The employee, who would only give her first name, Kim, said Birdsong and his girlfriend, who also was arrested, "seemed like the nicest people in world."
Yesterday Birdsong came home early from work as a carpenter at a hospital in Hollywood, Fla.
FBI agents were waiting - hidden inside and near Birdsong's 28-foot-long Winnebago.
Birdsong was captured without a struggle, Miami FBI spokesman Paul Miller said. He said the fugitive, wearing a baseball-style cap and clad in an open work shirt, was unarmed.
It marked the end of an intensive, nationwide manhunt for Birdsong, 28, described by Philadelphia homicide Lt. James Hanson as the department's most sought-after fugitive.
Birdsong's girlfriend, Jill St. Clair, 24, also was arrested yesterday. Authorities would say only the location was in Dade County, which is south of Fort Lauderdale.
It was a fire at St. Clair's Logan apartment on 12th Street near Loudon on July 17, where Birdsong was living and allegedly had stored away $400,000 worth of drugs, that prompted the rampage, Philadelphia police said.
Birdsong believed the fire was started by people who had been free-basing cocaine at the apartment. When firefighters arrived they found the drugs and called in police.
Enraged, Birdsong went hours later to a house on 17th Street near Chew Avenue, where he believed those who set the fire lived and started shooting, killing Gloria Panell, 36, and James Bagwell, 18, police said. Birdsong allegedly shot Panell's 17-year-old son in the head, pistol-whipped another son, 13, and pistol-whipped and raped Panell's 16-year-old daughter in a nearby park. He also shot three other men who were in the house: Gregory Johnson, 26; Hassan Holmes, 18, and Andre Kinard, 16.
