Christopher Londonio, 45, plotted the elaborate escape plan in 2017, the FBI says
A 350-pound Lucchese mobster’s wild alleged jailbreak plot has been revealed in newly unsealed documents.
Christopher Londonio, 45, plotted the elaborate escape plan in 2017 while behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, awaiting trial for murder charges, according to an FBI report obtained by Gang Land News.
The plot to escape through a cell window at the federal fortress allegedly involved a wide cast of characters, including Londonio’s wife, mother, father, the family priest and a Bronx bookie.
‘A central element of Londonio’s plan involved losing enough weight to insure he fit through the opened window,’ wrote agents Theodore Otto and Christopher Munger in the report.
‘Toward that end, Londonio began eating lots of bran, and had been exercising feverishly – running up and down the stairs separating the tiers in his unit and doing chin-ups,’ the report continues.
The plot to escape through a cell window at he Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in the Brooklyn (pictured) allegedly involved a wide cast of characters, including Londonio’s wife, mother, father, the family priest and a Bronx bookie
According to the report, Londonio planned to have his local priest smuggle ‘a diamond-tipped hacksaw blade’ into the MDC that Londonio could use ‘to cut through the steel window guards’ of his cell.
Phase two of the plan involved having Lononio’s mother smuggle dental floss into the jail, which he planned to use as a wire saw to cut through the window itself, the FBI said.
After punching two holes in the window glass using a homemade tool, Londonio planned to ‘snake’ the knotted dental floss in one hole and out the other using a second tool ‘fashioned out of an electrical clamp’, the agents wrote.
‘The floss would then be pulled back and forth, creating a sawing effect on the glass,’ allowing Londonio and his accomplices to slip out into the parking lot at night, the report said.
To test surveillance at the facility, Londonio’s wife went into the parking lot outside his cell and danced feverishly for a while, but was never stopped or escorted out, leading the plotters to believe there was no camera coverage in the area, the agents said.
Using bed sheets that he had squirreled away in a box under his bed, Londonio planned to braid a rope and slip out into the night, where he would be met by his father ‘in the vicinity of the jail, given guns and brought to the home of his father’s friend in the vicinity of the MDC,’ the agents wrote.
Londonio’s wife went into the parking lot outside his cell and danced feverishly for a while to test whether surveillance cameras covered that area
‘Londonio was also going to dye their shirts using Kool-Aid to avoid looking overly suspicious while en route to their safe house in Brooklyn,’ the agents said, without specifying a flavor.
Initially, Londonio planned to wait with his accomplices in the Brooklyn safe house for several days until the heat died down, and then make his way to a secret hideaway in Monticello in upstate New York, the report said.
‘A close friend,’ whom Londonio described ‘as a big bookmaker from the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx,’ the agents wrote, ‘was going to provide $150,000 to sustain them while on the lam’ in a home that ‘the Londonio family owned in Monticello’ that was ‘not traceable to his family.’
At the Monticello stronghold, he planned to remain a year ‘while Londonio’s father obtained false documentation for them and Londonio was able to have his appearance changed through cosmetic surgery,’ the agents wrote.
However, the plan suddenly changed when Londonio became enraged at the wife of then-Lucchese acting boss Matthew Madonna, who was one of his co-defendants in the murder trial, for showing him ‘disrespect,’ according to the report.
Former Lucchese boss Michael Madonna (above) enraged Londonio when his wife showed ‘disrespect’ to Londonio’s parents
‘Madonna didn’t acknowledge Londonio’s parents and Madonna’s wife shook hands with several FBI agents in the courtroom, while ignoring his parents,’ the agents wrote.
‘Londonio’s revised plan involved stopping in the Bronx,’ the agents wrote, ‘to kill both Madonna’s wife and his unidentified partner in a loansharking business’ who had stolen $200,000 from him.
Londonio told an informant, the agents wrote, that ‘his designs on Mrs. Madonna were a result of the disrespect Madonna had shown him and his family, particularly after, ‘all [he] had done for [Madonna.]’ ‘
The alleged plot fell apart when one of Londonio’s jailhouse confederates, bank robber David Evangelista, crumbled under pressure and squealed on his plans to prison guards.
Londonio is currently on trial in White Plains federal court for raketeering and murder charges, along with co-defendants Madonna, Steve ‘Stevie Wonder’ Crea and Terrence Caldwell.
They are charged in the execution-style death of rival gangster Michael Meldish in 2013.
Evangelista is scheduled to testify next month, and Londonio’s attorney John Meringolo has vowed that his cross examination will shred the government’s allegations about the escape plot.
Meringolo told jurors during opening arguments that ‘the government created a crime of attempted escape’ against Londonio, insisting on his client’s innocence.