[StBernard] St. Bernard Murder Suspect Escapes Orleans Parish Prison During Katrina

[Westley Annis]

14 Orleans inmates escaped after Katrina

By Michael Perlstein 
Staff writer - Times-Picayune

Despite assurances from Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman in the
days after Hurricane Katrina that no inmates escaped during a tumultuous
three-day evacuation of Parish Prison, fugitive arrest warrants were issued
for 14 inmates who were in the jail at the time of the storm, records show. 

They include a murder defendant who recently was captured and booked with a
fresh murder in Mississippi. 

The murder suspect, George Schaefer III, is one of five inmates who have
been rounded up since the storm, three of them after allegedly committing
crimes in other states, police and court records show. 

Gusman now acknowledges escapes by some inmates during the evacuation,
although he puts the number of Orleans Parish escapees at two. He said his
office is not responsible for Schaefer and two other escapees who were moved
from St. Bernard Parish as the storm approached. 

Schaefer was arrested Nov. 2 and accused of fatally shooting a retired
computer operator near Laurel, Miss., and stuffing his body into a freezer,
Jones County detective Matt Ishee said. 

“We also have him booked with burglary and theft during that crime, so we’re
looking to have him booked with capital murder,” Ishee said. “When we picked
him up, he admitted to the crime. He’s definitely a good one to get off the
streets.” 

Awaiting trial for a November 2000 slaying in Arabi, Schaefer was
transferred to the sprawling Orleans Parish Prison complex along with about
350 other inmates from St. Bernard Parish one day before Katrina walloped
the Gulf Coast and swamped New Orleans. 

All told, about 7,000 prisoners spread among 10 Orleans Parish Prison
lockups found themselves surrounded by rising floodwaters, leading to a
massive and sometimes harrowing evacuation by boats and buses. In the
immediate aftermath, Gusman described the operation as safe and orderly,
contradicting numerous deputies and inmates who described a chaotic scene in
which inmates set fires, breached walls and jumped from smashed windows into
more than six feet of water. 

On the sheriff’s office Web site, Gusman has claimed for weeks that “all
inmates housed in Orleans Parish were safely evacuated from our 10
facilities by boat, and transported to state and parish facilities by bus.” 

But in a prepared statement issued Friday, Gusman backed off that claim,
conceding that two inmates “eluded custody during or after the evacuation.” 

While Gusman doesn’t identify the inmates, records show that Matthew
Sartain, 25, was captured in Polk County, Ga., and Kenneth Youngblood, 37,
was arrested in Dallas. While their new charges and arrest dates were
unavailable, Sartain had been held in New Orleans on charges of aggravated
assault, felon with a firearm and parole violation. Youngblood had been held
for public intoxication. 

As for the other missing Orleans Parish inmates, Gusman appears to be
holding out hope that they will turn up in the diaspora of local prisoners
now spread throughout Louisiana and neighboring states. In the prepared
statement, Gusman stated that officials are still nailing down the
identities of the transferred inmates, no small task give their dispersal to
38 different state and local jails. 

“Out of an abundance of caution, the OPSCO issued 14 fugitive warrants while
we were still in the process of identifying inmates ... In the evacuation,
many of the inmates removed their arm bands and used assumed names when they
were booked into facilities outside of Orleans Parish,” Gusman wrote. 

Louisiana Department of Corrections spokeswoman Melissa Callahan said
several inmates who initially were unaccounted for eventually surfaced
through fingerprint checks after trying to conceal their identities.
However, she said that head count is now nearly complete. 

“We’re just about done, but we’re double-checking to make sure everyone is
properly identified,” Callahan said. “Some guys tried to fake who they were.
That made it a longer process than it had to be.” 

Unlike Gusman, though, state corrections officials are taking the position
that the missing inmates escaped until proven otherwise. In fact, three of
the New Orleans inmates with fugitive warrants have overlapping warrants
issued by the state department of corrections on parole violations. While
the sheriff’s office isn’t counting them as escapees, the state is. 

“There is no intelligence on them or their whereabouts,” Callahan said. 

Three of the inmates who turned up missing, including Schaefer, were moved
from St. Bernard and were not the responsibility of Orleans deputies, Gusman
wrote in his statement. 

“The St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office maintained responsibility for the
security and well-being of these inmates,” Gusman wrote. “They provided
their own deputies to guard their own inmates.” 

St. Bernard Parish Col. Richard Baumy, however, said that was not the way
his office understood the arrangement with the Orleans Parish jailers. 

“We sent six deputies there to assist their operation,” Baumy said. “They
were under the command of New Orleans deputies. It’s their jail, of course,
so we had to operate under their supervision.” 

Like Schaefer, the other two St. Bernard escapees have been recaptured.
Michael Gilly, 31, awaiting trial on weapons charges, and William Murphy,
37, held for failing to register as a sex offender and probation violation,
were found in the New Orleans area within weeks of the storm, Baumy said. 

Because he was awaiting trial for murder, the security surrounding Schaefer
after his pre-storm transfer looms as a critical question. In his statement,
Gusman wrote “all of the maximum security inmates, which we deemed to be a
danger to society, were evacuated in four-point restraints.” 

How and when Schaefer bolted is unknown, but high-ranking sheriff’s office
commanders and jail records show that of the 14 inmates issued escape
warrants, 13 were housed in Templeman III, including Schaefer. According to
the commanders, who declined to give their names for fear of losing their
jobs, deputies were forced to virtually abandon Templeman III because of
menacingly high water and a variety of security breaches by inmates. 

One commander said inmates used metal benches and shower rods as battering
rams to break windows and shatter cinder block walls. He said that of the
more than 1,000 inmates housed in that lockup, dozens broke out and jumped
into the murky floodwaters, only to be scooped up by deputies patrolling the
perimeter in boats. 

Another commander confirmed that account. 

The commander, a veteran with more than 10 years on the job, said, “hundreds
of inmates got out of that building. It was deep water and they (inmates)
swam right through it. Deputies were picking them and, just as fast as they
grabbed them, they had to go back and get more. We don’t know about the ones
who got over the fences, but we’re lucky the number was as small as it was.”


Michael Perlstein can be reached at mperlstein at timespicayune.com or (504)
826-3316.