By Lisa A. Davis
The Tampa Tribune
NEW PORT RICHEY- Rory McGrory tasted more than freedom this week before landing back in jail Thursday afternoon.
When deputies found him less than a half-mile from his parents’ house, he was stocked with cold beer, ice and a story that he spent time with a prostitute at a local motel.
McGrory, 43, even followed his story on television and in the newspaper, he told detectives.
Two days after the sheriff’s office launched its search, Pasco deputies, a K-9 unit and other local police officers captured McGrory outside a Winnebago parked behind the former Italian-American Club at 7222 Washington St.
Reported sightings of the missing inmate near his parents’ home at 7335 Candlelight Court and at the Salvation Army soup kitchen came in Wednesday night.
A neighbor got a visit Thursday morning from McGrory but shut the door and called authorities, said sheriff’s spokesman Kevin Doll.
That’s when deputies and police from New Port Richey and Port Richey set up a perimeter and began another full-blown search.
At some point, a deputy patrolling Regis Avenue spotted the escapee walking on the road wearing a wig and a hat. McGrory ran when he spied the deputy.
Just before 11:30 a.m., a police dog followed McGrory’s scent to the RV behind the old club, now a trucking company. Searchers had checked there before, but this time it appeared someone had been inside, Doll said.
As deputies went in the Winnebago’s front door, the man on the lam broke a window and jumped nearly into the arms of deputies who surrounded the RV.
He was taken first to the West Operations Center on Little Road to be questioned. McGrory reportedly told detectives he hitchhiked to his parents’ home, his last known address, after the jail break.
His mother and stepfather have been out of town and didn’t know his whereabouts, authorities said.
McGrory changed clothes, got money, presumably from his parents’ home, and ventured out into the community.
What he did and where he went wasn’t clear Thursday; detectives are still investigating.
“If he’s telling the truth in his statements, that’s anybody’s guess,” Doll said.
McGrory was booked into the Land O’ Lakes jail later Thursday and will be held without bail in the general population, rather than the minimum security area from which he escaped.
Authorities say that sometime after the 11 p.m. head count Monday, McGrory used a can cover to cut his way through the canvas walls of the shower facility and then dug under a fence.
Though he was released from state prison in May, he had been a trusty doing kitchen duty in the main jail building since his arrest in October on charges of burglary, grand theft and fleeing to elude.
Because of his disappearing act, McGrory, a career criminal, faces additional charges of escape, auto burglary (of the RV) and resisting arrest without violence.
“His few hours of freedom,” Doll said, “will cost him many more hours of confinement.”