WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Around 7 a.m. on June 3, 2006, District of Columbia Jail Corporal Herbert Douglas gathered 15 prisoners for their Saturday morning work detail. Douglas had been with the Department of Corrections for 15 years, first at the Lorton lockup and then at the Central Detention Facility in the Hill East neighborhood.

Before that, he had spent 35 years in several state and federal agencies. He’d received outstanding performance reviews for his work in D.C.

Douglas escorted the group through the jail, leaving them at various spots to clean and do light repairs. On the second floor of the jail, Douglas dropped off four inmates, including inmate No. 250-433, Joseph Leaks.

It was an innocuous beginning to one of the most brazen D.C. jailbreaks in memory — a jailbreak that would terrify a gentrifying Hill East neighborhood and bring unwelcome, if overdue, public attention to D.C.’s troubled jail.

Corruption, mistakes rife among jail staff

Leaks, then 32, was sometimes known as “Joseph Poindexter.” He was a balding, thin-faced man with a slight mustache. He was known in his neighborhood and in the jail as charming, a smooth talker.

He shouldn’t have been on the lightly supervised cleaning detail. He was in the jail charged as an accessory to the July 6, 2005 shooting death of David Valentine. He had already been convicted of assault with intent to kill in 1998, and was later arrested for violating his parole on that charge. The previous October, he’d escaped from the jail when in on an unrelated charge. A few days before the June 3 escape, Leaks had gotten into a fight with another prisoner.

Given his violent record and previous escape, Leaks should have been placed in maximum security, according to internal reports.

Instead, because one jail staff member hit the wrong key on the computer and another evaluated Leaks without checking his record, he was put on the cleaning detail.

Those familiar with the jail say it isn’t unusual for officers to bend the rules, especially for favored inmates. They say drugs, extra clothing and cigarettes are routinely smuggled in. According to the jail’s internal investigation, Leaks implicated officers in smuggling contraband in for him. He told officials where to find the contraband, and it was found exactly where he said it would be.

An inmate who spent a week in the jail last summer on a drug charge told Hill East activist Jim Myers that families and friends of prisoners often waited outside the jail’s grounds, flush with contraband. When the inmates came out into the yard for exercise, their relatives or friends lobbed tennis balls filled with drugs and other banned goods over the wall. The prisoners gathered the balls up, under the eyes of the guards, Myers said the inmate told him.

For the unarmed corrections officers, surrounded and outnumbered by often violent men and women in a dank, rickety jail, extra perks are a necessary evil: a way to keep the peace.

Leaks and the other inmates were supposed to clean the administrative suites, the life center of the jail during regular business hours. Leaks was allowed to wander the area, handing out cleaning solutions and cloths.

Inmate warned guard to get away

Douglas unlocked the supply room and Leaks followed him inside. Leaks poured himself a cup of coffee and then turned to Douglas.

“Leave the area,” Leaks said. “Because something is about to happen.”

Douglas, Leaks would tell authorities, walked away.

Sometime between 9 and 9:30 a.m., Leaks was seen chatting with corrections officer Lachonne Stewart as she stood in the doorway of the female employees’ locker room.

Stewart had worked at the jail for 24 years. She’d been suspended for various violations, but each time had successfully challenged the discipline and been reinstated.

As she talked amiably with Leaks, Stewart was holding on to a large “woman’s bag.”

Leaks wrapped up his conversation with Stewart and walked out of the administrative suite, pushing a trash bin in front of him.

He ambled down the corridor, towards the first-floor foyer. He mopped the floor there for a few minutes, before walking past the entrance to the Southeast One ward. He glanced into the ward and then walked a few feet down the hall.

At 9:42 a.m., inmate No. 279-826, Ricardo Jones, walked out of the Southeast One ward, carrying a pass to the jail infirmary.

Jones, then 25, was the alleged trigger man in Valentine’s death. He was light skinned and had a baby face, despite a neatly trimmed beard.

On July 6, 2005, he and his friend Leaks were sitting on Leaks’ front porch in the 1200 block of Meigs Place, NE when Valentine passed by. According to court documents, Valentine stopped in front of the home to adjust his pants.

Leaks waved a pistol and told Valentine that he had to be careful in the neighborhood. Valentine walked away, but came back quickly. As he approached the porch, Jones approached him. Jones shot him in the chest, nearly point-blank.

He and Leaks fled in Leaks’ gray station wagon. They were arrested in North Carolina on assault charges a few weeks later.

Jones and Leaks had “separation” orders in their files, which required them to be kept apart. But the pair chatted often as Leaks went on his cleaning rounds. Corrections officers stood by as the pair talked.

On the morning of the escape, Jones flashed an infirmary pass at the corrections officers. He wasn’t on the list to go to the clinic, but the officers waved him by.

Linking up in the foyer, Jones and Leaks headed back to the administrative suite. As they walked, Jones clipped on a green cleaning detail pass. The pass had been taken from another inmate three weeks before the escape. The other inmate’s name and picture were still on it.

Jones and Leaks were waved through security doors by yet another correctional officer.

They returned to the female employees’ locker room. They lifted a garbage bag from a large trash bin and drew out a blue jacket, a blue Department of Corrections baseball cap, sunglasses and two navy blue jumpsuits.

While they are in custody, inmates wear orange jumpsuits. After their release, they are given navy jumpsuits. Jail officials say this system makes it easier to keep track of prisoners.

Leaks and Jones tucked the clothing away and headed back to the second floor of the administrative suite, where Leaks’ morning began. They went to the supply closet that Douglas had unlocked and dragged a floor buffer out.

Inmates escaped through warden’s office

Around 10:05 a.m., they hoisted the machine down a flight of stairs to the warden’s suite and kicked the door open. Once inside the warden’s office, they stripped off their orange jumpsuits and changed into the clothes that Stewart allegedly had left for them.

Leaks wore the jacket and blue cap; Jones wore the sunglasses.

They pushed the floor buffer to the warden’s window, which looked over an awning that protected the visitors’ entrance from the sun. They smashed the windows out with the floor buffer.

Once they had a big enough opening in the glass, they crawled out and jumped onto the awning. The men then scampered down the awning, onto the jail’s lawn and scrambled off the jail’s grounds. A corrections officer on his way to work saw the pair running toward the Armory Metro Station. He notified jail officials.

Another officer saw the pair hit the ground and gave chase, but quickly gave up. Before heading back to the jail, the officer found an inhaler on the ground. The prescription tag carried Jones’ name.

An off-duty D.C. police officer also spotted Jones and Leaks. She gave a brief chase, but lost track of them.

The jail’s log would show that the jail’s siren — designed to alert staff and neighbors that an escape was under way — was sounded at 10:40 a.m. But neighbors said they didn’t hear anything.

The D.C. Police, the U.S. Marshals and the mayor’s command center were all notified. The jail went into lock-down and officers conducted a head count.

Jones and Leaks went to the Armory Station and boarded a shuttle bus. They got off at the corner of Minnesota Avenue and Grant Street, NE. Once there, they hitched a ride with a passerby and asked for a lift to the Kenilworth neighborhood.

Waiting for them in Kenilworth was Leaks’ brother, David. David drove them to Baltimore. There, they bought new clothes and ditched their escape garb in a trash can near the Inner Harbor.

They then drove back into D.C.

Authorities, meanwhile, checked phone records and the escapees’ files. An old address in the file led them to an apartment in a housing project on W Street, NW. They didn’t find either inmate, but they did find a pistol in a moldy couch in the apartment. The Glock 17 was traced to D.C. Police Lt. Teresa Brown, who had reported the weapon stolen from her office in the Fourth District police station in January.

Recapture and the aftermath

Neither inmate was free long. At 1:25 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 2006, marshals raided a room at the Virginia Lodge Motel in Alexandria. They found Leaks there.

Within moments, he confessed to the escape, implicating Douglas and Stewart and giving authorities a lead on Jones’ whereabouts. Stewart, Leaks claimed, had left the blue clothing for the men in the women’s locker room.

At 10:45 p.m., authorities drove to a mechanic’s shop in Seat Pleasant, Md. and arrested Jones.

The men were indicted on escape charges two days later. Since then, they’ve been shuffled in jails between the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

On April 3, Leaks pleaded guilty to several crimes, including his role in the 2005 homicide, a sex crime, and the escape.

“A sentencing date has not been scheduled,” Jail Director Devon Brown told his staff in a memo obtained by The Examiner, “and is contingent upon his obligations as outlined in the plea agreement.”

No one else has been charged in connection with the escape.

How we reported this story

To write this narrative account of the June 3, 2006 jail break, The Examiner pored over hundreds of pages of court documents, internal jail e-mails and reports, and interviewed several law enforcement sources.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com