THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230647
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines
Geoffrey Alan Ward, the confessed double murderer who escaped from Powhatan Correctional Center early Wednesday, was recaptured Thursday afternoon about 15 miles north of the maximum-security prison.
Correctional officers with dogs tracked Ward to a wooded area behind a Louisa County doctor's office about 12:45 p.m., officials said.
Ward, 38, was cut and bruised from scaling the prison's five barbed and razor wire fences and from somehow crossing the James River, said Bill Cimino, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. Officers found Ward huddled against a tree, wrapped in plastic for protection against the rain. He was accompanied by a stray dog and offered no resistance.
Ward's capture ended an exhaustive search that began Wednesday morning after he turned up missing at Powhatan's 7:30 a.m. inmate count. For almost 30 hours, correctional officers armed with shotguns staked out the rural roads surrounding the prison while state and local police combed the area with dogs and hunting maps.
Children were kept at school until their parents picked them up Wednesday. On Thursday, local police shadowed school buses and patrolled near school grounds.
Ward is serving eight life terms plus 140 years for crimes that included two murders in Norfolk in 1984. He abducted, raped and strangled a 14-year-old Norfolk girl and a 38-year-old Norfolk woman in separate assaults.
Ward returned to his native Massachusetts, but came back to Norfolk two years later and confessed to the crimes. He had become a born-again Christian, he told police, and he needed to relieve his conscience. He pleaded guilty to 13 felonies and has never been eligible for parole.
Ward was classified as a high-security inmate because of the nature of his crimes, according to prison employees who asked not to be identified. But he lived in Unit C-5, a kind of honor dorm, because he had never been charged with any institutional infractions. He worked in the prison kitchen, and reported there every day at 3 a.m.
``He was no problem,'' said an officer who knew Ward. ``He was the type of inmate who kept to himself, mostly. He played guitar in a couple of the prison bands.''
Ward went to the kitchen as usual early Wednesday, employees said, and was present for the prison's regular 3:30 a.m. count. But soon after the count, Secretary of Public Safety Jerry Kilgore confirmed, he apparently slipped out the kitchen door into a compound area and scaled a razor-wire fence behind the facility's visiting room.
The next two fences were made of barbed wire, the two after that of razor wire. A piece of Ward's bloody shirt was found clinging to one of the razor wire fences Wednesday morning.
Some employees said Thursday that Ward's escape was made easier by the fact that a key prison watch tower is not staffed between midnight and 8 a.m. Tower 4, which overlooks the compound outside the kitchen door from which Ward escaped, has been unmanned at night for several years because of staffing cutbacks, the employees said.
Each of the prison's eight towers is staffed during the day by an officer with a rifle and a shotgun. Between midnight and 8 a.m., however, two of them are empty.
``If the state would look at all the expense and manpower it took to find this man and compare it to what it would have cost to pay people to prevent his escape, they'd be way ahead of the game,'' said Lillian Abrams, local director of the Virginia Association of State Employees/American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The group counts 2,000 corrections officers in its membership.
Both of the watch towers at issue have been unstaffed at night since 1987, according to Kilgore. One of them - Tower 9 - is not staffed because it overlooks the medical unit and everyone there is locked down at night, he said. The other one - Tower 4 - overlooks a vocational area, which is also empty at night. Ward escaped from an area closest to Towers 4 and 6, Kilgore said.
Kilgore blamed Wednesday morning's thick fog, not insufficient tower staffing, for contributing to Ward's successful escape.
The fog was so thick that nothing was visible from any of the towers, and special ``fog patrols'' of officers and dogs were dispatched to guard the premises. ``We're always willing to reconsider staffing patterns,'' said Kilgore.
``But there haven't been problems in those tower areas in nine years. When fog rolls in, added precautions need to be taken. Once this investigation is concluded, we may need to look at additional fog patrols and items like that. We are looking for reasons for the escape and solutions to make sure it doesn't happen in the future.''
Ward was locked in M-Building - Powhatan's infamous prison-within-a-prison - Thursday night as corrections officials pondered his fate. He will probably remain there, or else be transferred to the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Kilgore said.
The Virginia State Police are investigating the escape. ILLUSTRATION: Graphics
Photo
Geoffrey Alan Ward
HOW HE GOT AWAY
Ward reported for work in the prison kitchen Wednesday and was
present for a 3:30 head count.
After the head count, he apparently left the kitche, went into a
compound area and scaled a razor-wire fence.
He then scaled for more razor- and barbed-wire fences to
freedom.
A bloodied piece of his shirt was found clinging to one of the
fences.
GUARD STAFFING
Some employees said Thursday that Geoffrey Alan Ward's escape was
made easier by the fact that a key prison watch tower is not staffed
between midnight and 8 a.m. Tower 4, which overlooks the compound
outside the kitchen door from which Ward escaped, has been unmanned
at night for several years because of staffing cutbacks, the
employees said.
KEYWORDS: ESCAPED PRISONER MURDER ASSAULT
RAPE SEX CRIME
by CNB