It took a robe, a rooftop and a whole lot of nerve for two women to slip out of an Ohio correctional facility on a Monday evening in October.
By the time staff realized they were gone, the pair had already busted out of lockup and disappeared into the woods across the street, leaving a lone shoe and a trail of discarded clothes behind them.
Investigators say the women had a getaway plan and a sunny destination already picked out. What they didn’t have, it turns out, was much of a head start.
Roughly a day later, U.S. Marshals and a police dog found them about 25 miles away, hiding in a hole near a basement foundation and covered in dirt.
The women, Hope Skerrett and Kerriah Ohler, escaped from the Stark Regional Community Correction Center in Louisville, Ohio, around 7 p.m. on Oct. 12, according to Cleveland 19.
Online records list Skerrett as 40 and Ohler as 29, WJER reported.
Police said the two jumped from the roof and ran through the Fairhope Nature Preserve, which sits across the street from the facility.
Staff noticed they were missing while closing the outdoor area for the night, then spotted a shoe outside the fence and a robe draped over the razor wire.
Police arrived about 20 minutes later. Officers deployed a drone and a K-9 unit, finding more dark clothing in the preserve, but the women had already escaped.
Someone inside the facility later filled investigators in on the alleged plan: get picked up near a Walmart on U.S. Route 62, then head to Florida, according to the police report.
Florida never happened.
On the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 13, marshals got a tip from a man renting an apartment in the 600 block of Race Street in Dover. He told them Ohler was inside, Dover Police Capt. Michelle Seibert told WJER. Local officers met the marshals at the address around 5:30 p.m. and sent a police dog through the residence.
The dog led them straight to the women, who had tucked themselves into a hole by the basement foundation.
Seibert said both women surrendered and authorities took them into custody without incident. U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott confirmed the arrests to WKYC, and jail officials booked both women into the Stark County Jail.
Their choice of hideout may not have been random. Skerrett and Ohler reportedly come from or have ties to the Dover–New Philadelphia area.
Online on Facebook, plenty of people had jokes about the short-lived getaway. “Well they didn’t make it to Florida,” one user wrote under a local news post about the arrests.
Another offered some unsolicited fugitive advice: “Rule number one split up…. Never play hide and seek.”
“Obviously, they never watched the Fugitive. Harrison Ford taught me all I need to know,” a third person joked.
Someone else gave credit to the manhunt itself. They wrote, “When US Marshals are involved, it rarely takes long for them to locate escaped prisoners!”
One local who said they drove past the facility that night said the place “lit up like a Christmas tree.” They also mentioned lights flashing, dogs roaming and a paddy wagon on site.
The escape has also raised questions about what was going on inside the facility.
According to a police report obtained by WKYC, employees told investigators that the facility recently fired a staff member over alleged conduct involving Ohler.
Authorities have not said whether that firing had anything to do with the breakout.
The center is a rehabilitation and treatment facility for people sentenced on felony cases. Skerrett had spent 54 days at the facility after authorities sent her there for a fifth-degree felony breaking-and-entering conviction. Ohler, sentenced on a fourth-degree felony failure-to-comply conviction, had been there less than 30 days, Cleveland 19 reported.
Now they’re looking at more time, not less. Both pleaded not guilty to third-degree felony escape charges in Canton Municipal Court on Oct. 15, where bond was set at $150,000 each. They’re due back in court Oct. 19.
Their run barely registered compared to the manhunt authorities launched after last year’s New Orleans jailbreak. Derrick Groves, a convicted killer and one of 10 inmates who broke out of the Orleans Justice Center in May 2025 by dismantling a toilet and scaling razor wire, stayed on the run for months as authorities said he was getting help on the outside.
Authorities finally caught Groves in October 2025, hiding in a crawl space beneath a home in Atlanta.
Skerrett and Ohler’s hideout held up for about a day.
