Monday, October 21, 2013
Associated Press
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla.
Back in custody after using forged documents to escape their life sentences, two convicted killers were being grilled on Sunday by law enforcement authorities who said they expect to make more arrests in a case that has given both court and corrections officials in Florida a black eye.
Among the questions being posed to Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker: Who forged the papers? Who helped you run from police? What other prisoners have gotten away with this? Who was coming from Atlanta to whisk you out of Florida?
“I can tell you, there will be more arrests,” Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey told a news conference Sunday, hours after Jenkins and Walker, both 34, were arrested without incident at a motel in Panama City.
“We will be backtracking to those who helped carry out this fraud and along the way we will be looking closely at anyone who may have helped harbor these fugitives,” Bailey said.
Jenkins and Walker, both 34, were captured Saturday night at the Coconut Grove Motor Inn in Panama City Beach. Hours earlier, their families had held a news conference in Orlando — 350 miles away — urging them to surrender.
The men, who had fled the Orlando area after word of their ruse became public, did not know law enforcement was on the way to Panama City.
They were waiting in the motel for someone to arrive from Atlanta to take them out of state, Bailey said, adding that authorities don’t yet know who that person was or where the convicts planned to go.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is working with Georgia authorities to answer those questions, he said.
Bailey’s department is pursuing a tip that someone was offering to forge documents for prisoners for $8,000.