Warden's report details death row escape plot

<p>A piece of gray string dangling from an air vent in the cell of a death row inmate helped unravel an escape plot at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, according to the warden's report.</p><p>A prison guard searching the cell pulled the string and noticed that it was secured by a piece of tape painted to conceal a cut in the vent. Convicted killer David Scott Franks apparently had cut through the vent and through another grate in the crawl space behind it.</p><p>The officers later found a cache of contraband allegedly used by Franks and two other condemned prisoners, Andrew Grant DeYoung and Michael Wade Nance, to further their escape _ welding material, five hacksaw blades, two reciprocating saw blades, knives, duct tape, 25 feet of "rope" fashioned from bedsheets, ski masks crocheted by the inmates themselves, $280 in cash, even a map of Georgia.</p><p>Many of the items uncovered in the three cells could only have come from the outside, said Warden Derrick Schofield, who suspects prison employees might have been involved in the plot.</p><p>"In order to get the amount of contraband found would require some staff involvement," Schofield's report said. "The hacksaw blades and the J-B Weld were brought in from the outside."</p><p>Borrowing from the storyline of a prison movie, two of the inmates told investigators they plotted for months and fooled prison guards by piling blankets and clothing on their beds to make it appear that they were asleep in their cells. Instead, they were crawling through ventilation spaces that link the cells and hacking away at bars leading to an exit door.</p><p>Corrections officials were tipped off to the plan on Friday and searched all 112 occupied death row cells at the prison in Jackson, about 45 minutes south of Atlanta.</p><p>DeYoung, Franks and Nance have been locked in solitary confinement since the plot was discovered.</p><p>Even if the inmates had been able to escape the death row unit, prison officials said, they still would have had to scale fences topped by razor wire and evade routine vehicle patrols of the grounds.</p><p>Scheree Lipscomb, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Corrections, emphasized Wednesday that prison officials foiled the plan. Still, Lipscomb said, the department is concerned about the lapses in security.</p><p>"We are going to make sure there are no breaches of security at any state facility," she said, adding that charges will be filed against anyone involved in the escape plot _ including employees, visitors and inmates.</p><p>No inmate has ever escaped from death row at the Jackson prison. In 1980, when death row was part of the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, four condemned inmates fled after sawing through several sets of bars with hacksaw blades. One of the inmates was killed in a bar fight, and the other three were caught in North Carolina.</p><p>DeYoung, 30, was sentenced to death in Cobb County for the June 1993 stabbing deaths of his parents, Gary and Kathryn DeYoung, and his 14-year-old sister, Sarah.</p><p>Nance, 42, was condemned for the shooting death of 43-year-old Gabor Balogh in Gwinnett County in December 1993. Nance had robbed a bank and shot Balogh to take his car.</p><p>Franks, 43, received the death penalty for the August 1994 stabbing death of 35-year-old Deborah Wilson in Hall County. Franks also injured Wilson's children, ages 13 and 9.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2864e24)</p>

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