Wade arraignment today

Wade is scheduled for arraignment today in U.S. District Court on federal bank charges that he used the nurse's ATM card in the days after she vanished.

Wade has not been directly linked to the disappearance of Mindy Schloss, his next door neighbor in Sand Lake, but police want to know how he ended up with her bank card and its personal identification number, and why his DNA was found on the steering wheel of her abandoned car.

"We were all so relieved when they caught him," said Schloss' sister-in-law, Mary Schloss, reached by phone Monday in Syracuse, N.Y. "At least he's off the streets now."

Within minutes of Wade's capture at an East Anchorage apartment complex Sunday morning, the FBI phoned the Schloss family in New York to tell them the fugitive had been apprehended.

Mary Schloss said now the big question is if Wade knows anything about what happened to her sister-in-law, a 52-year-old psychiatric nurse who lived by herself with a cat far away from where she grew up in Syracuse.

Police presume she is dead but despite an exhaustive search have not found her body.

"If he lies about this, or doesn't tell the truth, he's a chicken," Mary Schloss said.

Wade was taken to FBI headquarters where he was questioned by authorities late into Sunday night. He was not brought to the jail until nearly 12 hours after he was taken into custody, a booking employee with the Department of Corrections said.

FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez would not comment on what transpired in the interview with Wade, including whether he talked at all.

At visiting hours at the jail on Monday afternoon, Christina Greaser, the woman who turned Wade over to authorities after a warrant and reward were issued, waited for her turn to talk to the man she still considers her friend.

When she asked to see Wade, a Department of Corrections employee told her that Wade was talking with his lawyer. While waiting for that conversation to finish, Greaser said she came to visit Wade to explain to him why she called the police and to tell him she supported him.

"I'm not against him," she said. "I thought it was for his best interest. I did it for him."

Greaser said Wade did not have many friends to support him, nor was he very close to his own family. Sitting on the metal benches in the cinder block reception area of the jail, she said she would support him through the charges he faces now and whatever charges he may face in the future.

He had been through a lot in his life, she said. And what happened with Della Brown, the woman he was acquitted of raping and murdering in 2003, has left him with a lot of baggage he hasn't been able to shake.

"Society has pretty much already judged him," she said. "I think the community needs to let him get his chance to speak before jumping to conclusions. I don't think it's fair to pinpoint him just because of what they've already heard."

Meanwhile, further details emerged Monday of the dramatic surrender that shut down the neighborhood just off Tudor Road near Boniface Parkway where Wade was captured.

Michael Phillips, whose home Wade barged into, said Wade brought with him a small plastic bag of marijuana, a bong and several joints. During the hour-and-a-half standoff with police, the fugitive apparently polished off a half bottle of Wild Vines Frutezia white wine that was in the refrigerator and some whiskey, according to Phillips and his sister, with whom he shares the apartment.

Phillips said he and his sister hardly knew Wade. Wade had been visiting in the apartment complex about a month ago and briefly met his sister outside the building, Phillips said, where she directed him to her apartment in a friendly gesture to hang out sometime. His sister said she was surprised Wade even remembered her apartment number, he said.

The first thing Wade did when he entered the Phillips apartment was call lawyer Cindy Strout, who successfully defended him in the Della Brown case, Phillips said.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.