Jail escapees sentenced to 30 more years

NEWS 9

Kansas native Eli Dominique Edwards and Lewis Julian Peteet from Anadarko, Okla. were sentenced Tuesday to 30 additional years in a federal prison. 

Edwards, 30, and Peteet, 27, were found guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault following their escape from Caddo County Jail in 2006, said a press release from the U.S. Attorney for Western Distrcit of Oklahoma office.

The two escapees were already convicted and sentenced to a 99-year prison sentence in 2006 for crimes in Texas; however, the kidnapping and sexual assault of an Oklahoma woman was not included in that sentencing. The 30-year sentence will directly follow the defendants' 99-year prison term.

"The crime spree by these two defendants terrorized southwest Oklahoma and the Panhandle of Texas for two days," said United States attorney John C. Richter, in the press release.  "These defendants will never again hurt another citizen in our community as they will spend the rest of their lives in prison." 

On March 12, 2006, Edwards and Peteet escaped from the Caddo County Jail by breaking a window. Once free, the two began a crime spree which started in Anadarko and ended in Wheeler County, Texas.

First, the two men stole a car and burglarized a house in Caddo County, stealing a shotgun, a crossbow and ammunition.  By gunpoint, the defendants then carjacked two more vehicles and broke into a second house, from which they stole more guns and ammunition. 

At the second house, the defendants kidnapped a woman, threatened her with the firearms and a large kitchen knife and forced her into her car.  Edwards sexually assaulted the woman a number of times while Peteet drove to Texas.

Edwards and Peteet were charged in Texas, in April 2006, with aggravated robbery and kidnapping crimes the defendants had committed in Wheeler County, Texas. However, the two men were not charged with the kidnapping of the woman from Oklahoma.  

Eventually, Edwards pled guilty to kidnapping the woman and admitted he abducted the woman to hold her as a sexual hostage. Peteet pled guilty to being Edwards' accomplice.

The FBI, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Caddo County Sheriff's Office were just some of the offices who investigated these two cases.