The State - News from Aug. 9, 1985

Three inmates, including a convicted murderer, set a smoky fire to aid a successful escape from Merced County jail, the Sheriff’s Department reported. A statewide all-points bulletin warned that the escapees should be considered dangerous. Officers were searching for sentenced murderer Jerry Lee Bolton, 23; Jerry Leighton, 23, who has made three previous escapes from various jails, and Ronald Wayne Allen, 20. The prisoners loosened a hook-type latch to get out of their cell, then set a fire a few cells away. Guards turned on fans and opened a door to an exercise yard to clear the smoke. The three prisoners went into the exercise yard, where one climbed on another inmate’s shoulders and then onto a basketball hoop to reach a wire fence on top of the 30-foot wall surrounding the yard. That prisoner broke through the fence at a seam and lowered strips of mattress covers to his companions, who then clambered up and out.