Prison staff warned that Danilo Cavalcante was planning an escape a month before he broke out, emails reveal
Cavalcante was considered an escape risk when he was admitted to Chester County prison in 2021.
A corrections officer at Chester County Prison warned staff that Danilo Cavalcante was preparing to escape weeks before he broke out, according to county officials.
“I am just sending this cause I don’t want this to come back on us or [Officer Gerardo] Hernandez in any way. He noted back in July that this inmate was planning an escape,” Sgt. Jerry Beavers wrote in an email to Capt. Harry Griswold hours after Cavalcante escaped on Aug. 31 by crab-walking up the prison’s wall onto its roof. The email was first reported by ABC News.
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Cavalcante — who had been sentenced to life in prison for stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death in front of her children — was moved to a maximum-security unit at the state correctional facility at Phoenix after evading police for two weeks. During the manhunt across Chester County, authorities say, he stole a van from a dairy; contacted former coworkers for help; broke into a house in West Chester and took peaches, apples and snap peas; and then stole a rifle from a home in South Coventry Township.
He was captured behind a tractor dealership in Pottstown on Sept. 13. The prison guard on watch when Cavalcante escaped was fired.
» READ MORE: Two weeks on edge: How law enforcement tracked down an escaped murderer in Chester County
That July warning from a corrections officer was not the first time Cavalcante was considered a flight risk.
A source at the Chester County prison, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, said Tuesday that Cavalcante was considered a risk of escape the entire time he was incarcerated at the facility. He was being held at the county prison while awaiting a transfer to a state prison.
During Cavalcante’s trial, he was taken to the county courthouse in West Chester in a “chase car,” a vehicle that sheriff deputies use in pursuits, rather than the standard vehicle used for carrying prisoners. It was done, the source said, as an extra layer of precaution, because Cavalcante had tried to flee to Mexico after killing his ex.
Chester County spokesperson Rebecca Brain said Tuesday that Cavalcante “was initially identified as an escape risk” when he was admitted to the prison in 2021. In addition, county officials had received “unsubstantiated information from an unknown source” that Cavalcante planned to escape around the time of his trial, according to Brain.
Before Cavalcante escaped, Chester County Prison took security measures for inmates identified as an escape risk only when they were being taken off prison property, Brain said in a statement to The Inquirer. That policy, she said, was one reason the Prison Board put new leadership in place.
The prison has since made changes to the way it handles inmates at risk of escape under Acting Warden Howard Holland, whose first day on the job was the day Cavalcante ran away. The changes include assigning one or two corrections officers to monitor high-risk inmates when they are outside of their cells, Brain said.
The email from Beavers was forwarded to Holland after the escape so that the then-new warden “knew that information about an escape was previously noted,” according to Brain.
Cavalcante was not the first inmate to escape from Chester County Prison in 2023: Igor Bolte broke out of the facility in May by scaling the walls of the prison yard in the same manner.
After that, the prison began adding razor wire to gaps on the roof but hadn’t yet completed the job when Cavalcante escaped, Holland told residents at a town-hall meeting in September.
» READ MORE: Chester County residents voice anger, concerns at town hall after Danilo Cavalcante prison escape: ‘I couldn’t sleep’
Holland promised additional security measures at the facility, including more razor wire, 50 to 75 new security cameras, and a dedicated officer to monitor those cameras around the clock, as well as potential GPS monitoring for high-risk inmates.
“I want you to honestly know, from the bottom of my heart, that I am embarrassed and angry for what happened,” Holland said at the town-hall meeting. “But I’m here to tell you that I believe I can make things better.”