Notorious Prison Escape Artist, Career Robber Ronald Tackman Sentenced
NEW YORK (WCBS 880/AP) - Ronald Tackman is the stuff of legend around the courthouse.
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There were his jailbreaks, the commandeering of a Correction Department bus, walking away from his trial by posing as a lawyer picking up a manila folder, and there was the time he just walked right out of court.
The 58-year-old was sentenced Thursday to at least 28 more years behind bars for escaping from the Manhattan Criminal Court Building in 2009 and the half-dozen store holdups that had brought him to court in the first place.
He pleaded guilty to the escape and was convicted of the robberies. Authorities say they featured phony guns, fake noses and disguises.
"The stories about his escapes from prison are legendary. The story of him carving a gun from a bar of soap and that gun supposedly being in the corrections museum or on another occasion making a gun out of basically recycled material from a BBQ," says his attorney Joseph Heinzmann.
Heinzmann describes Tackman as a charming thief who, in all of his robberies with fake guns, never hurt anybody.
