Sheriff’s Officers Say Escape Plot Thwarted : Jail: Officials uncover various tools and weapons for an alleged escape attempt. Three of five suspects were involved in prior escapes.

Five maximum-security inmates--including two who were involved in a brazen jail escape two years ago and another who was the focus of a national manhunt after slipping away from custody four years ago--are suspected of plotting another bold escape, sheriff’s officials said Monday.

During a routine inspection Saturday of a day room in Module F in the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, where the men were housed, sheriff’s deputies found an air-vent guard that had been sawed off. They also found three makeshift knives, extra bedsheets, a hacksaw handle fashioned out of plastic toothbrushes and a map of Santa Ana showing the most direct route to the freeway.

Sheriff’s investigators believe that the men planned to crawl through the ventilation system, exit at another part of the security section, “attack a deputy and take the deputy’s keys . . . to flee the confines of the jail,” Assistant Sheriff Rocky Hewitt said.

Those suspected of planning the escape were identified as Steven Wilson, 28, in custody on suspicion of kidnaping and robbery; Richard Fluharty, 28, in custody on suspicion of burglary and escape; Mark Moen, 31, in custody for suspicion of burglary; Michael Mohon, 44, in custody on suspicion of attempted murder, burglary and escape; and Albert Sherwin, 36, a sentenced state prisoner in custody on an order to return to court, officials said.

“Escape attempts are not something that we usually publicize,” Hewitt said. “On a daily basis, we conduct searches and find things like makeshift knives or clubs. . . . It’s not unusual.

“Nobody knows for sure how such items get into security, but with 90,000 bookings per year and over 4,400 inmates in the county jail system on any given day, many of which are continually moved in and out of security to court or for medical reasons, it is possible illegal items are picked up on the outside and not found when the inmate is returned.”

The fact that all five facilities in the county jail system are severely overcrowded adds to the problem, he said.

Fluharty and Wilson were involved in a daring jailbreak in November, 1988, during which five inmates--including Michael Douglas Taylor, a notorious jewel thief--cut a hole in a fence on the rooftop recreation yard and rappelled off the four-story building with a makeshift rope crafted out of sheets.

Fluharty and Wilson were arrested two weeks later by FBI agents in a Denver suburb. Two sheriff’s deputies later lost their jobs as a result of the escape.

Mohon also has a history of escapes and was the focus of a national manhunt after escaping from the Orange County Jail in 1985. Mohon, who is suspected of trying to murder a reserve Fountain Valley police officer, escaped from a deputy after he obtained a gun allegedly planted by his wife while he was at UCI Medical Center for physical therapy.

Mohon was captured four years later in Eight Mile, Ala., after FBI agents were contacted by a woman who recognized his picture while watching the television program “Unsolved Mysteries.”