High heels betray cross-dressing prison escapee

Militarized policemen escort Plutarco Ruiz after he was found guilty of the murder of his girlfriend Sofia Trinidad Alvarado and her sister, the late former Miss Honduras Mundo, Maria Jose Alvarado, in Tegucigalpa on May 4, 2017. 
According to the Honduran Penal Code, Plutarco could be sentenced to 70 years in prison. | PHOTO | ORLANDO SIERRA | AFP |

What you need to know:

  • The cross-dressing escape attempt from a Honduran prison by inmate Francisco Roman Herrera came to naught, according to penitentiary officials speaking to local media.
  • It was the way he awkwardly walked in high heels that gave him away. That, and his suspiciously deep voice.
  • Herrera, a gaunt 55-year-old man, had donned a luxuriant blond wig, dark sunglasses, black skirt, a black-and-white blouse and stockings to try to walk out of the prison in Honduras' second city of San Pedro Sula as a visitor on Sunday.

TEGUCIGALPA

It was the way he awkwardly walked in high heels that gave him away. That, and his suspiciously deep voice.

In the end, the cross-dressing escape attempt from a Honduran prison by inmate Francisco Roman Herrera came to naught, according to penitentiary officials speaking to local media.

Herrera, a gaunt 55-year-old man, had donned a luxuriant blond wig, dark sunglasses, black skirt, a black-and-white blouse and stockings to try to walk out of the prison in Honduras' second city of San Pedro Sula as a visitor on Sunday.

UNFEMININE

But, although he flashed a woman's ID card while leaving, the guards at the gate quickly noticed his unfeminine voice and the way he teetered in high-heel shoes, a prison spokesman, Bayron Sauceda, said.

He was stopped and his wig was taken off, putting paid to his bid for freedom.

Instead, Herrera, who is serving a 15-year sentence for rape, was transferred from that prison to another, maximum-security known as "The Hole," where he will be kept along with more than 1,000 members of Honduras' feared gangs.