Authorities capture 2 escaped Fla. convicts, more arrests expected

(CBS/AP) PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. - Two convicted killers serving life sentences were captured Saturday after they were released from prison after providing forged documents. Authorities say they now expect to make more arrests in connection with the case.

Among the questions being posed to Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker: Who forged the papers? Who helped you run from police? What other prisoners have gotten away with this? Who was coming from Atlanta to whisk you out of Florida?

"I can tell you, there will be more arrests," Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey told a news conference Sunday, hours after Jenkins and Walker, both 34, were arrested without incident at a motel in Panama City.

"We will be backtracking to those who helped carry out this fraud and along the way we will be looking closely at anyone who may have helped harbor these fugitives," Bailey said.

Jenkins and Walker, both 34, were captured Saturday night at the Coconut Grove Motor Inn in Panama City Beach, a touristy area of putt-putt courses and go-kart tracks. Hours earlier, their families had held a news conference in Orlando - 350 miles away - urging them to surrender.

Both appeared briefly in court Sunday on the escape charges, reports CBS station WFOR in Miami. They were both being held without bond, and were scheduled to make another appearance Friday.

The men, who had fled the Orlando area after word of their ruse became public, did not know law enforcement was on the way to Panama City. They were waiting in the motel for someone to arrive from Atlanta to take them out of state, Bailey said, adding that authorities don't yet know who that person was or where the convicts planned to go. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is working with Georgia authorities to answer those questions, he said.

"They had to have had help - a lot of help - to get to where they were last night," Bailey said. He said the men were unarmed and didn't have much money on them.

Bailey's department is pursuing a tip that someone was offering to forge documents for prisoners for $8,000. He said there are at least two other recent cases where prisoners were thwarted trying to use fake documents to escape.

"The documents themselves looked good, they looked official," Bailey said, although they contained the signatures of people who normally don't deal with release documents, something that maybe should have raised questions, he said.

Meanwhile, Corrections Secretary Michael Crews scheduled a meeting with court clerks on Monday to find ways to prevent future escapes through bogus documents.

"It is embarrassing, but my concentration at this point is making sure that we come up with a process and a procedure that prohibits this from happening in the future," Crews told a news conference.

Crews has already ordered his department to begin verifying the legitimacy of early-release orders with a judge, not just court clerks. He said his department receives a few thousand such orders each year, although he acknowledged that reduced sentences in murder cases are rare.

He also expressed relief that the men were captured.

"I did a lot of praying for the last five or six days," he said. "To say we're thankful I think is probably an understatement. These were two hardened, convicted felons and the thought of them being out there in our state caused me great concern."

The two prisoners had not been traveling together, but hooked up once word of the forgeries became public and traveled from Orlando to Panama City, said Frank Chiumento, chief of the U.S. Marshals Service for Florida and the Caribbean.

Chiumento told The Associated Press on Sunday that Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker knew their time on the run was limited once their ruse had been uncovered. They were under surveillance for about two and a half days, and the men were surprised when authorities finally knocked on their motel door.

A woman who answered the phone at the motel said she saw police coming and they went into room 227. After authorities left, the parking lot of the two-story motel next to Big Willy's Swimwear was mostly empty.

Jenkins and Walker were both serving life sentences at the Franklin Correctional Facility in the Panhandle before they walked free without anyone realizing the paperwork, complete with case numbers and a judge's forged signature, was bogus. The documents seemingly reduced their life sentences to 15 years.

Jenkins was released first on Sept. 27 and registered himself as a felon Sept. 30 in an Orlando jail. Walker was released Oct. 8 and also registered himself with authorities three days later.

Family members said they thought the releases were legitimate and that the convicts even spent time with their relatives before they disappeared.

Jenkins' uncle, Henry Pearson, drove 300 miles to pick up his nephew from prison. Pearson told CBS News' Mark Strassman that Jenkins stayed with him for a couple of days, and the family never suspected anything was wrong.

"We had no indication anything was amiss," Pearson said.

Jenkins had been locked up since the 1998 killing and botched robbery of Roscoe Pugh, an Orlando man. It wasn't until Tuesday, when one of Pugh's relatives contacted the state attorney's office to let them know Jenkins had been let out, that authorities knew of the escape.

Prosecutors reviewed Jenkins' case file and quickly discovered the forged paperwork, including motions from prosecutors to correct "illegal" sentences, accompanied by orders allegedly filed by Judge Belvin Perry within the last couple of months. The orders granted a 15-year sentence.

Pearson said Jenkins' family only realized he had had escaped when officers showed up looking for him.

"I love him, but if I had an opportunity to talk to him, I would ask him, you know, 'What's the deal? Why would you put us through this if, you know, it's not real?'" Pearson said.

Complete coverage of the escaped Fla. murderers on Crimesider