Inmate Found Hanged Reportedly Was Bound : Wrists Were Tied With Hem From a T-Shirt; County Jail Officials Still Call Death a Suicide

The 19-year-old inmate who investigators believe hanged himself Tuesday from a drainpipe in a psychiatric observation cell at the Orange County Jail was found with his hands bound in front of him, sources said Wednesday.

Paul Allen Pinkerton was found hanging from a noose fashioned from a bedsheet, his hands loosely wrapped together with part of the hem torn from his jail T-shirt, according to law enforcement sources close to the investigation. They would comment only on the agreement that their names not be used.

Investigators said Wednesday they still believe that Pinkerton--who was considered a suicide risk because he threatened last November to jump 80 feet down a jail stairwell--hanged himself in the cell’s shower area. The noose was attached to a vertical wallpipe, but sources said that did not rule out suicide.

“Hell, no,” said one investigator. “You can hang yourself from a doorknob.”

Even with his hands bound, sources said, Pinkerton would have had more than enough mobility to hang himself.

While it was not known whether the T-shirt hemming was knotted, one source said, “It wasn’t enough to bind him. If you wanted to tie him up, you’d have to use more than (what) was there.”

Pinkerton, who last January escaped from Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, where he was sent after the November suicide threat, was to appear in court Tuesday morning for sentencing on a juvenile burglary charge to which he had pleaded guilty, one of his attorneys said.

Held in Macaw Theft

After his hospital escape, Pinkerton had been free until he was arrested May 21 on suspicion of breaking into an Anaheim vocational school of animal care and stealing a $1,750 macaw, authorities said. He was in the Orange County Jail awaiting arraignment on 16 misdemeanor charges stemming from that incident, when he was discovered hanged.

Jail medical personnel found Pinkerton hanging from the bathroom drainpipe at 1:15 a.m. Tuesday, according to Lt. Dick Olson, a sheriff’s spokesman.

One of two medical staff members on duty had checked on Pinkerton in the 12-man observation cell at 1 a.m. and found him lying on his bunk, Jim Enright, assistant district attorney, said.

Eleven other inmates also under psychiatric scrutiny--one of them a murder defendant--were in the cell at the time, Enright said. He added that it was not known whether the hanging was seen by the other inmates, some of whom may have been sleeping out of sight of the bathroom. Pinkerton’s cell mates were still being interviewed Wednesday.

Enright’s office is investigating the death, the first inside the jail this year.

Theoretically, Enright said, finding a hanged person with his arms bound would be considered “evidence that would alert us that it might be something other than suicide.”

As to whether Pinkerton’s hands were bound, Enright said: “That’s one of the things we couldn’t comment on until we complete the investigation . . . . There’s no indication that there was anything other than a suicide.”

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted May 14 to have the district attorney assume the coroner’s role in deaths that involve deputies or occur in the jail, which is run by Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates. The board’s action was intended to remove the potential for conflict of interest when Gates’ staff investigates deaths that may involve his employees.

An autopsy, begun Tuesday by a licensed forensic pathologist from Napa County, has not yet been completed, Enright said.

“Preliminarily,” Enright said Wednesday, “it looks like a suicide, but we have not completed (all) the interviews.”