Posted at 11:35 a.m., Monday, July 2, 2001

Hospital fugitive was 8th escape this year

By Brandon Masuoka
Advertiser Staff Writer

A 64-year-old man who was committed to the Hawai'i State Hospital after a strangulation murder in 1970 was arrested Saturday after escaping from the Kane'ohe facility, the eighth reported escape this year.

Police caught Stanley Morris Santos after a hospital worker saw him wandering on Hotel Street downtown. He was charged with second-degree escape and his bail was set at $15,000.He was returned to the hospital.

Police said the hospital had called authorities Friday after Santos left without permission. The next day a hospital employee saw him downtown and flagged down a police officer. Santos was arrested.

The Hawai'i State Hospital has experienced a rash of escapes in recent months. One patient, Leonard Moore, escaped twice in as many weeks by throwing a television, then a table through a window. Moore was awaiting trial on an auto theft charge.

Last year 16 patients escaped; so far this year eight have escaped. The Hawai'i State Hospital serves 160 patients with a staff of 600.

Santos has fled the hospital before. From March 9, 1973, he was on the loose for six years until Oct. 25, 1979, when he was arrested after allegedly telling crew members on a Western Airlines flight from San Francisco to Honolulu that he was going to blow up the plane.

Santos was admitted to the hospital Sept. 16, 1970, after being found found insane by a panel of three psychiatrists, and acquitted of murder in the strangulation death of Danny Matias, 23, found beaten to death in a Kalihi high-rise stairwell May 1, 1970.

Last month the hospital named its third director in as many years. Paul Guggenheim, executive director of an Ohio private mental-health care provider, will replace Barbara Peterson, who held the job for less than a year.

Guggenheim, 54, of the Cincinnati suburb of Loveland, is a former colleague of Peterson. Her $88,500 one-year contract expires in November.