Donald Kohut, Jr.FLEMINGTON, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey man charged in a foiled plot to help Tennessee's only female death row inmate escape is accused of trying to orchestrate a mortgage scam in the Garden State.
Donald Kohut Jr. returned to New Jersey after posting bond following his arrest in March on charges of scheming with a guard to make a copy of a prison key to break out Christa Pike. She's been on death row since 1996 for the slaying of a Job Corps student.
Prosecutors in Hunterdon County, N.J., said Kohut had taken out a mortgage to purchase a home then forged documents to secure another mortgage on the property and cashed out.
He's held on $115,000 bail, charged with theft by deception, forgery and other charges.
Prosecutors said more charges are expected.
Pike was only 20 when she was sentenced to death in 1996 for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995. Pike is also serving time for allegedly trying to strangle a fellow inmate, Patricia Jones, to death with a shoe lace in 2004.
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