Evan Ebel Update: Murder suspect slipped ankle bracelet 5 days before officials noticed

(CBS/AP) DENVER - Parole officials did not realize that Evan Ebel, the man suspected of fatally shooting a Colorado prisons chief, had slipped his ankle bracelet and fled custody until five days after the monitoring system first indicated he was being delinquent, according to records released Tuesday.

PICTURES: Colo. prisons chief shot and killed at home

Authorities sent a warrant out for Ebel's arrest one day before he was killed in a shootout with Texas authorities and a day after police now say they think he was involved in the slaying of Tom Clements.

"We have to do better in the future," said Tim Hand, director of the Department of Correction's parole division.

Ebel had been a model parolee until his electronic monitoring bracelet stopped working on March 14. Before that, he called in daily, even once calling in apparent alarm because no one had requested his weekly urinalysis test to show he hadn't been using drugs.

His father provided him housing and a job at his law firm, but on the afternoon of March 14, a "tamper alert" automatically went to a prison computer system showing the bracelet had stopped working.

Two days later, corrections officials called Ebel and told him to come in to repair the bracelet. He did not show up.

It was not until March 18 that parole officers spoke to Ebel's father, who told them he feared his son had fled and gave them permission to search his apartment. The next day, two parole officers saw Ebel had taken a large amount of clothing and apparently fled.

That night, Clements was shot and killed as he answered the front door at his house. The next morning, parole officers obtained a warrant for Ebel's arrest for parole violations and sent it to Colorado State Patrol. They had no indication he was involved in the Clements' killing until the shootout March 21.

On Monday, court officials vowed to reveal the procedures that led to a clerical error that allowed Ebel to leave prison four years early.

Judicial officials acknowledged that Ebel's previous felony conviction was inaccurately recorded and his release in January was an error.

In 2008, Ebel pleaded guilty in rural Fremont County to assaulting a prison officer. In the plea deal, Ebel was to be sentenced to up to four additional years in prison, to be served after he completed the eight-year sentence that put him behind bars in 2005, according to a statement from Colorado's 11th Judicial District.

However, the judge didn't say the sentence was meant to be "consecutive," or in addition to, Ebel's current one. So the court clerk recorded it as one to be served "concurrently," or at the same time. That's the information that went to the state prisons, the statement said.

So on Jan. 28, prisons officials saw that Ebel had finished his court-ordered sentence and released him. They said they had no way of knowing the plea deal was intended to keep Ebel behind bars for years longer.

Two months later, Ebel was dead after a shootout with authorities in Texas. Authorities say the gun he used in the March 21 gunbattle was the same one used to shoot and kill prisons chief Tom Clements two days earlier.

Police believe Ebel also was involved in the death of Nathan Leon, who was killed March 17 after heading out to deliver a pizza.

"The Colorado Department of Corrections values its long-standing partnership with the 11th Judicial District and the district attorney's office to maintain order at the prisons in Canon City," Gov. John Hickenlooper's spokeswoman Megan Castle said in a statement.

"We commend both the 11th Judicial District and the DOC for reviewing their own internal processes and procedures."

Charles Barton, chief judge of the 11th Judicial District, and administrator Walter Blair, said in a statement that the court regrets the oversight "and extends condolences to the families of Mr. Nathan Leon and Mr. Tom Clements."