Prison escapees found deadFriday, July 15, 2005
Two inmates who escaped from the Kentucky State Reformatory on Wednesday may have been dead before they left the prison grounds.
Investigators think the two hid in a Dumpster at the prison and were loaded into a garbage truck, where they are believed to have been crushed when the refuse was compacted. The truck later dumped the garbage and the two inmates' bodies at the Valley View Landfill in Trimble County.
Both men, Avery C. Roland and Michael Talbot Jr., were found dead in the landfill yesterday.
Roland, 26, of Stanton in Eastern Kentucky and Talbot, 24, of Louisville were discovered missing from the medium-security prison near La Grange during the noon prisoner count Wednesday.
After officers from several agencies, including the state Corrections Department, Oldham County sheriff's office, Louisville Metro Police and the Kentucky State Police searched for nearly 24 hours, Roland's body was found by a landfill employee just before noon yesterday, state Trooper Greg Larimore said.
Police and a dog trained to find human remains continued to search the landfill until they found Talbot's body yesterday evening.
Larimore said the bodies have been turned over to the state medical examiner's office in Louisville for determination of the cause of death. No one from the medical examiner's office could be reached yesterday.
It is common to ask the landfill to be on the lookout when inmates escape because large garbage trucks often enter and leave the prison, Larimore said.
"We try to cover all our bases," he said.
Officials are still trying to determine exactly how the inmates got out of the prison, said Lisa Lamb, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.
However, Lamb confirmed that a garbage pickup was made at the prison just before 8 a.m. Wednesday. And garbage from the prison was delivered to the landfill that day, she said.
As a matter of policy, when garbage is put into the large truck at the prison, the truck compacts it several times there as an officer watches, Lamb said. Then, as the truck leaves the prison complex, the garbage is compacted one last time in front of the guard at the exit, Lamb said. The undercarriage of the truck is also inspected.
"It is done as a security measure," Lamb said.
Both Roland and Talbot were present at the 5:30 a.m. head count and were seen by staff members and inmates, Lamb said. It wasn't until noon that their absence was discovered.
Alert system failed
Police responded quickly, searching the area and stopping traffic to look in cars.
However, hundreds of people who live in the area around the prison who had signed up to get telephone alerts about escapes were not called.
Lamb said the notifications were not made because of a worker's mistake. The person responsible for activating the call system, which tells people about an escape, did not send the message correctly.
"It was just a human error in the heat of this event," Lamb said. "It's a definite learning process for us."
Instead of alerting neighbors about the escape, the system twice alerted people who had asked for information about the status of these two inmates.
Bruce LeFan, whose farm adjoins prison property, said he was concerned because despite having registered for the system, he wasn't notified of the escape. LeFan has two small children, who continued to play outside Wednesday, unaware that two convicts might be free.
"It's unnerving knowing that you didn't know," LeFan said. "Had we known, we could have taken precautions."
Joyce Boles, who can see the prison from her home, also was frustrated, noting that she had registered for the system as soon as it was started last year. She didn't hear about the escape until much later in the evening, she said, so she didn't lock her doors or take any other precautions.
"You need to feel safe," Boles said.
About 380 people who live close to the three prisons that are just west of La Grange had registered to be alerted about escapes. Since Wednesday, 70 more people have asked to be added to the list, Lamb said.
Roland had been serving a four-year sentence for unlawful imprisonment and sexual abuse. A former Eastern Kentucky University student, he was arrested in November 2003 after an attack on a female student on the University of Kentucky campus in Lexington.
According to news reports at the time, Roland attacked a 19-year-old UK junior as she was walking home from the library about 1 a.m. Four other students interrupted the attack when they heard her screams.
Talbot was serving a 10-year sentence for wanton endangerment, theft, and fleeing and evading police. He was arrested in September 1999 after he led police on a chase from southern Louisville to a cornfield west of Corydon, Ind. Talbot and another man were in a stolen pickup at the time of the arrest.
Lamb did not know how long it had been since the last escape from the Kentucky State Reformatory.
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