Inmate admits escape attempt
NORRISTOWN >> A convicted Berks County child killer’s daring attempt to escape from custody via a tunnel below a former state prison in Skippack Township was thwarted and now he faces even more time behind bars.
David Charles Cummings, 54, formerly of the 1000 block of Walnut Street, Reading, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to one to two years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempted escape in connection with his June 28, 2018, attempt to break free from the former State Correctional Institution at Graterford.
Accepting a plea agreement, Judge Thomas C. Branca imposed the punishment consecutively to the total 36-to-85-year term Cummings was already serving in connection with the 2003 fatal beating of a 3-year-old Reading boy and multiple burglary-related incidents in 2004.
Assistant District Attorney John N. Gradel said essentially, Cummings will spend the rest of his life in prison. Cummings currently is housed at the State Correctional Institution at Frackville in Schuylkill County.
“Given his age, it is highly unlikely that he will make parole at his minimum, given the prior charges of crimes of violence. Even if he did, he would be well into his 70s,” Gradel said. “He’ll either never be released from prison or if he is, he’ll be a feeble, old man.
“I believe the extra one to two years has less effect on him personally than it does on other inmates who saw what he did, that you are going to get consecutive time if you try to escape,” Gradel added. “I believe it’s more general deterrence. I’m convinced he’ll die in prison, no matter what the sentence was.”
Cummings, according to an arrest affidavit filed by state police, broke a window in a dayroom to gain access to a yard between A and B blocks at the former Skippack prison about 9 p.m. and then used a metal shelf and air conditioning unit to gain access to the roof of B block.
Cummings, once off the roof, entered the prison “powerhouse,” which provided power to the entire prison, and then gained access to a tunnel.
“At one point he was in a tunnel. It’s my understanding that there was a gate at the end of the tunnel. Even had he gotten through the gate, he would not have been beyond the walls of Graterford,” Gradel explained. “He was caught in the tunnel and he immediately admitted to prison personnel that he was trying to escape.”
According to a criminal complaint filed by State Police Trooper Richard Sanzick, of the Skippack barracks, Cummings told police he went “straight across to the powerhouse after the guards went by” on their normal patrol.
“He explained that he did not do anything but that he was waiting for the guards to search and then would make his move. Cummings related that the guards made contact with him in the tunnel under the powerhouse,” Sanzick wrote in the arrest affidavit.
“Cummings talked about a plan to go over the wall by putting a ladder up against the portion where there is a fence…and talked about using rope or cable,” Sanzick added. “He indicated no one assisted him with his plan to escape.”
The attempted escape occurred just days before the Graterford facility was officially closed on July 15, 2018, and inmates were transferred to the new, nearby facility, the State Correctional Institution at Phoenix. The transfer of inmates from Graterford to Phoenix took place July 11 to July 15.
At the time of the attempted escape, Cummings was serving a total 36-to-85year prison term, according to court documents.
On May 26, 2016, Cummings, then 51, pleaded guilty in Berks County Court to a third-degree murder charge in connection with the July 25, 2003, beating death of his stepson, 3-yearold William E. Spayd. The boy, who went by the nickname “Hoover,” suffered injuries to his head, chest, back, pelvis and a fatal blow to his stomach, according to a report at the time in the Reading Eagle.
Berks County Judge Madelyn S. Fudeman sentenced Cummings to 15 to 40 years in state prison, as part of a plea agreement. The murder sentence was imposed consecutively to a more than two-decade term Cummings received in 2004 on multiple burglary-related charges, according to court records.
The murder went unsolved for more than a decade until Cummings confessed in 2015.