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His daring escape wasn't done at the spur of the moment. The escape was apparently planned out for weeks and carefully executed.

The details are all in a letter written by Verville to his wife, Tina. Guards found it in Verville's cell after his escape.

  Michael Verville's Letter from Jail

Verville was charged Wednesday with escaping from the House of Correction on Aug. 4. He was arrested the next day in Milwaukee.

The letter begins, "Dear Tina." It's dated July 25, a week and a half before the escape but well into the planning process.

"I can't do it! I can't live in a cage not knowing from day to day if you are out there again," he wrote.

On Aug. 1, he wrote, "I was going to leave tonight, but I got your letter and it encouraged me to stay."

He said he wanted to be a good husband and father and get a job. He also said he knew escaping is wrong.

"Do you want to know my plan?" he asked his wife in a letter. "I know you do. It is so cool. I have been working on it the whole time I have been here, and I was ready to go yesterday."

His plan was meticulous and apparently took a long time to accomplish.

"First I took the bathroom porter's job. It gained me access to a locked closet with a window," Verville wrote.

He said he used a broom handle as a “crashing bar” to break the window and the screen so his body could fit through.

"I used the crashing bar three times a day for three weeks until I broke all the rivets and screens around the frame," the letter reads.

Verville claimed he stole a women's blue jail uniform to wear during a night escape. He practiced climbing light poles every day so he could get over the fence.

He even included a hand-drawn map of his plan.

In the end, he told his wife, “I figured if I could get a bike I would be at Victory with you in my arms by 12:00 and running the rest of our lives.”

Verville was captured a day after his escape when he jumped from the second floor of a home near 12th and Hadley on Milwaukee's north side.

He called himself insane. But in this letter, he repeatedly says he knows escaping is wrong and even talks about doing more time if he gets caught.

No one caught on to his escape plan until it was too late.

County Supervisor Paul Cesarz said he is upset about the escape. "If procedure is followed, it's my understanding that at every shift change, every handoff from one guard to the next, every door, every window is checked," Cesarz said.

Correction officials wouldn't say if they did the proper window checks. But they said they are coming up with a plan to prevent other escapes.

County Supervisor Mark Borkowski said overworked guards and understaffing are part of the problem. "We've got a powder keg that's brewing," Borkowski said. "They're working mandatory double shifts, that means 16 hours in a row. Something's gotta give."

County supervisors have been briefed on what went wrong. They say changes will be made. "We have to make sure this doesn't happen again," Borkowski said.

The House of Correction is also doing an internal investigation to see if anyone else was involved in the escape.

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke is criticizing the House of Correction. In a letter to the County Board President, he blames complacency and negligence of the workers. He also criticizes managers who set the tone.

In the same letter, Clarke talks about touring the H.O.C. just two days after the escape. "People will usually recommit and rededicate themselves after an incident like Saturday's escape; one can usually fell the sense of urgency in the air. Unfortunately, I did not experience any sense of urgency in the atmosphere at the H.O.C." he wrote.

Franklin's mayor, Tom Taylor, met with House of Correction officials and County Executive Scott Walker Wednesday. He still wants to know how this could have happened. "There's got to be precautions put in place so this never happens again," Taylor told TODAY'S TMJ4 reporter Lauren Leamanczyk.