Man indicted in July jail escape

Peter J. DiBiaso, an inmate who escaped from the Belknap County Jail this past summer, managed to flee by using items in the facility’s laundry storage room to fashion an improvised battering ram, according to an indictment.

DiBiaso, 57, of Elm Street in Laconia, was indicted on charges of implementing an escape, escape, and motor vehicle theft.

The indictments were among a number issued by the latest session of the Belknap County grand jury.

An indictment is not an indication of guilt. Rather it is a finding by the grand jury that enough evidence of an alleged crime exists to warrant bringing a case to trial.

DiBiaso escaped from the County Corrections facility July 25 through a laundry room door that was not wired to an alarm and then climbed a 10-foot-high fence that didn’t have barbed wire.

According to one of the indictments, DiBiaso built a battering ram by affixing “a number of heavy metal chairs to a laundry cart, which he then used to smash open a locked door.”

DiBiaso was being held at the jail on domestic violence and weapons charges when he escaped from a room where he was folding laundry.

He fled on foot, eventually walking through the Long Bay condominium community on Paugus Bay where his movements were recorded by a surveillance camera. There police believe he commandeered a kayak, which he used to cross the bay. Once on the other side of the lake he allegedly stole a compact SUV parked outside a residence on Timber Lane.

He was apprehended on July 27 in Corning, New York, in the SUV without incident, after someone tipped off local law enforcement. He was then returned to the county corrections facility.