Years later as a convicted felon released from prison, early in September 1999, he was pulled over by the Pennsylvania State Police, but fled into the woods and evaded capture, leaving behind a stolen car that contained firearms, explosives, false identity papers, and a list of abortion clinics.

Later in September 1999, while on a self-described "mission from God", he took his wife and their nine children on a cross-country road trip headed west in a stolen Winnebago, planning to murder various abortion doctors, beginning with one in Seattle, Washington.

[2] Waagner's eventual notoriety is largely attributable to the hoax he then perpetrated in November 2001, in which he sent envelopes containing a white powder to more than 500 abortion providers.

The threat was considered serious, as it arrived shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, as well as the then-recent delivery of genuine anthrax letters to various governmental officials.

Waagner was captured on December 5, 2001, after a clerk at a Kinko's copy shop in Springdale, Ohio, identified him from a photograph on a wanted poster circulated by members of the United States Marshals Service.

In addition to his earlier 15 years to life sentence in Illinois, he was convicted April 18, 2002, in Cincinnati, Ohio's U.S. District Court on separate firearms and car theft charges.