Bucks child-sex suspect charged with plotting jailbreak

Walter Meyerle was willing to shed his own blood for the sake of freedom.

But, Bucks County authorities say, Meyerle's cause was anything but noble. The freedom he allegedly sought was his own, via a jailbreak.

Meyerle, 34, is described by prosecutors as the county's most prolific sexual abuser of children in recent memory.

Charged with 210 crimes, most of them felony sexual assaults, against 14 children, he is held in the Bucks County prison on $6 million bail, awaiting a July 20 preliminary hearing.

That list of charges grew Monday, as police filed additional counts of trying to escape from the county prison, of possessing child pornography, and of criminal use of a communications facility.

"He has dug himself in even deeper," District Attorney David Heckler said Tuesday.

In mid-May, police allege, Meyerle told a fellow prisoner, Keith Ruvolo, that he was plotting an escape. Ruvolo said Meyerle was planning a fight in which he "would get cut and have to go to the hospital, where his people would be there and take care of the guards and then he could escape," a probable-cause affidavit said.

Ruvolo said that was among several plans Meyerle had mentioned, each with the aim of getting to a hospital where "his people" could "take care of" the guards. Meyerle talked of fleeing to Costa Rica after escaping, the affidavit said.

Another prisoner, Justin Gilroy, told detectives that in April, Meyerle had questioned him closely about a trip Gilroy had made to the hospital after suffering a hand injury. Gilroy said Meyerle wanted to know how many guards had transported him, whether they were armed, which hospital entrance was used, whether he was shackled, and whether the guards used cellphones or radios.

Gilroy said he later heard that Meyerle "was trying to get 'sliced' so he would be taken to the hospital," the affidavit said.

A third man, Robert Gremmel, told detectives that he had been summoned by Meyerle's wife to her Falls Township home in March. In a collect call from prison, Gremmel said, Meyerle told him he was planning to be taken to Doylestown Hospital by unarmed guards and wanted Gremmel to overpower them.

Gremmel, whose relationship to Meyerle was not explained in court records, refused to go along. According to the affidavit, he said he told Meyerle "to allow his defense attorney to do his job."

A call seeking comment from Richard Fink, listed in court records as Meyerle's lawyer, was not returned.