Dieting Inmate Who Slipped Jail Recaptured
SYDNEY, Australia, Jan. 22, 2006
(AP) A prison inmate who shed 31 pounds so he could escape through a narrow hole in a wall has been recaptured after three days on the run in Sydney, the prison department said Sunday.
Robert Cole, 36, who was serving time for sex offenses and armed robbery, escaped from a hospital wing of Sydney's Long Bay Jail on Wednesday through 6-inch wide hole he had chiseled in the brickwork beside a window frame. He had been undergoing treatment for a psychiatric illness.
He reportedly managed to escape by reducing his weight to 123 pounds by taking laxatives.
He was recaptured in a Sydney shopping mall Saturday disguised with a beard drawn on his face with a pen, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.
Corrective Services Department spokeswoman Candace Sutton on Sunday confirmed Cole had been recaptured and was being held in a maximum security facility in Goulburn Prison, 124 miles southwest of Sydney.
He will appear in a Sydney court on Jan. 30 either in person or by video link from prison charged with escape, Sutton said.
It was not clear how much more of his original sentence Cole still had to serve, nor what penalty he faced on the escape charge.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/22/ap/strange/mainD8F9PJL82.shtml
SYDNEY, Australia, Jan. 22, 2006
(AP) A prison inmate who shed 31 pounds so he could escape through a narrow hole in a wall has been recaptured after three days on the run in Sydney, the prison department said Sunday.
Robert Cole, 36, who was serving time for sex offenses and armed robbery, escaped from a hospital wing of Sydney's Long Bay Jail on Wednesday through 6-inch wide hole he had chiseled in the brickwork beside a window frame. He had been undergoing treatment for a psychiatric illness.
He reportedly managed to escape by reducing his weight to 123 pounds by taking laxatives.
He was recaptured in a Sydney shopping mall Saturday disguised with a beard drawn on his face with a pen, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.
Corrective Services Department spokeswoman Candace Sutton on Sunday confirmed Cole had been recaptured and was being held in a maximum security facility in Goulburn Prison, 124 miles southwest of Sydney.
He will appear in a Sydney court on Jan. 30 either in person or by video link from prison charged with escape, Sutton said.
It was not clear how much more of his original sentence Cole still had to serve, nor what penalty he faced on the escape charge.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/22/ap/strange/mainD8F9PJL82.shtml
