In Maximum Security Cell : O.C. Escapee Gets Special Attention in South Dakota

The Pennington County Jail here on Kansas City Street is an unassuming, white stone structure that houses about 100 prisoners.

At the moment, none of the prisoners is being watched more closely than Michael Taylor, who had been the lone escapee remaining free following a November, 1988, breakout at the Orange County Jail and is a suspect in dozens of robberies in California and the Midwest.

“He is classified as a security risk,” Pennington County Sheriff Don Holloway said. “He’s in a maximum-security jail cell, and he’s put in restraints when taken around the facility. We’re taking special precautions.”

Taylor, 36, was arrested Saturday in this city of 52,000 when he tried to sell several loose diamonds at a pawnshop, where a jeweler became suspicious of Taylor and called police. Arrested along with Taylor was a woman who law enforcement officials say is his common-law wife, Lisa Marie Prindes, 24. Also arrested with Taylor was a man who first gave his name to police as David Meek but later was identified as Raymond E. Williams, 24.

Like Taylor, they are being held at the Pennington County Jail without bail. They are scheduled to appear before a state magistrate today for arraignment on charges related to aiding Taylor, who was wanted on a federal fugitive warrant.

A 6-year-old boy and 2-year-old girl who were traveling with Taylor and Prindes were placed in the custody of the state Department of Social Services. Police have said that at least one of the children was fathered by Taylor.

Rapid City police released few details Sunday about Taylor’s activities in South Dakota.

Police Lt. Doug Noyes told the Rapid City Journal on Sunday that it appears that Taylor, Prindes and Williams had been traveling from city to city for the last 30 to 60 days.

Noyes told the newspaper that Rapid City seemed to be a place where they stopped at the end of a travel day. He would not say what time they had arrived in town or whether they had been there overnight.

FBI Got Tip

After a May 7 broadcast of Fox network’s “America’s Most Wanted,” a television program about fugitives, the FBI received a tip that Taylor and Prindes had Nevada driver’s licenses and possibly were living in Portland, Me., FBI Agent Bucky Cox of the agency’s Orange County office said Saturday. When agents arrived at the Portland address, however, Taylor was not there.

Taylor was believed traveling along Interstate 90 when he stopped in Rapid City, which is at the base of South Dakota’s Black Hills, northwest of Mt. Rushmore.

Interstate 90 runs from Rapid City to Seattle, near where Taylor once lived in a home in which police found photographs of him posing in front of posters of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives.

While local authorities remained tight-lipped about one of the bigger crime suspects to come through their city in some time, Rapid City jewelers and pawnshop dealers chuckled about Taylor’s amateurish attempt to fence some apparently hot stones.

“The reason I didn’t touch it, he was in here about 1:30, (and) said he had a buyer at 4 p.m. but he needed the money now,” said Pete Skovran, owner of Landstrom’s Jewelers on “St. Joe,” the local shorthand for St. Joseph Street, a main shopping thoroughfare downtown.

Didn’t Like Sound of It

“I didn’t like the sound of it,” Skovran said. “I was going to call the police, but I was tied up at the time with a Rolex customer.”

Skovran said the diamonds were “pretty good-sized stones,” including a pear-shaped jewel that looked to be about three-quarters of a carat.

“He said they were ‘VS1’ stones--very slightly imperfect--and I told him I would determine that,” Skovran said.

Shortly after Taylor left Skovran’s shop, the jeweler got a call from Darcy Knight, manager of the Fair Deal Pawn & Gun Shop on East Boulevard. Knight told Skovran that Taylor had been in his shop, too, and that he was going to call the police if he returned. Skovran agreed that that was a good idea.

Taylor also tried to sell diamonds Saturday to Butch McKinney, owner of Best Pawn Shop on North Street, just a few blocks from Knight’s business.

“He come in here and showed me four diamonds,” said McKinney. Unlike Knight, though, who became suspicious because Taylor was asking so little for what appeared to be valuable jewels, McKinney found Taylor’s asking price of $2,000 about 50% too high.

“We lowball the heck out of ‘em,” McKinney said Sunday. “I didn’t get a chance to look at ‘em real good. . . . But they looked too clean, pretty flawless, and that made me nervous. . . . I think they were sapphires myself.”

Clumsy Attempt

Taylor’s clumsy attempt to get some quick cash contradicts his image of a meticulous, sophisticated jewel thief, painted by some of his alleged robbery victims and by longtime pursuers in law enforcement.

Taylor was awaiting trial in Orange County Jail last November for seven Orange County robberies, including the theft of more than $100,000 in gems from a Huntington Beach jewelry store last year. Los Angeles police said Taylor was connected to other robberies in Los Angeles in 1988, and he was about to face charges in 10 of those cases when he led four other prisoners in an escape from the roof of the jail in Santa Ana.

The five men cut through a wire fence at the top of the jail, then rappelled down the four-story structure with a rope made from braided sheets while one of two guards assigned to watch the roof area was away from his post.

The two guards were accused of not doing their jobs and were blamed for the jail breakout. One was fired and the other was disciplined.

One inmate broke his leg in the escape and was caught immediately. Three others were back in custody within a few weeks.

But Taylor, who eluded authorities, is suspected of stealing $450,000 worth of jewels from a store in the Chicago suburb of River Grove last February after abducting the store manager from her home in west Chicago. Chicago police say he is a suspect in a number of other robberies as well.

Authorities in Orange and Los Angeles counties said the jewels and gold taken in earlier heists may total $2 million.

Times staff writer George Frank in Orange County contributed to this story.