The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks

by Paul Simpson

  Touhy had had a couple of close shaves during the preceding few weeks. When he visited one friend, he realized that there were FBI agents waiting for him, and he was able to give them the slip. On another occasion, a Chicago patrolman addressed him by name – but the cop simply wanted to thank him for a kindness he had done during the Prohibition era, and didn’t report him. In fact, he paid for Touhy’s fuel at the filling station where they met.

  On 27 December, FBI agents confirmed McInerney and O’Connor’s identities by obtaining some discarded bottles from their apartment while they were out, and checking the fingerprints. J. Edgar Hoover then travelled to Chicago to oversee the final plans for the raids on the apartments personally. Where at all possible, civilians were removed from the neighbourhoods of the two apartments, so that there was less chance of collateral damage. Lines of fire were calculated to ensure the safety of all the agents involved. The local police’s assistance was needed to close off the streets once the operations got under way.

  The following evening, McInerney and O’Connor left their apartment, returning by 11.20 p.m. Two Bureau agents were waiting for them inside; others took up position in and around the building. Alerted by something, the two fugitives went to their apartment door with guns drawn. As soon as they opened the door, one of the Bureau men called out that they were federal agents and told them to put their hands out. McInerney and O’Connor fired into the darkness but missed. The FBI agents were shooting at two targets silhouetted in the door frame; they didn’t miss. The two men were blown back by the force of the bullets, and fell over the banister to lie dead on the second-floor landing. In McInerney’s pockets were the address of an undertaker, and an excerpt from a poem.

  Even as the FBI agents turned their attention to the other apartment, Touhy was starting to get an uneasy feeling, suggesting to Banghart that they should look for a new hiding place after he spotted men talking to each other out on the sidewalk late at night. Banghart told him not to worry.

  The next morning at 5 a.m., they were woken by powerful searchlights directed into their apartment. Through a loudhailer they heard an FBI agent tell them they were surrounded, and advising them to surrender immediately. They were given ten minutes to think about it; if they hadn’t come out by then, the FBI would go in, shooting. Realizing that their escape was over, the three men – Banghart, Touhy and Darlak – surrendered. They were amazed to find J. Edgar Hoover himself presiding over the arrest. “You ‘re a lot fatter than you are on the radio,” Banghart told him.

  Banghart was shipped to Alcatraz. Touhy was informed that, under an obscure Illinois law, he was liable now to serve Darlak’s term as well as his own; his sentence was therefore now 199 years. Banghart and Touhy continued to maintain that they had been framed for the kidnapping, and in 1954, a federal judge agreed with them. Touhy was released in 1959, but was shot twenty-five days later. He died within an hour, after commenting to a newsman, “I’ve been expecting it. The bastards never forget!” Banghart was freed in 1960, and spent his final twenty-two years living on a small island in the Puget Sound.

  Sources:

  Touhy, John: “Jake the Barber, Roger Touhy, and an Escape From the Big House” (Search International, 2001)

  FBI website: “Famous Cases and Criminals: Roger ‘The Terrible’ Touhy’s Gang”

  Touhy, Roger with Ray Brennan: The Stolen Years (Pennington Press, 1959)

  United States of America Ex Rel. Roger Touhy, Relator-Appellee, v. Joseph E. Ragen, Warden, Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, Illinois, Respondent-Appellant., 224 F.2d 611 (7th Cir. 1955) Federal Circuits

  New York Times, 10 October 1942: “Touhy Mob Heads Break From Prison”

  Time magazine, 19 October 1942: “Back to the Roaring ’20s”

  Escape from Scotland’s Gulag

  Although it would become best known for its implementation of the Stop programme to deal with sex offenders, Peterhead Prison in the Scottish county of Aberdeenshire spent many years as a home for some of the worst offenders within the Scottish legal system. Described by an Open University Study in 1991 as “a prison of no hope”, it was nicknamed Colditz by its inmates in 2010, not because of its impregnability, but because it was too cold. The temperature didn’t affect one of the most famous escapers from Peterhead, “Gentleman” Johnny Ramensky, though. He managed to leave its confines on five separate occasions over a twenty-five-year period, once by swimming away on a cold November morning.

  Built in 1888, Peterhead Convict Prison always had a bad reputation. It was the first such prison built north of the border – until then, convicts were sent to serve their sentences in England – and was always behind the times in receiving upgrades. Electricity wasn’t fully available until 2005 – a year before serious discussion began about closing the prison down. In 1987, it became well known after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered the elite Special Air Service regiment into operation on the mainland UK for only the second time (officially) to end a siege and rescue a hostage being held by prisoners.

  Safe-blower Johnny Ramensky was born to Lithuanian parents in North Lanarkshire in 1905, and moved to the Gorbals in Glasgow aged eight, following the death of his father. He drifted into a life of petty crime, and was sent to a borstal in 1921 where he spent three years learning the tricks of his trade – as has been noted on many occasions, these young offenders’ institutions often were the most effective school that any of its inmates attended. He embarked on a career of housebreaking, receiving an eighteen-month sentence in 1925 after pleading guilty to sixteen charges and a further three-year sentence in 1927.

  Ramensky was sent to Peterhead prison for five years in 1934 after blowing a safe at a bakers in Aberdeen, and made his first escape from there in November. Two years earlier, a man had managed to get away from a work party in the Peterhead quarry, but had been shot by the warders. Gentleman Johnny was the first to do so from within the walls of the prison. He was able to get over the walls between six and seven in the morning – either using a ladder or standing with his back against the wall, and heaving himself up it just using his shoulders, since he was incredibly strong. He was in ordinary prison uniform, with ordinary black shoes, but this wasn’t designed for the depredations of a Scottish winter.

  As soon as his absence was noted, a major manhunt began, with farms searched and road junctions monitored. Ramensky travelled as far as Ellon, fifteen miles south-west of the prison, and evaded the police, who had blocked the only route over the river Ythen on both sides, by swinging on the girders and stonework of the bridge. After waiting until darkness fell, he then headed south towards Foveran, but was spotted running across a field. He was apprehended, and despite carrying an iron bar in his hand, he surrendered without a fight. He had been on the run for twenty-eight hours. He was returned to Peterhead, where the governor ordered that he was shackled. The newspaper reports of this treatment led to questions in the House of Commons, and the decision to abolish this form of punishment in Scotland.

  Ramensky’s decision to abscond is often, wrongly, ascribed to the fact that he was denied permission to go to his wife’s funeral. In fact she didn’t die until three years later; Ramensky wasn’t allowed to attend the ceremony – the authorities at Peterhead didn’t make any allowances for him after he had embarrassed them by escaping.

  A further spell of imprisonment followed his release in 1938, when he blew open a safe at the Empress Laundry in Aberdeen. He gained a certain notoriety when he informed the police after he was convicted that there was still an undetonated charge within a second safe on the premises.

  When war was declared in 1939, Ramensky wanted to join up, but his various petitions to do so were turned down. On his release in 1942, he adopted the name Johnny Ramsay, and ended up in the Commandos. There are many stories about his safe-blowing exploits during the war, many probably apocryphal, but his less-legitimate talents were certainly put to good use.

  Ramensky was given the opportunity to “go straight” aft
er the war, but turned it down, and was back in prison again, this time at York, by 1947 (he was only demobbed in September 1946!). Thanks to lobbying by his girlfriend and the local MP, he was moved to Scotland, but on his release, he blew open a post office safe in Glasgow, and was sent to Peterhead on 20 February 1951.

  By this time, Peterhead wasn’t as escape-proof as its staff liked to think. On 12 December 1950, its inability to hold onto the prisoners was brought up in the House of Commons, and the Under Secretary of State for Scotland, Peggy Herbison, noted that “Twelve prisoners have escaped from Peterhead Prison during the last three years. Nine were recaptured within twenty-four hours, one within two days and two within three days. They committed no offences while at liberty except, in two cases, the theft of motor cars to assist their escape.” However, inquiries held after each escape noted that “there is neither laxity of administration nor, indeed, of discipline in this prison”.

  Eighteen months after Ramensky returned to Peterhead, he escaped once again. Annoyed at not being allowed to travel to visit his very sick mother, he got out of his cell and climbed on to the roof of the prison, then jumped down into the yard below. Newspaper stories at the time suggested that he had lathered himself with soap and slipped through the bars of his cell, but this seems rather less likely than he had found a way to deal with the locks. He had left a dummy in his bunk to avoid detection.

  From the prison yard, Ramensky was able to scale the prison walls, and once outside at 4 a.m., he stole a children’s bicycle, which he replaced with an adult one from the Glenugie distillery a few minutes later. At 5 a.m. he was seen five miles from Peterhead, heading down what is now the A90, on the same route that he had followed eighteen years earlier. Unfortunately for him, although he succeeded in remaining free for forty-six hours, he was picked up at Balmedie, ten miles south of Ellon, where he was found the previous time.

  Ramensky was released in 1955, but once again found it difficult to remain out of prison, sent for a ten-year stretch this time by Lord Carmont, who told him, “You have shown that you are a menace to society. Any sentence of less than ten years would be useless.” At the start of 1958, he made the first of his three escapes from Peterhead that year.

  On a cold January morning, Ramensky made a spur of the moment decision to go, taking advantage of laxity on the part of the guards supervising the queues for breakfast. He got through a skylight, then up a gas pipe onto the roof. From there, he headed down to the yard, broke into a shed, and borrowed a ladder! This he placed on top of a bin, and was just able to reach the stonework at the top of the wall. Hoisting himself over, he made a run for it – but he was spotted by men working at the distillery. It meant that Ramensky only had a twenty minute head start, and this time the police spared no expense. Tracker dogs were used, and the Aberdeen market was disrupted by checkpoints that were set up around the city.

  Ramensky was much closer to home. Rather than set out south as he had done previously, he remained in Peterhead, hiding on the roof of a local school, and then wandered around the town in a warder’s uniform that he had found in a shed near the prison. However, with all the publicity surrounding the escape, he wasn’t destined to remain free for long, and twenty-eight hours after he had left the prison, he was back behind bars.

  He inspired another prisoner to try to make a run for it. John Spence Gilmour escaped from a working party in the turnip fields near the prison on 18 June 1958, but was spotted and quickly recaptured.

  Nine months later, Ramensky was back on the loose. He got out onto the roof and over the wall on a Friday night, but the now fifty-three-year-old safe-cracker was finding it harder to evade pursuit, although he did stay free for forty hours this time. He was found by a seven-year-old boy in the hayloft at his father’s farm. As the boy’s father went to the prison to get help, Ramensky tried to make a getaway, but he was barefoot and bleeding. Near the distillery, he surrendered to police.

  Christmas 1958 saw Ramensky’s final escape attempt, although he kept his own counsel as to how he was able to stay on the loose for nearly nine days. According to James Crosbie, he had actually stayed hidden under the floorboards of the doctor’s office in the sick bay while everyone was looking for him outside the prison, with food provided for him by another convict. However, he came out of his hiding place too quickly, and was caught when he asked a lorry driver for a lift, not realizing that the man was a former warder at Peterhead! After Ramensky jumped out of the back of the lorry, the driver reported his passenger to the authorities. He was also spotted by a number of other people in the area, and was picked up by the police. Ramensky never admitted who, if anyone, had helped him.

  After that, Johnny Ramensky was watched around the clock, with six officers specifically tasked with monitoring him. He didn’t get out of Peterhead again until he was officially released. After further spells in prison, he died in Perth prison in 1972. His funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners.

  Although Ramensky was by far the most famous escaper from Peterhead, he wasn’t the only one. As James Crosbie recounts in his anecdotal history of the prison, there were many different attempts. Crosbie himself was caught red-handed with a hacksaw blade working his way through the bars of his cell.

  Some were doomed instantly to failure, such as the time when a prison warder was stabbed in the back with cutting shears but still managed to hit the alarm bell to summon the riot squad. That didn’t deter the perpetrator, robber William Varey, who tried again later in 1985, using an imitation gun to lock seven warders in a cell. Four years after that, he was able to cut through the prison’s double perimeter fence and stay on the run for two days, eventually getting caught around twenty-five miles from the prison.

  Other prisoners were able to elude capture for a decent length of time. Edward Joseph Martin set a record for his time away from the prison in 1955, staying free for thirty-one days. Murderer Donald Forbes, who had killed a man while on parole for murder, stayed loose for six days before being captured in Edinburgh after going over the wall on 31 August 1971. He tried to run again two years later, but was caught in the act. Manuel Cohen escaped from the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary on 2 October 1976 when he was transferred there from Peterhead while suffering from jaundice. Since he realized he was very easy to spot because of the distinctive yellow skin colouration caused by the disease, he holed up in a house that was rented by three nurses. He held them hostage overnight but they were able to persuade him to let one of them go to buy some food and cigarettes. She, of course, went straight to the police, and he was returned to custody.

  In 1997, murderer Thomas Gordon was helped by local youths to escape from the Peterhead Cottage Hospital when he went for a physiotherapy appointment. One guard was sacked over the incident; Gordon was caught at Euston station in London when he was recognized by a resident of Peterhead town who had seen the publicity.

  Despite Scottish leader Alex Salmond describing Peterhead as “the jewel in the crown of the prison service” and claiming that “Peterhead prison has an international reputation and to close it would be a disaster” in 2002, the demolition of parts of the prison began in February 2012, with a new facility set to open in 2014.

  Sources:

  Daily Record, 16 September 2010: “Inmates dub Peterhead prison ‘Colditz’”

  HM Inspectorate Of Prisons HMP Peterhead Inspection: 30–31 March 2005, published June 2005

  Jeffrey, Robert: Gentle Johnny Ramensky (Black & White, 2011)

  “Peterman”: “Four Examples”: http://www.peterman.org.uk/four-petermen.htm

  Glasgow Herald, 19 June 1958: “Peterhead Prison Escape”

  Glasgow Herald, 4 October 1976: “Police capture escaped prisoner in students’ flat”

  Glasgow Herald, 5 October 1976: “Escaped prisoner in court”

  Glasgow Herald, 21 October 1989: “Police recapture Peterhead prisoner”

  Hansard, 12 December 1950: “Peterhead Gaol (Escapes): Oral Answers to Questions – Scotland”


  Glasgow Herald, 5 March 1997: “Guard sacked after Peterhead escape inquiry”

  Crosbie, James: Peterhead Porridge (Black & White, 2007)

  Making Dummies in Internment

  Many of those involved in the struggles in Ireland regard themselves as participants in a war, striking a blow for freedom against the oppressors. If they are captured (or interned), they see it as their duty to escape so they can continue the fight, much the same way that prisoners of war did during the Second World War. When the IRA began its border campaign in the mid-1950s, many of those arrested in the Republic of Ireland were sent to an internment camp at the Curragh, in County Kildare.

  Amongst them was J.B. (Joe) O’Hagan, who, fifteen or so years later, would go on to feature in one of the most daring escapes on Irish soil (see chapter 29). He had joined the IRA aged eighteen, and was interned in Belfast’s Crumlin Road Jail for the majority of the Second World War. Although the decade following the end of the war was comparatively peaceful, he was happily recalled to active duty in December 1956. As Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said at his funeral, O’Hagan “was an example of a physical force republican who was prepared to support and exhaust other means of struggle. He saw armed struggle as a means rather than as an end, but he never ceased to be an unrepentant republican and to work always for the establishment of an Irish Republic based on national rights for the people of this island.” There were nearly two hundred internees in the Curragh, many of whom were itching to get out.

  Unfortunately for O’Hagan, he wasn’t as important in the pecking order as he would later become. When O’Hagan and another member, Charlie Murphy, was chosen by the IRA’s camp staff to work on an escape, the army’s General Headquarters (GHQ) Chief of Staff instructed that a different pair of internees should use the route being planned. With so many IRA members interned, the leadership knew that they needed some of their most experienced men back in the struggle. Dáithí Ó Conaill and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh were to be freed first. Although Ó Conaill was only twenty at the time, he was a rising star within the IRA. As second-in-command of the Pearse Column, he was involved in the raid on the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s (RUC) barracks at Brookeborough in January 1957, and had served six months in Mountjoy Prison. On his release from the Dublin jail, he had been rearrested and sent to the Curragh.