Escape Artist’s Mother Accused of Aiding New Plot

The aged mother of Ronald McIntosh, a California man serving a 25-year sentence for plucking his inmate lover out of prison in a dramatic helicopter escape in 1986, has been charged with helping her son in a new escape plot, authorities said Tuesday.

Margaret McIntosh, 76, of Seattle, has been charged with conspiring to help her son escape from San Mateo County Jail. Also charged in the case is Ernest Lail, who was a cellmate of Ronald McIntosh’s at the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Zanides, who prosecuted Ronald McIntosh for the 1986 escape, said he expects to charge him later in connection with the new plot.

Margaret McIntosh was arraigned in Seattle last week and is free on bail. She is expected to be brought to San Francisco to face trial.

Federal authorities said they discovered last July that Ronald McIntosh, 45, was considering an escape attempt from Leavenworth. But the officials said that plot was foiled when San Mateo County authorities charged him with a 1984 murder and transferred him to their jail to await trial.

According to a search warrant affidavit, McIntosh, his mother, Lail, and others began conspiring to help McIntosh escape from the county jail. Lail is serving a 64-year sentence at Leavenworth for bank robbery.

According to the affidavit, as yet unidentified co-conspirators planned to use automatic weapons to free McIntosh as he was transported to court proceedings. An alternate plan was to take Superior Court Judge John Runde hostage in exchange for McIntosh, according to the affidavit.

McIntosh’s troubles began with a gold futures enterprise he ran in Marin County in the mid-1980s. He was convicted of defrauding investors of $18 million and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison at Pleasanton, Calif., in 1986.

In October, 1986, McIntosh disappeared after he was given a bus ticket from Pleasanton and told to travel unsupervised to a minimum-security prison at Lompoc.

A few days later, McIntosh, a veteran who flew helicopters in combat in Vietnam, commandeered a helicopter at gunpoint in San Jose and flew to the yard at Pleasanton. There, his lover, Dorinda Lopez, a convicted bank robber serving a 50-year sentence, waited. The couple evaded capture for 10 days, but were arrested at a jewelry store in a Sacramento shopping mall where they had stopped to pick up wedding rings they had purchased earlier.

Lopez was sentenced to five additional years for the escape.

In San Mateo County, McIntosh is facing charges that he paid $53,000 to a hit man, Drax Quartermain, to kill a business associate. Quartermain was convicted of the murder and is on San Quentin’s Death Row.