Earlier this month, Nick Ricigliano finally came face to face with a fugitive he’d been tracking since 2019 and whom the Army had been after for nearly 30 years.
“I was a bit taken aback by how much he had aged and how unhealthy he appeared,” Ricigliano, an Army veteran and long-time U.S. Marshal, told Task & Purpose. “I suppose 30 years of waiting for that knock on the door had taken a physical as well as mental toll.”
The fugitive that Ricigliano finally got to meet was former Staff Sgt. Jesse Bussey, an “Army Most Wanted Fugitive.” Bussey went missing from an Army base in Germany in September 1996, just before facing a court-martial for attacking multiple fellow soldiers. He was later convicted in absentia of rape, indecent assault, and desertion and sentenced to 16 years in prison, reduced in rank to E-1, and given a dishonorable discharge.
He was returned to the United States on June 8, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Following a tip, Ricigliano’s task force found Bussey in Spain, living under an assumed name. Now the acting United States Marshal for the District of New Jersey, Ricigliano was at an airport in Newark, New Jersey, when Bussey was brought back to the United States.
Cold case
Bussey, 69, initially served in the Army from 1978 to 1981, and later re-enlisted, taking part in Operation Desert Storm, Ricigliano said. In 1996, he was accused of rape by multiple women in his unit while assigned to the 299th Forward Support Battalion, 1st Infantry Division in Germany. He fled on the day his court-martial was scheduled to begin.
“At that point, the trail went cold,” Ricigliano said
Ricigliano said that he had been assigned the case in 2019 while he was serving as a deputy U.S. Marshal. He and his partner, Senior Inspector Kevin Kamrowski, have since been promoted, but they continued to look for Bussey.
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By the time the Army handed the case to the U.S. Marshals Service, Bussey “had a 23 year head start on us,” Ricigliano said.
“When I got the call from headquarters, they described him as the U.S. Army’s most wanted sex offender,” Ricigliano said. “My partner Kevin and I, we basically used everything in the kitchen sink to throw at this investigation.”
They started with “old-fashioned” detective work by talking to Bussey’s friends and family members, soldiers in his former unit and his victims, Ricigliano said. Through the hours-long interviews, investigators developed Bussey’s pattern of life and learned some interesting facts, including that Bussey had joined the French Foreign Legion while on the run.
A tip to look in Spain
Ricigliano credits Senior Inspector Kamrowski with breaking the case when Marshals received a tip in 2024 about a man going by the name David Osuji, who was working at the Málaga English Academy in Spain at the time.
“Kevin Kamrowski was the guy who took this tip, and he said: ‘I really like this tip, and this is the one we’re going to drill down on,’” Ricigliano said.
The man was positively identified as Bussey in September 2024, Ricigliano said. Over the next 14 months, U.S. government officials worked with the Spanish government until a Spanish judge issued an arrest warrant for Bussey in November 2025.
Bussey then spent months fighting extradition before returning to the United States. He is currently being held at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
“We believe he crossed into Spain at some point pre-9/11,” Ricigliano said. “We believe he finished up with the French Foreign Legion around 2000, early 2001, and that he was homeless on the streets of Paris,” Ricigliano said.
Following his capture, Bussey told Marshals that he had been treated harshly in the French Foreign Legion, which had used brute physical force to “beat the French into you,” Ricigliano said.
“He said he got out of the French Foreign Legion because he didn’t want to fight ‘pocket wars in Africa’; and that when you go into the French Foreign Legion, they straight up tell you: You’re here to die for France, so that Frenchmen don’t have to die,” Ricigliano said.
Bussey also told Marshals after his capture that he chose the alias David Osuji to pass himself off as an African national, Ricigliano said.
For Ricigliano, capturing Bussey after spending seven years on the case is a career highlight.
“It’s an incredible feeling,” Ricigliano said. You feel like you are actually contributing to ensuring that the victims get justice. We have been in touch with some of his victims over the investigation, and being able to deliver the news to the victims that he’s been apprehended – I can’t think of a better feeling than that.”
