Prison: “Everyone thinks of escaping; they just won’t admit it”

Sarah Pender, right. 

The two convicted murderers who escaped from a New York state prison last week are running around freaking everyone out. Stories of fearful residents in areas all over the state are blowing up.

Chances are pretty good they’ll be caught in short order.

Why? They’re male, to start with.

Every so often we hear of an escaped convict who made the break only to be found years later, living a peaceful life as an upstanding member of a community, usually far away from the prison.

Most of the time – not all of course – they’re female.  People don’t seem to fall apart when it’s a female escapee.  In a CNN splash on the escape, the news group pronounces a dozen top manhunts. All are male.

This list of five crazy-ass escapes from 2013 is pretty funny; all are male escapees.

Think of Sarah Pender, the convicted murderer who broke out of an Indiana prison in 2008. She stayed gone for 136 days, befuddling everyone. In the book Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, I outline how she eluded the cops and how she spent her four months of freedom.

She did in best by blending in. She found a guy who would help her out but the couple cavorted in casinos, ate in restaurants, and she worked a job as a bookkeeper for a Chicago construction firm.

This, despite the fact that she was on American’s Most Wanted several times.

“Everyone thinks of escaping; they just won’t admit it.”

Pender told that to a TV crew in 2009, not long after she was captured after spending 136 days on the run.

Of course. Who doesn’t want to escape from prison?

It’s a little easier than anyone wants to admit. Pender was trading sex to a guard, Scott Spitler, who provided her with some civilian clothes, a cell phone with which to coordinate her break and, as a parting gift, drove her through the gates in the back of a prison van.

Spitler got eight years in 2009 for assisting. He served in county jail, an easier place to deal with.  The authorities claimed it was for his protection.

From the book, Girl Wanted:

Sarah Pender had outwitted an entire prison system that is designed to avoid exactly such flights and had done so with a plan so simple, yet flawless, that it took two hours for prison staffers to determine that she was gone. The usual head count at 4 p.m. showed one prisoner short. As according to policy, a second count was done and again showed one inmate short.

At that point, all inmates were ordered back to their dorms for a one-by-one count. It was a top bunk along the south side that was empty in one dormitory: Sarah Pender was gone.

And the caper also had serendipity all over it. Sarah walked past an unmanned security checkpoint. New security cameras were slated to be installed the week after her brazen walkout, cameras that might have caught her in the act. The gate allowing her to meet Spitler was open. The guard at the gate leaving the prison failed to conduct a search of the van in which she was hiding, allowing her to leave the facility grounds. It was a festival of incompetence and corruption, and Sarah was both the leader and beneficiary of the fiasco.

Sarah Pender To Return to General Prison Population

Pender in 2008, at the time of her arrest

While Sarah Pender was denied an appeal last week, she has been removed from the solitary confinement cell she has lived in since being apprehended following a prison escape in 2008, according to a report in a prisoner advocacy journal.

Pender writes in an article for Solitary Watch, a journal that examines the practice of solitary confinement in our corrections system:

I am confined to my cell 22 hours each day, and the other 2 hours am handcuffed and escorted 25 feet down the hallway to another locked room for “recreation and exercise,” though the space is only twice the size of my cell…Despite knowing that isolation can drive people insane, the mental health care here is woefully inadequate. Once a month, a mental health staff comes to ask us if we are hallucinating, hearing voices, or are suicidal. More frequent meetings can be requested, but they offer no coping skills, no therapy, no advocacy. The luckiest among us are prescribed anti-depressants to numb us from the hardest parts of being alone. I am fortunate to have incredible support from my family and friends. To pass the time, I read, write, learn and plan for the future when I can be with them again. What sanity I eek out of these letters, books, phone calls and visits is enough to sustain me just a little longer. I am mentally stable now, but my mind broke down under the weight of isolation 3 1/2 years ago, and it was a long, slow, painful process of putting myself back together.

She is living in a transition dorm before returning to general population, according to Solitary Watch. 

Pender is serving 110 years for her role in a double homicide in 2000. Pender escaped from prison in 2008 and spent 136 days hiding in plain site before being captured. My book, Girl, Wanted, details her time on the run. From the book, this is where Pender is talking to Ryan Harmon, the cop who doggedly chased her while she was temporarily free. This is from a tape I obtained in the course of my reporting:

“I don’t have a sink, and I can’t flush my toilet. I can’t open or close my door, I can’t turn off my own light. I have a video camera in my room, I can’t make phone calls, I can’t have visits. I can’t even flush my own toilet. I’m in like the suicide room . . . the other rooms can’t talk to me. My door has to be closed at all times. If I come out of my room, all the doors have to be closed. They are not allowed to talk to me. The Commissioner said as a direct order, ‘If you talk to her you’ll get written up.’ The staff can’t even talk to me. The staff can only talk to me if I am asking them for something I need, like if I need my toilet flushed or I need a pencil sharpener. Like I could not even get a pencil for like five days; I think it was more like a week. They ask me if I want ice or whatever and I can say yes. But other than that there is no conversation. They cannot talk to me like a normal person. No conversation outside my immediate needs. And if it’s like a male officer they cannot even speak to me at all unless there’s someone else there. I can’t have my own clothes in there; everyone else has their own clothes. They have to bring me mine. I just now got my hygienes. I use to not be able to brush my teeth until I took a shower and when I take a shower . . . everyone else can just get let into the shower. I have to get locked in a cage in the shower. So that I am handcuffed at all times and I have no contact with the people. If I come out of my room there has to be three people on the floor. Two officers and the third has to be a supervisor or a man. Oh, it’s insane.

“I couldn’t have any mail at all for like the first week and a half. And then when they finally came over and interviewed me . . . they finally let me have a pencil and paper and they told me I could receive mail right now but I couldn’t order commissary so I have no stamps and envelopes to send out so my parents must think like ‘What’s going on?’ You get what they feed you. . . . which is really bad food.”

The Saga of Sarah Pender, Featured on Investigation Discovery Sept. 22, 9 P.M. Eastern

It’s been hard for the media to get it right on Sarah Pender. There have been erroneous reports that Larry Sells, the prosecutor who tried and convicted Pender of murder in 2002, was going to represent Sarah in a bid for freedom. A recent story noted that the Marion County, Indiana, prosecutor’s office has decided Pender does not deserve a new trial or consideration for a reduced sentence, despite Sells’ opinion that she did not receive a fair trial based on previously undisclosed evidence.

Marion County prosecutor Terry Curry said in that story, “I don’t doubt Larry’s sincerity in stating that but all we were presented with was a motion to modify the sentence.” That leaves the door open to more legal movement in the case, as Pender takes her hopes to the state Court of Appeals to ask for a second round of post conviction relief. 

Pender’s case will be featured on the Sept. 22 episode of Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall.  I was part of the taping. In advance of that show, here's an exclusive interview with Larry Sells.  

For 15 years, Larry Sells was the iron fist of the law in Marion County, Indiana, home of Indianapolis, ground zero for middle America.

As deputy prosecutor of homicides from 1991 to 2006, Sells put convicted murderers to death with creased-brow scorn.  He was a no bullshit guy, a rangy Marlboro Man lookalike who had done some modeling in his wild days before settling into a law career. His Southern fried accent and dramatic demeanor gave him great favor with juries.

Today he's 69 years old and has spent the last year in sleepless nights over a 23-year-old girl he put away on murder charges in 2002. He’s advocating on behalf of that young girl, Sarah Pender, who is serving her 110-year sentence in the Indiana Women’s Prison. Sells believes she didn’t get a fair trial.

His crusade began after reading a true crime book that revealed information that compromised his key witness in that case, a career criminal and jailhouse snitch named Floyd Pennington.

I wrote the book that changed Sells' mind, Girl,Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, an Edgar award finalist in 2012.

On page 115 of that book is a graph that may eventually give Pender her freedom.

There was a problem with [Pennington’s] testimony and, in the rearview mirror, its impact on the jury. A letter discovered after the trial in the police file found that Pennington had offered to turn evidence on a list of people, from drug dealers to chop-shop owners. He named names on a yellow legal pad in his own writing. But the list was never presented by the defense during Sarah’s trial.

The letter was a snitch list I found in the homicide file.  It had never been seen by anyone outside the investigation, including the defense.

“Just some top-notch dope dealers I’m close to and can get in and make sells for and bust them…” Pennington notes in the handwritten list.

 “That letter should have been given to the defense and I never even saw it,” Sells told me in a phone call in mid-2012, when he admitted it had stuck in his mind since he had reread the book earlier that year. “If that had been introduced to the jury, it would have made a huge difference on the impact of the testimony of the key witness, that of Floyd Pennington. She did not have a fair trial.”

Pender was an unsympathetic character. A former engineering student at Purdue, she had been part of a bloody double homicide on the city’s south side. The two victims, Andrew Cataldi, 25, and Tricia Nordman, 26. were found shot to death in a Dumpster, their hair matted with dried blood. Pender and her boyfriend, Richard Hull, were arrested. Until the murder on October 24, 2000, the victims, Hull and Pender had been roommates and business partners. They moved pot, meth and acid out of the two-bedroom house they shared.

But when some money got funny, Cataldi and Nordman wound up dead and Hull and Pender blamed each other for the shootings.  Who pulled the trigger? Only those four knew for sure, and two of them weren’t breathing.

Helped by the testimony of Pennington, who testified in court that Sarah confessed to her role in the murders to him while both were in a jailhouse infirmary, Pender was sentenced to 110 years.

Pender was sent to state prison, where she remained until August 2008, when she escaped. For 136 days, Pender lived in relative freedom, meeting and being romanced by a man, working a regular job at a construction contractor in Chicago, living in an apartment in Rogers Park.

She was captured that December and returned to prison.

Even during her time on the run, Sells was convinced she had been rightfully convicted, calling her “the female Charles Manson” for her ability to convince others to do her felonious bidding.

Now, Sells talks about his change of heart and how the woman he so enthusiastically put away for the rest of her life needs to be let out of prison.

Steve Miller: The common joke is that prisons are full of innocent people – just ask the inmates. How common is something like this in the justice system, in which evidence that could influence a jury never comes to light?

Larry Sells: If a book were written about every case and the author was as thorough as in this book, there would be more things found. There are convictions set aside, of course. But usually it’s the defense that ferrets that out.

Steve Miller: You called me around June of last year to tell me that there was a major problem with the case and that justice was not served in Sarah’s trial. But you knew about that document, Pennington’s snitch list, since 2009, when I asked you about it.

Larry Sells: I didn’t look at the list very long although when I did, I thought, ‘Damn, why didn’t I have this back then in 2002?’ It really affects the credibility of Pennington. He was a shady witness then, as all jailhouse witnesses are. But by 2009 I was no longer a prosecutor. I retired in 2006. I still had a prosecutor mindset but I wasn’t in the office where I could do anything about it. When I reread it, it became crystal clear to me that this letter destroyed Pennington’s credibility. I had to do something. Yes, I saw the list, but when you see it described in writing, it makes more of an impact.

Steve Miller: What was your first move to make this right?

Larry Sells: I got hold of Sarah’s mom, Bonnie, it was the Friday before Mother’s Day. I told her, ‘you know Bonnie, it’s my opinion that Sarah didn’t get a fair trial and I will do what I can to help.’  When she realized I wasn’t pulling her leg and I was who I said I was, she burst into tears.

Then I called Sarah’s lawyers and told them what I thought. Then I got a call from the prosecutor’s office, which had heard through Sarah’s lawyers about my opinion. He was pretty attentive to what I had to say. Then I got a call from the sentence modification committee at the prosecutor’s office, and we met. We looked at the document, and at first, they were thinking this is no big deal, it’s simply impeaching evidence. When I ran my opinions by them, though, their opinions started changing. I’ve been interviewed by the Marion County prosecutor’s office. Sarah’s lawyers are pushing forward. Now things are up to the system.

Steve Miller: So is Sarah Pender an innocent person who has served all this time?

Larry Sells: I thought she was guilty before any testimony. I thought she was a dangerous person. She has expressed a couple of times that it didn’t bother her that her roommates were brutally murdered. I can’t say what her role in the shooting was, but based on this letter and the fact that her attorney didn’t have this document deprived Sarah of a fair trial.  I am still not convinced of her innocence. But that doesn’t factor in to what I believe about her case. I had to come forward because it’s the right thing to do. I had to do it as a lawyer and a human being. My conscience wouldn’t let me do otherwise.

          

More News From Nowhere – Sarah Pender’s Legal Team Continues Push for Her Freedom

The lawyer for Sarah Pender has filed a petition with the Marion County Prosecutor’s office in hopes of getting her client sprung. The motion includes an affidavit signed by Larry Sells, the man who prosecuted Pender for a double homicide in 2002. Pender received 110 years.

If you’re here, you are aware of the legal debacle. I outline it here, using an article by the local newspaper in Indy, the Indianapolis Star. The town is blowing up over this story, which has received only local coverage so far. But when Pender is released, the cameras will swoop in from everywhere. 

New Discovery Show on Sarah Pender Case - New Trial?

I receive comments from people on any item I write on Sarah Pender, mostly from her supporters, who are predictably my detractors.  It’s good to read these comments, although most are poorly reasoned and filled with typos and nasty personal attacks rather than thoughtful insights that would at least reflect credibly on Sarah’s behalf. One I recently received was simple and stupid: “sarah is innocent.”

Well no, even Sarah admits she was involved in a crime and deservedly served time.

“But the truth dosn't sell now dose it,” someone else posed to me. Spellcheck, please. Another post blared “FREE STACY PENDER!” You get the idea.

But something is going to happen that may change the right minds for the right reason: A couple weeks ago, I was in Indianapolis taping a show with NBC/Discovery, along with former Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Larry Sells, about a problem in the trial of Pender. You can see it on page 115 of Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, regarding the testimony of Floyd Pennington, a key witness in Pender’s trial:

“…there was a problem with his testimony and, in the rearview mirror, its impact on the jury. A letter discovered after the trial in the police file found that Pennington had offered to turn evidence on a list of people, from drug dealers to chop-shop owners. He named names on a yellow legal pad in his own writing. But the list was never presented by the defense during Sarah’s trial.

It would have been easy to pass that note by. I found it in the police file one afternoon. I was leafing through the file in the office of Indianapolis Police Captain Mark Rice. I even recall the day, a sunny summer afternoon. Larry was with me there at a desk, sitting to my right, when I found the letter. I turned to him with it, realizing that such a snitch list would have jeopardized his case. He had a poker face – Larry is a poker ace, by the way – when he read it the first time, but he clearly knew its implication.  From the book:

“I never saw that list, and it would seem that the defense never saw it either, since it wasn’t in evidence or used to combat Floyd’s statements for us,” says Larry Sells, who prosecuted the case for the state.

What if I had tucked it back into the file never to be seen again? That would have helped my story, that Sarah Pender was a dangerous criminal who had been rightfully convicted. Of course I didn’t do that. 

One misguided NBC staffer, using some convoluted logic, tried to explain to me that had Pender not escaped, I wouldn't have written a book, and Pender would have had to serve her sentence with no chance for a new trial. 

That ridiculous notion is easily refuted: If Sarah hadn't been living in a drug house with criminal meth heads, she never would have been involved in a crime of this magnitude. She wouldn't have had to escape from prison.  

Our justice system generally works. But without a free press and open records, not to mention people who are part of that press who understand legal possibilities, possible wrongs can't be righted.

So here we are, with what may be a substantial news show, Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall, debuts this fall.  Judging by the questions and my conversations with the crew it is slanted toward Pender, whom they interviewed at a ridiculous cost of $5,000, which the beleaguered Indiana Department of Correction charges. Still, is it possible to right a wrong here? Pender could get a new trial, which anyone interested in justice should support. I maintain she is a dangerous person. But there are many dangerous people who are running around free, and to lock them up simply because someone perceives them as a threat would make for a crazy society. And if she gets a new trial and a jury finds she is guilty of a lesser offense, or no offense at all, then her sentence should reflect that. 

Sarah Pender Escape Co-Conspirator Out of Prison, On Facebook

A fascinating Facebook post from Jamie Long today. Long was the woman who played a primary role in helping convicted murderer Sarah Pender escape from a prison outside Indianapolis in August 2008. Her 136 days on the run is the subject of my book, Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, which came out last year.

Long’s post reads:

“To all my friends. There has been a book written about Sarah's escape filled with misinformation and misleading information that has hurt me and my family deeply. It is a great work of fiction from my viewpoint, but omits so much of the real truth. Now there is a movie coming out on Lifetime on Dec. 29th, that after reading the reviews, I believe it is even more atrocious and filled with more lies than the book. The production company will not respond to my emails which in itself says they know how much a work of fiction and an overactive imagination and false information it took to create this "real life" drama. If people want to write about me or make a movie, at least get the facts and the story right. The book is called "Girl Wanted; the Chase for Sarah Pender, and the movie is titled "She Made Them Do It". I don't know how the writers of either one can sleep at night with all the lies and BS they spread with their stories.”

Of course I sent a letter to Long when I was writing the book and she never replied. It’s always like that. This is what I sent her in March, 2010, as the final edits were being done:

“Ms. Long –

I am finishing a book on the escape of Sarah Pender and have reviewed your case file, included some things from it, seen the arraignment video, the AMW stuff, and spoken with a number of people about you. The book is mostly written and it is exhaustive. But your input would be a positive thing for yourself. I seek at all times to be fair and in doing so, invite anyone involved in a particular subject I write on to tell their own story. So I ask you for your input and your side of this tale.  It will be a lot more flattering than the information that is out there now, and there is little downside in visiting with me for an hour at your place.

I’d be glad to come to Indiana for a visit. “

She also refers to a Lifetime movie that hits in December, which was done in a particularly unprofessional way; it used the book as a blueprint – there was no other written material – and avoided paying the writer.I recall talking with Adam Parfrey about What We Do is Secret, the movie based on a book he co-wrote, Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short of Life of Darby Crash and the Germs. While they wouldn’t pay Parfrey, who wrote the book with Brendan Mullen and Don Bolles, the book, he told me, was all over the set of the movie. I never checked the movie out, simply because I prefer real life over fiction. More on that at a future date.

There have been a number of television episodes made on the Stephen Grant case without anyone involved ever talking with the authors of A Slaying in the Suburbs; The Tara Grant Murder, nor did anyone interview the prosecutors in the case, who did all of the heavy lifting. There is an episode of A & E's Biography on the Grant case coming up, in which I discuss the case. It's being done by Story House Media Group. 

I’m sure Gary Tieche, who is credited as the writer of this Pender movie based on the Pender book, has never seen the inside of a court file not has he sat down with inmates or knocked on doors of murder victims in doing a re-creation of an existing work. But the script was sold and money was made, somewhere along the chain. I’d look for another movie based on this book at some point. Only this will be the real deal. 

Email from Inmate Regarding Sarah Pender, Girl Wanted - Yes, Prison is a Bad Place

I received an email over the weekend from a former inmate at Rockville Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Indiana from which Sarah Pender, the woman at the center Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender, escaped in August 2008.  The email was sent under an obvious pseudonym, although I would never out someone with such a candid and honest delivery.  I’ve edited some of it to avoid personal details about two named officials. Here it is:

I just read your book "Girl, Wanted". It was truly excellent, but fawning isn't my purpose. You were left with some unanswered question for which I feel you deserve straight answers. As you discovered, the Blue Wall is alive and well with the Department of Correction. Although I walked out the gate at Rockville for the last time in 1996, there are things you don't forget, and the DOC's hatred (not exaggerating in the least) of media attention defies understanding even when nothing particularly bad is happening, exponentially more so when it is. First, I have to stand in defense of [prison internal affairs investigator] Jerry Newlin as he is a very decent person who has attained his social position you rightly describe as the 'dean of Rockville' by being honorable and good at what he does. In other words, he is too honest for future promotion yet pragmatic enough about choosing his battles that he has had such remarkable longevity. I have never met [Rockville prison warden] Julie Stout. I can only hope she is less filthy than her predecessors, Gene Martin who was transferred there as an assistant superintendent under then-superintendent Michael Broglin. Broglin. I believe in the shuffling process he had a stint at the Reception Diagnostic Center at Plainfield, which is a 24/7 lockdown facility. (OMITTED)  Significantly, you may notice that sexual indiscretions are handled much different for those in more senior positions than for the hourly staff. In a situation for which a blue-hat correctional officer or a sergeant would be fired, a lieutenant or a captain would be demoted unless he had someone really peeved at him (or her), someone wearing a suit simply gets moved to a different facility. I would have been unaware of this if not for knowing a well-connected captain, a couple of suit and tie people, and a few better connected inmates. Most trafficking happens at the hands of captains, counselors, assistant superintendents, and superintendents.
The staff tend to be an eclectic group. Prisons are often built in economically depressed areas in which they are often the largest employer in the county. Voting with one's feet is often not economically viable, and the job attracts not only people who are there because they need the jog, but also those who see illicit opportunity with being paid hourly and receiving benefits serving as a bonus, and also those who for lack of a better explanation don't have a dog at home to kick and get their gratification from taking to work and taking it out on the inmates.
One critical thing pertaining to finding truth from the outside comes to mind: In a moment of hubris, Gene Martin made a declaration to an assembly of staff to the effect that when dealing with reporters, you make up your mind what you are going to tell them. Regardless of what they ask, you tell them what you decided to tell them.
Hopefully tying together a few loose ends helps, if nothing else, to ease the curiosity left after so much work makes you the owner of questions that are generally unanswerable.

Her email backs up a lot of the criticism I had for the Indiana Department of Correction, which runs on a prayer it seems.

From the book, Girl, Wanted:

Indiana Department of Correction… is an institution that has seen some very poor performances and doesn’t appear to be making any strides toward improving things. Twice in my initial research for this book, an employee of the Indiana DOC hung up on me, literally, when I asked for some help and some access. This is the kind of hostility bred under poor or stressful working conditions. I was hardly discouraged by such conduct; in fact, it created a suspicion that something was very wrong with the inner workings of the system, and they were afraid someone was going to look behind the curtain. That day may yet come.

And more from the book, regarding my persistent pursuit of public records surrounding the escape of Sarah Pender and the prior record of a guard named Scott Spitler, who helped Pender escape:

The Department of Correction refuses to release any records regarding the escape, including investigations stemming from the breakout or anything the department might have been looking into regarding Spitler’s conduct leading up to the escape. But an arrest affidavit for Spitler filed in Parke County three days after Sarah’s breakout stated that, according to [Jerry] Newlin, the prison’s internal affairs investigator, “Spitler and Pender were already known associates (outside the realm of normal correctional office/offender interactions) prior to this date.” Newlin said that “Spitler was also suspected of trafficking and unprofessional conduct with offenders.”

And yet, despite suspicion that Spitler was engaging in conduct that could be a security risk, nothing was done to monitor his activities. Spitler was allowed to carry out his duties without any supervision, an obvious security breach that allowed Sarah to run.

Sarah Pender Begs Edgar Committee to Reconsider Girl, Wanted

Sarah Pender Envelope Art

Sarah Pender, the gift that keeps on giving. I called the Mystery Writers of America the other day to renew my membership and the woman answering asked my name and immediately asked if I was the Edgar nominee. I thankfully couldn’t deny it.  Then she referenced a letter she received from Sarah Pender, who was the subject of the book that garnered the nomination, Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender. The letter, read it here, asks the committee to reconsider the nomination.

“How would you fee is someone accessed and published your medical records, including the prescription for Viagra, the treatment for anal warts and the procedure to extract that raisin from your nasal passage?” Sarah asks in the letter.

I did a word search of the manuscript and could find no mention of any of these items. She goes on to talk of how I accessed her presentence report “which is clearly marked confidential on its cover” and the usual criticizing of the veracity of much of the story.

Yes, I did gain access to the report. It’s what reporters do, we get stuff.  And the book is 100 percent factual.

It’s a good letter, as usual, even if she has some kind of alternative reality going on in there.

There may be more to come for her; she may get another shot at freedom, although this time it will be in a courtroom. Come back and visit and you can read about it here first.