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© St. Petersburg Times, published August 16, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Clayton Lee Waagner, the antiabortion domestic terrorist arrested last year after rising to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, tried to escape this week from a Kentucky jail, according to a newspaper.
Waagner and a fellow inmate at the Boone County Jail were implicated in an unsuccessful scheme to dig out the mortar between the cinder blocks of their maximum-security cell, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Thursday.
The failed plot came to light Monday night, the newspaper said, quoting jail officials who would identify the other inmate only as a murder suspect.
Waagner was the subject of a two-part special report in the St. Petersburg Times on Aug. 4 and 5.
The Boone County Jail is near Cincinnati, where Waagner on Thursday was sentenced in federal court on charges stemming from his Dec. 5, 2001, arrest at a suburban Cincinnati copy shop.
The arrest ended nearly 10 months of crimes that began in February 2001, when Waagner broke out of another jail -- this one in Clinton, Ill. -- claiming God had freed him to kill abortion providers.
In his 10 months on the run last year, Waagner posted threats on the Internet against abortion doctors, robbed banks, crisscrossed the country in stolen vehicles and sent 550 hoax anthrax letters to abortion clinics.
Last September, he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
In January, Waagner was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the Illinois jail break and other charges.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott added 19 1/2 years to Waagner's jail time when she sentenced him for the Cincinnati-related convictions, which included stealing a Mercedes and illegally possessing weapons.