Rapist, Murderer Escape Ore. Prison
March 1 -- A rapist and a torture murderer escaped together from an Oregon prison on Wednesday night after cutting a hole in a fence.
For one of the inmates, life as a fugitive didn't last long. Aaron O'Hara, 23, was captured by an officer patrolling the roads near the prison in Ontario, Ore., state corrections officials said. O'Hara, now back in prison, is serving a six-year sentence for sodomy, sex abuse and two counts of rape.
His cohort in the escape, Lee John Knoch, 23, remained at large and authorities were scouring the area. Ontario is in eastern Oregon, midway between Portland, Ore. and Salt Lake City, Utah.
By all accounts, Knoch has a viciously violent past. In 1998, he was convicted of aggravated murder, assault, kidnapping, theft by extortion and harassment and was serving a life sentence without parole.
The details of the crime are particularly brutal: Knoch killed a 34-year-old Oregon man named Robert Holliday to keep him from testifying that Knoch previously had tortured him.
Notorious Case Led to Ballot Measure
Knoch, who was free on bail at the time of Holliday's slaying, was awaiting trial on charges that he allegedly kidnapped Holliday in 1995 and tortured him over a two-week period, leaving him with 11 broken ribs, heat and chemical burns, and internal bleeding.
Holliday was clubbed, his throat and wrists slit, and then buried alive in March 1997, only days before Knoch's torture trial was set to begin.
Knoch's case was notorious in Oregon and inspired a ballot measure, passed in 1999, that allows judges to deny bail to any defendant deemed a danger to a victim or the community at large.
Holliday's brother Brad filed a lawsuit in 1999 accusing a senior pretrial release officer of violating his brother's civil rights because he said Knoch had breached the terms of his release several times while out on bail.
The case also named Knoch's father, who Brad Holliday argued had accepted responsibility to help oversee his son's compliance with release terms, but neglected that duty. Holliday later settled the suit, which also named the city and state, for $112,000.
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