A deputy district attorney compared one of the men who escaped Friday from the Central Men’s Jail to a movie villain and contended the Sheriff’s Department was too lax in its handling of the suspect after it was warned about his violent past.

“He’s diabolical,” said prosecutor Heather Brown, who is handling the 2012 case against Hossein Nayeri on charges of kidnapping and torture.

“My first reaction was: Oh, my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out. He is sophisticated, incredibly violent and cunning.”

An Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said the escape remains under investigation but that Nayeri was properly housed in a maximum security lockup.

Officials had not found the men as of Tuesday morning and did not have any new details. Authorities plan to hold a 2 p.m. press conference at the Sheriff’s Department headquarters, which neighbors the Central Men’s Jail, to discuss the latest information.

Nayeri is accused of participating in a 2012 attack against a Newport Beach resident who ran a licensed marijuana dispensary in Santa Ana.

In that attack, according to Brown, Nayeri burned the victim with a butane torch, beat him with a pistol and a rubber hose, and eventually ordered another suspect to cut off the man’s penis.

Nayeri’s trial was set to begin Feb. 23. He has pleaded not guilty.

Nayeri’s defense attorney, Salvatore Ciulla, could not be reached for comment Monday.

More than 250 investigators from local, state and federal agencies executed 30 search warrants Monday in an effort to hunt down Nayeri and fellow escapees Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong. All three men remained on the run Monday after they cut their way through metal barriers early Friday and rappelled from the roof to escape from the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana.

Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer said Monday he’ll recommend that the county increase the reward for help in the capture of the three fugitives to $200,000 from $50,000.

Tieu, 20, is charged in a 2011 gang murder in Westminster. Duong, 43, is charged with attempted murder stemming from a shooting in November in Santa Ana. Both men pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors said Monday that all three men were being charged with an additional felony count of escape.

NAYERI CALLED POSSIBLE LEADER

Investigators spent time Monday talking with people in the Little Saigon neighborhoods where Tieu and Duong had friends and relatives, and appealing for help in the county’s broader Vietnamese American community.

Brown described Nayeri as the potential leader of the escape.

Nayeri has fled prosecution at least twice before. He spent three years in Washington, D.C., after fleeing officials in Madera County, where in 2005 he was in a drunken driving accident in which a passenger in his car was killed. In 2012, after his initial arrest in the torture and kidnapping case, he jumped bail and fled to Iran. He was re-arrested in 2013 in Prague.

Though born in Iran, Nayeri, 37, grew up in central California. While attending Clovis West High in Fresno, Nayeri, a wrestler, had at least three close friends – two men and a woman – who also were charged in the 2012 kidnapping and torture.

He served in the U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton, according to court documents.

Several people wrote to the court after Nayeri pleaded no contest in the 2005 drunken driving case, saying that severe injuries in that accident had left him depressed and emotionally scarred. “Since this moment, he has never been the same, and I don’t know if he ever will be,” one of the letters said.

Brown said Newport Beach police and the FBI warned the Orange County Sheriff’s Department about Nayeri, suggesting that the nature of the allegations against him – and his history of getting away from captivity – indicated he should be treated as a high-risk prisoner. Still, Brown said, Nayeri was “white-banded” at the jail, meaning he was housed in its lowest-security area. She said the Sheriff’s Department should be investigated for the way Nayeri was handled.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Jeff Hallock said because Nayeri was a flight risk on the outside didn’t make him a security risk inside the jail.

The Central Men’s Jail, where the three escapees were housed, is a maximum security facility. Hallock said Nayeri’s classification status – whether he was white-banded or otherwise classified – is under investigation.

But Brown noted that when Nayeri was arraigned, 10 bailiffs ushered him into the court’s holding cage, indicating that some in the department believed he warranted extra attention.

“It’s mind-boggling that he was housed in a dorm with such low-level security,” Brown said. “They were notified of the flight risk. … That should be looked into.”

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Brown said she believes Nayeri’s escape partners are in danger.

“They’re liabilities,” she said, referring to how Nayeri might view Duong and Tieu. “I guarantee he doesn’t trust them. He’s desperate. He’ll do whatever it takes to not be in jail.”

HARROWING STORY

Brown’s comments line up with the story told by the woman who was kidnapped along with the Newport Beach man who was tortured in October 2012. The Register is not identifying the woman because she is a victim of sexual violence.

She told a harrowing story of the night she was dragged into the desert.

She was asleep in her bed when the assailants barged into her bedroom around 2 a.m., pressed a gun barrel to the back of her neck and quickly blindfolded her. They zip-tied her hands and ankles. She said she never saw any of the assailants because she was blindfolded the whole time.

The men kidnapped her and her male roommate and threw them in the back of a van. They drove them out to Antelope Valley, repeatedly asking the roommate, “Where’s the money?”

The vehicle came to a stop in a remote area of the desert.

For the next two hours, she said, the men beat and tortured her roommate. They incorrectly believed he had money buried in the desert.

She was on the ground just feet away, blindfolded, gagged and tied up, as she heard him cry in agony.

“They were beating him horribly. They were hitting him with something. … I instantly knew it was a rubber hose.”

She said one of the men was extremely brutal.

“I think he went unconscious,” she said of her roommate. “I really just wanted to do all I could do to survive and help him.”

After the attack on the roommate, she said, one of the men tossed a dull knife near her, one of the knives used on the roommate.

“He said, ‘I’m gonna throw it and you’re gonna roll and if you find it you can set yourself free and you’re gonna live. Today is your lucky day.’”

He then told her to count to 100.

“As soon as I heard the tire … on the gravel I managed to sit up and push the blindfold up with my knees. It was still semi-dark, predawn, getting a little bit light. I could see the knife. I crab-walked over there. I was in shock, but adrenaline is an amazing thing. I was able to get the knife.”

Though her hands were still bound, she said she could use the knife to cut herself free. While she cut the ties, she tried talking with her roommate.

“I told him to stay calm and try to take deep breaths. I told him I was going to get him some help.”

She tried to cut the zip ties on his wrists but his hands were too swollen and she was cutting into his skin.

She then sought help, walking about half a mile, barefoot, on desert gravel.

“I could see the car lights, and the sun was starting to come up. I just kept thinking, ‘You gotta walk fast. You gotta walk fast.’”

When she reached the road she tried to flag down cars but nobody stopped.

“Then I saw a state trooper, and I was so very grateful. I just spit out exactly what happened. I told him my friend might bleed to death, they tortured him and he’s in bad shape.”

Police and ambulances arrived on the scene within minutes.

She said all she could think about was helping her roommate.

“I did the only thing any normal, caring person would do. I was not going to let them win.”

On Monday, Brown, the deputy district attorney, said she is worried that Nayeri has already fled the country.

“If I was him, I’d be in Mexico drinking margaritas right now,” she said.

Staff writers Alyssa Duranty, Alma Fausto and Scott Schwebke contributed to this report.