O.C. Woman Convicted of Helping Kill Husband Escapes from Prison : Corrections: Frontera authorities have no idea how Jeanette Hughes got out Sunday. She had been held in ‘close custody’ since a foiled 1987 attempt to saw the bars in her cell.

Authorities at the state women’s prison at Frontera remained baffled Tuesday about how Jeanette Lynn Hughes, serving a 25-year sentence for the 1984 murder of her husband in Huntington Beach, managed to escape.

“It looks like the only way we’re going to find out is to ask her when we finally find her,” said Associate Warden Ross Dykes.

Hughes, 36, disappeared Sunday after visiting with her father, James Tugwell, in the large visitors lounge in the late afternoon. She was discovered missing about 9:20 p.m. when she had not been escorted back to her housing unit following the end of the visitation period at 9 p.m.

It was the first escape from the 67-acre, maximum-security prison near Chino in four years.

Although Hughes, like the other inmates, was wearing her own clothes, Dykes said there was no evidence to show that she had simply walked out with other visitors leaving the prison. In fact, her father was observed leaving, but not with her.

Dykes said there was also no sign that Hughes had somehow scaled the 12-foot fence which surrounds the prison. The fence is topped by sharp ribbon wire. The associate warden said no one could cross that wire without leaving evidence that it had been disturbed.

Authorities also ruled out the possibility that she had remained on the prison grounds, after they spent all night searching for her.

“Sometimes a person will hide out right here, holed up for days waiting a chance to escape,” Dykes said. “But about the only thing we are sure of in Jeanette Hughes’ case is that she is definitely not still on the premises.”

They said they also checked all commercial vehicles that had been there on business that day to see if she had hidden in one of them. They turned up nothing.

Prison officials sent out a statewide alert to law enforcement agencies, and began an intensive search for Hughes’ father. But he was located Monday at one of the addresses he had given to prison officials earlier, and Dykes said prison authorities are convinced that he was not involved in his daughter’s escape.

“We really think he was as surprised about this as we were,” Dykes said.

One area Dykes said he could not discuss was what other inmates who lived near Hughes might know. He would say only that there was no evidence any other inmate had helped her.

Hughes had attempted to escape before.

She and others cut the bars of their cells in 1987. But their plan was discovered before anyone made it out of a cell.

Since then, Hughes has been on “close custody,” which includes being escorted to and from the visitors area. It also means that she is housed in an area that does not have the same access to the yard as most other inmates.

Dykes said the prison has not ordered any change in policies since Hughes’ escape because “we have no idea right now what weaknesses in our security system exist.”

But Dykes said one change that could occur would be if officials learned Hughes’ escape was aided in any way by the fact she was in street clothes.

Hughes was convicted in 1986 for the death of her husband, James Hughes, who was shot while he slept in their tract home. Hughes later confessed that he was killed by her lover, Adam Ramirez, because the two of them wanted the $442,000 that would go to her from his life insurance. She admitted that she had left a light to signal Ramirez when it was safe to come in and then later made up a story about a burglar shooting her husband and then hitting her.

Ramirez, tried separately from Hughes, was convicted of first-degree murder.

Hughes’ trial attorney, Donald G. Rubright, said Tuesday that he had not talked to his former client for more than a year. About her escape, he said, “She was always very resourceful.”

Rubright said he was pleased to hear that it appeared that her father was not involved in her escape.

“He is a wonderful man who just happens to be totally committed to his daughter,” Rubright said.

Hughes’ first parole hearing would have been scheduled for 1998. But an escape, Rubright said, would probably set back her chances of parole by at least three to four years.