Criminally insane killer Paul on the loose

(NECN/KXLY: Spokane, Wash.) – Phillip Paul could be anywhere, making the search for the criminally insane killer even more difficult. “But we’re not going to stop looking until we have him back in custody,” Sgt. Dave Reagan said. Paul escaped while on a mental hospital field trip to a county fair. Paul was committed after he was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1987 slaying of an elderly woman in Sunnyside. He soaked the woman’s body in gasoline to throw off search dogs and buried the remains in her flower garden. As the search intensifies by air and on the ground, so does the media coverage. It is a story one cannot ignore. Sgt. Reagan with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office has been on the phone all morning with national media. This is a big deal; so big, federal marshals and a special inmate recovery team from the Department of Corrections have gotten involved in the search. “We’re expanding our knowledge about this guy and we hope that gives us enough to put him back into custody, but it’s kind of slow going,” Sgt. Reagan said. When Paul escaped he had a backpack, so Reagan said it was possible he planned it all. “It could very well be he’s been thinking about this for awhile, we don’t know what he had in that backpack. Could’ve been a change of clothes, could’ve been food and supplies — we don’t know,” Sgt. Reagan said. As more time passes, investigators worry his medication will begin to wear off, making the pressure to find him even greater. “He is not somebody that committed a crime out of passion, he committed a crime because the voices in his head tell him to commit the crime and we don’t know when those voices will start talking to him again,” Sgt. Reagan said. KXLY’s Annie Bishop reports. Material from The Associated Press used in this report.