Jose Espinosa and Otis Blunt hail from different towns and very likely were strangers until they wound up in the same jail, a drab building of sealed windows rising 14 stories behind the courthouse in downtown Elizabeth, N.J.

The two men both had violent reputations: Mr. Espinosa had pleaded guilty in a drive-by shooting death, and Mr. Blunt had done prison time for assault and armed robbery. What they also had in common was a cinder-block wall that divided their cells and, apparently, a desire not to be incarcerated any longer.

On Saturday, the Union County authorities said, Mr. Espinosa and Mr. Blunt staged a cinematic escape from the jail, using dummies fashioned out of bedsheets and pictures of pinup models to cover their tracks.

They squeezed out of their cells and out of the building through holes barely larger than a sheet of legal paper and then long-jumped 16 feet from a roof over a fence topped with razor wire, landing on a railroad bed. Two sets of footprints, each pointing in a different direction, showed that the men parted ways as soon as they hit the ground, the authorities said.