Hacksaw Blade, Dirty Laundry Used in Escape

CASTAIC — A suspected murderer who escaped from custody for 24 hours used a hacksaw blade smuggled in a book and a rope of dirty laundry to break out of the Pitchess jail, sheriff’s deputies said Monday. The weekend escape, one of several recently from Pitchess, left neighbors fearful and angry.

“There is obviously something wrong over there,” said Christine Moten, who has lived in the nearby Hillcrest Park housing development for three years. “It seems like criminals are beginning to get out at regular intervals.”

An April 1995 breakout by 14 of the jail’s inmates prompted sheriff’s deputies and neighbors to establish a warning system, under which members of a citizens advisory group sound air raid sirens and pass along telephone warnings to notify about 1,400 neighbors when there is an escape.

Since then, there have been two successful escapes--in September 1995 and May 1996--involving four inmates. In another incident on April 6, a suspected rapist, thought to have escaped, was found hiding in the jail’s basement.

The warning system went into effect in the most recent escape, when murder suspect Robert Carrasco, 40, was found to be missing about 7:30 p.m. Saturday from the North County Correctional Facility, the maximum-security compound in the Pitchess Detention Center.

More than 100 sheriff’s deputies and SWAT team members searched for Carrasco through the night, said Barry King, chief of custody for the Sheriff’s Department. Helicopters, mounted units and dogs were also used, he said.

On Sunday, sheriff’s deputies fanned out to the West Los Angeles area, where Carrasco lived and had relatives, and sighted him about 10 p.m. in the 12000 block of Braddock Drive, said Deputy Kimberly Unland, a sheriff’s spokeswoman. Carrasco was a passenger in a car driven by his sister, Frances Carrasco, 38, of West Los Angeles, when detectives arrested them without incident, Unland said.

Frances Carrasco was charged with being an accessory to an escape and is being held in lieu of $50,000 bail, Unland said.

King acknowledged that inmate escapes are a cause of concern for neighbors but said Pitchess does not have a higher escape rate than other facilities.

Escapes “are minimal,” he said. “It doesn’t occur that often.”

“When you’re dealing with human beings, there’s always a potential for failure,” King said, promising to instruct guards to “keep the level of awareness of escapes up at all times. It is easy to get into a routine, which we want to avoid.”

On Monday, investigators pieced together the painstakingly planned escape from the 7-year-old North County Correctional Facility, which sheriff’s officials believed was very secure. Before Saturday, they had never even found evidence of any attempted escapes, King said.

Investigators believe Carrasco and three other inmates--whose identities are being withheld--sawed through a steel lattice near an outdoor toilet in a fenced-in yard, King said. At least two hacksaw blades were allegedly smuggled in to the inmates in book bindings, which allowed them to work on the three-eighths-inch corrugated steel lattice bars over an unknown period of time, he said.

The saw cuts were not discovered because there is a metal barrier shielding the toilet, King said. Investigators believe the inmates fashioned a rope to scale the 14-foot fence surrounding the yard using dirty laundry left there in a bin, King said.

On Saturday night, four inmates threw the rope over the fence and tried to use more dirty clothing as padding to protect themselves from two rows of barbed wire at the top, he said.

Despite that, investigators believe two of the inmates cut their hands so severely on the barbed wire that they turned back, and another abandoned the attempt when he saw how badly the others were cut, King said. Although Carrasco made it out, he--like the other two--needed sutures on his hands.

“It’s obvious that it was well-planned because they knew where to go, had three separate pickup points, three separate people and cars to get them,” King said. “There were changes of clothing in the cars. [The inmates] had visits earlier that day with the alleged pickup people.”

Robert Carrasco, who was arrested in February of last year on suspicion of murder and was being held without bail, will also be charged with escape, Unland said.

Sheriff’s investigators have not yet determined whether charges will be filed against the other three inmates who attempted to escape.

When Carrasco escaped, sheriff’s deputies put into effect the neighborhood warning system established in 1995, King said, paging members of the citizens advisory group to notify them shortly after the escape was discovered.

The jail’s sirens were sounded and residents who had been provided with sirens sounded alerts as well, he said. Then, residents of three housing developments across the Golden State Freeway were notified by telephone to lock their doors, keep children indoors and look out for suspicious individuals, he said.

Moten praised the sirens as an improvement. “I feel better now because of the sirens,” she said. “It used to be left up to the deputies, who would drive around and give warnings out on their car loudspeakers. The sirens let us know immediately someone’s got out.”

Other residents wondered whether the escapes will lower property values.

“When we moved here, we probably didn’t ask the right questions about the jail,” Ralph Demuth said as he washed his car Monday. Demuth said that when he bought his home in the Hillcrest Park development, the jail did not house maximum-security prisoners.

“It seems to me that maybe they aren’t equipped for it,” he said. He is reassured, he said, that “so many sheriff’s deputies live in the area. But the breakouts are getting [tiresome].”

Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this story.