Killer who participated in 2010 Arizona prison escape dies behind bars

The central figure in a highly publicized northwest Arizona prison escape in 2010 that led to two murders in New Mexico has died in custody.

The Arizona Department of Corrections said that John McCluskey, 52, apparently died of natural causes on Tuesday.

DOC spokesman Andrew Wilder said McCluskey was serving prison time out of state and had been hospitalized for treatment of undisclosed health issues.

McCluskey’s cousin and fiancée, Casslyn Welch, brought wire clippers and supplies to aid him, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick to escape on July 30, 2010, from the 3,500-inmate prison in the northwest Arizona community of Golden Valley. That prison was privately operated by Management & Training Corp.

McCluskey shot and killed a vacationing Oklahoma couple in New Mexico just days after the prison break. He was serving a life sentence for those murders plus more than 200 years for a string of convictions in Arizona.

The escape exposed serious security deficiencies at the prison in Golden Valley. A history of problems at the facility led the state of Arizona to cancel its contract with MTC before turning the operation over to the GEO group in December 2015.