Bed Sheets Seen Hanging From Jail Cell Window

Felon caught in the act at Spokane County Jail
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 23, 2015 4:32 PM CDT
Bed Sheets Seen Hanging From Jail Cell Window
   (Reed Schmitt)

Staffers at a jail in eastern Washington state foiled an escape attempt by spotting a long trail of knotted bed sheets hanging from the window of a cell housing a suspect in a murder-for-hire plot. They saw the rope of sheets that nearly reached the ground around 4:30am Thursday and put the Spokane County Jail on lockdown. The escape "was thwarted by the good work of the staff," FBI spokesman Frank Harrill told the Spokane newspaper the Spokesman-Review. The cell belongs to James Henrikson, 36, a felon linked to fraud and terror in North Dakota. He was sent to Washington state to face federal charges of ordering the killings of a business associate that owed him nearly $2 million and his former trucking company employee.

After finding the dangling sheets, officials moved Henrikson and a cellmate to another part of the jail. The cell window is about 4 feet tall but less than 5 inches wide, according to Spokane County Jail Commander John McGrath. In February, authorities investigated after another inmate reported that Henrikson planned to escape by having a team attack a US Marshals Service van with guns, grenades, and gasoline, according to court records. Last September, Henrikson was indicted on murder-for-hire charges in the deaths of Doug Carlile and Kristopher "KC" Clarke in Washington state. Carlile, 63, was shot in the kitchen of his house, and Clarke, 30, was last seen at Henrikson's trucking company. Henrikson has told investigators that Carlile owed him nearly $1.9 million for their dealings in Kingdom Dynamics, an oil development firm. (More prison break stories.)

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