Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 09:35:04 -0400
From: egs <egs@philly.infi.net>
Philadelphia Inquirer 8/17/99
Ridge orders review of prisons
After the second breakout in two weeks, the governor also mandated
24-hour patrols and lockdowns.
By Ken Dilanian
INQUIRER HARRISBURG BUREAU
HARRISBURG - In the second state prison escape in
two weeks, a pair of Philadelphia convicts broke out of a
prison near Wilkes-Barre yesterday, prompting Gov.
Ridge to order a lockdown and round-the-clock police
patrols outside every state penitentiary."This is
unacceptable," Ridge said in a statement.The governor
said he ordered state Corrections Secretary Martin Horn
"to begin an immediate check of every security system
at every one of our 24 institutions." Authorities said
cellmates Anthony Yang, 31, and Michael McCloskey, 43 -
both from Philadelphia - broke out of the medium-security
prison in rural Dallas between 5 a.m., when they
were last seen by guards, and 10:45 a.m., when
they were determined to be missing.The escape happened two
weeks to the day after the Aug. 2 breakout of Chester
County murderer Norman Johnston, who used a dummy to fool
guards while he fled the maximum-security State
Correctional Institution at Huntingdon.
"I need to be convinced that the weaknesses these
inmates exploited do not exist" elsewhere, Ridge
said.Johnston, one of a notorious gang of
brothers whose trail of burglary and murder across
southern Chester County in the 1970s inspired the
movie At Close Range, remains at large.
McCloskey had
been serving a life sentence for second-degree
murder in the 1985 killing of 70-year-old
Andrew Stark. McCloskey shot Stark, as Stark's wife
looked on, after the man refused to turn over his
wallet during a holdup of a Northeast Philadelphia tavern,
prosecutors said. He then robbed Stark of $8, prison
officials said.Yang was serving 20 to 50
years for arson, having pleaded
guilty in 1989 to setting 10 fires in Northeast Philadelphia
that caused $3 million in damage. No one was hurt by Yang's
fires, but a six-alarm blaze on June 28, 1988, at
an apartment house on Roosevelt Boulevard near
Guilford Street left 400 people homeless.
Prison officials yesterday did not offer details about how the
latest escape occurred, saying they were
investigating.Kenneth Burnett, spokesman at the State Correctional
Institution at Dallas, said a preliminary inquiry turned up no staff
involvement, no tunnel and no breach of the fence. The
prison holds about 1,800 inmates, Burnett said, and Yang and McCloskey
were in the general population.
No inmate successfully escaped from a Pennsylvania prison last
year, officials said, but six tunneled out
of Pittsburgh's century-old Western Penitentiary in 1997. All were
caught, but the escape was the subject of
hearings by the state Senate Judiciary Committee and led the legislature
to fund construction of a new prison in Pittsburgh.
In his statement, Ridge said, "Secretary Horn is to determine
exactly how our security systems could be compromised twice in a
matter of weeks, and he is to take whatever steps
are necessary to correct those deficiencies."In the same news release,
Horn was quoted as saying: "The reviews have already begun. I am taking
steps to bring in respected prison security experts from outside our state
prison system to assist in this review.... Their outside perspective may
shed light on problems we have not yet seen."
The Johnston escape was followed by
disciplinary action against two employees of the State
Correctional Institution at Huntingdon,
who were suspended because they
allegedly smuggled items to Johnston and other prisoners in the
facility's restricted unit. Officials declined to say what the smuggled
items were but the items have not
been linked to the escape.
Meanwhile yesterday, the Pennsylvania State Police said a feature on
the Johnston case Saturday night on the television program America's Most
Wanted generated about 60 leads, mostly from Pennsylvania, Maryland and
Delaware.
Pennsylvania State Police Capt. Henry Oleyniczak said the response was
"obviously
nothing so promising that we're knocking on someone's door, but we are
following leads up. There's a couple that look promising."In order
to follow up on tips, Oleyniczak said, the 40-member task force searching for
Johnston may be expanded.
Johnston and his two brothers, Bruce and David, were convicted of the 1978
murders
of three teenagers who were junior members of their burglary ring and who the
brothers feared would cooperate with police.
They were also found guilty of the murder of Robin
Miller, 15, a girlfriend of Bruce Johnston's
son. Bruce Johnston was also convicted of two other murders. All three
Johnston
brothers received consecutive life sentences.
>
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>"Building more prisons to address crime is like
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> -Robert Gangi, Executive Director,
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>"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same things
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