Today's story that a youth woker at a Baltimore County detention facility helped a 17-year-old sex offender escape, then had sex with him before they got arrested, reminded me of a similar case a decade ago.

Only worse.

In 1999, a convicted armed robber named Bryon Lester Smoot and convicted murderer Gegory Lee Lawrence escaped from the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup (cops had no idea somoene had scaled a fence until a young boy spotted the men running through the woods).

Police at the time said Elizabeth L. Feil picked the inmates up in her car. Feil just happened to be a counselor at the Patuxent Institution who met Smoot during her rounds. She had gotten fired in 1998 for inappropriate contact with inmates, but for some reason wasn't barred from visiting prisoners. She helped both inmates develop an elaborate escape plan, provided transportation and had clothes and food waiting for them on the outside.

They picked a day when visitors were not allowed and a guard tower was thus unstaffed. All were quickly caught; Lawrence was serving a life sentence for shooting and robbing a man in 1978 in North Baltimore; Smoot was serving 29 years for 11 armed robberies in Anne Arundel County.

In 1999, Feil pleaded guilty to a single count of being an accessory after the fact and served six months of jail time.