Authorities searched for a death row inmate who slipped off his handcuffs, changed into street clothes and bluffed his way out of jail by flashing a fake ID badge with a photo of himself.
Charles Victor Thompson, who was sentenced to die for killing his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend, got past at least four employees at the Harris County Jail by claiming he worked for the Texas Attorney General's office.
"He's a charming, affable, articulate guy, and I'm sure he used his charming abilities to talk his way out of the jail," Thompson's attorney, Terrence Gaiser, said on Friday. "He didn't present himself as the desperate, I'll-do-anything type."
The sheriff's department is investigating whether Thompson, 35, had inside help. Investigators found a truck on Friday that they said might be connected to the brazen escape.
Sheriff's Lieutenant John Martin said officials fear Thompson might retaliate against relatives of the woman he murdered.
"He's extremely dangerous," Martin said.
Thompson, 35, of the Houston suburb of Tomball, was condemned in 1999 for the shooting deaths a year earlier of Dennise Hayslip, 39, and Darren Keith Cain, 30.
He had been transferred to the jail in Houston because an appeals court had ordered that he be resentenced. A jury issued a new death sentence on Oct. 28, but Thompson was still waiting to be transferred back to a prison about 120km away.
On Thursday, a deputy took Thompson to a meeting room because Thompson said he had a meeting with his attorney. The visitor, however, was not Gaiser, who said he had no plans to meet Thompson that day. Investigators were questioning the visitor.
The visitor left after a short time, and once Thompson was alone he managed to remove his handcuffs and slip off his bright orange prison jumpsuit, Martin said.
Thompson then somehow left the prisoners booth in the visiting room, flashed a fake ID badge and walked out into the street.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS