Massive jail break in New Orleans 'impossible' without staff involvement, says ex-FBI fugitive hunter

Fox News

20-05-2025

A former FBI agent who spent 10 years hunting fugitives says employees of the Orleans Parish Jail almost certainly knew about and assisted the massive 10-person escape last Friday.
Scott Duffey spent 22 years in the FBI, including a decade hunting fugitives, before retiring as a supervisory special agent. He is now the director of the Wilmington University Criminal Justice Institute in Delaware.
He said it would be nearly impossible for 10 people to escape from a jail without help from the inside, or at least without people on the inside knowing about a planned escape.
"If 10 people did it, that means at least double that number knew about it," he told Fox News Digital. "So that's a big intel breach. And how can that happen without somebody on the inside not assisting?"
Authorities said they are investigating whether the inmates, many of whom have been charged with heinous violent crimes, had help from jail staff. Three employees have been suspended pending the ongoing investigation.
"How could there not be somebody on the inside?" Duffey said. "That would be such a major intel [and] physical security breach that I would say everybody needs to be looked at there, because that's a huge number [of escapees]."
As for why a corrections officer might help a prisoner escape, Duffey said there are a number of reasons, but he specifically mentioned that a romantic relationship with an inmate could be plausible.
From an investigatory standpoint, Duffey said it is likely that the fugitives are still in the New Orleans area and likely couch-surfing with friends and family to avoid detection.
He said he would be applying maximum pressure to those family and friends to get them to turn the inmates in.
"So everybody in the family is immediately being interviewed and probably given the riot act with regards to, OK, we determined he's definitely not here. Now we want to know when's the last time you had contact?" Duffey said. "Did you get contacted by the fugitive since he escaped? And here's what can happen if you aid a fugitive."
A romantic relationship was at the center of one of America's more recent high-profile escape cases.
Casey White, an inmate at the Lauderdale County, Alabama, jail, was awaiting a capital murder trial while already serving a 75-year sentence for attempted murder and kidnapping when he broke out of jail with the help of a guard.
His accomplice was Vicky White, a high-ranking corrections officer at the jail, who allowed him to walk out and then fled alongside him.
The pair, who were lovers, led authorities on an 11-day manhunt across Tennessee and Indiana, which eventually culminated in a confrontation outside an Evansville, Indiana, motel room.
The pair jumped into a black Cadillac and attempted to flee but were rammed off the road by police, causing a crash. Vicky White died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and Casey White was captured and extradited back to Alabama.
In 2015, another alleged sexual relationship led to a high-profile prison escape.
Two inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility, Richard Matt and David Sweat, escaped from the maximum security facility that bordered the tiny upstate New York town of Dannemora.
Both were serving life sentences for murder, but with the help of prison worker Joyce "Tilly" Mitchell, the pair escaped.
Matt and Sweat allegedly had sexual relationships with Mitchell, who provided the inmates with tools to hack away at the walls in their cell for three months straight during time normally reserved for eating and recreation. An inspector general's report later noted the institution's culpability in failing to supervise the duo.
After a 20-day manhunt, Matt was shot and killed by police about 30 miles from the prison. Days later, Sweat was found by authorities jogging on a road just south of the Canadian border. He was also shot, but he survived his injuries and was returned to prison.
Mitchell was sentenced to seven years in prison for her role in the escape.
In the same year, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Mexican drug lord and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, escaped from a maximum-security Mexican jail via a mile-long tunnel that led from his cell to a construction yard. It was later determined that his cartel associates dug the tunnel.
Fourteen years earlier, he had escaped from a Mexican prison after bribing guards and being wheeled out in a laundry basket.
Guzman was recaptured by Mexican authorities in 2016, extradited to the U.S. the following year and found guilty in 2019 of numerous criminal charges related to his cartel activities. He was sentenced to life in prison in Colorado's ADX Florence, a supermax facility in Colorado.
On Dec. 13, 2000, seven men, later dubbed the "Texas 7," escaped from the John B. Connally Unit, a maximum-security prison near Kenedy, Texas, by overpowering the guards. They stole a cache of weapons on their way out of the facility and went on a vicious crime spree.
Two of the men were serving life sentences for murder at the time of the escape.
On Christmas Eve of that year, the men held up a sporting goods store and shot and killed responding Irving Police Officer Aubry Wright Hawkins.
Between Jan. 22–24, 2001, after the airing of an episode of "America's Most Wanted" that featured the men, six of them were captured. The seventh committed suicide before he could be taken into custody.
They were all tried and convicted of Hawkins' murder and sentenced to death.
Michael Anthony Rodriguez, one of the seven, waived his appeals after his conviction and was executed in 2008.
In 2012, the ringleader of the escaped prison gang, George Rivas, was put to death for the murder. Another escapee, Donald Newbury, was executed in 2015. A fourth, Joseph Garcia, was executed in 2018.
In 2019, the executions of the last two escapees were stayed.
Perhaps the most storied prison escape in American history occurred on June 11, 1962, from the infamous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco.
On that day, Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, all convicted bank robbers, escaped from the prison through air ducts and an unguarded hallway after they placed papier-mâché model heads bearing their likenesses inside their own beds, tricking the guards.
They boarded a makeshift raft and paddled away from the island, never to be seen again. It is believed they drowned in San Francisco Bay.
A fourth potential escapee, Allen West, did not make it off the island.
Alcatraz has recently been in the news as President Donald Trump floated the idea of reopening the island prison.