2011 jailhouse tapes obtained by I-Team reveal Floyd Brown threatened to kill cops

The Illinois fugitive charged with killing a lawman during a hotel siege in Rockford had promised to shoot it out with police years earlier according to recordings of jailhouse phone calls obtained exclusively by the ABC7 I-Team.

"Better hope and pray that I don't get out," Floyd E. Brown said in a phone conversation from jail with his girlfriend in March, 2011. "They don't understand the way my mind works," Brown said.

Brown is heard angrily threatening law enforcement officers, "swear to God," he said, in a series of calls from jail where he was being held on several burglary charges in 2011.

Fast forward to today and Brown, now 39, is accused of carrying out those threats. He allegedly opened fire last Thursday on a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive arrest team, killing McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keltner. Following that deadly encounter, Brown escaped by jumping from a third floor motel window and then led police on a high-speed, cross-state pursuit that resulted in a downstate stand-off before he was taken into custody.

Brown is now being held without bond on federal murder charges in a Rockford lock-up.

The 2011 jailhouse phone calls between Brown and several different women including, apparently, his mother-were filled with profanity and rage directed at his attorneys; promises to never return to jail and threats against police.

"I'm not coming back I promise you" he said, seeming to refer to jail. "You come f----n with me and we're gonna shoot it out." The I-Team obtained the audio recordings on Tuesday under a Freedom of Information request.

In 2011 Macon County Judge, Timothy Steadman, set a high bond for Brown who he said would pose a physical threat to shoot it out with officers if released. On one call, Brown was heard to say he "had nothing to lose."

The Springfield man had been arrested for allegedly committing a series of burglaries on Decatur's far north side.

Two years later Brown pleaded guilty to three counts of residential burglary, a Class 1 felony, as part of an agreement with prosecutors. He was sentenced to 13 years in state prison but was released early for good behavior.

He was on parole from those crimes when police said he committed fresh residential burglaries last December. He was on the run from those charges last week when the federal fugitive task force came to arrest him at a motel in Rockford.

Authorities would have known that Brown had a long criminal history and had threatened to shoot it out with police at the time they went to arrest him.

Brown's attorney Paul Gaziano, with the federal public defender's office, on Tuesday declined to comment on jailhouse tapes obtained by the I-Team.