The last person to escape from state prison custody in Nebraska was Tecumseh State Correctional Institution inmate Michael McGuire.
McGuire was 54 and being taken back to the prison from an appointment at Johnson County Hospital in 2004 when he forced a pair of prison guards at gunpoint to drive him to the Plattsmouth area. He handcuffed the guards to a tree and was captured after holding a man hostage in Omaha for four days. Authorities believe someone had planted the gun for him in a bathroom at the hospital.
McGuire was serving 73 to 193 years for robbery, kidnapping and rape.
Today, he's back at Tecumseh and serving 236 to 463 years after picking up more than a dozen additional charges related to the escape, according to state Department of Correctional Services records and newspaper files.
Inmates walk away from work release from time to time, but Corrections spokesman Andrew Nystrom said he wasn't sure early Friday afternoon if there had been other escapes from maximum-security state prisons between 2004 and 1984, when inmates Noel Heathman and Roger Weikle made history by becoming the first men to go over the wall at the Nebraska State Penitentiary since 1951.
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The two scaled the 30-foot prison wall in broad daylight.
Weikle broke his ankle when he landed on the east side of the prison and was captured later that day. Originally in prison on a two-to-four-year sentence for burglary, he remains at the penitentiary, where he's serving a sentence of 72 to 218 years.
Heathman was arrested six months later in California. At the time of the escape, he was about four years into a life sentence for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 19-year-old convenience store clerk at gunpoint in Omaha in 1980. He died in custody at Tecumseh on Dec. 1, 2014.
Authorities were searching Friday for two men suspected of escaping the Lincoln Correctional Center, a prison near Pioneers Park. Both were serving time for sexual assault.