By Jeffrey Gold
The Associated Press
UNION COUNTY, N.J. — Two Jersey jail inmates used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they used to escape and left behind a thank-you note, signed with a smiley face, for a guard they claimed helped them, officials said yesterday.
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José Espinosa, 20, and Otis Blunt, 32, squeezed through the openings sometime before dawn Saturday in a high-security unit of the Union County Jail in Elizabeth, jumped onto a rooftop below, and made it over a 25-foot-high fence topped with razor wire, authorities said.
Officials withheld the name of the officer the inmates said was involved.
The note, found in Espinosa’s cell, read, “Thank you Officer [withheld] for the tools needed. You’re a real pal. Happy holidays.”
Authorities are investigating the claims.
Espinosa was awaiting sentencing for manslaughter in a drive-by shooting, and Blunt is facing robbery and other charges in the shooting of convenience store manager, said county Prosecutor Theodore Romankow.
Meanwhile, authorities are reviewing security measures and barred inmates from pinning up pictures from magazines on cell walls.
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The jailbreak is reminiscent of one in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” in which the main character, an inmate, uses posters of women, including a bikini-clad Raquel Welch, to conceal an escape tunnel he is digging.
Espinosa and Blunt used at least two improvised tools — a thick metal wire like those used to bind chain-link fences to poles, and a 10-pound steel water shut-off wheel — to remove cinderblocks from the wall, officials said.
The thick wire was used to scrape away mortar around a cinderblock in the wall between their cells, and then from around a cinderblock in an exterior wall in Espinosa’s cell that faced busy rail tracks, Romankow said.
The shut-off wheel was used to crush the cinderblocks so they could be hidden in the cells, Romankow said.
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