Killer Recaptured After 2nd Escape in 4 Years

Michael Wilson was treated in a hospital under a fake name for injuries from razor wire
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 19, 2018 6:14 AM CDT
Updated Feb 16, 2022 5:10 PM CST
Newspaper Editor Unknowingly Gave Ride to Escaped Killer
Michael Floyd Wilson, an inmate who escaped from the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, is shown in custody in this photograph provided to media outlets by the Harrison County Sheriff's Office, taken after he was captured Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 15, 2022 .   (Harrison County Sheriff's Office via the AP)

Update: Convicted murderer Michael "Pretty Boy Floyd" Wilson is back behind bars in Mississippi after his second escape in four years. Authorities say the 51-year-old inmate was arrested in Harrison County when a car he had stolen ran out of gas on Tuesday, three days after he escaped from the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility 130 miles away in Jackson, the Clarion Ledger reports. After his escape, he claimed to be an FBI agent and was treated at a hospital —twice—under a fake name for injuries he sustained climbing the prison's razor-wire fence, reports the AP. Officials say he went undetected because prison employees waited a a day to inform the state Department of Corrections of the escape. A dozen employees have been suspended. After a previous escape, Wilson got a ride from an unsuspecting newspaper editor. Our story from July 18, 2018 follows:

A newspaper editor picked up a twice-convicted killer who asked for a ride in Mississippi, not realizing he'd just escaped from prison. Michael "Pretty Boy Floyd" Wilson, serving life sentences for the 2014 killings of two men, jumped a fence at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville on July 5, reports the Biloxi Sun Herald. Some time after an elderly woman gave Wilson a ride to a nearby Walmart, believing he was trying to get to a hospital to visit his wife, he turned up in front of the home of Russell Turner, editor and publisher of the Greene County Herald. Though authorities warned the public not to give rides to strangers, per WALA, Turner obliged, dropping Wilson at a hospital. Wilson was found by police getting into another person's car near St. Martin after three days on the lam.

He "was desperate and dangerous and this could have certainly had many different, tragic outcomes," Turner writes in a Monday op-ed. "It doesn't really bother me that I have made such a good target for jeering," he adds, arguing a staff shortage and other security issues at the minimum security prison should steal the attention. "From all accounts, a bare minimum, skeleton crew runs the prison most days with many guard positions being covered by staff from other departments or just not staffed at all," Turner writes, noting that comments made by county officials suggest staffing is only a third of what it should be. Meanwhile, Wilson is being held at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman as authorities investigate the escape, including how Wilson got to the perimeter fence and came up with street clothes. (More escaped criminal stories.)

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