”Cowboy Mike” still attempting to break out

YAKIMA – A man charged with killing one woman and trying to kill another has been caught in what appears to be at least his fifth jailbreak attempt, officials say.

Michael John Braae, 45, a former country western singer and songwriter known as “Cowboy Mike,” picked a lock with a toothbrush and tried to escape through a crawl space in late April, Yakima County Jail officials said.

Braae, also linked to the disappearance of several women in the Pacific Northwest, damaged windows in his cell last year in an apparent but misguided escape attempt, guards said, noting that he could not have squeezed between the concrete pillars just outside the window.

In February 2003, prison officials in Idaho said they had found evidence of three escape attempts in the time since Braae was caught in July 2001 after a high-speed chase in which he shot at law enforcement officers several times, jumped off a 40-foot bridge into the Snake River and tried to swim away.

On April 29, Braae whittled a stubby toothbrush into a makeshift key, picked the lock on a hatch in the four-cell complex where he is confined by himself and slipped into a crawl space, jail security chief Art Crews said.

A guard monitoring a hidden surveillance camera missed Braae’s abortive getaway attempt but saw him re-enter the cell after Braae discovered the crawl space was a dead-end access to plumbing fixtures.

“We had just stopped watching him full-time seven days before, but we knew he would try something again,” Crews said.

“That’s why we had the camera on. He didn’t know about the camera.”

Other security measures include specially welded steel grates lining the windows and the ceiling of his cell and a requirement that he be strapped into a wheelchair and blindfolded before being taken to court appearances.

“This type of individual won’t attack you face to face,” Crews said Friday. “He’ll come at you behind your back and around the corner. He just exhibits a very high degree of criminal sophistication.”

Nor has Braae limited himself to furtive activity.

He has filed 119 administrative grievances since arriving from Idaho in August 2003, claiming that he deserves more food and telephone time, complaining about the wheelchair requirement and accusing guards of eavesdropping on his conversations with his lawyers.

Braae is scheduled for trial June 27 on an attempted murder charge. He is accused of shooting a traveling companion, Marchelle Morgan, now 52, and leaving her left for dead on a road south of Union Gap on July 14, 2001.

The discovery triggered a manhunt and a wild chase through eastern Oregon that ended in the capture of Braae after he leaped into the Snake River.

Braae also faces charges of murder and rape in Thurston County in the death of Lori Jones, 44, of Lacey. A trial date in that case has not been set.

Braae also has been investigated in Douglas and Wahkiakum counties and in Portland in the disappearance of other women and is serving a 9 1/2 -year sentence in Idaho for aggravated assault and eluding an officer in the pursuit that led to his capture.