Thursday, April 06, 2000
Fax a cut-and-paste job
Convict used library in escape attempt
BY MARIE McCAIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A strangler from Hamilton County who has been housed in an upstate correctional facility since February made use of his time in the facility's law library, officials said Wednesday.
“It appears he may have cut ... legal terminology out of some of the books to include in this letter,” said Ronald Edwards, warden of the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, Ohio, of inmate Raymond Akins, 26.
On Tuesday, a document marked “URGENT” was faxed to prison officials urging them to release Mr. Akins. The paperwork stated that his involuntary manslaughter convic tion had been a mistake.
The document carried the signatures of a Hamilton County judge, the county prosecutor, a defense attorney and a court clerk. In addition, it carried a time stamp and a seal from the clerk's office.
Officials immediately noticed that the document was a fake because none of the signatures matched the real ones. However, they are still trying to determine where the fax came from and who faxed it.
On Wednesday, officials searched Mr. Akins' footlocker. They found court papers and other items that led them to believe he was “the architect of the document,” Mr. Edwards said. No charges have yet been filed.
Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus sentenced Mr. Akins to 15 years for involuntary manslaughter and car theft in the 1998 strangling death of his girlfriend, Laquitta El liot.
Her body was found by police inside her Bond Hill apartment.
Mr. Akins is housed at the Orient facility as a “transient inmate” awaiting placement in a permanent Ohio prison while he undergoes assessment. He had been living in a 150-inmate housing unit and would have been transferred to a state prison in a few weeks, Mr. Edwards said.
But after Tuesday's incident, he has been placed in isolation.
Judge Niehaus said Wednesday that the FBI is investigating the incident, in addition to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the prosecutor's office and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.
If Mr. Akins is charged, he could face four counts of forgery, attempted escape, interstate wire fraud, and complicity, officials said, which could add nine years to his sentence.
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