By Juliana A. Torres Staff Writer Makeshift saws with hardcover-book handles and metal prying tools, three bed sheets knotted together, which jail officers and their supervisors failed to notice for two weeks, allowed accused attempted murder inmate Michael Rigby to escape from Osceola County Jail last month. With the 21-year-old gang leader still on the loose at press time Friday, Osceola County Corrections Chief Greg Futch let TV show America’s Most Wanted and local media into the jail this week to

The toilet/sink unit Michael Rigby used as a portal for escape from the Osceola County jail now sits in a closet in the jail.

It started when Rigby and his cellmate, 44-year-old David Sanders, realized their high-risk security cell was never thoroughly searched, Futch said. In the two weeks leading up to Rigby’s escape, jail officials should have conducted a total of 56 full searches of the cell – two every 12-hour shift.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office could only confirm that three such searches had been conducted and even then, not very well, Futch said.

“In those three searches, essentially what they did when they walked in, was they walked in, looked around and walked out,” Futch said.

They should have noticed, for starters, that all but one screw in the light fixture had been removed and a rectangle metal chunk of the bottom bunk had been cut away, not to mention the gradually expanding gap in the toilet/sink fixture as the inmates worked steadily to peel back the metal and expose a hole leading out to the maintenance chase. The damage to the toilet/sink fixture was covered with a towel.

Aside from the damage to the cell itself, the Sheriff’s Office found a large amount of contraband. That included five hardcover books, five extra sheets, an extra inmate uniform, a foam flip-flop shoe cut like a hand to disguise Rigby’s disappearance from the cell that was never used after the inmates became comfortable their presence was never effectively confirmed and a metal binder clip.

“Had any of these officers even done a thorough search, we would have been pinning metals on them instead of having them face disciplinary action,” Futch said. “They clearly would have discovered the breach in the sink and averted this escape.”

The inmates started the gradual destruction of cell 8B in the jail’s highest security housing unit when then-Officer Milton Caraballo, who has since been arrested, gave them a metal binder clip. They already had offered to pay Caraballo $40,000 for hacksaw blades, but settled for the binder clip when he refused.

The inmates broke the clip in half, creating a rough edge that they then used to carve away at a welded seam of a cup-shaped shelf used to keep the toilet paper just under the sink in their cell. When they still couldn’t see into the maintenance chase behind the sink, they convinced the inmates above them to flood their toilet with a sheet. Crews came to fix the stoppage, rolling up a giant orange door that, from the outside, allows access to the plumbing of four cells, including Rigby and Sanders’ cell on the bottom level and two on the top. Through the open door, the inmates could see their way to freedom and made further plans.

Inside the light fixture on the ceiling of their cell, behind a speaker, they took out a perforated metal plate, about the thickness of a penny. Like the binder clip, they folded it in half until it broke, giving them a saw-like edge created by the perforations.

With their new tool, they carved out a small rectangle, about 8 by 1.5 inches in size, from the thick metal side of the bottom bunk. This new tool was used as a wedge to pry back the metal below the sink. Three of the extra sheets tied together were looped like a pulley through the hole in the sink and around a metal table and seat welded into the wall across from the sink/toilet unit. One inmate pulled on the sheets to create pressure while the other sawed down either side of the metal as they bent it back.

It took about seven to nine days to cut down the metal enough so Rigby could fit through, Sanders later told Sheriff’s Office investigators. Sanders said he decided not to go about a week into the process. Futch speculated Sanders was left behind because only Rigby’s much thinner frame could fit through the small hole in the back of the sink, through which the cell’s sewage and water plumbing ran.

The inmates spent the remainder of the two-week period sawing through a piece of half-inch rebar meant to bar off the plumbing hole.

On the morning of Feb. 19, just after midnight, Rigby made his escape. Once he had crawled through the hole in the sink into the small space in the maintenance chase, he only had to pull up an orange rollup door that separated him from the outside. The door was secured with a padlock, but the hinges were bolted into the cement floor with drywall screws and came out relatively easy, Futch said.

Once outside, Rigby climbed up a fence that had razor wire along the top facing the wrong way and chicken wire, meant to keep him from fitting his fingers between the metal, on the opposite side. A long bar jutting over top the razor wire allowed him to climb onto and walk over the fenced roof of the cage high-risk inmates, like himself, were kept inside when they were let into the recreational yard behind the jail.

Jail officials said they believe that, armed with a mattress cover to throw over the razor wire along its bottom, Rigby made a running jump and grabbed onto the outside fence that was his final hurdle in escaping. Once he had climbed up, there was about a foot and a half gap in the razor wire above a vehicle gate that was no longer in use. Rigby climbed through it and jumped down to freedom, leaving his entire inmate uniform and some of his own blood behind as he made a run for his grandmother’s house nearby.

Apart from Caraballo, 17 jail employees have been put on paid administrative leave while the state’s attorney office investigates the charges the county wishes to bring against them. As the investigation continues, eight additional employees could face reprimand, though probably not dismissal, for their part in Rigby’s escape, Futch said.

Futch said he was a firm believer in the fact that no jail was infallible, especially when procedures in security are ignored.