Insiders May Have Helped Jail Escapee, Sheriff Says

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday that a suspected cocaine dealer from Colombia may have had inside help--possibly from bribed jail personnel--in escaping early last week from County Jail.

Block disclosed that William Londono’s ticket to freedom came in a routine but unauthorized “release message” sent at about 2 a.m. Aug. 25 on the jail’s computer system.

That message directed jailers to let Londono, 23, leave his maximum-security cell and head unescorted to the jail’s reception center release area, one floor below. Instead of going to the release area, where other jailers presumably would have double-checked his file and realized that his release was in error, Londono disappeared.

Block said a 12-man team of investigators has yet to determine who may have sent the computer message or how Londono could have left the jail apparently unobserved. Between 500 and 600 other inmates were processing out of the jail at the time--a number that Block described as “normal for that time of day.”

‘Secure System’

He said his investigators are examining the possibility that a “hacker,” perhaps an inmate familiar with the jail’s computer system, had sent the message freeing Londono.

‘We’ve never had a problem with hackers in the past,” Block noted. “We believe we have a secure (computer) system.”

Asked if investigators were also considering whether Londono may have bribed his jailers, Block said, “We’re not ruling out any possiblity. . . . There was a compromise of the system. It would appear that he had help. We’re looking at this thing from all angles.”

Besides the Sheriff’s Department investigation, the Los Angeles Police Department, the district attorney’s office and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration are conducting probes.

“As long as I’ve been around, when an escape happened, we were able to immediately determine what happened and how it happened,” a chagrined Block told reporters. “In this case, we just don’t know.”

He said authorities “have no idea” where Londono is.

Two Jail Escapes

In the last three years, there have been two escapes from the Central Jail, a massive, multistory building southeast of downtown Los Angeles that holds about 7,700 prisoners. In each of those escapes, inmates switched wrist identification bands with other prisoners and simply walked out.

It took jail officials six days to discover that Londono had escaped. The revelation came only after he received a visitor at the jail and deputies went to find Londono, Block said. The sheriff would not reveal the identity of the visitor.

He said jailers do not take roll of inmates but instead conduct head counts several times each day. No discrepancy was discovered because the jail’s computers listed Londono as having checked out, even though the prisoner did not pick up his personal belongings or street clothes.

Londono was among 16 suspected members of a narcotics ring arrested April 11 after a six-week investigation by local police and federal agents. One authority dubbed Londono “one of the more significant cocaine traffickers ever captured here.”

He 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.

Prosecutors said they had videotaped evidence showing Londono dealing with Horacio Marco, an undercover Los Angeles police detective whose safety has been the subject of concern since Londono escaped. Marco has been given police protection.