Burham pleads guilty in escape from Warren County Prison, kidnapping case
WARREN, Pa. — Michael C. Burham has pleaded guilty to escaping from the Warren County Prison in July, an escapade that made the fugitive and homicide suspect a national figure for more than a week.
Burham has also pleaded guilty in a separate case to charges that he kidnapped an elderly couple in Warren County and stole their SUV and drove with them in it to South Carolina in May. Authorities said Burham was trying to evade a homicide investigation in Jamestown, New York, north of Warren County and east of Erie County.
Burham, 34, entered the pleas on Thursday in Warren County Common Pleas Court. He will be sentenced on Jan. 5.
“The defendant was on the run for nine days in an attempt to evade justice,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry said in a statement announcing the pleas. "I commend the efforts of Pennsylvania State Police who took this defendant into custody, as well as my team, the Warren County District Attorney’s Office, and the City of Warren Police Department, for their work in holding the defendant accountable for his many crimes."
The Attorney General 's Office is prosecuting Burham in the escape case. The Warren County District Attorney’s Office is handling the kidnapping case.
Burham escaped from the prison, in downtown Warren, on July 6. He climbed on top of exercise equipment in the prison yard to get on a roof, and he rappeled down the side of the building using bedsheets tied together. The Pennsylvania State Police captured him in the woods in Warren County on July 15.
Warren police in late October charged a fellow inmate with aiding Burham in his escape. That defendant, George A. Flasher, 21, is accused of giving Burham two bed sheets and information on how many sheets would be needed to make the roughly 40-foot descent from the roof of the prison to the ground.
Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNpalattella.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Michael Burham pleads guilty in escape from Warren County Prison
