The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks (21 page)

At 8 a.m. on 2 April 2007, Fitzmorris was transported to St Elizabeth’s by two private guards from NOCC. It was his second visit, after he had manufactured an excuse for treatment earlier in the week. When one of them left the treatment room on the eighth floor to heat up some food, Fitzmorris asked permission to use the lavatory. His hands were tied in front of him with plasti-cuffs, and the remaining guard couldn’t see that there was a problem – at Fitzmorris’ trial for the escape, the guards claimed that their supervisor hadn’t warned them how dangerous their prisoner was. In the restroom, Fitzmorris was able to cut through the plasti-cuffs with a pair of nail clippers that he had smuggled inside his shoes from the prison.

His hands now free, and with a makeshift weapon, Fitzmorris overpowered the remaining guard and took his gun. The two medical technicians in the room, as well as two trainees from the CCA, were at his mercy. “Hey, I’m already looking at life, I don’t have anything to lose,” he told one of the technicians, Christine Jones. When the other guard returned, Fitzmorris was able to disable him. He then forced one of the guards to strip off his trousers, shirt, jacket and cap. Fitzmorris put that clothing on, placing the gun down for a few seconds, but relying on the power of fear and the constant threats he was making towards them to prevent any of his hostages from acting against him. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I’ll blow your brains out if you don’t do what I say,” he kept repeating. With a final warning to them not to follow him, Fitzmorris left the room, claiming that he was waiting for his brother to come and pick him up. (The US Marshals noted that there was no evidence that any of Fitzmorris’ family were aware of his plans to escape that day.)

Fifty-four-year-old car mechanic Richard Orto’s day then proceeded to take a turn for the worse. He was waiting in the parking lot for a space to free up so he could collect his mother from the hospital, before going for a game of golf with his son who was home on leave from the Marines. To his horror, he found a .38 calibre revolver pointed at his face. Fitzmorris told him to put the car in “park” and move over. The scared car mechanic did so, and Fitzmorris slid behind the wheel, instructing Orto to buckle up both of their seatbelts and remove the battery from his phone so it couldn’t be traced. Orto was then held hostage for the next two and a half hours, as Fitzmorris drove away from Youngstown towards his mother’s home in Columbus, Ohio. Unaware at the time that Fitzmorris was nowhere near the premises, officers and federal agents from local counties, as well as a search dog, all descended upon the hospital and subjected it to a room by room search.

During the drive, Richard Orto later claimed that he never looked beyond the gun that was holding him hostage. It never left Fitzmorris’ hand – a hand that Orto could describe in some detail to the court, even if he didn’t have a clue as to his captor’s features. However, talking to the
Columbus Dispatch
shortly after the incident, Orto recalled that Fitzmorris was desperate and nervous, sweating profusely and mumbling to himself. Knowing that his life was in Fitzmorris’ hands, Orto tried to engage him in conversation and offered him a cigarette. Fitzmorris accepted, and started to tell Orto how he had got into trouble with the law when he tried to make some easy money on a drug deal. The two even stopped to buy some more cigarettes, but Orto couldn’t raise the alarm, as Fitzmorris carefully parked where his hostage would constantly be in his line of sight.

When they reached the suburb of Powell, Fitzmorris drove past a bank on Sawmill Parkway, then turned round and went past it again. After he did that a few times, he pulled into a parking lot and switched off the engine, taking the keys from the ignition. Ignoring Orto, who took the opportunity to undo his seatbelt and unlock his door, Fitzmorris went to the car trunk, and started putting some plastic bags that he found in there into the pockets of his jacket. He then pushed the gun down into the sleeve of his jacket and zipped it up.

Realizing that Fitzmorris was highly unlikely to be able to unzip the jacket and get the gun in the time it would take him to get away, Orto opened the passenger door and raced in a zigzag across the parking lot towards the nearest shop, a UPS despatching point. As Fitzmorris drove away, Orto ran into the store and demanded that the workers call the police. He reported what had happened as the news started to come in of a robbery at the First Citizens National Bank opposite.

Fitzmorris didn’t stop at one bank robbery. A few minutes after hitting the bank in Powell, he raided the Ohio Savings Bank in Upper Arlington. Police, now aware of what he was driving from Orto’s call, spotted him on a freeway west of Columbus and tried to get him to stop. He didn’t, and a highspeed chase followed, heading onto the suburban streets of Hilliard.

After losing control for a moment, Fitzmorris rear-ended a stationary vehicle and wrecked his stolen car. He jumped out and headed into Norwich Street, a small side street of houses. Passing a couple of properties, he ran up the steps of a two-storey house and kicked the door in – all of this with the police following, and news-channel helicopters capturing every moment of it (the footage of the smash and his subsequent entry to the house can still be seen on YouTube).

The house belonged to John and Karen Zappitelli, who ran their accountancy business from their home. Karen and employee Geneva Herb were in the property when Fitzmorris smashed his way in. Herb raced upstairs and was able to escape from a window, rolling down the roof of the porch area and falling into the shrubbery, from where she was rescued by police officers who were quickly surrounding the building.

Karen Zappitelli was left inside with Fitzmorris. As her husband waited behind a police barricade, a three-hour siege ensued. As she recalled during evidence in a civil action she brought against the NOCC and the guards who had been overpowered by Fitzmorris, the fugitive “was totally irrational,” she said. “He was a mad, irrational, panicked, desperate man . . . All I could do was stay calm. I didn’t want to provoke him.”

Fitzmorris dragged Zappitelli upstairs, where they spent the majority of the time during the stand-off. According to Zappitelli, he sat behind her, with one leg wrapped around her, and one arm on her jacket. If she moved in a way that he didn’t like, she would know about it instantly. He took her phone and began to make calls, talking to his family and to police negotiators, who were anxious to bring the situation to a speedy and blood-free resolution.

Although Fitzmorris worried negotiators led by Sergeant Mark Cartwright at one point when it seemed as if he was determined to go out in a blaze of glory, they were relieved when he asked for a pepperoni and ham pizza to be delivered. This was brought to the door by SWAT team officers two hours into the siege. Within half an hour, Fitzmorris had surrendered peacefully.

It was the last time he’d do anything in that way: his subsequent trials were marked by his disrespect and contempt for the judge, and the warning that he would kill the next correctional officer that he laid his hands on. Three jails refused to house him during the period before his trial for the original offences (for which he received a thirty-five-year sentence) after he damaged cell sprinklers on multiple occasions, and was caught with contraband in his shoes and shoved up his back passage – including on one occasion a brass outlet cover from a courtroom floor.

The US Marshals even made an application for him to wear a stun belt during his trial for the escape after his behaviour; if he tried anything, a hefty electrical jolt would make him unable to move. Although that motion wasn’t granted, the Marshals had to restrain him during the trial after he turned over his attorney’s desk, swore at the presiding judge and spit at the prosecuting attorneys. He was sentenced to a total of 960 months’ imprisonment (eighty years) for the crimes during the one-day spree; prosecutors recommended that the Bureau of Prisons send him to the Supermax facility in Colorado.

The trials didn’t end there. Both Richard Orto and Karen Zappitelli brought actions against the private prison company and the two guards who had let Fitzmorris escape. Both cases ended in a negotiated settlement.

Sources:

YouTube footage showing Fitzmorris entering the house in Hillard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuBJsbKT4cw

The Vindicator
(local Youngstown newspaper), 5 April 2007: “Inmate’s escape puts private prison under microscope”

NOCC description:
http://www.cca.com/facility/northeast-ohio-correctional-center/

United States of America v. Billy Jack Fitzmorris, filed 5 May 2011: “On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio: Opinion”

The Columbus Dispatch,
8 October 2008: “Carjacker’s gun remains man’s most vivid memory”

The Vindicator,
3 April 2007: “Spree that began at St. E’s ends with surrender”

The Columbus Dispatch,
7 April 2007: “He spent 3 hours next to a loaded .38”

The Columbus Dispatch,
16 November 2010: “Hostage ordeal left woman feeling like a ‘freak,’ jury told”

The Columbus Dispatch,
17 November 2010: “Woman seized by escapee ends suit”

US Attorney’s Office, 23 February 2009: “Billy Jack Fitzmorris Sentenced to 80 Years Imprisonment for Escape, Bank Robberies, Gun Crimes and Hostage Taking”

10TV.com
, 25 February 2009: “Bank Robber, Hostage-Taker Throws Fit In Court”

The Columbus Dispatch,
17 September 2008: “Escaped Inmate Releases Hostage In Exchange For Pizza”

The Vindicator,
24 May 2007: “Abducted man sues private prison, St. E’s”

The Columbus Dispatch,
15 August 2008: “Prosecutor wants stun belt on career criminal”

Real Prison Breaks,
Cineflix Productions, 2011: Christine Jones interview

In medieval times, being sent to the Tower of London was the equivalent of hearing you were being imprisoned in Alcatraz, the Maze or a Supermax facility. People went in and only came out when the authorities dictated. Over the centuries of the Tower’s use as a prison, of course, a few people did manage to escape, but far less than you might imagine. According to the official Book of Prisoners held at the Tower, between 1100 and 1916, only thirty-six people managed it, the majority of them in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (the period when it was most in use). The last man was an unnamed subaltern during the First World War; the first, to the shame, no doubt, of the Tower warders, was the very first prisoner held in the fortress.

Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, better known as the Tower of London, was founded straight after the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066; the White Tower was built twelve years later, and had become a prison by 1100. Its first prisoner was Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, who had been responsible, under King William II, for the construction of the wall around the Tower as well as tax collection throughout the kingdom. Flambard wasn’t popular with William’s brother, who succeeded him as King Henry I, and he was imprisoned in the Tower in August 1100 for extortion.

According to legend, the bishop was allowed to escape by his custodian, William de Mandeville. On the Feast of Candlemas (2 February), a flagon of wine was sent in to Flambard by friends on the outside. Inside it was a length of rope. The bishop removed the rope then generously shared the wine with his guards, and once they were drunk and asleep, he let the rope out over the wall of the Tower. He climbed down, but when he realized it wasn’t quite long enough, he had to jump the remaining few feet. Once on the ground, he scurried to a boat waiting on the river Thames, which took him to a ship that transported him across the English Channel to safety with King Henry’s brother Robert Curthose. Ranulf returned to England shortly afterwards, but did not end up back in the Tower.

Nearly five hundred years later, Jesuit priest Father John Gerard carried out an equally hazardous escape from the Tower, and unusually, we have a full account of the incident which Gerard himself penned a few years later. Gerard’s father had been imprisoned in the Tower himself after becoming involved in one of the plots to free Mary Queen of Scots from her imprisonment at Tutbury in Staffordshire; he was able to buy his way out of prison, but would return behind bars in 1586 for his part in the Babington Plot, an attempt to remove Queen Elizabeth from the throne of England.

Gerard was brought up as a Catholic at a time when those who professed the faith in that Church were subject to persecution. He was educated on the continent, since there were limited opportunities for Catholics in England, and returned home in 1584, aged twenty, although that journey soon ended with a sojourn in Marshalsea Prison. After three years back in Europe, Gerard came back to England, charged with keeping the Catholic faith alive. Between 1588 and 1594 he acted as an undercover agent for the Society of Jesuits in England, frequently evading arrest through good fortune. He was betrayed in April 1594 but when he refused to recant his faith, or to reveal who had been assisting him, he was put in close confinement, and eventually sent to the Clink prison, south of the Thames. After he became a focal point for Catholics even while imprisoned there, the authorities moved him on 12 April 1597 to the Tower of London, where he was given a room in the Salt Tower, part of the Inner Ward of the Tower, built in the thirteenth century.

Gerard was tortured in the Tower on at least three occasions – his autobiography gives a graphic account of the manner and effects of the various schemes that they devised to try to get him to talk – but whenever he was asked to confess, he simply said, “I cannot and I will not.” Once the torture stopped, Gerard was allowed to recover, and during that time he asked to be allowed to have some oranges. Although he used the peel to create rosaries, he was keeping the juice for a more clandestine purpose. He wasn’t allowed a pen or paper, but was given a quill to pick his teeth. Part of this he adapted into a pen, and used the orange juice as ink. In this way, he was able to send messages to his friends outside the prison on the wrappers he was permitted for the rosaries – invisible to the naked eye, such messages could be read if the paper on which they were written was warmed up. After a few months, his warder permitted him to use a pencil and paper, and Gerard wrote innocuous lines to his friends in pencil while using the orange juice to pass on instructions. When he realized that the warder was illiterate, he stopped worrying about what he read.