A man believed to be Danelo Cavalcante was captured on a trail camera in Longwood Gardens, within a few kilometres of the prison he escaped from. Photo / Pennsylvania State Police via The New York Times
A man believed to be Danelo Cavalcante was captured on a trail camera in Longwood Gardens, within a few kilometres of the prison he escaped from. Photo / Pennsylvania State Police via The New York Times
As the search for a convicted murderer continues, a mixture of fear and unease has settled over the community outside Philadelphia, United States, where he escaped and is believed to be hiding.
The French doors were cracked open to the night outside, and someone was down in the kitchen. RyanDrummond, standing noiselessly at the top of the stairs, was sure he knew who it was.
Grasping a frame with a picture of his wife and children — the only possible weapon at hand — Drummond, 42, ran through his options. He decided: best to let the intruder understand that he knows he’s in the house. He flicked the lights on and off.
For nearly a week since a convicted murderer slipped away from the Chester County Prison, the people in Pocopson Township, Pennsylvania, a quiet stretch of farmland and wooded thickets about an hour outside Philadelphia, have had to live with a relentless unease. Teams of police officers jog through backyards, drones buzz in the skies, and for one day, helicopters shuddering overheard blared the sound of a woman’s voice pleading in Portuguese — the mother of the man who escaped, begging, in a recording, for him to give up.
The fugitive, Danelo Cavalcante, 34, was convicted August 16 of stabbing his former girlfriend, Deborah Brandao, nearly 40 times, killing her in front of her children. On August 22, he was sentenced to life in prison. Last Thursday morning, a little over a week after the sentencing, he disappeared.
He has been seen since, once by a prison employee and several times in the ghostly infrared light of security cameras. For many residents, he has been an unseen force, drawing scores of reporters and police officers, rerouting traffic and closing down schools, creating as much inconvenience as a sense of panic.
Danelo Cavalcante was convicted of fatally stabbing his girlfriend. Photo / Chester County Prison via AP
Few if any of them have had an encounter like the one Drummond had Friday evening.
Drummond, who gave his account first to WPVI-TV, the local ABC affiliate, said he was “100 per cent” sure it was Cavalcante who had been in his house, having seen his image in the news.
At a news conference Saturday, while discussing possible break-ins related to the escape, the Chester County district attorney, Deb Ryan, mentioned that “one resident” had observed a “male fitting the description of our subject” in the area Friday evening, although she gave no further details. The Pennsylvania State Police would not discuss the incident.
The week had come to an unsettling close for the Drummond family, with news of the prison break sending recess indoors at the local schools. As they got ready for bed, Drummond’s 9-year-old daughter asked her father nervously about the French doors that didn’t seem to lock right; he reassured her, asking her why, of all the doors in the area, the fugitive would choose to try those.
He would later wonder if someone had been listening at that moment, perhaps just outside the window or in the shadows beneath the deck, where the family had spent the evening.
Hours later, he awoke to sounds downstairs.
“‘I don’t want to freak you out,’” he recalled whispering to his wife. “‘But I think someone is in the kitchen.’”
He got out of bed and walked softly to the bedrooms of his three children, making sure they were still asleep. Then he came to the upstairs landing, where he saw — exactly as his daughter had feared — that the French doors stood cracked open. That is when Drummond and the man in the kitchen communicated by the flicking of light switches.
Chester County Prison in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Danelo Cavalcante, convicted of fatally stabbing his girlfriend escaped on August 31. Photo / AP
Telling his wife to call police, Drummond braced for a potential confrontation, then watched as the man walked to the French doors, carrying a bag and appearing to be in no particular hurry. Police came within minutes, he said, and rushed to the tree line, but the man was gone into the night.
All that the man apparently took was a peach, an apple and a handful of snap peas that Drummond had bought at the farmers market earlier that day and had laid out on the counter.
For the rest of the weekend, the family tried to live as ordinary a life as possible, fixing soccer nets and having drinks with neighbours as SWAT teams came in and out of the woods and helicopters hovered overhead. Things have quieted down on his block since Monday night, when it appeared that Cavalcante had slipped out of the area where police had been focused. But there is no true return to normal in the area as long as the search continues.
“When I left my house, I set my house alarm, I made sure I had my car key ready to go, so we just jumped in the car and I locked the doors really quick,” said Kristin Muzik, 50, who stopped at a convenience store Wednesday with her three children in tow because the local schools had closed for safety reasons. “I really hope they catch him quickly.”
