A convicted child rapist is back in a Texas prison after his mother helped him escape earlier this week.
Robert Yancy Jr’s mother and her boyfriend are also behind bars, charged with helping the felon flee a prison farm in Brazoria on Sunday.
Yancy, 39, was captured in Matagorda County early Monday morning and brought back to Brazoria County, where a judge gave him a $5 million bond although he was already serving a life sentence without parole after being convicted in 2022 of continuous sex abuse of a 7-year-old girl, the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office said.
A jury deliberated less than two hours before returning that conviction, as CrimeOnline reported.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice told KTRK that Yancy was captured at a park in Bay City, about 40 miles from the prison, when people at the park recognized him and call 911. When police arrived, he first claimed to be the man whose ID he was carrying but later confessed.
TDCJ told the station that Yancy’s mother, Leanor Priestle, orchestrated the escape on Sunday when she came to visit her son. Priestle was wearing a black sweater and beanie when she arrived, officials said, and she gave those items of clothing to Yancy, which he put on without anyone noticing.
Priestle — a former correctional officer at another prison unit — also gave her son an old work identification. The two got in her car, and Yancy presented the old work identification to leave the prison, which the guard didn’t notice wasn’t his. Officials said she probably had some kind of “inside information” from her previous job, although they didn’t say what that might have been.
Priestle was arrested Sunday evening in Victoria, still driving the same vehicle, although by then she’d already dropped Yancy off elsewhere. She has been charged with facilitating an escape. Her boyfriend, Russell Williams, was also arrested and charged with criminal intent to escape, although it’s not known exactly what role he played in the debacle.
TDCJ said that since it was the second escape from the prison unit in Brazoria in the last two months, they were looking at their processes to see how they could improve.
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[Featured image: Leanor Priestle, Robert Yancy Jr, and Russell Williams/Texas Department of Criminal Justice]
