MIAMI -- Authorities said a serial rape suspect planned to kill a prosecutor in his case and return to his native Honduras after escaping a Miami jail last week.

Police were able to capture Reynaldo Rapalo before he could carry out the plan. A tipster led police to the southwest Miami shopping center where Rapalo apparently had been hanging around Monday night.

A spokesman for the state attorney's office said officers were assigned to guard two prosecutors and State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle while Rapalo was at large.

Authorities said Rapalo told at least one inmate of his plans before he escaped.

During his nearly weeklong escapade, Rapalo made several calls to friends. Authorities used wire tapping to listen to those calls without a court order.

The state attorney's office approved the wiretap because a judge had previously allowed wire tapping before Rapalo's jailbreak.

Police recaptured Rapalo at a Winn-Dixie shopping center on Bird Road near Southwest 67th Avenue in a "tactical arrest" that was planned and executed as a result of the investigation.

Rapalo had shaved his mustache, combed his hair forward, and was wearing jeans and a pink sweater at the time of his capture, not what he was wearing when he escaped.

The arresting officers who responded to the tip said Rapalo told them he was a homeless man from Nicaragua and ran when he was being questioned.

Rapalo’s Escape

State, county and city law enforcement officials were on high alert after Rapalo, known to investigators as the Shenandoah rapist, escaped from the Turner-Guilford Knight Correctional Center Dec. 20.

Rapalo, 34, used tied-up bed sheets to lower himself from the roof of the facility to the ground. Authorities said he climbed through a ceiling vent to get to the roof.

Rapalo was scheduled to appear in court Jan. 5 for DNA evidence that allegedly ties him to seven rapes and four attempted assaults in the Shenandoah neighborhood of Miami dating back to 2002. The victims range in age from 11 to 79.

He gained notoriety as the subject of a documentary feature called "Code 33" that chronicles the alleged serial rapist's crime spree and his subsequent arrest.

Rapalo has been denied bail on an escape charge.