The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks

by Paul Simpson

  Perry only lasted one day longer. He had made his way to Weehawken on the New Jersey shoreline, but when he was challenged by a police officer, he tried to run. Falling from a narrow ledge on a cliff, he was arrested, and, after an extradition battle between the states of New Jersey and New York, he was sent back to Matteawan, although he took advantage of the publicity surrounding his case to complain about the inhumane regime at the asylum. Within two months, he was declared “free from any active mental disturbance” and sent to Auburn – not before he had tried one more escape plan, trying to bribe a keeper to help him. The keeper had reported this to Dr Allison, and Perry was returned to solitary confinement for the final few days of his stay at the asylum.

  The authorities were not convinced that Perry hadn’t received outside help for his escape from Matteawan. According to the keeper Perry had tried to bribe, Perry had informed him that one of the other warders, William Hopkins, had supplied the keys. When Hopkins was questioned, he claimed that Amelia Haswell had sent him a parcel of jewellery in the autumn of 1894 in return for his help in the escape: Hopkins provided keys, a file and blank keys to Maguire, and had unlocked the cell door. He was also meant to leave a set of clothes and a gun for Perry to pick up once he had left the asylum, but had got drunk and forgotten. Hopkins had disposed of the jewels already, but Pinkertons were able to track them down and return them to American Express – they were part of the loot from Perry’s first train robbery. Haswell admitted that she had sent the jewels, but said that they were Perry’s property and he had asked her to arrange for a friend to sell them. After a lengthy court case, Haswell was vindicated.

  By the time that Amelia Haswell’s name was cleared, Oliver Perry had committed the act that would send him back to Matteawan. Putting two large needles onto a piece of wood, he had quite deliberately blinded himself. Two months after being recommitted to the asylum, he used broken glass to complete the job. But was even this drastic act part of an escape plan? In 1897 some of his poetry was published which suggested that he was hoping for sympathy – after all, what could a blind man do? His hopes for a pardon were dashed, and in 1901, Perry was sent to Dannemora State Hospital, within the grounds of Clinton prison. He died there on 5 September 1930.

  Sources:

  Spargo, Tamsin: Wanted Man (Bloomsbury, 2004)

  New York Times, 20 August 1895: “Miss Haswell Makes Denial”

  New York Times, 30 August 1895: “Examination of Miss Haswell”

  New York Times, 17 April 1895: “Perry Happy in Jersey”

  Montreal Daily Herald, 22 October 1892: “Escape of a Long Term Prisoner”

  New York Times, 10 April 1895: “Perry Still at Liberty”

  Weekly Auburnian, 24 February 1892: “Capture of Perry”

  The Utica Journal, 14 April 1895: “Wasn’t Oliver Perry”

  Hartford Weekly Times, 11 April 1895: “Train Robber Perry”

  Bringing Out the Big Guns

  When the gangsters who had ruled Chicago were sent behind bars, many thought that would be the last the world heard of them. But there were a few who were determined to ensure that they were not forgotten, and when Roger “The Terrible” Touhy and members of his gang broke out from the supposedly escape-proof Stateville Prison, near Joliet in Illinois, their reputations were sufficient to merit the attentions of one of the top law enforcers in America. It was FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover himself who successfully led the hunt and got his men. And perhaps not surprisingly, the pursuit became the basis for a movie, praised for not glorifying but authentically recreating the gangster lifestyle.

  While the FBI still maintains in its history of Touhy on its official website that he was responsible for the kidnapping of John “Jake the Barber” Factor for which he was sentenced to imprisonment in Joliet, authorities from 1954 onwards seemed to accept Touhy’s version of events. Touhy maintained that he was framed for the kidnapping by Al Capone and Factor in order to get him out of the way (one of the chapter titles in his autobiography is the rather mild “Al Capone Didn’t Like Me”, which underestimates the depth of feeling quite dramatically). What Touhy never tried to deny was that he was a gangster.

  One of six sons of a Chicago policeman, five of whom would turn to crime, Roger Touhy started his criminal career after the introduction of Prohibition with the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, and the Volstead Act, both in 1919. He formed a trucking company with two of his brothers, and they expanded into illegal beer and spirits distribution in the north-west suburbs of Chicago. Touhy then began working with Matt Kolb, who was supplying Capone’s Chicago Outfit with a third of its beer, and they set up their own brewery. Around the same time, he added illegal gambling to his portfolio.

  Touhy’s success irked Al Capone who tried on two separate occasions to persuade him to hand over control of his operations. Both times Touhy refused, and although Capone kept negotiations going, he also tried a takeover by force; Touhy was backed by Mayor Walter Cermak, which led to an escalation of the hostilities. When Capone arranged for Kolb to be killed in October 1931, all-out war began.

  Capone tried to frame Touhy for the kidnapping of brewery heir William A. Hamm in 1933, but the charges failed to stick – the FBI were well aware that Ma Barker’s gang, along with Alvin Karpis, were responsible. However, Capone’s second try was more successful, and thanks to perjuring witnesses and corrupt lawyers, Touhy and two of his henchmen were sentenced to ninety-nine years. The rest of Touhy’s mob were also eradicated: three weeks after Touhy was imprisoned, his machine-gunner Basil “The Owl” Banghart, was also sentenced to ninety-nine years for involvement in the Factor kidnapping (Banghart was set up by Capone to collect the ransom money, although perjured evidence stating that he was a key player in arranging the kidnapping swayed the court against him).

  In 1935, the two men were reunited at the Stateville Correctional Centre, where 3,000 or so prisoners were surrounded by a nine-feet wide, thirty-three-feet high prison wall, made from solid concrete and steel. After war was declared by Congress on 8 December 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, many of the younger guards were called up for duty or took better-paid jobs in munitions factories. They were replaced by old-timers, some of whom took a distinctly lax approach to their duties, or very raw new recruits. This left around seventy-five guards to watch over 3,256 inmates on the day that Touhy and his friends escaped. The Warden Joseph Ragen had resigned over political meddling in the prison running; his replacement, Edward H. Stubblefield, was nowhere near as strict.

  If you believe Touhy’s own account, he was brought in on the escape attempt quite late in the day; it seems more likely that he was involved in the planning and implementation early on, as the FBI suggests. Certainly, the balance of power had shifted once the members of the Touhy Gang were behind bars: Basil Banghart was the driving force now, as would be demonstrated once the men were on the outside. Labelled “a regular sharpie” and “tougher than Tough Touhy” by Chicago detectives, Banghart began his criminal career as a car thief. He had escaped from the penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, on 25 January 1927 after sawing through the bars of his cell window, and running through the local swamps to evade the tracker dogs; he later managed to escape from custody by persuading passers-by that the pursuing police officer was the one who needed stopping. After serving another two-year sentence, he was arrested for armed robbery and sent to South Bend jail in Indiana. There he blinded a warder with pepper, used the man’s keys to get hold of a machine gun, and shot his way out of jail. He started his term for the Factor kidnapping at Menard state prison, but was sent to Statesville after he and other inmates attacked a warder and commandeered a truck, breaking through the prison gates before being recaptured.

  With a minimum of thirty-three years to serve before either man could be considered for parole, Banghart and Touhy didn’t need to rush any attempt to escape, and in any case the latter was trying every legal avenue that he could to gain an appeal and prove that he wa
s framed. Banghart was probing the States-ville system for weak points: he claimed that he spotted that the guns the guards used had a hundred yard effective range, but the towers were 300 yards apart.

  The first thing that the prisoners would need were guns even if, as Touhy noted, “guns in a prison are like a firebug in a high-octane gasoline refinery”. These were obtained by Big Ed Darlak (sometimes spelled Darlack), a murderer serving a 199-year term. His brother Casimir got hold of two .45 calibre revolvers, and stashed them in the bushes near the prison. They were then brought in by one of the trusties, Percy Campbell, when he was allowed out to collect the American flag from outside the prison. Darlak therefore was brought in as one of the escapers, alongside robbers Martilick Nelson, William Stewart and St Clair McInerney, as well as serial escaper James “Gene” O’Connor. O’Connor, whose real name was Eugene Lathorn, (which is how the FBI refer to him in their accounts, leading to some confusion between different sources) had gone over the wall previously, after switching off all the lights in the prison and getting hold of a ladder from the carpenters’ shop. On another occasion, he had had himself nailed inside a furniture crate that was being sent to the nearby town, and had been driven through the gates in a truck. Each time, though, he had been apprehended, returned to States-ville, and his date of release set further away.

  As well as guns, the escapers would also need a getaway vehicle. O’Connor was responsible for sorting that out. He had built up a relationship with Hugh Kross, the guard in one of the towers, stealing food from the prison storehouse and selling it to him. When O’Connor joked that one day he’d come up to see him in the guard tower, the old warder had told him that if he did so, he wouldn’t shoot him. O’Connor arranged to bring some goods for him on the date the break was set, 6 October, so he would need to have his car near the tower.

  Although all the preparations were ready, the escape didn’t happen on the sixth: O’Connor decided to wait to see if any of the prisoners had betrayed them in return for a lighter sentence. Instead they went on 9 October 1942. At lunchtime, Touhy was waiting for the prison garbage truck to arrive. The driver, Jack Cito, was attacked (he claimed that Touhy threatened him with a large pair of scissors; Touhy says Cito had to say that to avoid being accused of collusion), and Touhy took the truck.

  The only way in or out of the guard tower was via a door on the outside of the fence. The plan therefore was to get into the guard tower from the prison side, and then exit down the stairs. Touhy drove the truck to the mechanical store, where the other escapees were waiting. They overpowered the guards on duty there, ripped out the telephone wires, and grabbed some of the ladders, making two of the guards sit on them to keep them steady as they made their way to the tower in the north-west corner of the prison yard. At first, the truck wouldn’t start, but a number of other convicts who were watching the escape with great interest helped them bump-start it.

  With the two revolvers, and a homemade Molotov cocktail which O’Connor had assembled just in case it was needed, they put the ladders together and leant it up against the tower, and, taking the two guard hostages with them, went up to the small cubicle at the top after blowing out the glass with a single shot, causing Kross a slight glass cut.

  Once at the top, O’Connor kicked the ladder away, much to the surprise of his colleagues. He then threw the rope, which Kross had previously used to haul the stolen goods out of the yard up into the tower, over the other side of the wall. Nelson shinned down it, O’Connor threw him a key for the tower door (the lock was only on the outside), and he opened the door, allowing the others to come down, pile into Kross’s car and escape. Before they left the guard tower, they appropriated the weaponry up there: two high-powered rifles and a load of ammunition. The whole escape had taken seventeen minutes, from the initial hijack of the truck to driving away in Kross’ Ford.

  Prison governor Stubblefield wasn’t on duty at the time of the escape, but even before he had arrived back from Springfield, the manhunt was under way. Within forty-five minutes, all highways within twenty-five miles of Joliet and Statesville were blocked by Illinois state police. Expecting the fugitives to head in their direction, the Chicago police began checks. Ten cars filled with officers from the State Attorney’s office in Chicago joined the patrol of local highways. Local airfields were warned to set guards, since Banghart was an amateur flier and might well try to steal a plane. According to news reports, mob leaders, fearing that Touhy and Banghart were set on vengeance, went into hiding.

  In fact the escapers were nowhere near as organized as the authorities or their previous enemies believed. No proper plans had been made for a hideout, or what to do to evade the law. The FBI claimed that the fugitives ran through a roadblock and abandoned the car that night in the suburb of Villa Park; Touhy says that they drove round in circles without being spotted before eventually getting rid of the car. He knew of one person who might help them, someone whom he had not communicated with while he was in Stateville, and thus wouldn’t be on any of the lists of contacts that the police would be poring over to find them. Disguised in an old raincoat that they found in a garage, Banghart went by bus into Chicago to make contact.

  The morale among the escapees was low. “If Banghart doesn’t score,” McInerny noted, “We might as well go back to the main gate at Stateville and apply for readmittance.” But Touhy’s friend came through, with a new car, some money, and the address of an apartment where they could hole up. This all sounded like good news, until they saw the state of the basement flat. “Warden Ragen wouldn’t allow a pig from the Stateville farm to set one cloven hoof in the place,” was Touhy’s acid description years later. He was quick to get himself out of there and into a different apartment, particularly when Nelson and McInerny started drinking and causing fights.

  Banghart knew that they needed to make some serious money in order to afford a proper lifestyle, possibly even including plastic surgery, which would set them back around $100,000. He tried to keep the others under control, and when they went out to get supplies, he would follow at a distance, carrying his shotgun wrapped inside a newspaper.

  By this time the search was being conducted by the FBI. The prison escape was the responsibility of the state police – it wasn’t a felony at the time – and the fugitives had not crossed state lines, so the Bureau couldn’t get involved initially. However by the autumn of 1942, the military draft was in operation, and when the men failed to present themselves for registration under the Selective Service Law, they became draft delinquents, and thus the Bureau’s responsibility. This was a little bit disingenuous, as Touhy was over draft age and had served in the US Navy during the First World War, but it provided the excuse that FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover needed for clearing up the mess. The full resources of the Bureau were directed towards the hunt.

  Although checks were kept at every border crossing, and every law enforcement organization in America was put on alert, the focus was firmly on Chicago. The Bureau agents calculated that Banghart would be keeping the group close to his former base of operation, and that the men would probably have assumed identities from people whose wallets they had pickpocketed, in case they were stopped in the street for any petty misdemeanour. The first of the fugitives who was caught because of these checks was Nelson.

  He and Stewart had been abandoned by Banghart and the others after they had gone out and got roaring drunk. Banghart had pistol-whipped them severely, leaving them unconscious, and when they had recovered, they had gone their separate ways: Nelson had headed to Minneapolis, Stewart to a former girlfriend’s house. Nelson contacted his mother in northern Minneapolis on 15 December; she immediately told the police. The FBI deduced that he would probably be living in a cheap hotel, and started to cross-check residents of these with the names of Chicago citizens who had lost their wallets recently. A mere twenty-four hours later, “Harold Seeger” was located in just such a motel, the door to his room barricaded, and a gun under his pillow. He was arrested, but refus
ed to talk.

  As it transpired, his silence didn’t make a difference. On the same day that Nelson was arrested, the FBI tracked down Stewart. The same principle had been applied: when Stewart had made contact with a friend in Milwaukee, the call was traced to a payphone on North Broadway in Chicago. The FBI saturated the area with agents, asking people if they had seen Stewart, and received multiple confirmations that he had been there.

  Stake-outs in the vicinity produced results on 16 December. A known associate of Stewart’s was spotted standing awkwardly on a street corner, clearly waiting for someone. The Bureau agents were disappointed when the rendezvous wasn’t with Stewart but with another man, whom they followed anyway to a hotel on West Harrison Street. A check of the register revealed that “James Shea”, who had lost his wallet and ID three weeks earlier, was living there. Rather than arrest Stewart immediately, and get the same lack of cooperation that their colleagues were receiving from Nelson, the agents decided to be patient and follow him.

  Four days later, their patience paid off. Stewart met up with two other men, who the agents guessed were couriers acting as go-betweens for Stewart and the other gang members. They therefore arrested Stewart, and started to follow the new pair of suspects. The next day, 21 December, they saw one of them meet Banghart and Darlak in a crowded downtown area. Banghart was carrying his shotgun beneath his newspaper, as he always did when he went out, and rather than risk a shootout in a crowded area, the agents switched their surveillance on to him.

  This proved harder than they expected; Banghart was used to throwing off tails, and the agents were lucky that they weren’t spotted. However, over the next five days, they were able to ascertain the location of the other gang members. McInerney and O’Connor were in one apartment; Darlak and Banghart were in another, with Touhy a regular visitor.