Last Mass Escape From Pitchess Jail Was in ’85 : Security: After that incident, the county promised to keep high-risk inmates elsewhere. But that commitment remains unfulfilled because of overcrowding.

The maximum-security North Facility at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho--from which 14 inmates escaped Sunday morning--has had one other mass escape. In 1985, seven inmates--one a convicted murderer--fled after cutting a hole in wire mesh over the recreation area.

After that incident, Los Angeles County officials promised to stop sending inmates held on murder charges to the Castaic facility. But overcrowding at the Downtown Mens Central Jail forced inmates awaiting trial for all types of crimes--including murder--to continue coming to Pitchess, officials said.

To ease the strain of housing some of the county’s most violent criminals, a new maximum-security jail--the North County Correctional Facility--was opened in 1990. The giant $134-million complex consisted of five smaller jails on 34 acres of the sprawling Pitchess ranch and boasted amenities such as a central computer system that locked and unlocked all doors in the complex and a control center with 28 television monitors hooked up to 128 cameras stationed throughout the complex.

But with only 2,000 beds at the state-of-the-art facility, there was simply not enough room for all high-risk inmates, Sheriff’s Lt. Nick Berkuta said.

“We mainly keep inmates (at the North County facility) who haven’t received their sentences yet,” Berkuta said. “But we just don’t have enough beds there, so we end up keeping people in the other maximum-security areas where beds are available.”

Escapes from Pitchess are fairly common, although most are inmates fleeing from minimum-security units alone or in small groups. “It was usually a situation where people just got lonely for their families and would leave,” Santa Clarita Mayor Pro Tem Carl Boyer said. “But this escape is entirely different.”

“It is a shock,” Santa Clarita Mayor Jo Anne Darcy said. “There is certainly going to be further investigation to make sure that security is as high as it can possibly be in the future.”

The maximum-security units at the jail have been hit with just three escapes in the past decade. In 1985, a paroled killer awaiting trial on two new murder charges escaped from the North Facility with six other inmates. All but one were recaptured in less than 24 hours, including the convicted killer. The last inmate was captured almost a month later.

In that escape, the inmates cut through a pipe in the wall of their second-story dormitory with a saw left by workers, then forced open a heavy mesh window screen using a piece of the pipe. After lowering themselves to the ground with bedsheets, they scaled two 16-foot chain-link fences topped with barbed wire.

At that time, authorities reassured the public that it was only the second escape from the maximum-security section in 20 years.

Four years later, an inmate accused of robbery and kidnaping cut a hole in the wire mesh over an enclosed recreation area of the North Facility, jumped off the building’s roof and scaled the barbed-wire fence.

After that escape, officials installed metal plating to replace the wire mesh. The man was never recaptured, however, and was believed to have returned to his native Mexico.

A few days after his escape, another inmate used the same method to flee from the maximum-security East Facility. That inmate, convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and filing a false financial statement, was captured a week later.

The 2,800-acre Pitchess facility recently closed its only minimum-security unit due to county budget cuts. Most of the facility is open fields, and for decades the jail doubled as a work farm for the low-risk inmates.