Thursday: Authorities say five people have been charged in the plot to kidnap Janssen. 
 
 Late Wednesday: The FBI storms into an apartment in Atlanta and rescue Frank Janssen. 
 
 Wednesday: Law enforcement officials monitor voice and text communications between various phones, including one transmitting from Polk Correctional Institution in Butner, where Melton is incarcerated. Melton bars his cell door and smashes the phone when authorities try to enter. 
 
 Monday: Janssens wife, Christie, begins to receive text messages transmitted from a phone in Georgia. The messages make various demands for the benefit of Kelvin Melton, according to a criminal affidavit. 
 
 Saturday: Frank Janssen, Colleen Janssens father, is assaulted and kidnapped after answering a knock at the door of his Wake Forest home. He is taken to an apartment in Atlanta. 
 
 2012: Kelvin Melton is convicted in Wake County of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and being a habitual felon. Colleen Janssen prosecuted him. 
 
 — Kelvin Melton is serving a life sentence in North Carolinas most secure prison. He spends a typical day in a cell behind two locked doors. When he leaves, hes escorted by two guards. 
 
 On Friday, Melton was charged with conspiring to commit a violent crime that occurred entirely outside prison walls. Now the state is investigating how a 49-year-old man may have bypassed all the protections of Polk Correctional Institution in Butner to help orchestrate the snatching of a prosecutors father from his home in Wake Forest. 
 
 A federal criminal complaint indicates a simple answer: Melton had a cellphone. An Eastern North Carolina number, area code 252, placed hundreds of calls and texts from inside Polks walls, possibly connecting Melton to his daughters and the five people accused of kidnapping Frank Janssen on the morning of April 5. 
 
 Meltons alleged co-conspirators were charged Thursday with kidnapping. A federal complaint says that a woman hit Janssen with a stun gun at his home last Saturday and several people assaulted him before loading him into a rented car. 
 
 Melton never left the prison gates. In fact, he may have been using a phone for more than a month before the kidnapping culminated Wednesday in a successful rescue in Atlanta by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Melton, also known as Dizzy and Old Man, apparently was patched into a network of phones associated with the crime, according to the criminal complaint. 
 
 George Solomon, director of prisons for North Carolina, said he could say little about the specifics of the case, but said it may be an example of an influx of mobile phones into prison facilities across the country. 
 
 It is a problem  were continuing to combat it, Solomon said. Everyone is adversely impacted when phones are introduced to facilities. 
 
 Sneaking phones in 
 
 In fact, prison authorities said the number of phone infractions by inmates in 2013 was more than 20 times the number in 2005. The state reported 747 cellphone infractions in 2013, down from a high of 863 in 2012. 
 
 Sometimes the phones arrive inside inflatable balls, like basketballs and footballs, that are thrown over lower-security prison fences, Solomon said. Sometimes they are carried through the gate, stuffed in sandwiches or hidden in books, by visitors, guards or inmates returning from court. Most are older flip-phones, though BlackBerrys and iPhones are appearing, too. 
 
 Administrators have responded by introducing 48 portable metal detectors, at $10,000 each, that can pick up components of electronic devices. The state also has trained dogs to sniff out phones. 
 
 While lower-security inmates are allowed to use monitored pay phones to call outside the prison, those under the strictest security are restricted to the postal system. Even their visitors are kept at a distance, with personal contact forbidden. 
 
 With a contraband phone, inmates may communicate between prisons or stay connected to gangs outside the facility, according to state officials. 
 
 In our experience, the phones are utilized for continuing behavior they did on the street, Solomon said. 
 
 He hopes that a recent drop in the number of phone infractions means the states new efforts are working. A 2009 law made it a misdemeanor to provide a mobile phone to an inmate, and the 48 portable sensors were put into circulation in the states 59 prisons in 2012 and 2013. 
 
 But people with insurmountably steep sentences  such as life in prison  have little reason to stop trying. 
 
 Theres not much motivation for the inmate not to want to be caught with a cellphone, Solomon said. 
 
 Habitual felon 
 
 Melton has been cited for a series of infractions during his time in North Carolinas prison system, which began in October 2012. 
 
 In the past year, he has been cited twice for having an audio or video device, once for unauthorized tobacco use, twice for lock tampering and once for possession of a weapon, according to prison records. 
 
 Meltons criminal record dates to 1982, when he was convicted in New York of first-degree robbery; he was convicted of first-degree manslaughter there in 1998. 
 
 Prosecutors contended that Melton led a subset of the Bloods gang in New York, and that in September 2011 he sent a man to kill a former lovers new boyfriend in Raleigh. The man was shot but survived. 
 
 Melton was convicted in 2012 of being a violent habitual felon and conspiracy for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, though he was acquitted of attempted murder, according to criminal records. 
 
 Solomon declined to say whether Melton has been moved from his cell in Butner. 
 
 Kenney: 919-829-4870; Twitter: @KenneyNC 

 RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina inmate described as a high-ranking member of the Bloods street gang faces a federal kidnapping charge after authorities say he used a mobile phone to help orchestrate the abduction of a prosecutor's father. 
 
 An arrest warrant was issued Friday for Kelvin Melton, who is serving a life sentence for ordering the shooting of a Raleigh man in 2011. 
 
 Melton is accused in the Saturday kidnapping of Frank Arthur Janssen of Wake Forest. Janssen, 63, was rescued Wednesday by the FBI at an Atlanta apartment. 
 
 Five others have also been arrested and charged. 
 
 The case highlights the problem of inmates getting access to smuggled smartphones that can allow them to make calls, exchange email, browse the Internet and maintain Facebook profiles. They can also direct criminal conspiracies, authorities say. 
 
 Melton, 49, had a mobile phone in his cell at Polk Correctional Institution in Butner, exchanging at least 123 calls and text messages with the alleged kidnappers in the past week, according to the FBI. Authorities closed in on the suspects by tracking their mobile phones and listening to their calls. 
 
 Melton also made about 100 calls to his daughters, according to the FBI. 
 
 Melton is being held on "maximum control" status after racking up several infractions over the past year, including being cited for possessing a weapon and twice for having a mobile phone. 
 
 In 2013, 747 mobile phones were confiscated from inmates in North Carolina's prisons. So far this year, 166 have been seized. 
 
 Officials at the state Department of Public Safety concede many are brought in by prison employees bribed by inmates or their relatives. They are now investigating how Melton got the phone. 
 
 The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys called Friday for improved protections for prosecutors and their families, as well as increased punishment for people caught smuggling mobile phones into prisons. They also want the state prison system to invest in electronic devices that can jam cellular signals. 
 
 According to testimony from his 2012 trial, Melton is a high-ranking member of the Bloods street gang from New York City who ordered a 19-year-old subordinate to travel to Raleigh and kill his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. 
 
 Court records show Melton has a long record of felony convictions in New York, the first being a 1979 robbery committed when he was 14. He pleaded guilty of manslaughter and robbery in 1998 and served more than 13 years in New York prisons before being released in August 2011. 
 
 Melton was arrested in the shooting in Raleigh the following month. It is not clear from the court record why Melton came to the South, but he was still supposed to be serving parole in New York through 2015. 
 
 The admitted triggerman, Jamil Herring Gressett, testified that he had joined the Bloods a few years earlier and that Melton was the boss of their subset within the gang. Gressett said he followed Melton's orders to shoot the North Carolina man for fear he or his loved ones would be killed if he didn't. The victim survived a gunshot wound. 
 
 Melton was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and being a habitual felon, resulting in a life sentence. 
 
 The prosecutor in the case was Wake County Assistant District Attorney Colleen Janssen, 33. 
 
 Frank Janssen was kidnapped Saturday from his Wake Forest home and driven to Atlanta, the FBI said. 
 
 On Monday, his wife, Christie, started receiving text messages. One of them said that if law enforcement was contacted Janssen would be sent home "in 6 boxes." 
 
 The messages made specific demands for the benefit of Melton, according to the FBI. Those demands were not spelled out in the court filings. 
 
 On Wednesday, Janssen's wife received a text photograph of him tied up in a chair along with a message: "Tomorrow we call you again an if you can not tell me where my things are at tomorrow i will start torchering." 
 
 The FBI said a call was placed by Melton from the prison to a phone associated with the kidnappers in Atlanta. Quotes in court filings suggest the two male callers were discussing how to kill Janssen and dispose of his body. 
 
 "We want to make sure it's in a secluded area and the ground is soft so we can go 3 feet deep," a male voice said, according to the documents. 
 
 Following the call, authorities tried to enter Melton's cell and he smashed the phone. A few hours later, they located Janssen in Atlanta. 
 
 When making the arrests, authorities also recovered a .45-caliber handgun, picks and a shovel, according to the FBI. 
 
 Charged with kidnapping were: Jenna Paulin Martin, 21; Tiana Maynard, 30; Jevante "Flame" Price, 20; Michael "Hot" Montreal Gooden, 21; and Clifton James Roberts, 29. 
 
 Officials said they were all from the Atlanta metro area. 
 
 Police booking records from Cobb County in suburban Atlanta show Price has had a string of seven arrests over the last three years, most for relatively minor offenses. 
 
 The five people are due back in court for a bond hearing Tuesday, when they will each have a lawyer appointed by the judge. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Kate Brumback reported from Atlanta. Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Biesecker at Twitter.com/mbieseck
– An inmate in North Carolina is accused of getting revenge on the prosecutor who put him away for life by orchestrating the kidnapping of her father from behind bars, reports the News & Observer. Authorities say Kevin Melton had a cell phone in prison and exchanged more than 100 calls and texts with co-conspirators on the outside to set up the kidnapping of 63-year-old Frank Arthur Janssen from his home in Wake Forest. Janssen is the father of Colleen Janssen, an assistant DA who got a conviction against Melton in a 2011 shooting case. Luckily, police were able to trace the phone messages and rescue Janssen, who had been taken to Atlanta, after three days. Five other people have been charged in the case. After the kidnapping, Janssen's wife began getting threatening texts, one of which included an image of her husband tied to a chair. "Tomorrow we call you again an if you can not tell me where my things are at tomorrow i will start torchering." In earlier texts, the kidnappers made unspecified requests for the benefit of Melton, reports AP. In one recorded call between Melton and another man, a male voice says, "We want to make sure it's in a secluded area and the ground is soft so we can go 3 feet deep," suggesting that they were preparing to kill their victim.