Authorities are on lookout for escaped felon
DOWNTOWN LA — A potential three-strike criminal, accused of twice kidnapping an elderly Santa Monica woman, escaped from police custody on Tuesday and remains at large.
Authorities are looking for Alfonzo Fitzgerald Taylor, who walked away from the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center the day before his jury trial was set to begin on charges of receiving stolen property and unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle.
Taylor, 41, who has also been charged with seven counts relating to two separate kid-nappings of a Sunset Park woman last fall, never showed up to court on Wednesday for the jury trial relating to the stolen car charges. Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Eric Harmon, who is prosecuting that case, said jury selection would have most likely begun Wednesday and the trial would have started within the next two days.
“I came to court and Judge (David) Wesley informed me that (Taylor) had escaped,” Harmon said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Taylor had appeared in court on Tuesday for a pre-trial conference, but has since disappeared.
“He apparently walked away from the criminal courts building,” said Whitmore, who declined to discuss specific operating procedures for transporting inmates to and from jail and courthouses. “We have a full dragnet looking for him and there are several issues we are examining to find out what happened.”
Authorities discovered Taylor missing at about 6 a.m. Wednesday when he wasn’t accounted for at the Northern County Correctional Facility in Santa Clarita, where he had been in custody awaiting his fate.
“They do a count every morning and he wasn’t there,” Whitmore said, adding that inmates also are scanned and counted each time they are transported via bus to the courthouse. “From time to time, people do slip through the system.”
Taylor, who is black, was last seen wearing a white county jail jumpsuit. He is six feet, four inches tall, 215 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.
Taylor was in custody pending trial for a 2004 kidnapping and robbery that occurred in the 1000 block of Bay Street in Santa Monica.
Taylor faces seven felony charges related to two separate incidents, one on Oct. 18, and the second on Nov. 4.
Prosecutors allege Taylor twice kidnapped the same 75-year-old woman, stole from her and threatened to kill her with a syringe and screwdriver.
Former Olympic Silver Medalist Danny Harris was first charged with the crime in November. Police arrested Harris after trained bloodhounds following the scent of a hat left by the kidnapper led authorities to Harris’ room at the Clare Foundation, a rehabilitation facility located off of Lincoln Boulevard south of Interstate 10. Harris tested positive for drugs in 1996 and was barred from competing in the Olympics. He has struggled for years with a cocaine addiction. Harris, who captured the silver medal in track in the 1984 Olympics, spent nearly two months in jail before he was cleared of the charges.
Subsequent laboratory tests showed the kidnapper’s hat contained Taylor’s DNA. Taylor was already in custody on the stolen car charges. The two men, who share similar physical characteristics, claimed not to know one another.
Prosecutors initially refused to drop the charges against Harris, claiming the two men may have been working together. Though the victim only saw one kidnap-per, at one point she said the kidnapper threatened to kill her and burn down her house, and referenced two accomplices.
Prosecutors at the time pointed to three eyewitnesses who picked Harris out of a photo lineup. The three witnesses were a next-door neighbor who chased off the kidnapper with a gun, a nearby resident who saw the kidnapper strip off his shirt while fleeing the scene and the victim, who picked Harris along with two other people in the photo lineup as possibly the person who assaulted her. Authorities said the shirt the kidnapper left as he fled the scene also contained Taylor’s DNA.
Two live police lineups were conducted in January to see if the eyewitnesses would tie Taylor to the kidnappings. In the first lineup, Taylor stood in a line with five inmates. In the second lineup, Harris stood with five different inmates. None of the witnesses picked Harris. The elderly victim identified Taylor, and the other witnesses picked different prisoners, lawyers said.
In February, Taylor was charged with one count of kidnapping to commit another crime; two counts of first-degree burglary; two counts of first-degree residential robbery and two counts of making criminal threats.
Taylor also faces one count of unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle; one count of receiving stolen property; one count of resisting a police officer and one count of driving as an unlicensed driver. Those charges, which he was to stand trial for this week, stem from him allegedly stealing a car in Las Vegas, said Los Angeles District Attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison.
Taylor is a twice-convicted felon — he served two years in state prison for a 1991 conviction for burglary and he served 12 years in state prison for a 1994 conviction for burglary. Both crimes occurred in Torrance, said DA spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.
Meanwhile, a bench warrant was issued on Wednesday for Taylor, whose bail for the Santa Monica crimes had been set at more than $2 million. A jury trial for the Santa Monica kidnapping and burglary charges was set to begin on June 14 at the LAX Courthouse, Robison said.
That’s if authorities can find him before then.
“Our fugitive detail is out in full force,” Whitmore said. “We will find him.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 5, 2005. Read the original PDF.