Jail escapee may have had help, police say

MIAMI -- A serial rape suspect who escaped from jail by climbing through a ceiling vent and rappelling down the side of the building on tied-together bedsheets seemed to have had outside help and used tools that had been smuggled in, the city's police chief said yesterday.

''This is a conspiracy. This was hatched over about three months," Chief John Timoney said.

Reynaldo E. Rapalo, 34, and another inmate broke out of a Miami-Dade County jail Tuesday night by crawling through a vent in the ceiling of a sixth-floor cell, officials said. The vent's door had been pried off. And bars blocking the vent's opening to the roof were cut.