Weekend Tryst Was First Stop for Jail Escapee

Escaped convict Kevin Jerome Pullum spent his first weekend of freedom shopping, eating chicken and Rice-a-Roni, watching television and listening to music with his girlfriend in downtown Los Angeles, just a few blocks from the county jail that he had fled, she said Wednesday.

As sheriff’s deputies were conducting seven wristband counts and six jailhouse searches before finally announcing on Monday, July 9, that he had escaped, Pullum was enjoying a romantic stay with his girlfriend, who said she was unaware he was on the lam.

Carmen Ford described in an interview Wednesday their romantic weekend together, beginning on a Friday night 12 days ago when Pullum walked out of the Twin Towers jail just hours after being convicted of attempted murder. Pullum continues to elude the Sheriff’s Department, despite a large-scale manhunt.

Ford, 46, a downtown office manager, agreed to an interview Wednesday in an attempt to appeal to Pullum to surrender to authorities.

“Enough is enough. Give yourself a break, Kevin,” she said. “Don’t make it worse. . . . They can take away your freedom, but they can’t take away your spirit and your soul. And they can’t take away the people who love you.”

Pullum was convicted of shooting a man six times in what authorities believe was a drug deal gone bad. Police say the May 1999 shooting took place in broad daylight. Pullum was scheduled to be sentenced in Van Nuys Superior Court today, and prosecutors say they will request a bench warrant for the fugitive.

Ford said she did not know Pullum had just escaped when he called her on the evening of July 6. Rather, she said, Pullum sheepishly told her two nights later--and she didn’t believe him.

“I said, ‘Yeah, right,’ and I laughed,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m just messing with you’ and then he kissed me and said he had to go take care of some business.”

She said she hasn’t seen him since that day, July 8. The Sheriff’s Department did not issue its first news release about the escape until the next morning.

Sheriff’s officials confirmed that Ford is Pullum’s girlfriend and they say they have interviewed her. They acknowledge that they are closely monitoring many of Pullum’s friends and relatives in an effort to find him.

But Ford does not believe Pullum will attempt to see her again while he is a fugitive. She said he left her a message Saturday, to “tell me that he loves me.” She said he hasn’t called back since.

Pullum apparently was wearing street clothes--which Ford said she bought at his request two weeks earlier--under his jail uniform when he was returned by bus to the downtown Inmate Reception Center after his conviction in a Van Nuys courtroom. Sheriff’s officials believe that he dumped the uniform in an unguarded tunnel linking the reception center and Twin Towers, from which he left through an employee entrance while wearing a fake employee identification badge, the department said.

Sheriff’s Department security cameras show Pullum, a three-strike convict facing up to life in prison, walking out of the jail at 7:51 p.m. That was the last time authorities have seen him.

According to Ford, Pullum called her downtown apartment about 8 p.m. that Friday, saying he wanted to see her. He took the subway a couple of stops from Union Station, and they met, she said.

“He was so happy,” she said, laughing. “He hugged me, picked me up in his arms.”

She said he told her that the Sheriff’s Department gave him “a free ride” back downtown after his court appearance in Van Nuys.

He was wearing a light flowered shirt and beige pants, clothes that she bought him for court. She said he did not have a badge or a jail wristband on at the time. She now says she understands why he was “so adamant” about her buying new clothes before his recent court appearances.

They took a leisurely walk before going to Ford’s apartment, where she cooked dinner: fried chicken, vegetables and Rice-a-Roni.

“He was saying, ‘This is so good,’ ” Ford said. “He’d take a bite and kiss me and say, ‘Oh, Carmen, this is so good. . . .’ I guess after that jail food, it was good.”

That Saturday, she said, they shopped along Broadway downtown. She said she bought him new tennis shoes--when he arrived he had been wearing his jail-issued black slip-on sneakers. She also bought him a pair of jeans. He never appeared nervous while strolling along the street that day, she said.

“I’m not saying Kevin is a pillar of society,” Ford said, at turns sentimental and at turns laughing at the turn of events. “I know his background. I saw a different side of him. I saw a lovable side, a compassionate side, a guy who would brush my hair, dance with me in the house, paint my toenails.”

She said they spent the rest of that Saturday in her studio apartment, cooking, watching television, playing cards, listening to the radio.

Nothing seemed unusual, she said. There was no mention of a jail escape on TV or on the radio.

Indeed, jail officials did not even notify Sheriff Lee Baca about the escape until Sunday morning.

Ford said she has been involved with Pullum for nearly three years, adding that they lived together about 10 months in Van Nuys before he was arrested in April 2000.

When a helicopter whirred over her apartment the Saturday night after his escape, she said, he asked whether they were common in her new neighborhood. She said she sometimes heard them, not thinking about why he might have asked. On Wednesday, she laughed and shook her head as she recalled that moment.

She did find it odd that Pullum was wearing glasses, she said, but he told her that he had been preparing for his trial--he represented himself in court--and that he needed them for reading.

The jailhouse informant who provided details of the escape to sheriff’s investigators told them that Pullum made a fake identification card using a picture of Eddie Murphy from “Dr. Dolittle 2.” Murphy is wearing glasses in those movie advertisements.

Ford said Pullum opened the windows of her apartment for fresh air. “He said, ‘It’s so nice to look out a window.’ ”

“You can’t help who you care about,” she reflected Wednesday, as she lighted a cigarette. “Maybe he needed a taste of freedom before he gets put away for the rest of his life.”

She said the couple spent a quiet Sunday together, calling friends, joking around together.

When he left that evening, she said, she watched some television and went to bed.

About midnight, she said, sheriff’s deputies showed up at her door, guns drawn, and searched her apartment.

It was, she said, the first time she realized he had escaped.

Capt. Bob Malone, who is overseeing the search for Pullum, confirmed that deputies searched Ford’s apartment that night and that she has told the same story to authorities.

Malone said deputies learned that she was Pullum’s girlfriend on Sunday afternoon but did not go to the apartment until hours later because they were still gathering Pullum’s jail photos, court records and other pertinent information about him.

“In this particular case,” Malone said, “it took a bit longer than we wanted it to.”

Sometime that night or the next night, sheriff’s officials said, Pullum apparently broke into his sister’s Hawthorne apartment. Jerryle Bradley said she believes her brother took a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt.

Bradley has also appealed to Pullum to surrender to authorities. She said she is worried that deputies will kill him and believes that the Sheriff’s Department is putting too much pressure on her family. Pullum, she said, appeared at her apartment early Monday morning asking for money and telling her he loved her.

Ford also said the Sheriff’s Department is putting pressure on her. She said detectives are insisting that she tell them wherever she goes, and she believes they are constantly watching her.

Baca, who sent letters Tuesday to Ford and Pullum’s other friends and relatives appealing for the inmate to surrender, denied that deputies are harassing anyone associated with the case.

“That’s a common phrase,” Baca said in an interview. “The reality is we are polite; they know why we are there. Given the nature of this particular problem, they must cooperate with us.”

Further, the sheriff said, “I’m not going to let up on the pressure until we have him brought back safely to custody. We cannot afford to decrease our intensity in looking for him.”

Family members and Ford say they believe Pullum might have received help from someone inside the jail system. Officials say that they are investigating that possibility but that they do not now believe he had inside help. Rather, they have acknowledged that their system broke down in several areas. Pullum, for example, did not appear to have been strip-searched when he returned from court, and his fake badge was not checked by deputies before he left.

“He did not hold anybody up; he didn’t do anything violent,” Ford said. “He just politely walked out the door. . . . He knew it would be a long time before he would do that again.”