Serial Rapist and Murderer back behind bars
~~Adz:Left~~ CHRISTIANSTED, St. Croix – JEFFREY Warner, a 45 year-old native of St. Kitts who was serving four life sentences escaped from a St. Croix prison recently but was recaptured last Thursday and is awaiting resentencing.
An arraignment has been scheduled April 9 when Warner will go before a V.I. Superior Court Judge to answer to the charge of ‘escaping lawful custody’.
Warner made his escape from prison by fastening a sheet to a roof beam in the basketball court area and slipping through the fenced ‘ceiling’ of the Golden Grove Adult Correctional Facility on March 15.
It was reported in the VI Daily News that a Correction Bureau Officer saw Warner’s prison cell ajar on the said night but closed it without checking to see if the inmate was inside.
A manhunt was launched and neighboring St. Thomas was also put on alert as Warner was considered a ‘very serious threat’ especially to young girls.
Warner was convicted and sentenced for the murder of 19-year-old Yathera Corona in 1999 and was also convicted and sentenced for three counts of first-degree aggravated rape, with two of the victims being 13 and 15 year-old girls that he raped at knifepoint behind a school on St. Thomas where he resided before his arrest.
DNA evidence collected in the rape case involving the young girls also tied him to other rapes of young teenage girls in an area near to a busy shopping centre on that island.
Warner surrendered himself to police after authorities tracked him to a hillside in Estate La Grange.
V.I. Attorney General Vincent Frazer reportedly said that after his resentencing, Warner will be housed off-island in a maximum security prison.
It was also reported that the circumstances surrounding Warner’s escape are being investigated.
US Virgin Islands News