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Escaped Iowa Prison Inmate Caught in Mo.

Posted on: Friday, 18 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By TODD DVORAK

FORT MADISON, Iowa - The second of two inmates who escaped from an Iowa prison was caught Friday in southern Missouri, officials said.

Robert Joseph Legendre, 27, serving a sentence for attempted murder, was captured in Steele, Mo., officials said. On Thursday, convicted murderer Martin Moon, 34, had been caught near Chester, Ill.

The men scaled a wall Monday at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, about 325 miles from where Legendre was captured.

Steele police Chief Mike Tomlinson found Legendre at a truck stop, in a pickup truck that had been reported stolen, said Ryan Holder, a Pemiscott County, Mo., sheriff's investigator. Legendre gave up peacefully and was in custody in Pemiscott County, Holder said.

Moon was returned to Iowa later Thursday, said Fred Scaletta, an Iowa prison spokesman. He made an initial appearance Friday in a courtroom inside the prison, charged with escape, and a public defender was appointed to represent him.

Legendre was convicted in Nevada in the kidnapping and attempted murder of a Las Vegas cabbie and was transferred to Iowa last year. He was serving two sentences of 15 years to life. Moon was convicted of murder in 2000 for shooting his roommate during a drug deal in 1990 and was serving a life sentence.

Authorities said the two escaped using a homemade hook and a rope fashioned from upholstery materials taken from the prison furniture shop. They went over an unguarded section of wall late Monday and got around a wire that is supposed to activate an alarm when touched.

Based on Moon's account, police had said they believed the pair immediately split. The towns where the two men were caught are about 125 miles apart.

Police in Randolph County, Ill., discovered Moon after officials at Illinois' Menard State Penitentiary called to report a car parked nearby. When an officer stopped to run on a check on its license plates, Moon drove off, but crashed into a fence. Moon then tried to run away before being caught by a police dog.

The car was believed to have been stolen from a home in Ferris, Ill., officials said.

An investigation of the escape was under way, Gov. Tom Vilsack said. "There were a series of mistakes that were made," he said.

A corrections official has said the guard tower near the spot where the inmates went over the wall was unmanned at the time because of budget cuts.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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