Escape of Drug Suspect Noticed Six Days Later

A Colombian national regarded by Los Angeles police and prosecutors as one of the most important cocaine traffickers ever arrested here apparently escaped from County Jail a week ago but was not discovered to be missing for six days, sheriff’s deputies said Tuesday.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials said they have launched an intensive inquiry into how William Londono, 23, managed to slip away from the Men’s Central Jail early last week.

It was not until about 4 p.m. Monday, said Sgt. Merlyn Poppleton, that jail deputies heard of a “possible escape attempt” and investigated. They learned that Londono was transferred during the early morning of Aug. 25 to the inmate reception center release area, where prisoners go when they are about to be released, taken to court or switched to another facility.

There was no record that he was released or that he had been returned to his cell section, Poppleton said. After a lock-down and identification armband check of all inmates of the Men’s Central Jail on Monday night, deputies concluded that Londono had escaped.

Officials would not speculate publicly on whether, after nearly a week, he was still in this country. Deputy Dist. Atty. Curtis Hazell, the prosecutor in the case, said he thought the chances of catching Londono are “zero.”

Late Tuesday afternoon, the Sheriff’s Department issued a statement conceding that it was “obvious to us that in some fashion William Londono has compromised our Central Jail release mechanism. It has not been established at this time how this was accomplished.”

The statement called it a “unique situation” and said no one in the department could recall a similar escape. “Extensive” investigations both inside and outside the jail system in conjunction with Los Angeles police, federal narcotics agents and the district attorney’s office were being conducted in an attempt to locate the escapee, it said.

Considered Important

Londono, law enforcement officials said, was one of the major figures arrested as a result of “Operation Pisces,” which U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III called “the largest and most successful undercover investigation in federal drug enforcement history.”

In the confusion that surrounded the Colombian’s disappearance, Sheriff’s Sgt. Stuart Reed told a United Press International reporter that he was heading a 13-member task force assigned to investigate the escape. “We’re looking at everyone involved,” Reed said, “including sheriff’s personnel.”

The Sheriff’s Information Bureau, however, said it could offer no information on the task force.

Nor could all law enforcement authorities even agree on how the fugitive spells his name. Hazell, the prosecutor, said it is Londono. A sheriff’s spokesman said the missing man was booked as Landano. And a booking photograph released by deputies bore the name Lamdano.

Londono was being held with bail set at $3 million and faced a Dec. 2 trial on charges of conspiracy and possession of narcotics for sale.

He was one of 16 suspected members of a narcotics ring arrested April 11 after a six-week investigation by Los Angeles and Anaheim police, Ventura County sheriff’s officers and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

“He was one of the more significant cocaine traffickers ever captured here,” Hazell said. “He was a cog, an employee. There is a command structure of Colombians above him, but he was moving lots of dope, laundering lots of money and he was living extremely well.”

Officer Identified

Hazell said Londono’s escape was particularly unsettling because an undercover Los Angeles police officer testified against him in an early court hearing and the officer’s identity has thus become known.

Hazell said the officer is Detective Horacio Marco, who was honored Tuesday with a Police Department Medal of Valor for his 20-month infiltration into what the department called “a ruthless Colombian organization of major narcotic traffickers.”

If identified during his undercover role in Operation Pisces, said the department citation, Marco, 41, “faced immediate torture and execution.” Authorities fear that Marco may be in danger.

Hazell said that in the operation, Los Angeles police and the Drug Enforcement Administration set up a sophisticated money-laundering organization through which a total of $48 million in profits from various drug rings was laundered and sent to Colombia.

Tracking the Dealers

“By this method,” Hazell said, “agents were able to identify major launderers and follow them back to the major dealers, people trafficking in hundreds of pounds of cocaine, without them ever knowing how we were learning their identity.”

Meese said the arrests around the country resulting from Operation Pisces were “unprecedented.”

Capt. Robert Blanchard of Los Angeles police narcotics said the ring in which Londono allegedly was involved was “one of the biggest in the country,” and he called Londono “a major component of that organization.”

Although police were not anxious to discuss the escape and referred all questions to the Sheriff’s Department, one police official said: “We want to know how this bird took flight. We had him and now he’s gone.”

‘Significant Arrest’

Londono, according to prosecutor Hazell, was “one of the last arrests before Operation Pisces ended. It was one of the significant arrests (resulting from that undercover operation).”

Londono was taken into custody last April with three of the other 15 suspects at an estate in the gated Ventura County community of Bell Canyon, west of Canoga Park. The house, estimated by police to be worth about $3 million, was believed to be the ring’s headquarters.