Profile

Name: Scott Alan Hornick (Scott Allen, Charles Hall, Jerry Todisco, Steven Ingardi)
Aliases: Scott Allen, Charles Hall, Jerry Todisco, Steven Ingardi
Sex: Male
Race: White
Age Now: 37
Height: 5'11\"
Weight: 260
Hair (Color, Description, Facial Hair): Brown
Eyes (Color and Correction): Brown
Other Physical Characteristics: Hornick is overweight
Wanted for: Escape, Warren County, NJ; Aug 06, 2001
Obstruction, Passaic, NJ; Oct 16, 2002
Burglary 2nd degree, Baltimore County, MD; Dec 13, 2004
Burglary, Passaic, NJ; Aug 08, 2002
Probation Violation

Locations

Last seen: Unkown
Possible location: New Jersey New York Pennsylvania
Last known: Unkown

Traits

Police say Hornick likes to gamble
He hangs out in the Easton Pennsylvania region
Police say he dates women and gets access to their credit cards, then leaves them
Hornick has several aliases and phony social security numbers

Case Story

From A Jail Cell To A Carousel

On December 13, 2004, Baltimore County, Md. Detective Gary Lippa and his partner began an investigation into a camera store burglary. They had a good witness who saw four people loading trash bags into a van and the tag of that van. With the help of the NYPD, Lippa tracked the van as a rental to an Anthony Todisco. Turns out he'd rented vans between October 2003 and December 2004, racking up over 30,000 miles in total. Two days later, when Todisco and his brother, Jerry, returned the van, NYPD officers arrested the pair. They learned that \"Jerry Todisco\" is an alias of New Jersey fugitive Scott Hornick. After a fingerprint check, they realized they had the real Jerry Todisco. The brothers were arrested and extradited to Maryland on burglary charges. As Det. Lippa continued to investigate, he learned that his 2004 break-in was just the tip of the iceberg.  Since then, he's been in touch with detectives up and down the east coast concerning similar burglaries and each one come back to fugitive Scott Hornick.  Det. Lippa said, \"The M-O's are all the same, a large male accompanied by a small female break into a high end camera store in the early morning hours wearing masks.\"  He went on to say that the suspects use crow bars to force entry then load up the goods into black trash bags.  In a matter of minutes the burglars steal up to $50-60,000 in expensive cameras. To name a few cases, police say Hornick is believed to be behind the March 18, 2005 burglary in the Syracuse, New York region.  There detectives say Hornick allegedly stole $40,000 in digital camera equipment in about one minute.  In Allendale, New Jersey, detectives want to question suspects in a July 7, 2006 burglary of a camera warehouse. Cops are unsure if the two suspects are Hornick and his female partner, but there are a lot of similarities.  The burglars got away with $60,000 in cameras during an early morning raid which lasted about 4 minutes. Big Man And Small Woman On Roller Coaster? Detectives don't know where Hornick and his pals fenced their goods, but they know where they were spending the cash. Not on drugs or expensive cars, but on roller coasters. Lippa says they found receipts and have tracked the foursome to amusement parks up and down the east coast including Disney World, Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion. The team believes Hornick is travelling with an accomplice, Sasha Ingardi, a woman arrested in 2004 in New York with Anthony Todisco. Detective Lippa says this odd couple should stand out -- Hornick's some 300 pounds, and Ingardi is a small, long-haired woman. With the Todisco brothers in custody, police say they are still keeping a close eye on other camera equipment store burglaries in other jurisdictions. Knowing the remaining duo's fetish for amusement parks, cops are certain to look high and low for Hornick and Ingardi.  

Fat Fugitive Can Certainly Run -- From The Law

Catching up with prison escapees is what New Jersey State Police Detectives and members of the United States Marshals Fugitive Task Force do best. These experienced cops have a knack for finding convicts who sometimes come up with clever ways to break out.  But Scott Hornick is the one guy they just can't seem to get their hands on, because he's proven to be nimble and slippery. You'd never think a man who is almost six feet tall and weighs 300 pounds could evade police so easily. \"When you first look at Scott Hornick,\" says Sgt. Jim Steiger of the New Jersey State Police, \"you think you're looking at an overweight, unkempt loser. However, he's a cunning, elusive opportunistic person.\" Police say Hornick is a career criminal who has been in and out of jail most of his life, serving time for writing bad checks, identity theft, burglary and a long list of felonies. His latest stint in jail began in 2001 at the Warren County Correctional Center in northern New Jersey. Hornick acted like a model inmate, and earned points that landed him a job in the jail's kitchen. But while he was cleaning dishes, authorities say, he was plotting a clean getaway. In early 2001, Hornick abandoned his dishwashing duties and loosened the kitchen door from its frame. Once outside the kitchen door, he wasn't far from freedom. He ran some 40 or 45 feet across a gated area, scaled one fence and made a dash to a second fence. Luckily, an alert officer watching surveillance cameras that morning caught the overweight inmate making a break for it. Hornick was caught, thrown into maximum security and stripped of his privileges.

The Big Squeeze

Maximum security didn't deter Scott Hornick one bit. In the summer of 2001, several months after his first escape attempt, jail officials say Hornick and another inmate devised a new and complex escape plan. According to the jail's warden, \"Hornick was able to identify a flaw in the building design where a hatch that opens into the mechanical systems in the ceiling of that housing area was placed at the time of construction.\" Hornick, he says, figured that he could get that hatch open. Over a period of a few days, jail warden Byron Foster says, Hornick and his partner picked at the lock on the hatch with a tool made from an eyeglass frame. On August 6, 2001, the hatch opened. Foster says the two inmates jumped up into the ceiling, pulling the door closed behind them. According to the warden, the two inmates crawled through the air handling system's ductwork, emerging on the second floor which housed maintenance systems, tools and a workout room. When Hornick and the other inmate located a roof drainage pipe in the ceiling, authorities say they used tools and free hand weights to break it open. The result was an opening with a 20-inch circumference. They stacked tables and chairs underneath it, climbed up and squeezed through the ceiling onto the roof top. Because it was in the middle of the night, no one heard them or saw them. Cops are still baffled how a 260 pound man squeezed through a 20-inch hole. Once on the roof, Warden Foster says the two inmates climbed a fence and made it outside the perimeter of the jail. Police say the well-planned escape concluded with a getaway car driven by an unidentified woman, parked about a-half mile from the jail. Police believe Hornick got behind the wheel and drove the three of them to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Cops caught up with Hornick's skinny partner in southern New Jersey. He told arresting officers that he and Hornick had split up in Atlantic City, and he hadn't seen Hornick since. But Hornick hardly kept a low profile. In August of 2002, cops say Hornick, still weighing almost 300 pounds, tried to burglarize a Circuit City in Wayne, New Jersey, with two other men. Police say the three tried to use a blow torch to open the back door of the business. But the would-be burglars didn't get inside Circuit City, because cops responded to the alarm. The obese fugitive and his accomplices then took off in an SUV, leading patrol cars on a high speed chase through neighborhoods and backyards in northern New Jersey. The SUV crashed in a cul-de-sac, and officers caught Hornick and his accomplices. Hornick cooperated -- but gave cops a fake name, Jerry Todisco. Todisco had a clean record, so he was allowed to bail out. By the time a fingerprint comparison arrived showing who he really was, Hornick was gone again. Then, cops got another chance to bust him. Police caught up to Hornick in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, at an extended stay hotel. When cops arrived, they say Hornick took the only escape route -- his second story window. Amazingly, this huge fugitive jumped from two floors up and landed without breaking a bone. Hornick got up from the fall, made a run for his car and got away. No one knows where he is now. Wherever he is, Sgt. Steiger of the NJ State Police says \"Scott Hornick is probably committing some type of crime. If he's not, he's thinking of the next crime he's going to commit.\" And Sgt. Steiger appears to be correct.