Ingram was caught in March after he applied for a Texas driver's license.
"Your (criminal) record was clean for 23 years," Nadel said.
Ingram, 48, was convicted in 1988 of trafficking Ecstasy, an extremely rare drug at the time. He was arrested after the man who hired him to bring the pills to Ohio turned out to be a police informer.
Ingram appealed his sentence and Nadel allowed him to remain free until the appeal was heard. Instead, Ingram ran.
After his arrest last spring, he was sent back to Ohio's prison system in May to serve out his sentence.
Nadel, though, ordered Ingram returned to Hamilton County in July so the judge could find out more about the ghost, how he lived, how he stayed invisible to the government and why the judge should grant Ingram's request for an early release.
During those court conversations, Nadel seemed to take to the likable Ingram.
The masonry worker isn't the typical convict who stands before Nadel, a judge who often scolds defendants. Nadel saw something in Ingram and was fascinated how Ingram could stay crime-free and an apparently honest, hardworking man.
"I get people on probation who can't even go three months, two months without doing anything wrong," Nadel said.
"If I got a traffic ticket in Texas, they'd have brought me back here," Ingram told the judge.
Ingram said he has had more than 100 jobs since he ran in 1988. He didn't have a telephone until the recent advent of prepaid cell phones. He never owned a home because it would require a credit check and bank account history. He paid his rent with cash.
"It was a prison without bars," Ingram told the judge.
Ingram learned in March a friend had died and left him a car. He wanted to drive it to Massachusetts.
"I wanted to go up and take care of my mother," Ingram said.
"The only time you were caught is when you tried to do something legal," Nadel joked.
Within minutes of being fingerprinted for his license application in Texas, Ingram was in cuffs. Officials there saw the outstanding warrant for his arrest. Within days, he was headed back to Ohio's prison system.
Ingram's sister came from Texas to be at the hearing and vouch for her brother. When she told Nadel she worked as a film production assistant, Nadel prompted the courtroom to burst into laughter when he asked her, "Are you going to make a movie of (her brother's life)?"
Over prosecutor's objections, Nadel agreed that the seven months Ingram served in Ohio's prison this year was enough and ordered him released. Hearing that, Ingram dropped his head in relief, said "Thank you, sir" and then looked heavenward.
Nadel placed Ingram on probation for three years but said that consisted of Ingram calling in monthly to his probation officer.
"If you want, I'll tell you how I'm doing, too," a grateful Ingram told the judge.
"You can do that. You know my address here. You can write me," Nadel said.
The freed man walked out still wearing the cuffs - until he was processed out of the jail - and a very big smile.
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