Austin (AP) - Texas' 111 prisons holding some 155,000 inmates were locked down after Gov. Rick Perry ordered a systemwide search of the nation's second-largest prison system for contraband following a convicted killer's threatening calls to a state senator made from a cell phone smuggled to him on death row.
Lorraine Tabler, 60, the mother of condemned prisoner Richard Tabler, was arrested and jailed for buying the minutes authorities say her son and nine other death row inmates used for some 2,800 phone calls over the past month, including the calls to Sen. John Whitmire.
She was apprehended Monday at an airport in Austin as she arrived from her home in Georgia. She had planned to head to death row at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston in East Texas, about 170 miles east of Austin, for a scheduled visit with her son.
As she was being hauled off to jail to await a bond hearing, Richard Tabler was being confronted by officers in his death row cell to surrender the illegal phone. He did so peacefully, officials said.
"Let there be no doubt about how seriously we take this security breach," Perry said, directing prison officials to impose the lockdown that will keep all prisoners from receiving visits and tighten security checks for all prison employees, staff and visitors who now could be subjected to pat-down searches as they enter prisons. People entering the Polunsky Unit already go through airport-style metal detectors.
Whitmire is the Texas Senate's senior member and chairman of the legislative committee that oversees the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The Houston Democrat summoned prison administrators to Austin for an emergency meeting Tuesday of his criminal justice panel to address what he called "a lax attitude on contraband."
"I want to know how an inmate on death row gets a cell phone in the first place, and then how they and other inmates can make thousands of calls in a month without getting caught," Whitmire told the Austin American-Statesman.
Richard Tabler's call to Whitmire on Oct. 7 prompted the investigation. The prisoner's calls continued intermittently, the latest coming Sunday, according to investigators. In the calls, Tabler told Whitmire he knew the lawmaker's daughters, their ages and their addresses.
"He called his daughters by name," John Moriarty, the prison system's inspector general, said, adding that he expected additional arrests from the continuing investigation. He wouldn't say if those likely to be arrested were inside or outside prison.
Perry's office said a bribed corrections officer was believed the source of the phone, but the officer's name and whether he or she had been apprehended were not disclosed.
"It is a shame that the criminal acts of some overshadow the good name of others," Perry said, demanding zero tolerance for contraband. Any violations would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, he said.
"It's a security issue, obviously, and a serious concern," Moriarty said.
He said each of the 2,800 calls from the confiscated phone would be investigated.
Lorraine Tabler was held on felony charges of providing a prohibited item to an inmate. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney. Messages left at a phone number for her in Blackshear, Ga., were not immediately returned.
Richard Tabler has been on death row since last year for a shooting spree in which two men and two teenage girls were killed in Bell County in central Texas during Thanksgiving weekend 2004.
"Whether it's a citizen or a senator, no one should be contacted by an incarcerated offender who is using an illegal cell phone," Criminal Justice Board chairman Oliver Bell, a Perry appointee, said Monday.
Investigators determined the phone had been purchased in Waco in September 2007, that Lorraine Tabler had been buying time for the phone, including a purchase on Oct. 7 at a Wal-Mart store in Waycross, Ga. Detectives obtained a store video showing the woman making the purchase.
The investigation also determined calls were coming to the phone as well as going out.
Moriarty said the phone apparently was being passed among the other nine inmates in Tabler's immediate cell block area. Like Tabler, they also face possible criminal charges or disciplinary actions.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit from an investigator from the inspector general's office in Polk County, where the Polunsky Unit is based, 44 calls were made on the phone to Lorraine Tabler's home number. The same phone was used to call Whitmire.
The warrant said an examination of cell site records determined the calls were coming from inside the prison, where cell phones are barred.
Early this month, Tabler was in court in Belton telling a Bell County judge he wanted to end appeals and volunteer for execution.
The Killeen man was convicted last year of fatally shooting Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni, 25, and Haitham Zayed, 28. He also confessed to killing Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amber Benefield, 16. All four had ties to a Killeen strip club.
A call to Richard Tabler's trial lawyer Monday was not immediately returned.
Illegal cell phone use is a continuing problem in prisons where the phones are considered a security breach and of particular value to gang members.
Moriarty said since Jan. 1, his investigators have closed or are working on 19 cases of prohibited phones or phone components on death row. But he said that's just a tiny portion of some 700 cases investigated systemwide this year, including one where officials have an X-ray of an inmate with a phone and charger inside the prisoner's body.
He said of particular interest among inmates, and the target of searches by officers, are postage-stamp-size subscriber identify modules, known as SIM cards. The cards are easily hidden and allow easy transfer of information from one phone to another.
