Terrell Watson has never seemed to stay in one place for long - even when he was supposed to be locked behind bars.

The convicted felon, believed to be 33, was reported missing from his cell at a medium-security Nashville, Tenn., prison at 5:50 a.m. Sunday. The same prisoner, known in Maryland as Terrence Kassis Washington, also escaped from Harford County sheriff's deputies last year.

Known for his brazen escapes, Watson once sawed through a window in a Louisiana prison and persuaded a jail trusty to look away while he fled from an Arkansas facility, authorities said. This time, he escaped through a pipe and ventilation system, officials from the Metro Detention Facility in Nashville said yesterday.

Since his disappearance Sunday, the Nashville facility has been on lockdown and halted all visits as officers scoured the detention center in case Watson was hiding inside, corrections officials said. But searches with bloodhounds and infrared thermal tracking devices couldn't turn up the missing inmate.

Watson is "at large at this time," said Susan Poindexter, a spokeswoman for Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the detention facility.

"It is unfortunate this has happened, but it shows how high of an escape risk that he is," Harford County Sheriff L. Jesse Bane said yesterday.

Watson escaped from the custody of Harford County sheriff's deputies during a six-minute ride to the hospital in a 2007 incident. He squirmed free of his handcuffs, leg irons and belly chains.

His antics have landed him on the television show America's Most Wanted several times.

Watson was serving a four-year sentence in Nashville after being found guilty of two theft charges, according to records. He began serving his sentence at the Metro Detention Facility in a unit separate from the general prison population on June 25, Poindexter said.

"He was in a segregated unit, where movement was limited," said Poindexter, adding that the area was where inmates with disciplinary issues or with a history of escaping were kept. But she said that Watson "was not restrained" in his cell.

Citing the investigation, she declined to elaborate on how he escaped and said, "We're considering all possibilities."

Beginning in 1998, he was wanted for bank robberies and auto theft, leaving a trail of stolen cars from Alabama, Illinois and Missouri to several Mid-Atlantic states, according to a profile from America's Most Wanted.

Watson, an amateur rapper who has tattoos reading "Only God Can Judge Me" across his chest and "Cash" on his stomach, used more than a dozen aliases, including Terrell Watson, Terrell Wilson, Travis Washington, Cassidy Washington and others. He has platinum caps on some of his upper teeth and prefers sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, according to the profile.

In September 2003, he was suspected of leading a high-speed chase in Bel Air in a stolen SUV and twice ramming a state trooper's car head-on. He initially escaped but was arrested in Ohio months later - after he reportedly stole a car and then tried to swim across a frigid lake to elude officers, according to America's Most Wanted.

He was transferred to Harford County on charges of assault and theft for the 2003 incident in Harford County.

In January 2007, he complained of a stomachache and was transported four miles from the Harford County Detention Center to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center. When deputies opened the back door of the police car, Watson had freed himself from his shackles and darted into the woods, where deputies later found his striped prison shirt.

The sheriff's office launched a manhunt using helicopters and infrared sensors, but Watson had disappeared. Police said he left a trail of stolen vehicles from Maryland to Alabama after his Jan. 24, 2007, escape.

Watson was arrested in May on suspicion of auto theft in Goodlettsville, Tenn., a town 15 miles north of Nashville, after police said they found a stolen Ryder truck and a car with an Indiana tag full of stolen suitcases, pocketbooks and laptop cases.

In Maryland, the Harford County Sheriff's Office still has a warrant for his arrest for first-degree escape.

"Every agency we've come into contact with, regarding him, we have been advising them of how high of an escape risk that he is," Bane said.

madison.park@baltsun.com