Hunt for fugitive scaled down

Metro Police officers and FBI agents thundered into the Mount Charleston area last week in fevered pursuit of someone believed to be fugitive Timothy Blackburn -- only to learn they had the wrong man.

The conspicuous show of force -- including a SWAT team, armored police vehicles and Metro Sheriff Jerry Keller in full uniform -- created the impression of a no-stone-unturned manhunt. In fact, the incident belied the dwindling manpower authorities are devoting to their search for Blackburn.

In contrast to the 50 federal and local law enforcement officers who left the mountains Friday with empty hands and a bit of egg on their face, the FBI has one to three agents working the case day to day. Blackburn, a suspect in the armed robbery of $1 million from a Bank of America ATM repository in December, broke out of jail Aug. 11 with the help of a woman identified by police as his wife, Puthea Lee.

Special Agent Kevin Caudle said the FBI has scaled back its hunt for Blackburn, 25, as his escape trail cools and the odds of apprehending him in Las Vegas diminish.

"As each day goes by, there's less and less thought that he's still here and we're going to find him," Caudle said. He added that in the absence of any solid leads, authorities must rely on tips from the public or hope that Blackburn slips up with a traffic violation, a traceable phone call or other obvious blunder.

"We don't sit back, but we turn our attention to other things and let him make a mistake," Caudle said.

The FBI deployed 25 agents in its hunt for Blackburn in the days following his brazen escape from the North Las Vegas Corrections Center. After Lee, 24, allegedly helped Blackburn sneak out of the jail's visitation area, the couple exchanged gunfire with warrant officers as they fled across a parking lot to a pickup truck. Authorities believe the couple have taken their two daughters, ages 2 and 4, on the lam.

Caudle conceded that two weeks removed from the jailbreak, there are days that only one agent keeps a bead on Blackburn -- a common shift in FBI priorities when a suspect eludes capture for a significant length of time. Should he resurface, the FBI will mobilize as many agents as necessary, Caudle said.

"But it would be silly to spend that much time and manpower day to day on the case," he said.

At this point the best bet for tracking down Blackburn could be the $10,000 reward offered by the FBI and two local banks for information leading to his arrest.

"He doesn't know who he can really trust. He doesn't know if a person he talks to isn't going to make a phone call 5 minutes after he's gone" to alert authorities, Caudle said. "There may be people who have some loyalty to him, but money does talk."

The raid on Mount Charleston marked the third false sighting of Blackburn since his escape. While Caudle described the incident -- in which authorities mistook a family of four for Blackburn, Lee and their two children -- as a "huge letdown," he downplayed any sense of humiliation on the FBI's behalf.

"The only embarrassing aspect was that it wasn't them, and we scared the heck out of a family of four that we didn't need to scare," he said. "We gave (the family) a story to share with their friends back home."

North Las Vegas jail officials, meanwhile, remain both red-faced and tight-lipped about the jailbreak.

"We're embarrassed we let the people down," Sgt. Dan Lake said. "But to (dwell) on it, I'm not sure that's the answer either."

Jail officials expect to complete an investigation into the escape by week's end. Lake said the final report will show that a combination of human error and procedural flaws apparently enabled Lee to spring Blackburn, who was in custody awaiting the start of his October trial.

The breakout prompted jail officials to beef up security measures at the center, including hand-held and walk-through metal detectors, additional surveillance cameras and smaller privacy partitions between visiting booths.

Lake declined to talk about the details of Blackburn's escape, but disputed news reports that claim Lee used an electric screwdriver to unfasten the pane of glass that separated her from Blackburn in the visitation area.

The tool was a nonelectric "screwdriver-type device," Lake said, adding that the new security measures should prevent a repeat of the breakout.

"Unless someone comes in with a blowtorch, they're not getting someone out, I can tell you that," Lake said.

archive