Headlines - 24 May 2000

Detroit Prison Guards Mind-Controlled and Killed, Five Prisoners Escape

(Reuters - 23 May 2000)   The Witherspoon Correctional Facility, located 10 miles west of Detroit, was the scene of a gruesome triple murder Tuesday night, after which five inmate of this low security prison escaped. Originally thought to be a bizarre murder-suicide by three of the guards, officials are now certain that the guards were mind controlled by a powerful mentalist into violently killing themselves.

Dead are Sheriff's Deputies Edward Vanas, 31, John Flynn, 54, and Shane Brown, 29. Still hospitalized in critical condition, is Deputy Mike Andrews, 30. Authorities said each suffered severe self-mutilation. Escaped are Harold Rail, 32, Marcus Kilgore, 42, Salvador Ortega, 25, Benjamin Preston, 64, and Orlando Gillespie, 55.

Detective Sgt. Paul Jurkis, Detroit Police Department, gives this account of the murder and escape:

The bodies of the deputies were found by Deputy Victor Reeves when he was investigating a gunshot he heard while inspecting an adjacent wing of the prison. The bodies of the deputies were found in the laundry. The men had apparently mutilated themselves to death. The gunshot was apparently caused by Deputy Andrews, shooting at one of the escaped convicts. Blood was found nearby that cannot be attributed to any of the slain men, which is currently be examined by the Detroit Police Crime Laboratory for identification. The prison went into an immediate lockdown, and a search conducted. The prisoners, all of the same cell block, were discovered to be missing at this time. Deputy Flynn's Chevy Suburban is missing from the parking lot. How the prisoners got outside is unknown at this time.

"Whoever did this is ruthless," Jurkas said of the murders. Wayne County Prosecutor Tony Tague said he will seek charges against those who helped the convicts and also will file additional charges against them if they had anything to do with the murders.. "I want it to be clear that this type of attack against sheriff's deputies won't be tolerated," Tague told The Detroit Chronicle for a story Tuesday. "This is the most brutal attack on jail officers that I've seen in Wayne County."

No known metahumans were incarcerated at the Witherspoon facility, nor were any of the escapes known to be associated with metahumans. Dr. Hiede Wright, a metahuman expert with PRIMUS, tells us that of all the metahuman traits, mentalists are the rarest. "However did this, to have caused these men to inflict so much damage upon themselves against their wills, is incredibly powerful. The only known paranormal with enough mental stength to have done this would have been Mentalla, who died five years ago in a plane crash".

The escaped prisoners should all be considered dangerous. Rail was serving a life sentence for 1st degree murder, Kilgore a 40 year sentence for second degree murder, Ortega a 45 year sentence for armed robbery, assault, and murder, Preston a 30 year sentence for murder, and Gillespie a 30 year sentence for armed robbery and second degree murder.

Destroyers Escape from PRIMUS Transfer Vehicle

(Jack Collins, Chicago Tribune- 24 May 2000) PRIMUS lost their Most Wanted meta-criminals this afternoon, while transferring them from the PRIMUS holding cells to the federal court building. Counter to PRIMUS standard operating procedures, the Destroyers were neither drugged nor properly restrained to prevent the use of their powers.

The escaped metacriminals - John "Master Blaster" Young, Walter "Fuxion" Schmidt, Neville "Crackerjack" Farnsworth, and Maria "Inferno" Carlton - were apparently aided by their mentalist companion, Denise "Misery" Crosby. Silver Avenger Maria Chow, speaking at a press conference Wednesday morning, said that it appears that Misery seduced and subtly mind-controlled PRIMUS MSgt. Tony Subar, a 17 year PRIMUS veteran. Subar, a PRIMUS jail guard shift supervisor, had apparently been approached by Misery under a disguise at a local nightclub three weeks ago. The two had been dating continuously since then.

Normal transfer procedures call for power-dampening cuffs and helmets to be attached to the prisoners, and for power-suppression drugs to be administered. Instead, a simple saline solution had been given to the prisoners for the past three days, and the power-dampening equipment on Fuxion was sabotaged. Subar himself gives final inspection on the prisoners before they are transferred, and thus these abnormalities weren't discovered. Apparently Subar swapped the drugs with the saline, as well.

During the transfer, Fuxion broke his cuffs, killed PRIMUS Cpl. Kelly Brown, 24, Cpl. Jack Kirby, 25, and Sgt. Marcus Cole, 32. He then freed his companions, who drove the PRIMUS van into a downtown parking lot, and escaped. PRIMUS was alerted that something had gone wrong when the tracking equipment installed on the van showed it was stationary, and slightly off route, for five minutes. Not being able to raise the van on the radio, they scrambled two units of PRIMUS field agents, and the Guardians paranormal team. The van and bodies were quickly located, but no sign of the Destroyers was found.

Chow stressed that policies are being revised to insure that this doesn't happen again. In the meantime, MSgt Subar is on administrative leave pending further investigation, and the most notoriously violent metacriminal group in the history of our nation is loose, perhaps still in Chicago area.