SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – Staffers at a jail in eastern Washington state foiled an escape attempt by spotting a long trail of knotted bed sheets hanging from the window of a cell housing a suspect in a murder-for-hire plot.
They saw the rope of sheets that nearly reached the ground around 4:30 a.m. Thursday and put the Spokane County Jail on lockdown. The escape “was thwarted by the good work of the staff,” FBI spokesman Frank Harrill told the Spokane newspaper The Spokesman-Review (http://bit.ly/1NKs1mB ).
The cell belongs to James Henrikson, a felon linked to fraud and terror in North Dakota. He was sent to Washington state to face federal charges of ordering the killings of a business associate that owed him nearly $2 million and his former trucking company employee.
After finding the dangling sheets, officials moved Henrikson and a cellmate to another part of the jail. The cell window is about 4 feet tall but less than 5 inches wide, according to Spokane County Jail Commander John McGrath.
In February, authorities investigated after another inmate reported that Henrikson planned to escape by having a team attack a U.S. Marshals Service van with guns, grenades and gasoline, according to court records.