FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Two Miami-Dade corrections officers were suspended on Thursday while authorities continued their massive manhunt for an accused serial rapist who escaped from jail earlier this week.
Federal, state and local officials have offered a combined $16,000 reward for anyone who can lead them to recapturing Reynaldo Rapalo, 34, charged in seven sexual assaults committed by the “Shenandoah Rapist.”
Rapalo was awaiting trial before he escaped from the Miami-Dade County Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center late Tuesday by climbing down a rope made of bed sheets.
The rapist’s victims ranged in age from 11 to 79 and lived in Miami-Dade’s Shenandoah and Little Havana neighborhoods. The assaults continued for more than a year and the search by Miami police officers was the subject of the movie documentary “Code 33.”
Now, police find themselves searching again.
“This is a conspiracy. This was hatched over about three months,” Miami Police Chief John Timoney told The Associated Press.
A series of memos and reports made public since Tuesday’s breakout sheds a closer light on how the escape may have been pulled off, and has raised a number of questions about security lapses at the jail.
The escape was first discovered on Tuesday night by a visitor who noticed a chain of tied up bed sheets hanging from the side of the jail. The visitor told jail officials he then saw an inmate scale down the sheets moments after a security van drove by.
Charles J. McRay, director of the county’s Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, told officials in a memo dated Thursday that he suspended the correction officer assigned to patrol the facility’s perimeter. McRay also suspended the officer assigned to Unit 6-3, a maximum-security cell where Rapalo and others accused of sexual crimes lived.
A second inmate, Idanio Bravo, tried to escape but broke his ankles and was captured outside the jail.
Reports indicate the escape route began in a vent in the cell’s ceiling that leads to the jail’s roof. The vent was apparently pried open with a tool, while bars blocking the vent’s opening onto the roof were cut. There are also indications someone was planning to meet Rapalo after he escaped, Timoney told the AP.
Rapalo was scheduled for a February trial. Prosecutors have said that DNA matches him to seven rapes and four attempted assaults.
At the height of the 2003 manhunt, police took more than 200 DNA samples from men who matched the serial rapist’s description. Rapalo was captured that year after a detective happened upon him in Little Havana by chance.
During interrogations with investigators, Rapalo referred to himself using two names and said his evil side committed the crimes.
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AP-NY-12-22-05 1935EST
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