Women who aided in escape attempts choose prison time

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 | 11:13 a.m.

Two women who were given probation for helping their boyfriends escape from jail in 2003 opted this morning to serve 12 to 30 months in prison in exchange for no new charges being filed against them for trying to help the same men escape from prison in February.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Gerald Gardner said Danielle Tito and Michelle Garoian agreed to not contest the revocation of their probation so that they can avoid facing new charges for assisting their respective boyfriends Jack McLaughlin and Joseph Antonetti in an escape plan for the second time in two years.

District Judge Lee Gates accepted the terms of the negotiation this morning and sentenced Tito and Garoian to 12 to 30 months in prison. Gates could have sentenced them to as much as four to 10 years in prison.

Tito and Garoian pleaded guilty to one count each of aiding a prisoner in attempt to escape for trying to help McLaughlin and Antonetti escape from the Clark County Detention Center in September 2003.

In that case, Gates had issued each a suspended sentence of four to 10 years in prison and placed them on probation.

As a condition of probation neither were to have any contact with McLaughlin or Antonetti, which they both violated by allegedly helping the men escape from prison while being transported from High Desert State Prison on Feb. 16.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo has said McLaughlin and Antonetti's plan was to slip out of their shackles and jump the guards as they were let out of the High Desert State Prison prisoner transport van upon arriving at the prisoner entrance at Bridger and Casino on Feb. 16.

Through letter and phone calls to Tito and Garoian a getaway driver named simply as Tara was to be standing by with fake identification for the pair and be ready to drive McLaughlin and Antonetti away to freedom.

Although both inmates succeeded in getting out of their cuffs, the driver stopped at the Clark County Detention Center instead, and McLaughlin and Antonetti decided to put their cuffs back on and try the plan out at a future date.

The escape plan may have never been discovered if not for an inmate who was riding down from High Desert with McLaughlin and Antonetti, according to prosecutors.

That inmate later informed authorities who then through confiscating mail and telephone records discovered the plan had been discussed by McLaughlin, Antonetti, Tito and Garoian.

Gardner said he is currently waiting on a completed investigation report before decided whether or not McLaughlin and Antonetti will face attempted escape charges.

On Sept. 17, 2003 McLaughlin and Antonetti with help of two other inmates, John Knecht and Charles Smith, at the jail broke the glass out of Knecht's ninth floor cell window and lowered a makeshift rope made out of sheets nine stories to the ground.

There Garoian and Tito attached hacksaw blades, gloves and rope to the sheet. The inmates then lifted the tools back to the cell where the hacksaw blades were used to cut through the metal bars in order to escape through the window.

DiGiacomo said jailhouse conversations between McLaughlin and Tito. helped authorities uncover McLaughlin and Antonetti's conspiracy to commit murder.

McLaughlin and Antonetti are charged in connection with that alleged conspiracy and area also charged with attempted escape and possession by a prisoner of tools to escape. They were on their way for a hearing on the conspiracy case when they were planning to escape last month.

Antonetti is already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Mary Amina, 20, the attempted murder of her boyfriend Danny Stewart, 30, and the attempted murder of his former roommate, 34-year-old Suzanne Smith.

McLaughlin is currently serving prison time for an attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon conviction.