Inmate Unsuccessfully Attempts To Escape Cell

LAND O' LAKES - A murder suspect's escape attempt was foiled last week after he encountered a tangle of pipes while trying to saw his way through a jail cell's metal toilet.

John Allen Ditullio, a self-professed neo-Nazi accused of slashing a neighbor and killing her houseguest, also tried to saw his way out of his maximum-security cell through an air vent Monday, according to an arrest report released Saturday.

Ditullio, 21, also had fashioned a makeshift rope using torn bed sheets and had altered a jailhouse jumpsuit, so it would appear he was wearing shorts and a shirt if his escape was successful, according to an arrest affidavit charging him with attempted escape.

Jail guards found three hacksaw blades hidden in Ditullio's cell. When he was questioned about his escape plans, Ditullio said he wanted to escape because he is facing murder and attempted murder charges, reports state.

Prosecutors have not announced whether they will seek the death penalty if Ditullio is convicted of the March 2006 stabbing death of 17-year-old Kristopher King.

King was staying overnight at the home of Patricia Wells in the Griffin Park mobile home community, near New Port Richey. Wells, the mother of King's close friend, survived the midnight attack by a man who broke into her home wearing a military-style gas mask.

Wells lived next door to the home of another self-professed neo-Nazi, Brian 'Zero' Buckley, who headed a group of white supremacists known as the Teak Street Nazis. Ditullio was part of the group.

Described by Ditullio as the father figure he never had, Buckley, 45, is awaiting sentencing for trying to break into Wells' home several weeks before the slaying.

Pasco County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kevin Doll said Saturday that contraband such as hacksaw blades are a 'fact of life' at any correctional institution.

'That's something we're looking into,' Doll said when asked how Ditullio got the hacksaw blades.