Oklahoma escapees believed to have stolen car

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- Two inmates, including one who is serving a life sentence for murder and another convicted of kidnapping, escaped from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester early Monday.

The inmates were reported missing from a maximum security wing at the prison about 5 a.m., said Jerry Massie, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. The pair's escape went unnoticed by prison guards until they were discovered missing from their cells and no one inside the prison was overpowered in the breakout.

No injuries were reported, he said.

Massie identified the escapees as James Robert Thomas, 25, and Willie Lee Hoffman, 21.

Thomas was convicted of the March 1993 rape and murder of Jessie M. Roberts, an 81-year-old woman who had hired him to mow her lawn.

Prosecutors said Roberts was strangled with a telephone cord and raped while she was unconscious.

Massie said Thomas, 17 at the time of the slaying, was sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder in November 1997. He received an additional 400 years in prison for rape, Massie said.

Hoffman is serving a total of 20 years for kidnapping and other charges out of Oklahoma and Payne counties, Massie said.

The inmates were suspected of stealing a car in the McAlester area around 10 a.m., said Sterling Taylor, a dispatcher for the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Office.

"They are on the road. And we don't know which way they are headed," Taylor said.

The vehicle was described as a white 1995 four-door Oldsmobile with a maroon stripe. The license tag is PIJ-074.

The escape is the first from the high-security unit at the prison known as H Unit, Massie said. Authorities do not know how the pair managed the escape, Massie said.

"That's what we're looking at," he said.

Thomas and Hoffman have escaped previously from Oklahoma jails and prisons. Authorities said Thomas escaped from the Oklahoma County Jail in November 1994. Hoffman previously escaped from the Payne County Jail in August 1998 and a private prison in Cushing in December 1997.

Massie said corrections officials and local law enforcement agencies have mounted a search using tracking dogs in the remote area around the prison.

"They were able to get some type of track, but I don't have any update on it," he said.

Both inmates are considered dangerous but there was no evidence that the two had armed themselves before they fled the prison, Massie said.

Each of the men is white, Massie said. Hoffman was described as 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 130 pounds with brown eyes and black hair. Thomas was described as 5 feet 9 inches tall weighing 160 pounds with brown eyes and black hair.