Escaped Killer, Prison Guard Are Captured

Ten days after a Huntington Beach murderer escaped from a high-security women’s prison, Texas authorities captured her and a female prison guard who they believe helped pull off the daring breakout and then joined her in a frantic flight through the Southwest.

Officials at the California Institute for Women at Frontera called the escape Wednesday the most successful “inside job” they had ever seen in the state corrections system.

But even as officials investigate several escape theories--including the possible use of a guard disguise and a prison van--they admitted that they are still puzzled about just how the scheme was carried out by inmate Jeanette Lynn Hughes, 36, and Cindy Marie Coglietti, 26, a corrections officer for five years who was assigned to guard Hughes.

“It’s not a pretty thing to see one of your fellow (staff members) fall victim to a manipulative inmate,” said Ross Dykes, the associate warden at the 2,500-inmate prison near Chino in San Bernardino County. “But right now we don’t have a lot of answers--just a lot of maybes.”

Coglietti and Hughes, who was serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for the 1984 murder of her husband in their Huntington Beach home, appeared late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in El Paso to begin proceedings that could result in their extradition to California for prosecution.

The two were apprehended without a struggle at El Paso International Airport about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday by federal agents and local police who had been tipped by prison officials to their suspected location. Both had been missing since Hughes’ March 25 escape, the first at the facility in four years.

Hughes and Coglietti had been playing cards in the airport lobby, waiting for an arriving passenger--perhaps a relative--to bring them cash, authorities said.

They apparently planned to use part of the money to pay for plane tickets to Denver that they had reserved for later that night, authorities said.

“There was no fight or struggle or anything,” said El Paso Police Officer Patricia Roche, one of the officers who matched Hughes and Coglietti to the descriptions provided by California authorities. “We told them we needed to talk to them, and they just said OK.”

Roche said Coglietti handed over her California driver’s license upon request, but Hughes, when asked for identification, stuttered for a moment, then gave an alias.

“Jeanette (Hughes) seemed real calm, but Cindy seemed worried, a bit nervous. She just kept looking down,” Roche said.

The two women had several pieces of luggage with them. Investigators who searched the luggage found clothes, makeup, cologne and a sealed, interprison envelope from the Frontera facility, Roche said. There were no weapons.

Terry Kincaid, special agent with the FBI in El Paso, said: “They have had conversations with us that have been incriminating, but I can’t get into the content.”

El Paso was the women’s last stop on a whirlwind jaunt that had included several days in Phoenix and Las Vegas, Kincaid said. The two had been in El Paso since Saturday, staying at a Motel 6, and may have been sighted in Dallas, authorities said.

Their ultimate destination was unclear, Kincaid said. But he added: “They said they had no intention of fleeing to Mexico, which is always a concern because of the proximity.”

Detection of the two in Mexico might have led to complicated extradition proceedings, he said.

Prison officials would not detail how they tracked down Hughes and Coglietti, but they did credit Hughes’ family for its help.

“Hughes’ parents were very cooperative,” associate warden Dykes said.

Hughes’ father, James Tugwell, who was visiting his daughter just before her disappearance but was not implicated in the scheme, “wants his daughter back safe,” Dykes said. “And he wants to know her whereabouts.”

Contacted at his San Bernardino home Wednesday, Tugwell told a reporter, “Forget it,” and hung up.

Word of the capture spread quickly around the Frontera prison complex Wednesday morning, but staff members there said they were under strict orders not to discuss the case or the many rumors that have surrounded it in recent days.

“This is the kind of thing you want to keep your nose out of,” said one guard who requested anonymity.

Asked how the escape may have been carried out, another prison staff member said: “We don’t even understand what happened.”

Hughes was last seen at the prison about 6:30 p.m. on March 25, about the time the visit with her father ended. Her disappearance was not discovered until a few hours later, when cells were checked, Dykes said.

He and prison investigator Lt. Ray Lobatoz said they are looking into reports that Coglietti may have gotten Hughes a prison guard’s uniform or helped conceal the inmate in an outgoing prison van. Coglietti was seen leaving the facility alone.

Dykes added, however: “We just don’t know yet how they got out of here. . . . That’s why we want to talk to them.”

Citing confidentiality regulations, officials refused to discuss unconfirmed published reports that Hughes and Coglietti had become lovers in prison.

But prison officials did acknowledge that the capture put an end to the speculation that Coglietti had been kidnapped, a theory that they had previously refused to rule out.

In 1987, Hughes tried to saw through her cell bars and made other elaborate escape plans before being caught. As a result, she was placed in a high-security unit, at which she had personal escorts to and from virtually all activities. Coglietti was one of the corrections officers assigned to Hughes’ unit.

“That was her job--to be with that inmate, and other inmates (in the high-security unit) on an eight-hour basis, five days a week,” Dykes said.

Corrections officers in those situations are trained to develop “a close relationship with the inmates, keep an eye on them and what they’re up to,” Dykes said.

But in the case of Hughes, he added, Coglietti apparently “crossed the line.”

On the possibility of intimate relationships between prison staff and inmates, Dykes said: “It occurs from time to time. It’s not something we like to see happen . . . but the system itself seems to be pretty good. If you get human failure in the mechanics of it, you work on it.”

At the Wednesday hearing in El Paso, U.S. Magistrate Janet Ruesch set bail for Coglietti at $40,000 but refused to set bail for Hughes. They are scheduled to reappear in court there Monday for further preliminary proceedings.

Prison officials said both may end up being extradited to California for prosecution, Hughes on charges of unlawful flight to avoid confinement and Coglietti on charges of harboring a fugitive.

If convicted, Hughes could have more time tacked onto her sentence. Coglietti faces up to three years in prison if convicted of aiding the escape, federal officials said.

Hughes was found guilty in 1986 of having conspired with her lover, Adam Salas Ramirez, to murder her husband, computer engineer James Hughes, as he slept in their tract home, so they could collect $442,000 in life insurance money.

Ramirez shot the husband and fled, while Hughes called police with a phony story about a break-in.

Ramirez is serving a 28-years-to-life sentence for first-degree murder.