Toronto, July 21: The cashier at a Chevron service station in Dexter took a moment Friday morning to tell Rond Anderson how happy he was that the woman who killed Anderson’s mother in a car crash 16 years ago was finally found.

“We’ve been getting a lot of comments,” Anderson said. “Just about everybody knew her, and if they didn’t know her, they know us.”

The entire town of Dexter, whose population is about 2,300, has been talking about the news that Jean Keating, now 54, was found living in Canada under an assumed name, Anderson said.

Keating was allegedly driving drunk along Interstate 5 near Albany with her 10-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter on April 13, 1997, according to Oregon State Police.

She swerved into another vehicle driven by Jewel Oline Anderson, who was 65. Anderson had been driving to visit her sister in Stayton, but she lost control of her car, crossed into the southbound lanes and crashed into another vehicle.

Medics pronounced her dead at the scene.

Keating and her children were uninjured.

Oregon State Police charged Keating with first-degree manslaughter, DUII, reckless driving and three counts of recklessly endangering another person. Rather than face a trial, Keating fled 1,500 miles to Minnedosa — a small town of about 2,400 people in Manitoba, Canada, about two hours north of North Dakota.

There, she reinvented herself as Jean McPherson, the wife of Leonard McPherson, who lived on a farm outside of town.

To many of Minnedosa’s residents, Keating/McPherson was a stranger. Folks struggled to remember anything about the woman who lived in their midst for 15 years. Most people said she kept to herself.