GALVESTON, TX - Texas authorities began searching again this Sunday for a convicted burglar who escaped, this time by climbing seven stories down the side of a building on a rope made of bedsheets, officials said.
Avery Jones Clampett, 21, was last seen at 8:15 p.m. Saturday on the seventh floor of a Texas Department of Criminal Justice medical facility in Galveston, Texas, by an orderly.
"I went to see if he needed clean towels or fresh sheets," the orderly said, "but he wasn't in his bed. I started to look under it, but this little sign popped out that said, 'NOPE! I'M NOT UNDER HERE!' I was like, whatever, I'm not falling for that one, so I looked anyway."
When he did, Clampett reached out from under the bed and squeezed his nose, honking it like a horn.
Moments later, there was a second sign reading "VACANCY" on his bed, but Clampett had disappeared.
Security officers noticed a new door drawn on the wall in pencil, but when they rushed through it to follow Clampett, they smashed into a brick wall.
They later discovered he had tied bedsheets together and rappelled down the side of the building onto the back of a waiting horse, which he rode to Houston, where he caught a taxi to the airport, then took a plane to New York City, where he boarded a train for San Francisco, and there hijacked a rowboat and set out into the Pacific Ocean.
Clampett was serving 35 years in prison for felony convictions and escape charges that included cross-dressing to distract guards and tunneling out of prison with a spoon.
