A Leachville man who 10 years ago wore a guard uniform and walked out of an Arkansas prison to flee a life sentence for capital murder has escaped again from a different detention facility, authorities said Monday.
Authorities said Calvin Adams, 49, escaped from the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Brickeys, about 30 miles southeast of Forrest City. He was discovered missing after officials conducted a unit-wide count, according to a statement released Monday morning by the state Department of Corrections.
Department spokeswoman Dina Tyler said she was first notified shortly after 5 a.m.
“The last time he was seen on camera he was heading to the boiler room,” she said.
Tyler said authorities are unsure whether Adams has gotten past the electric fence of the East Arkansas Regional Unit.
“We are working on two fronts,” she said. “One is that he is still on the grounds and hasn’t made it past the electric fence because this is a big facility. The second is he somehow made it past the electric fence and is loose on the outside.”
She said for him to get past the electric fence he would have to leave either going out the front gate of the facility or the back, where the sally port is located.
“Those are the only two options unless he flew out of here,” Tyler said. “Both of those areas have cameras, but it’s kinda hard to see.”
The U.S. Marshals Service and several other agencies are assisting the Arkansas Department of Corrections with the search for the missing inmate, said Bob Clark, spokesman for the U.S. Marshals.
“We don’t have a specific location where he might be at or anything like that,” he said. “We are just trying to put some pieces together.”
Adams had multiple disciplinary violations this year at the prison, including lying to a staff member in May. January violations included being out of place, possession or manufacture of contraband, lying to a staff member and escape.
“The escape violation is not technically an escape,” Tyler said. “It was more like he wasn’t in the area he was supposed to be in. It was an ADC rule violation, but it wasn’t technically an escape.”
Adams pleaded guilty in 1995 to abducting and fatally shooting 25-year-old banker Richard Austin and injuring the man's pregnant wife. He received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
In 2009, Adams and another convicted murderer, 33-year-old Jeffrey Grinder, left through the Cummins Unit’s front doors after dressing themselves in prison guard uniforms and identification cards, according to previous Democrat-Gazette reporting.
“I believe they were caught in New York,” Clark said. “If I remember right they were trying to get to the Canada border.”
Ted Murray, who was then the chief of police in Hornell, N.Y., said at the time the escapees put on guard uniforms and “just walked out” of the detention facility.
The East Arkansas Regional Unit has both medium and maximum secure facilities on the grounds. Tyler said that Adams was placed in the open barracks area of the medium security facility.
“The open barracks is just like an army barracks where there are 40 to 50 people inside the unit,” she said. “He was inside the medium security unit, because the whole facility is behind an electric fence and his escape attempt was more than 10 years ago.”
If Adams has escaped from the facility it would be the second time an inmate has gotten past the electric fence, Tyler said.
“Someone escaped in 2016,” she said.
Read Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.