Security Relaxes for Wilkening, Cleared of Escape Plot

Convicted madam Karen Wilkening has been cleared of suspicion of escape and sent back from a maximum-security cell to her normal routine, state prison officials said Tuesday.

Wilkening was returned about 10 days ago to the medium-security California Rehabilitation Center in Norco from a maximum-security cell at the California Institute for Women in Frontera, prison spokesman Paul Hamrick said.

She had spent about three weeks at Frontera after prison mail clerks intercepted aerial photos of the Norco prison and authorities suspected the pictures might be part of an escape plan, Hamrick said. However, he said, she was returned to Norco after officials decided Wilkening was not planning to escape.

Wilkening was sent the photos by a private pilot--whom authorities have declined to identify--who has written her since she was sent to Norco on a 44-month sentence.

“I don’t know why he sent them,” Wilkening’s former attorney, Steven Carroll, said Tuesday. “The only thing she can figure is that he has the ability to take pictures from air, he did so and thought she might like them for her wall. The prison’s response was to consider it a potential escape issue and lock her up.”

Wilkening pleaded guilty last year to two felony counts in connection with what prosecutors have said was a high-class call girl ring run out of Wilkening’s Linda Vista condominium. She is scheduled to be released in May, 1991, Carroll said.

Her case has led to investigations by three county grand juries, including the current, or 1990-91, panel.

Last year’s grand jury was asked to investigate whether a client list allegely kept on a Rolodex file by Wilkening had been altered while in police custody. That grand jury’s investigation reportedly widened into a probe of misconduct and favoritism in the San Diego Police Department.