by Paul Buck
A number of cars were hijacked, the first being a towtruck obtained at gunpoint outside the courtroom. Another was a Honda Accord that he took from a reporter, whom he pistol-whipped to obtain the vehicle. He abandoned that car before he had even left the parking area, switching to another.
Twenty-seven miles north of Atlanta, in Duluth, Georgia, Nichols approached Ashley Smith at an apartment complex and forced her into her bathroom where he tied her up, placing a towel over her head whilst he took a shower. Fearing for her life, she struck up a rapport with the man over several hours, telling him about her five-year-old daughter. Though he wanted marijuana, she only had methamphetamine to offer, as she was addicted but was trying to get clean. She read to him from the Bible and from a book that inspired her, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. She told him how her husband had died in her arms after a brawl a few years before, and showed him a large scar across her torso from a drug-fuelled car crash.
She was undoubtedly having some effect on Nichols, and was trying to convince him to surrender. She made him pancakes for breakfast, and he let her leave to visit her daughter, who had been taken from her as a result of her drug use. Smith then phoned the police, and the apartment was soon surrounded by all manner of agents. Nichols surrendered peacefully.
Today, at this point in writing, the new trial has still not begun, for fifty-four charges and eleven scenes-of-crime are now involved (including the courtroom, which has been sealed off ever since the murders), and the defence has become so complex and costly to the taxpayer that there are fears the trial may never really take place.
Wayne Carlson became an escapee after his first conviction for stealing cars in 1960, when he was eighteen years old. His total number of escapes to date is thirteen, both in the United States and Canada.
His life has been a series of petty robberies and imprisonments, with most escape methods employed: sawing through bars, climbing down a sheet rope and over the fence (Regina Correctional Centre, 1970); locking up seven sheriffs and five prisoners, armed with a .38 Smith & Wesson (Burlington Correctional Centre, 1973); sawing through bars and tying up a guard (Windsor State Prison, 1974); making a key to doors (Fort Saskatchewan, 1976); leaving a dummy in bed, hiding under piles of dirt in the yard and cutting through a fence (Stony Mountain Penitentiary, Manitoba, 1982); failing to return on a day pass (Bowden Institution, Alberta, 1987).
In 1974, Carlson was reminded of Dillinger’s wooden gun escape when he saw an inmate carving a pipe with the end of an Exacto blade. He wanted a gun that looked real head-on, not just from the side. “He’d placed silver paper from a cigarette package into each chamber of the cylinder,” Carlson later wrote, “so when I looked into the front end of the revolver, it appeared to be loaded. [He] had burned the wood and then blackened it further with shoe polish, giving it a dull, gunmetal shine.”
Carlson wanted to use the fake weapon to break out of an upcoming court appearance. He pondered how to get a gun, fake or otherwise, past the various security searches when he changed from his prison clothes to his own for court. He reckoned he could get through the superficial body pat if the search was cursory enough by placing the gun in his pants and winding elastic bandage around his body.
To avoid the closer skin search he created a scene, refusing to go to court when they came for him, getting into a temper and offering a display of aggression by smashing a table so that they grabbed him, performed only a perfunctory body pat and fixed him in a belly chain, his hands linked to his waist. When they placed him in a room to change his clothes he created another scene, until in the end they were pleased to let him be taken to the van in his prison denims with no skin search made.
Having made the guards nervous by suggesting he was going to court in connection with a cop-killing charge in Canada, he was taken into the courtroom with his handcuffs removed but his chains left on. He was actually there to receive sentence for his recent escapes. After receiving three-to-seven years, he relaxed with his guards and said he needed to go to the toilet ‘bad’. In the toilet, the guard thought their man was tame enough to let him step into the middle cubicle.
Carlson removed his fake gun and leapt out, thrusting the weapon in the guard’s face, dropping it to his stomach before he could realise it was a fake. He tried to reach for the officer’s gun, but the guard twisted away. He then tried to outmanoeuvre the guard, saying he just wanted him to put his gun down on the floor. Once it was down, Carlson snatched it up and checked to see if it was loaded. “As I looked into the cylinder I glimpsed semi-wad-cutter ammunition. Semi-wad-cutter bullets are indented instead of pointed, and the slugs immediately expand on impact with flesh and bone, leaving huge gaping wounds in their wake. As soon as I saw the slugs I put my gun in my pocket and used his. I pulled the hammer back and left it on full cock.”
Carlson then took the officer and his companion, who was waiting outside in the corridor, from the courthouse. Going out the back way, they walked unhindered across the lawn and into the underground parking lot. Once the other guard was disarmed, they climbed into the car, with Carlson taking the wheel. Though the guards were in the back, he warned them of the damage their guns loaded with semi-wad cutters would do if he had to use them. Carlson drove out the city and up the Interstate, his foot down hard, knowing they wouldn’t try to jump him at that speed. Later he turned them out of the vehicle. His recapture brought much media attention.
In 1999, he was finally let out on parole and was apparently developing a new life, having written a book and been involved in a prison suicide prevention programme and other activist work, as well as getting married – not once, but twice. But the dice didn’t seem to roll right. Carlson slipped into drinking and smoking marijuana, broke his parole stipulations via possession of a gun, and was sent back inside in 2004. He will be seventy-three when he emerges from jail, unless he finds another way out.
Larry Marley, the IRA activist, registers on the roll-call of escapees for his breakout from a courthouse, where he was already being charged with attempting to escape from prison. He had been arrested dressed as a British army patrolman after making his way, with some comrades, through the compound at Long Kesh, where they moved unimpeded until they reached the last gate. They were taken to the Newry courthouse on 11 March 1975. There, in the holding cell, they discovered that the bars on the toilet window were rusted. The ten prisoners broke them and went out into the yard, though not before scrawling, “Up the IRA” in soap on the mirror. An electricity transformer provided the climbing frame to get over the fencing, most of them making the long drop over the barricade uninjured, after which they stole cars and headed for the Irish border.
If we direct our attention to the American Wild West, we come across tales of escapes from the jailhouse at every turn. Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, was as famous for his escapes as for his short career as an outlaw and gunman, better known as ‘Billy the Kid’. Bonney (the name he regularly used) also continually escaped his pursuers, but it is his custodial escapes that concern us. As so much is written about him, there is also confusion as to what is fact, fiction or myth.
His first escape was at fifteen, when he was locked up in Silver City for a robbery. The sheriff probably thought he was too young to be kept in a cell, and allowed him the run of the corridor outside. When the sheriff ’s back was turned, Bonney was up the chimney. He seems to have escaped whatever jail he was put in. The most famous escape attributed to him occurred in April 1881, and was to be his last. He was taken to the Lincoln County Courthouse, guarded by two men, James W. Bell and Robert Ollinger, and kept in handcuffs and leg irons in a room on the second floor.
There seem to be variations in the story, but one account is that he was returning from the toilet out back in the yard, accompanied by Bell. Despite his chains he got ahead of the guard, slipped his handcuffs and turned to hit Bell with them, reaching for his gun first and shooting him dead. Ollinger, who had taunted Bonney and hoped to kill him with his new sh
otgun, heard the shot across the street at a restaurant. Bonney had already taken Ollinger’s shotgun from the office and drew his attention from a window, before blasting the returning deputy. He removed his shackles and rode away at a leisurely trot, on a borrowed horse – it was returned two days later. As they say, the rest is history. Outlaw-turned-lawman Pat Garrett was called and set off in pursuit, later gunning Bonney down in a darkened room.
The life of Christopher Evans (who, in partnership with the Sontag brothers, was the leader of a gang known as the California Outlaws) is a great story in itself, but for our purposes here, this legendary train robber and great nemesis of Southern Pacific Railroads (robbing the company’s safes on board, but never the passengers – or even the US Mail) was almost lured into an escape from jail so that he could be gunned down by railroad detectives and their henchmen, to save their greedy company any further trouble.
The man who had been instructed to arrange the escape was Ed Morrell, who worked as a spy for the gang because he was acquainted with the detectives. He decided to frustrate the railroad’s plan by bringing the escape bid forward by twenty-four hours. Morrell, who worked in the restaurant across the road from the Fresno County Jail, turned up with Evans’ evening meal on 28 December 1893. Evans was awaiting transfer to Folsom Prison to serve a life sentence.
Beneath the platter was a gun. Morrell joined Evans as they guided the jailer down Mariposa Street to reach a team and buggy tied up a block away. Evans needed to be helped because, prior to being returned to custody, he had been involved that same year in a mighty gun battle at the Stone Corral in which George Sontag had been killed whilst Evans, despite being riddled with bullets, had survived – though he needed his arm to be amputated, an eye removed, and he was left with some brain damage from the shotgun pellets that entered his head.
Evans’ flight was closer to a hobble. It was freezing winter, but at least he was helped by many sympathetic residents of the area, until the reward was raised high enough to bring forth a betrayer. Evans was returned to prison where he stayed until 1911, before being released to live out his final years with his family.
When the police station is used to hold prisoners today, one may not think that a gun could be passed directly to set a breakout into operation. Bonnie Parker may have been able to hand a gun through the bars to Clyde Barrow as late as 1930, but things today are surely more complex with regard to security. Nevertheless, guns are still smuggled in along with the full array of tools needed for escape.
Nikolaus Chrastny offers us a good view of how the system can be a lot less smart than the criminal whose sole intent is to escape. Scotland Yard and Customs officers had a problem when they arrested Chrastny in 1987. He named his drug smuggling partner as Roy Garner, a villain and alleged police informer, and further alleged that Garner had a useful friend in Detective Superintendent Tony Lundy (subsequently allowed to retire on health grounds with full pension and good service medal). At stake was the smashing of a major cocaine smuggling ring. To protect their star informer, with whom they were doing a deal, Customs officers moved him out of London. They handed him over to the police in South Yorkshire, who would hide him in a police station in Rotherham where they could interview him quietly over a period of time, and where it was less likely that others would try to either rescue or silence him.
Chrastny was kept in a normal cell, but fraternised with the police officers so easily that they feared they might become complacent and their prisoner’s situation be jeopardised. He was moved to Dewsbury police station and the safety of the West Yorkshire police (who had earlier looked after the Yorkshire Ripper), housed in a section usually reserved for female prisoners. Though Chrastny was under arrest and regarded as a dangerous, high-security risk, he was also treated as a guest because of his status as high-level informant or ‘supergrass’. He received privileges such as a television set and a stereo hi-fi. The only problem was that the cells were not equipped with electric plugs, and for these appliances to be of any use required a lead to run from his cell to a plug in the room opposite, the doctor’s office. This meant that his cell door had to be left open, along with that of the doctor’s room. The only barrier to freedom was the gate that closed between his cell door and the hallway.
Chrastny’s wife, Charlotte, visited him regularly, even sharing a meal with him in the jail. She was such a regular presence that they stopped searching her, and she would bring in beer, cigars, extra food and books. It is believed that two hacksaw files were concealed by her in the spine of the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. To fill in the hours between interviews with the Customs officers, Chrastny requested model-making equipment, including Plasticine, paint, glue and Blu-Tak. He put them to good use, though not in making models. With background music to drown out his activities, at night he sawed through the bars of the outer gate of his cell and filled the gaps temporarily with Plasticine.
Fortunately, he was just finishing his preparations when he was informed, in early October, that within a few days he would be moved back to London to appear in court. That night he carefully removed the bars and went through the gate, replacing them so as not to make it too easy to trace his path. Then he crossed the hallway into the medical room, which was unlocked because of his electrical lead. As the window had no bars, he moved rapidly out and into the police station yard, climbing the gate. It is believed he was met by a car.
At 11:30am the next morning, when the prisoner had his breakfast brought to him in bed, along with his morning newspaper, he seemed to be fast asleep. When the police returned twenty minutes later, an accompanying inspector accidentally kicked the gate, dislodging one of the bars. In the empty bed was a note: “Gentlemen, I have not taken this step lightly. I have been planning it for several weeks. The tools have been in my wash-kit for several years in preparation for such an occasion.” Later that day he phoned Dewsbury police station and repeated his apologies.
That is the last anyone has heard of Chrastny on these shores. Everyone involved blamed someone else’s unprofessional behaviour. And everyone cursed how the opportunity to haul in an international drug ring had been botched. So who had helped him? His associates? Corrupt Scotland Yard detectives, who may have had a lot to lose by his evidence? Or his wife Charlotte, a former German policewoman, who visited him not long before he escaped? She was later to receive a seven-year jail sentence, not for aiding and abetting her husband’s escape, of which she was acquitted – but for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.
Arthur Hutchinson had planned to escape from court in September 1983. He even told his two-man escort, when they took him from Armley Prison in Leeds to Selby Magistrates’ Court for his fifth appearance, that he would be escaping that day. They laughed. But when they arrived, the desk sergeant, the only person on duty, was busy with two juvenile absconders and buzzed in the prisoner with the warder handcuffed to him. Hutchinson was taken to the interview room. Whilst they were busy counting out £120 that he had brought with him, Hutchinson asked for the toilet. They unlocked his cuffs and he went to use the toilet in the next cell. Or so they thought.
Actually, he had gone up the stairs to the courts. As soon as they realised, the police ran round the front, expecting him to appear through the public entrance. But Hutchinson knew the layout of the place from his previous visits. He was also fortunate in that some doors were unlocked, as the court was undergoing redecorating work. He went straight into the courtroom, startling the decorator, ran across the press bench and dived headlong through the window. It was closed. Glass went everywhere as he fell six feet onto the wire netting over the police station exercise yard. Then he dropped onto the roof of a van, crossed the schoolyard next door and escaped into the streets of Selby. No major search was put in operation. He had convictions for petty theft and sex with underage girls, and his current charges were rape and burglary, but he was probably not regarded as dangerous.
What followed would change all that. Unsurprisingly
, when he dived through the glass window and landed on the wire below he made a four-inch gash in his leg. It became infected, so he went to the Royal Infirmary in Doncaster to have it treated. They told him to return in two days, when he was given antibiotics. He continued moving around the area, eventually sharing a room at a guesthouse in Sheffield with two others. It had been four weeks, and the police had focused no press or media attention on him at all.
It seems that he met an eighteen-year-old, Nicola Laitner, in a pub in Sheffield, and she told him of her sister’s wedding at their home in Dore. Perhaps she invited him, casually or purposely. In any case, Hutchinson arrived late at the house on 24 October 1983, when the family were recovering after the day’s wedding celebrations. A marquee still stood in the garden. It seems that Hutchinson wasted no time in killing wealthy solicitor Basil Laitner, his wife, Avril, and their elder son, Richard, using a Bowie knife, and then turned his attention to the daughter, Nicola, raping her twice, in her bed and in the marquee. He then robbed the house of cash and jewellery, before departing.
On the run, Hutchinson phoned his mother. The call was monitored and, once the police realised that he was injured, they played up the wound to the media, indicating that it was serious, that gangrene would develop and amputation would result. In fact it was not a major injury, if looked after properly. In any case, Hutchinson was captured in a field near his hometown in the Northeast, trapped by police dogs.
IV
Not Stopping
The possibility of escaping from custody would seem to be even more pronounced with home leave, when prisoners are allowed to go back to the nest for whatever reason. This has undoubtedly occurred down the years, though not always as directly as in the case of Percy Lefroy, a.k.a. Percy Mapleton. He has the distinction of being Britain’s second railway murderer, after Franz Müller. Lefroy robbed and killed an elderly man, Isaac Gold, in June 1881 on the London to Brighton line. He wasn’t initially arrested, spinning the story that he was also attacked on the train, as the body of Gold was not discovered until later in a tunnel. Lefroy was escorted back to London by a detective, who was told not to let him out of his sight while they continued their investigations. But Lefroy was sharp enough to convince his escort not only to make a detour to his lodgings, near Croydon, but to wait outside on the front doorstep whilst he went in to change his clothes. The detective’s wait was a long one, as Lefroy escaped immediately through the back door.
