U.S. marshals arrested a former Utah prison inmate Tuesday after he escaped from a Kansas jail where he was being held on drug charges.
Herbert Ross Montayne, 49, was arrested in Green River after an Emery County sheriff's investigator followed footprints leading from a Utah Highway Patrol office that had been broken into to a motel room. Montayne was hiding in the motel room when the investigator entered it.The UHP office had been broken into and several items were taken, U.S. marshal's office spokesman Doyle Decker said.
"When the investigator went into the motel room, he discovered stolen items from the UHP office," Decker said.
Two or three ceiling tiles in the motel room were missing, and the investigator "found (Montayne) hiding in the attic of the motel room."
Montayne escaped with an accomplice from the Abilene, Dickinson County Jail, Feb. 19. The two hacked through a cell wall, crawled up a chimney and escaped across the roof of the jail.
Montayne was arrested on drug charges in Bountiful in June and was eventually convicted of building a methamphetamine lab in Kansas City, Mo.
He tried to escape from the Salt Lake County Jail in June 1981 when his former wife threw two sticks of dynamite onto the roof of the jail. They had hoped the explosion would blow a hole through the roof and allow him to escape, but the plot failed.
In a December 1970 escape attempt from the Utah Prison, Montayne made it to the outer fence of the facility after using bed sheets to lower himself to the ground from a fan room. He was stopped by a Highway Patrol trooper who was patrolling the grounds.