Eight hours after the audacious crab-walk escape of convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante from a Chester County prison in August, a prison official conveyed to the acting warden that Cavalcante had meticulously planned his evasion for months.
It was Sergeant Jerry Beavers of the Chester County Prison who took the initiative and sent an email to Cpt. Harry Griswold, passing along information he had obtained from a fellow employee. The Sergeant possibly was concerned about the potential backlash and blame shifting, as evidenced by his words, “I am just sending this cause I don’t want this to come back on us or Hernandez in anyway,” a snippet from his email dispatch sent a few minutes before 4 p.m. ET on August 31 – the chaos-filled day of the escape.
Beavers’ message had further described a suspicion, as previously expressed in July, that the inmate was scheming an escape. This message was then later the same day, forwarded by Griswold to Howard Holland, the acting warden of Chester County Prison, triggering speculative discussions about the internal handling of this sensitive information.
The narrative of this thwarted prison escape and subsequent manhunt kept Chester County inhabitants on tenterhooks for a fortnight towards the end of summer, providing a seemingly no-end-in-sight script for local news. Public Information Officer Rebecca Brain shared a statement with this regard, though, curtailing further detail on the email discourse initially revealed by ABC News.
Playing a central role in the narrative were Sgt. Beavers, Cpt. Griswold, and Office Hernandez – although the county failed to provide Hernandez’s first name. The county officials wanted to affirm Acting Warden Holland’s cognizance of Cavalcante’s earlier escape plans. The statement elucidated, “During the time surrounding (Cavalcante’s summer) trial, unsubstantiated information from an unknown source was received reinforcing Cavalcante’s status as an escape risk.”
Furthermore, the county reevaluated its policy pertaining to potential escape risks in the aftermath of Cavalcante’s evasion. Today, inmates that could potentially escape are easily identifiable through their different colored clothing and are constantly under additional surveillance within the premises. Also, during the manhunt, the county had to terminate a corrections officer who failed to notice and subsequently report Cavalcante’s escape in time.
In the wake of the escape, the prison board elected to allocate between $2.5 million and $3.5 million to secure the prison yard further. This dramatic story serves as a reminder of the vigilance required within our penal system, even as we move through the 21st century.
