LOCAL : Husband Slayer Flees Frontera
Authorities in San Bernardino County are searching for Jeanette Lynn Hughes, who escaped Sunday night from the California Institution for Women at Frontera near Chino, where she was serving a 25-year murder sentence for her role in her husband’s 1984 death in their Huntington Beach home.
Hughes, 36, disappeared in the late afternoon after visiting with her father, James Tugwell, in the visitors’ lounge. She was discovered missing about 9:20 p.m. Associate Warden Ross Dykes said today that officials have no idea how she escaped and are satisfied that her father was not involved.
It was the first escape in four years from the state’s only maximum-security prison for women.
Hughes was convicted in 1986 for the shooting death of her husband, James Hughes. She later confessed that he was shot by her lover, Adam Ramirez, in a scheme to obtain $442,000 from his life insurance.
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