lot of time sifting through other leads, but so far these too have turned out to be false. Meanwhile the couple remain at large and the manhunt continues.