Escapees

Rudolf Vrba, one of the few prisoners to escape from Auschwitz during World War II and the coauthor of the first eyewitness report detailing the extent of the atrocities there, has died. He was 81. Vrba, who is was credited with saving the lives of more than 100,000 fellow Jews, most of them Hungarians, died March 27 of cancer at a hospital in Vancouver, Canada.

Authorities have captured two more teenage offenders who had escaped from Probation Department custody last month, an official said Wednesday. Isaiah Walker, convicted of attempted murder in adult court, was among four gang members who broke out of Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar on March 23. The other teen, who was not named, escaped from custody March 29. The two are among eight who recently escaped. Two Nidorf escapees remain at large.

One of four teenage prisoners who escaped from a Sylmar juvenile hall was recaptured Friday, but the others remained free, police said. The escapees, all 17 and gang members -- one convicted of attempted murder -- had been moved from a locked cell to a less secure room where they broke through wall paneling before daybreak Thursday. About 3 p.m.

A prison volunteer and the murderer she allegedly helped escape from a Kansas prison were nabbed in a chance encounter with police, who were in a mall parking lot in Chattanooga, Tenn., discussing strategy for catching them. The arrests of Toby Young and John Manard came nearly two weeks after authorities say Young drove out of Lansing Correctional Facility with Manard hidden in a dog crate.

A 14-year-old boy who escaped from a camp for juvenile delinquents was killed when he crashed a stolen pickup into a rock wall on Highway 178. Curtis Eugene Vaughan escaped Sunday from Camp Erwin Owen, stole a truck from a nearby campground and headed east on Highway 178, said Kern County Deputy Chief Probation Officer Debra Kirkendall. Vaughan missed a turn on the winding road and was pronounced dead at the scene. He had been at the camp a few weeks for theft, Kirkendall said.

An American charged with being part of an Al Qaeda cell in New York was probably among 23 men who escaped from a Yemeni prison last week, an FBI official said. Jaber Elbaneh, 39, was charged in 2002 with participating in a sleeper cell based in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburb of Lackawanna and attending an Al Qaeda training camp before the Sept. 11 attacks. Elbaneh, who was born in Yemen, was arrested there in 2003.

Thirteen Al Qaeda militants convicted in the attacks in Yemen on the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole and the French supertanker Limburg were among 23 men who broke out of jail in Sana, the capital, a state-run website said. The website quoted unnamed sources saying the 13 convicts included top militants Jamal Badawi and Fawaz Rabeie, who managed to flee the prison by digging a 220-foot tunnel. Rabeie, the leader of the group convicted of bombing the Limburg in 2002, was facing the death penalty.

Two jail escapees were captured after an anonymous tip led police to the attic of a relative's home, but two others were still at large after nine inmates broke out of a maximum security area of the Yakima County Jail. Five escapees were recaptured on the jail grounds Friday night.

The second of two inmates who used a homemade grappling hook to escape from the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison was captured after four days on the run. Robert Joseph Legendre, 27, was captured without incident at a truck stop in Steele, Mo., where he was found sitting in a stolen pickup. The other escaped convict, Martin Moon, 34, had been arrested Thursday near Chester, Ill. Legendre was in prison for attempted murder and Moon was serving a life sentence for murder.

The search for a death row inmate who walked unnoticed out of a Texas county jail became a nationwide manhunt Saturday as authorities investigated whether he had help making the brazen escape. The U.S. marshals service offered a $10,000 reward for the capture of Charles Victor Thompson and designated him a federal fugitive. Thompson, 35, of the Houston suburb of Tomball, escaped Thursday after meeting with an attorney, though not his defense attorney of record, authorities said.