Two Murderers Escape From Pen

By SANDY FITZGERALD

The Intelligencer Staff - November 17, 1988

Two murderers serving life sentences used a prison truck to smash through a gate at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville Wednesday afternoon, then escaped in a Department of Corrections vehicle equipped with a police radio.

By press-time, there were two reported sightings of the escapees including one from a trucker who said he was almost run off the road by the escapees' vehicle minutes after they broke out.

Also, according to the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, a Beallsville Police Officer sighted a car fitting the description of the escape vehicle heading west on Ohio 145 about 5 p.m.

The officer thought the car contained prison officials looking for the inmates but found out 20 minutes later that the Penitentiary car fit the description of the vehicle used in the escape, said a sheriff's deputy. The deputy theorized that the escapees were heading for Interstate 70 "by way of the back roads."

The escapees were identified as Freddy Rakes, 29 of Lincoln County and Dickie Wimmer, 36 of Wyoming County. Both men were serving life sentences without chance of parole.

According to Warden Jerry Hedrick, Rakes and Wimmer had been working in the Penitentiary's motor pool about 3:40 p.m. when Rakes suddenly jumped into a prison maintenance truck and rammed through a chain-link gate as unarmed supervisors stood by. Wimmer followed behind in a Department of Corrections vehicle, and the two them abandoned the pickup truck a block away from the prison and sped off in the state car.

The getaway car was described as a gold, four-door Dodge Diplomat sedan with a Penitentiary insignia on the doors and green state license plate with the number 9292. The vehicle was equipped with a police radio, meaning the escapees could monitor radio calls. Authorities said the car apparently has a full tank of gas.

Roadblocks were immediately set up in West Virginia and Ohio, but were removed a short while later after there had been no sign of the fugitives' car.

Authorities from the prison, West Virginia State Police, the Marshall County Sheriff's Office and members of the Ohio and Pennsylvania state police were combing the tri-state area in search of the two escaped convicts.

"We believe they went across the 12th Street Bridge into Ohio. The reason for that is because we had a report from a truck driver on the Ohio side that a car answering the description of the prison car almost hit him," Hedrick said. Although the escapees' destination was unknown, the warden pointed out it is easier get into Ohio than to risk driving on sparsely-populated back roads to get to Pennsylvania.

Rakes, who is from Hamlin, has been an inmate at the Penitentiary since March 1981. He was sentenced to life without mercy after being convicted of first-degree murder for killing an elderly Lincoln County man in September 1980 by shooting him several times, then running over the victim twice in a pickup truck. Rakes was hit with an additional 75 years in prison for committing robbery by violence in connection with the old man's murder.

Wimmer, a Wyoming County native, has been an inmate at the maximum-security facility since June 1979. Wimmer is serving two life sentences for shooting to death his estranged wife and two young children in January 1979.

Hedrick did not know if the two men were armed, but said both should be considered dangerous.

Rakes is white, 6 feet tall and 190 pounds with light brown hair and blue eyes. He has a tattoo of a cross on his right forearm, a 1-inch scar on his left forearm and a burn scar on his left shoulder, and sometimes wears eyeglasses.

Wimmer is white, 5-foot 9-inches tall and 165 pounds, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Authorities say he has no identifying marks or tattoos.

Although Hedrick did not have the pair's prison disciplinary records available, he said he did not believe they had caused trouble in the past because they were allowed to work at the motor pool, located outside the 122 year-old Penitentiary walls. He said the pair had been working on the Department of Corrections car for several days and that Rakes had just changed one of the car's tires when he leaped into the maintenance truck and drove through the gate, which is topped with barbed wire.

"I have not had the opportunity to talk to the supervisors," Hedrick said. "It happened so fast that I doubt that anyone could have stopped them."

Hedrick planned to conduct an internal investigation. He was not sure if the convicts planned the breakout "or whether it was a spur of the moment thing," but noted it occurred while other inmates were milling around the recreation yard.

"There was plenty of diversion," he said.