NEW YORK—Investigators sweeping a jail after breaking up a drug smuggling ring uncovered an inmate’s apparent escape plot using 64 neatly tied together bedsheets, enough for him to shimmy down 11 stories from his cellblock to the street, city officials said Thursday.
Ernest Murphy, awaiting trial on an attempted murder charge, had the sheets stashed under a sink in his cell at the Manhattan Detention Center, said Mark Peters, commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation. The coil stretched the length of a gymnasium nearly four times.
“Thankfully, it was discovered before he had an opportunity to test his skills at making a getaway,” Peters said. “And so the city was spared the potential spectacle of joining the state for the past two weeks in a manhunt for escaped inmates.”
