CONVICTED rapist and murderer Antonis ‘Al Capone’ Kitas escaped from a private Nicosia hospital during the early hours of yesterday.
While police and prison officials grappled to come to terms with how one of the island’s highest profile, life sentence prisoners managed to give authorities the slip, Justice Minister Kypros Chrysostomides submitted his resignation.
Reports of lax security measures and unconfirmed sightings of Capone, 42, outside the hospital over the past month circulated throughout the day.
Kitas gave his three prison guards the slip just before 2am when he climbed out of his room’s window on the second floor. Sources said the guards were fast asleep and only stirred when police arrived at the Appollonion to notify them of their ward’s escape.
Police chief Iacovos Papacostas said the convict, who has served 14 years for the brutal murder of two women, and three other men were spotted in a suspicious vehicle at around 2am near Stasicratous Street.
Three patrols cars, who were in the area responding to a tip-off of a potential robbery, attempted to cut off the car and it was only when Capone emerged from the vehicle holding a gun that one officer identified the convict. The escapee attempted to shoot at the officers but the weapon misfired. As police fired back, the car sped off, crashing into and destroying the three patrol cars, Papacostas said.
Arrest warrants have been issued for Capone and two of the other men. The identity of the fourth man is still being established.
Meanwhile Larnaca police kept close watch over Athienou village where the escaped convict was born and raised. United Nations and police patrol cars were also dispatched to the area which lies in the buffer zone. A police helicopter and officers patrolled the Green Line, and road blocks were set up at various checkpoints with armed police stopping cars for inspection.
Investigators were also examining the possibility that the escape had been planned.
The rumour-mill was running hot yesterday, with some saying Capone had been injured in the shootout and others saying he had died and his body had been dumped. Some speculated that he had made plans to escape north and then travel to China with his Chinese wife, who he married at Aradippou town hall in April 2006, while others told grand tales of the underworld goings-on from his hospital bed, including grand scale bribery and horserace fixing.
A history of escape attempts
THE CONVICT has a history of attempted escapes. In 1986, Capone was serving a sentence in the prison’s juvenile wing when he and four other inmates broke out from the open prison. He was later caught and returned to complete his term.
Eight years later he was jailed for life and in March 1999 a prison warden was arrested after Capone bribed him to help him escape.
But sources speculated the convict was only in the area to assist in a robbery and had plans to return to his hospital bed before his watchers woke.
“He had every reason to want to go back. He had heard the stories that he could be eligible for parole after serving 15 years and wouldn’t have wanted to risk jeopardising that. He’d married, was on his best behaviour and was waiting to hear if his application to go abroad for surgery would be approved.
“He would have wanted to show a parole board that he deserved a second chance,” a Justice Ministry official said.
Although a parole system does not yet exist in Cyprus, discussions to introduce one are currently under way, following pressure from EU human rights watchdogs. Up until now a life sentence has literally meant until the end of a prisoner’s life. When the parole system comes into effect, lifers could go before a review board after serving 15 years.
Capone was serving a life sentence at Nicosia’s Central Prisons for the murder of Oksana Lisna, 20, and the rape and murder of Christina Ahfeldt, 28, in 1993.
He and his accomplice, Michalis Iakovides, were sentenced in 1994.
He had been recuperating at the Appollonion following a Medical Council referral in May for gastric reflux, prison sources said. Hospital doctors refused to comment on their patient’s medical condition.
Capone was paying for his treatment privately. A private room, excluding medical costs, is around €250 a day, which would have amounted to a total in the region of €45,000. Prison authorities said it was not within their jurisdiction to investigate where a convict got the money to pay for treatment.
Justice Minister resigns in wake of scandal
JUSTICE Minister Kypros Chrysostomides yesterday submitted his resignation following the escape of convicted rapist and murderer Antonis ‘Al Capone’ Kitas.
The announcement was overshadowed by the news of former President Tassos Papadopoulos’ death and it was not made known whether President Demetris Christofias accepted.
The minister also called for the suspension of all the prison guards involved in the debacle, including the Central Prisons’ Head of Security and the Prison Director.
Chrysostomides said he planned to ask for the appointment of an independent investigator to examine the circumstances from the convict’s hospital admission to his escape.
Anyone who bore any responsibility in the incident would be held accountable, he said.
Chrysostomides accused the Central Prisons’ management of negligence following previous escapes in recent months and vowed that Capone’s escape would be fully investigated.
“The police are putting in every effort to find and arrest the escapee. There is information, actions are being taken and I’m confident the convict will be arrested,” he said.
But sources said they had information police had known about Capone’s planned robbery.
“We were told they’d received a tip-off that he was taking part in a break-in, which is why there were so many patrol cars lying in wait.
“It wasn’t a coincidence that they were all there just when he happened to show up. What needs to be addressed is why the prisons’ management was not informed,” he said.
A rapist and a murdered serving life
ANTONIS Prokopiou Kitas was sentenced to life imprisonment in March 1994 for the murder of Ukrainian artiste Oxanna Lisna.
Five months later he was found guilty for the abduction, rape and murder of Swedish mother-of-two Christina Ahfeldt Constantinidou.
He was 28 at the time.
His accomplice Michalis Iakovides was also found guilty of the same crimes.
Lisna’s decomposed body was found first at the bottom of a well in Larnaca on October 29, 1993. She had disappeared from Ayia Napa on June 20 of the same year where she had been with her boyfriend and two other men on her night off from Nicosia’s Magic Palace cabaret, where she worked as a dancer.
Capone led police to her body when he was arrested for possession of guns. At the time he told police another two people had killed the woman for $15,000 because she had cheated somebody out of money.
In November the same year, Iakovides was arrested and told police that he and Capone had killed her. Two weeks later Capone also confessed. Both men later retracted their statements. The men were found guilty of raping Lisna multiple times and then strangling her, before dumping her body.
The Swedish housewife went missing on June 5, 1993 as she was walking home from the Ayia Napa nightclub her husband owned. Kitas and Iakovides drove the 28-year-old woman to a Larnaca beach where they raped and then murdered her to keep her from talking.
Her badly decomposed body was discovered after an 18-day police search at the Kotsiatis rubbish dump in November that year. A coroner’s report revealed she had died from multiple blows to the head.
Initially Capone had tried to implicate Constantinidou’s husband in her death, claiming he had hired a hit man for $10,000 after she’d cheated on him.
Prison sources said Capone had initially reacted badly to his imprisonment with the usual display of opposition.
“This is common with lifers and after the first few years he seemed to calm down and get used to the idea. He also matured with age. He was 28 when he was sentenced and is 42 now,” he said.
At the time of his arrest Capone had a pregnant Romanian girlfriend. The woman gave birth to a daughter who left the child with the 42-year-old’s mother. Prison authorities said the girl used to visit her father in jail up until his hospital admission.
In April 2006 Capone married a Chinese national at Aradippou town hall.
