She Tried to Help Murderer Escape From Jail : Wife Gets Probation, Told to Avoid Husband

A woman who pleaded guilty Wednesday to trying to break her convicted killer husband out of the Orange County Jail was granted probation and no more jail time--but only if she follows the judge’s order: She is not to see her husband until her probation is up in three years.

Linda Kipp, 38, was arrested April 18 after she sought assistance from an undercover sheriff’s deputy in her scheme to help Martin Kipp escape.

Law enforcement officials say it was an ill-conceived plan that would never have worked. Linda Kipp wanted the man she had met--the undercover officer--to stand guard while her 16-year-old son took Martin Kipp a set of escape tools through an air vent. Officials say that neither the youth nor the inmate could have made it through the air vent.

Linda Kipp, who has remained in custody since her arrest, admitted the details of the plan to Superior Court Judge Myron S. Brown before pleading guilty Wednesday.

Brown ordered her to serve one year in County Jail but said he would reduce that to six months already served if she agreed to stay away from her husband. She agreed.

Martin Kipp is scheduled to be sentenced Friday for slaying 19-year-old Antaya Yvette Howard of Huntington Beach, and he is awaiting trial in a death penalty case in Los Angeles County in connection with the 1983 murder of Tiffany Frizzell, 19, in a Long Beach motel room.

A jury gave Kipp a death verdict for the Howard slaying last month. After the sentencing Friday, Judge Brown said, Linda Kipp can be released from jail as soon as her husband’s bus to San Quentin State Prison has departed. Brown’s order also forbids Linda Kipp from visiting her husband at the Los Angeles County Jail, where he is expected to be taken soon after he arrives at San Quentin.

“She had no previous record, so the judge didn’t want to sent her to state prison,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Joel P. Kew.

Kew described Linda Kipp as “a nice woman and mother who became a paralegal and just got completely delusional about this guy.”

The Kipps were married while Martin Kipp was in custody.

“She says she wants to go to Florida,” Kew said. “I think that’s fine with the judge. He’d let her go to the moon if he thought it would keep her away from (Martin) Kipp.”