Victim’s Daughter Decries Escape Asks How Killer Babb Was Able To Break Out Of Louisiana Prison

The daughter of murder victim Ronald Boone of Potlatch, Idaho, said the escape of her father’s killer from a Louisiana prison left her bewildered.

“More than anything, I’m just feeling frustration,” Christine Baird, 29, said Friday. “Why is a first-degree murderer in a medium-to minimum-security prison?”

Roger Dale Babb, 41, who in 1991 was convicted of shooting Boone to death at his Potlatch-area farmhouse, escaped along with four other Idaho inmates Thursday night from the privately run Basile Detention Center in southwestern Louisiana. Babb and one other inmate were still at large Saturday.

Latah County Public Defender Brian Thei declined comment when asked if the escape might hurt his client’s attempt to get a new trial.

Baird said she heard about Babb’s escape Friday morning from a friend who had read a newspaper account.

“The first thing I did was go lock the doors,” said Baird, who is married and has two young daughters.

But she said her initial fear subsided.

“There’s nothing I could do, except hope he gets caught,” Baird said. “I’m so bewildered. I thought it was over and done with.”

Babb’s conviction was controversial in that his first attorney, Allen Bowles of Moscow, and now Thei both raised the question of whether Boone’s death was a suicide. The current attempt for post-conviction relief revolves in part around a contention that inadequate gunshot residue tests were done and that new evidence might prove Babb’s innocence.

Babb was sentenced by former 2nd District Judge John Bengtson of Moscow to 20 years to life in prison.