Look Back: Selenski’s prison escape 20 years ago

To many, like myself, the escape of Hugo Marcus Selenski from the Luzerne County Correctional Facility two decades ago seems like yesterday.

It was Friday, Oct. 10, 2003, just after 9:30 p.m., I was just about to leave the newsroom and as my fingers were on the on/off button of a police scanner on my desk, the words in a panic rang out on the radio: “We need flashlights up here.”

Like my Belgian Malinois, Raven, when she sees me with a new tennis ball in my hand I’m about to throw to her, my ears perked up.

Reporting Selenski’s escape was all-hands on deck.

In 2003, I worked at another newspaper. And here is what happened the night of the escape.

I told the assistant night editor something was going on at the county prison. She yelled because I bothered her.

Instead of going home, the reporter in me drove the short distance to Water Street where I parked near the courthouse parking garage as I never park near crime scenes.

Being the first reporter at the county prison, several Wilkes-Barre police officers and correctional officers were walking around with hand-held flashlights looking into parked vehicles and searching the brush along the Susquehanna River.

Dim yellow lights shined onto the prison tower casting shadows on the structure as the bed sheet rope hung from Cell 9 on the top floor. Fog began to creep up from the river.

Other media began to arrive.

Remaining in front of the prison, Bob Kadluboski wearing a FBI hat and carrying a clipboard told me the escapees were Hugo Selenski and Scott Bolton.

My first thought was “No way,” Selenski was charged days earlier for the shotgun killings of two men after a summer long media frenzy into the investigation. Earlier that week, search warrants had become unsealed in the investigation and they read like a Rob Zombie horror novel.

Kadluboski’s information was quickly confirmed by a Wilkes-Barre police sergeant at the scene.

We had flip-phones back then not capable of taking pictures and videos. So I called back to the newsroom to tell the assistant night editor Hugo Selenski and Scott Bolton escaped and needed a photographer.

She screamed at me again for bothering her and promptly yelled the photographer on-duty was busy processing high school football pictures. And abruptly hung up! This actually happened.

Troopers with the Pennsylvania State Police began to arrive as I recall the first troopers were from the Shickshinny barracks, who responded on their own after hearing chatter on the scanner.

Then-District Attorney David W. Lupas arrived at the prison and held an impromptu news gathering with media.

WBRE/WYOU set up a live-shot and broke into Jay Leno’s talk show with breaking news.

The Wilkes-Barre Fire Department arrived with their aerial ladder truck used to access the roof followed by police officers crawling along the roof’s edge.

We soon learned Bolton was injured on the roof and was taken out on a stretcher through the main door.

A report came over the scanner the subject — Selenski — was seen entering a residence on South River Street near Academy Street in Wilkes-Barre. As soon as that report came over the radio, I ran to my vehicle and raced along with state police and Wilkes-Barre police cruisers down North and South River streets, similar to a scene in the movie, The Blues Brothers. I was the third vehicle in line behind two cruisers with more cruisers and an ambulance behind me.

The two state police cruisers jumped the curb with troopers exiting with firearms in hand they aimed at a shirtless guy on the front porch yelling to get down. It wasn’t Selenski.

Returning to the prison, another news conference was held inside the Emergency Management Building at about 3 a.m. followed by several media gatherings that weekend.

After two media conferences late Monday afternoon on Oct. 10, 2003 – one by the county prison board with then county commissioners and the other by Lupas, it was announced Selenski was in custody when he called his attorney, Demetrius Fannick, from the Mount Olivet Road, Kingston Township, home to arrange his surrender. The Kingston Township property was the center of the investigation.

Months later during a jailhouse interview with Selenski, he said he planned to escape but wanted to wait until he was officially charged with criminal homicide.

There remains a dispute about how Bolton suffered his injuries when he landed on the roof above the prison’s control room.

Selenski claimed Bolton was out-of-shape, overweight and lost his grip on the bed sheet rope. Bolton claimed Selenski kicked him causing him to lose his grip.

It certainly was a weekend to remember even after 20 years. I just may write a book about the long complex Selenski saga.