Mobster's Jailbreak Plan: Floss, Hacksaw Blade, Crash Diet and a Priest

But first he had to make sure he could fit through the hole he intended to create.

So Londonio, a portly man, embarked on an intense exercise routine of cardio and chin-ups and picked up a fiber-heavy diet to shed weight and ensure he could squeeze out of a jail cell window.

His plan, which was detailed in a recently unsealed FBI report, was ultimately foiled after a fellow inmate reported it to officials, and federal prosecutors eventually charged Londonio in September 2017 with attempted escape. He has pleaded not guilty.

The 10-page report, compiled from three interviews with the unnamed inmate, offered a more detailed picture of a dramatic, complex escape plan that prosecutors likened to a “script for a made-for-TV movie.”

A redacted version of the report was unsealed this month at the request of Jerry Capeci, a longtime Mafia reporter who first wrote about the document on his website, Gang Land News.

Londonio, now 45, was first detained at the Brooklyn federal jail in February 2017 on murder, racketeering and weapons charges, with prosecutors linking him to the killing of a gangster, Michael Meldish, in the Bronx in 2013.

Officials also accused Londonio of being part of a long-running conspiracy involving members of the Mafia and linked him to the Lucchese family, one of New York’s five infamous criminal family enterprises.

Londonio, who was awaiting trial, believed he could face a life sentence or the death penalty in his case, according to the report. He told the unnamed inmate that he had “nothing to lose” from an escape attempt and that he and an unnamed Bloods gang member had devised a complex plan.

Londonio’s father, the report said, had told him of a construction flaw in the windows of the Metropolitan Detention Center’s cells. Londonio planned to exploit it by cutting caulking from around the window with a razor, punching holes on the sides of the window, according to the report. He also planned to use dental floss, braided together, to saw through the glass.

The floss was smuggled in by Londonio’s mother, according to the report. He told his fellow inmate that at least twice, his mother hid the floss in condoms she then hid in food purchased from a jail vending machine. Londonio swallowed one condom and hid the other in his underwear.

After cutting through the glass, Londonio would still need to remove the steel guarding the windows. For that, the report said, he intended to use a diamond-tipped hacksaw blade smuggled into the jail by a “sympathetic priest.”

Afterward, Londonio and the Bloods member planned to climb down the side of the building using bedsheets he had been stockpiling in his cell, according to the report.

Londonio had initially considered escaping through an air duct in the prison’s gym but soon realized he wouldn’t fit, the FBI agents wrote in their report.

To guarantee he would be able to squeeze through his cell window, Londonio began eating “lots of bran” and was exercising feverishly, running on jail stairs and grinding through chin-ups, the report said.

Londonio’s father was then going to meet the would-be escapees near the jail and provide them with “a bag of guns” before taking them to a safe house nearby. To prevent them from being detected en route, Londonio was going to dye the inmates’ shirts with Kool-Aid.

Initially, they were going to wait for media attention around the escape to die down before relocating upstate to a family home in Monticello, New York, a small town in the Catskills, the report said.

But an incensed Londonio revised the plan, the report said, to include a stop in the Bronx to kill the wife of his co-defendant, Matthew Madonna. (After the couple ignored Londonio’s parents at a court hearing, Londonio apparently took umbrage at the perceived disrespect.)

According to the report, the unnamed inmate became “increasingly anxious” that Londonio and his co-conspirator might actually go through with their plan, especially after Londonio said he had sought permission for the priest to visit the jail.

Worried he might be implicated in the jailbreak, the inmate revealed the plan to prison psychologists.

In the FBI report, the anonymous inmate also told officials that Londonio spoke frequently about his role in Meldish’s death, admitted to being involved in drug businesses and said that his mother smuggled an opioid treatment drug, Suboxone, into the jail.

Londonio has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His lawyer, John Meringolo, said Friday that the details in the FBI report were “all false.”

“It’s a government-created crime to prejudice the jury on the other counts,” he said.

Since the 1990s, the power of the city’s five traditional Mafia organizations has seemed to be on the decline, particularly as officials boosted their use of racketeering laws to loosen the Mafia’s control over certain industries and unions.

Still, the criminal clans still exert influence in the city and the region, and cases against them have continued. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged 20 suspected associates of the Colombo family of racketeering, extortion and loan-sharking charges, including a scheme to fix a college basketball game.

This article originally appeared in

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Mobster's Jailbreak Plan: Floss, Hacksaw Blade, Crash Diet and a Priest

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