Final peanut-butter escapee recaptured

MIAMI — The last of 12 inmates who escaped an Alabama lockup by tricking a guard with peanut butter is back in jail after persuading his sister to drive him to Florida, a sheriff said.

Martin County Sheriff William Snyder announced Tuesday night that investigators “zeroed in” on a house on a quiet street in Tequesta, just north of West Palm Beach, where a car with an Alabama license plate was parked outside.

A short time later, Brady Kilpatrick, 24, was arrested, along with his sister, Jensen Davis Lefan, 18; her boyfriend, Hayden Thomas Mayberry, 24; and Mayberry’s childhood friend, Dakota Anthony, 23.

Kilpatrick escaped Sunday from the jail in Walker County, Ala., where inmates tricked a guard into letting them out by using peanut butter to alter a number over a cell door. Authorities said the inexperienced guard, watching 150 inmates through security cameras from a control room, thought he was opening the cell at an inmate’s request, when in fact, the peanut-buttered number he punched in released a door to the outside.

A dozen inmates fled, throwing off their orange jail uniforms and running in every direction.

“He told us that he never stopped running,” Snyder said. “He actually ran for two hours and never got pinned down.”

Lefan, of Cordova, Ala., told investigators that her brother called her shortly after the escape, asking for a ride. She and Mayberry borrowed a car from his roommate and picked up Kilpatrick a short time later. He hopped in and told her “Go!” according to an arrest affidavit. Five to 10 minutes later, he told them he’d escaped from jail, cutting his hands when he climbed a 15-foot fence topped with razor wire.

Belinda Ann Weldon, an Alabama attorney representing Kilpatrick on drug and burglary charges that landed him in jail, said she hasn’t talked to him since the jailbreak. He and the other prisoners are being charged in Alabama with escape, she said.

Jail records don’t list attorneys for any of the arrestees. Lefan and Mayberry face charges of facilitating escape and hindering apprehension of a fugitive in Alabama, as well as aiding and abetting a fugitive in Florida.