Let-off for pair who helped jail break-out

The sister and girlfriend of a violent prisoner have been let off with suspended sentences for helping the thug after he broke out of jail in an Alcatraz-style breakout.

Matthew Baker, 29, and James Whitlock, 32, fooled guards at HMP Pentonville with blankets and pillows to make it look like they were still in bed.

They escaped by sawing through the bars of the cell with a diamond tipped saw and using their sheets as ropes on 7 November last year.

Baker broke his leg in two places during the escape and was discovered hiding under a bed at his sister’s house in Ilford, Essex, two days later.

He applied a home-made cast of wall filler so tightly he almost had to have his leg amputated, but surgeons at Royal London Hospital managed to save it.

Whitlock was arrested at a house in Shepherds Lane, Homerton, east London, six days later.

Baker’s sister, Kelly Baker, 21,admitted helping her brother by buying him black dye to conceal his distinctive ginger hair.

A search found a receipt for hair dye in Kelly’s purse.

When Baker was arrested he shouted ‘I’m not saying anything. Kell, tell them I’ve only just got here’.’

Baker had also been communicating with his girlfriend Chelsea Gibson, 23, from prison using an illegal phone and had told her of his plans.

In a series of texts she said to him: ‘All you do is graft, don’t y’a? You need to be out and all that shizzle.’

She also asked him: ‘Why did you only tell me what you are doing and no one else? Before you said you couldn’t trust me with anything.’

In a text sent late at night, Baker replied ‘I’m going back to work now’ – thought to refer to the sawing of the bars.

Gibson helped Baker to get a taxi once he was outside the prison walls and handed him a wad of cash to help him get to his sister’s house.

Kelly Baker, of Friars Close, Ilford, admitted harbouring an escaped prisoner and Gibson, of Four Seasons Close, Bow, admitted assisting an offender at Blackfriars Crown Court.

They were both sentenced to eight months jail, suspended for 18 months.

Baker was told to complete 100 hours of unpaid work while Gibson was also ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work.

Matthew Baker was on remand at the time awaiting sentence at the time for trying to murder 25-year old Matthew Bennett with glass and a knife, at a flat in Lewis Way, Dagenham, Essex.

Mr Bennett was left with nearly 50 scars to his body as well as injuries to his heart and lung and brain via a stab to the ear and needed emergency surgery to save his life.

Whitlock was on remand in Pentonville Prison at the time for conspiring to burgle cash machines.

He was part of a gang who blew up ATMs with welding gas bottles to steal £290,660 from cash machines inside 13 takeaways and other small business.

Baker escaped the fifth-floor wing of Pentonville jail with Whitlock just two days before he was due to be sentenced.

The pair had arranged pillows in their beds to dupe guards on patrol into thinking they were asleep.

They cut through their window bars using a the saw and a pair of wire cutters which may have been flown into the prison on a drone.

Moments later the pair squeezed through the gap and abseiled to the ground using their bed sheets as rope.

Matthew Baker, of no fixed address, and Whitlock, of Staplefield Close, Chelmsford, Essex, admitted breaking prison. Baker was jailed for 30 months last month while Whitlock was sentenced to two years imprisonment.

Whitlock was jailed for four and a half years for conspiracy to burgle in March this year, while Baker was jailed for life with a minimum of 10 years at Snaresbrook Crown Court last December for trying to murder Mr Bennett.

The escape of the two men was just one of a string of high-profile security breaches at HMP Pentonville.

In October last year, two weeks before the escape, Jamal Mahmoud, 21, died after suffering stab wounds to the neck – he was housed on G wing, the same wing as Baker and Whitlock.

A recent damning report found that 84% of prisoners in Pentonville had physical or mental health problems and faced long delays for treatment.

As many as one in five were being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs.
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