Ten years on the run can age a person.

Take for example Josephine Sunshine Overaker, one of two remaining fugitives in the biggest takedown of eco-saboteurs in U.S. history.

Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the day federal agents began to round up many of the 20 suspected underground arsonists accused of causing $30 million in damage by fire and vandalism. The FBI is commemorating the anniversary by publicly releasing an age-progression photo of Overaker, now 41.

The photo, put together by the FBI's laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, depicts Overaker as she might look today, enhanced with some wrinkles and a touch of gray in her brown hair.

Overaker had gone underground with the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, the government alleges. But she slipped out of the Eugene area in 2003, well before the FBI's Dec. 7, 2005, sweep to arrest the others. She fled to Europe and likely made her way to Spain, possibly taking up with Basque separatists, said FBI Special Agent Timothy W. Suttles, one of the primary investigators in the case.

"She's fluent in Spanish," he said.

The FBI has created an online wanted poster for Overaker in Spanish, which features five photos of her face during her youth and lists a slew of her aliases, including "Maria Rachelle Quintana." The bulletin notes that she was a Canadian who might seek employment as a firefighter, a midwife, a sheep tender or a masseuse. A bird is tattooed across her upper back.

Tips about Overaker pour into the FBI in spurts, about two to three a year, but have turned up nothing substantial, Suttles said. But he said the bureau's reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to her arrest keeps the tips coming, and that's fine with him. Working through tips was precisely the way the FBI caught former mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger after 16 years on the run.

Overaker was indicted in Portland's U.S. District Court for her suspected role in eight firebombings between 1996 and 1999, including the October 1998 torching of a ski resort under construction in Vail, Colorado. That $12 million conflagration stood for years as the Earth Liberation Front's coup de maitre and it spawned a new era when the FBI described the eco-arsonists as its leading domestic terrorist threat.

The crimes were committed in small cells of saboteurs, typically a handful of people, who roved the American West to punish industries and government agencies they accused of despoiling the natural world. The cells kept tight security, using nicknames only. Collectively the cells called themselves "The Family."

The FBI's investigation to take down The Family came to be called "Operation Backfire."

An indictment handed up in 2006 accuses Overaker of helping to destroy the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in Oakridge and a truck at the Detroit ranger station - both in late October 1996 and both by fire. After that she allegedly torched a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wild horse corral in Burns in 1997, a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility in Olympia in 1998, a BLM wild horse holding facility in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1998, Childers Meat Co. in Eugene in 1999 and the Boise Cascade timber company office in Monmouth in 1999.

One reason to suggest Overaker made it to Spain was a crime that occurred in Madrid about a month after the U.S. arrests: The Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for stealing 28 beagles from a veterinary lab in Madrid, then dedicated the crime to William C. Rodgers, one of Overaker's alleged co-conspirators.

Rodgers worked in an anarchist bookstore in Prescott, Arizona, was the suspected architect of the Vail arson and is credited by the FBI as co-designer of the signature firebombs used by The Family. He was much older than most of the ecosaboteurs in his midst and served as an influential figure in Overaker's life. But two weeks after he was arrested in the 2005 FBI sweep, Rodgers committed suicide in an Arizona jail.

His asphyxiation with a plastic bag made him a martyr for his movement partly because it came on the Winter solstice, a day held dear by many radical environmentalists.

Overaker had become radicalized during the bitter-cold winter of 1996 into 1997 as she and other activists protested logging in the snowy south end of the Willamette National Forest, Suttles said. They dug trenches to keep loggers out of Warner Creek, where they survived harsh conditions. There she's suspected of meeting other true believers and brainstorming ways to strike back.

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, who went by the nicknames "Seattle" and "Steve" and "God" during his underground days, also remains a fugitive.

FBI agents made contact with Dibee at his home in Seattle, where he worked at Microsoft, on the first day of their 2005 Operation Backfire dragnet. But they lacked evidence to arrest him with other suspects. He refused to talk with them. Four days later, according to a federal indictment, Dibee vanished.

Although Dibee held a pilot's license, he apparently didn't take advantage of it. Suttles believes Dibee made his way to Mexico City, then caught a commercial flight toward the Middle East. He's now 48 years old and believed to be living in Syria, where he holds citizenship.

Syria has no extradition treaty with the U.S. and holds poor diplomatic relations, so the U.S. can't compel him to appear in its courts.

-- Bryan Denson

503-294-7614; @Bryan_Denson