Clayton inmate flub was ‘operational failure’ of sheriff’s staff, fugitive expert says

Those with experience hunting down fugitives predicted Thursday that Kathan Guzman had left the state and may have gotten assistance from a family member or friends. Guzman was from the Orlando area, where he was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service at a family member’s home.

“If he’s smart, he definitely left Georgia,” said Patrick McCall, a private investigator who specializes in fugitive cases in the United States and abroad in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this week. “This guy is looking at some serious time. His life is over, so he’s going to try to stay on the run as long as possible.”

The PI said Guzman probably knew authorities would search places he’s been, and he’ll likely avoid those hangouts while he’s on the lam. But the mistakenly released inmate had apparently been staying at a family member’s home in Florida when he was apprehended, authorities said Friday.

Dave Gambale has almost three decades of experience chasing down fugitives who skip out on bail. Like McCall, he also thought Guzman left the state, because it took authorities so long to realize he was missing.

“You got to go after him within the first 24 to 72 hours. You gave him two weeks to run’ you gave him two weeks to get away,” Gambale, who owns a bonding company in Virginia, said Thursday.

Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in October for choking 19-year-old Delila Grayson to death at an apartment complex in 2022. He remained at the Clayton County Jail until he was mistakenly released on or about March 25, according to prosecutors.

However, neither Sheriff Levon Allen nor his office notified Grayson’s family, the Clayton County district attorney or the public about the mistake. It wasn’t until Tuesday that the Georgia Office of Victim Services realized Guzman had been released and informed the district attorney’s office.

Allen told Channel 2 Action News he never alerted the public because they didn’t want Guzman knowing they were looking for him. Allen has declined to comment on the case to the AJC.

“It’s just kind of baloney to me because I think what they were doing was probably trying to save face,” said McCall, who has been hunting fugitives since 2005. “They were hoping that he would be located, maybe they deployed some of their deputies or some of their resources to look for this guy quietly.”

Credit: Clayton County Police Department

Credit: Clayton County Police Department

The Marshals Service told the AJC on Thursday that the Clayton sheriff’s office requested their assistance within the past week. McCall said he believed marshals would find Guzman eventually.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said the first thing he wondered was why Guzman was still being held at the county jail months after a murder conviction.

Sills, who has been sheriff nearly three decades, said even if a detainee still faced unrelated charges, his first order of business would have been handing over that inmate to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

He said “human error” is likely to blame, either by the court system or the jailhouse deputy who let him go. Allen told Channel 2 the mistake was the result of a “training failure,” and his employees were not paying attention.

”Whoever did the release maybe didn’t see the murder conviction and he walked out the door,” Sills said. “It’s possible somebody doesn’t check properly and then they get released.”

Still, the sheriff said he couldn’t imagine how two weeks could lapse without anyone noticing. And if the mistake was realized sooner, Sills said it would have been “all hands on deck” until that person was located.

”Nobody here would have gone home for a long time,” said Sills, who worked in the fugitive unit at the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office years ago. “If that happened here, I would desperately need a shave because I would not have gone home for days.”

The mistaken release of a convicted killer has caused some tension between the sheriff and District Attorney Tasha Mosley, who told the AJC Thursday she canceled a scheduled news conference 30 minutes in advance because it’s Allen, not her office, who needs to answer for the mix-up.

“We are just as disappointed and pissed off as everybody else,” Mosley said.

Former Gwinnett County DA Danny Porter said they had a system in place that worked pretty well. Once a sentence was imposed, that was relayed to the local sheriff’s office, he said. Porter said it’s rare for a DA to deal directly with the sheriff on cases.

“Butch Conway was the sheriff for most of the time that I was district attorney. He and I had a pretty good relationship, but it was very rare for me to deal directly as the district attorney with the sheriff, unless we were talking about sort of upper level programs,” he said.

Porter said that, while it’s rare for an inmate to be released this way, it’s not unheard of for somebody to make a mistake. He said if he were still the DA, he doesn’t think he would pursue additional charges against Guzman since he was told he could leave.

“I don’t think I would have charged him for (this),” Porter said. “Technically, you could, but I have a little bit of a problem charging somebody where the sheriff’s department makes a mistake.”

McCall called Guzman’s release an “operational failure” on the part of the sheriff’s office and jail. He encouraged Allen to put procedures in place that require multiple checks by different individuals, especially considering this isn’t the first time an inmate has been mistakenly released.

To catch Guzman, Gambale said law enforcement officials should be find people who don’t like him, adding those are the people most likely to disclose his whereabouts.

“He’s gonna go on the run because he knows he’s gonna go back and sit in jail for the rest of his life. He needs support somewhere; obviously he’s not working, so he can’t make money like that,” Gambale said. “They’re going to have to find somebody that’s funneling money to him in such a way where he can survive and stay gone.”

McCall said he would have started by doing surveillance, checking the daily jail logs to see who Guzman spoke to leading up to his release. He said if Guzman is smart, he won’t commit any crimes that might lead to his capture.