by Paul Simpson
While his various appeals against his sentences were going on, Dennis was housed at the OSP, along with armed robber Michael Charles Lancaster, who was serving a sentence of twenty-five years, with eligibility for parole after fifteen. Lancaster had escaped from Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite in 1970, and later from Cleveland County Jail; during one of these escapes he had held up a liquor store and become involved in a gunfight with an Oklahoma state trooper. Dennis had briefly escaped from the Stephens County Jail in 1976, but had quickly been recaptured. Neither man had much likelihood of seeing the outside world before the start of the twenty-first century; both had appealed against what they perceived as unfair trials, but were stuck inside the OSP.
Tunnelling out of prison is nothing new, but usually prisoners have to go through the laborious process of actually digging the tunnel, getting rid of the earth and other refuse, and keeping it hidden from sight before they use it as an underground route to freedom. Dennis and Lancaster benefitted from OSP’s location: various tunnels from the town’s coal-mining days still remain beneath the streets of McAlester, and the pair were able to locate a way into them from the abandoned power plant in the industrial area of the prison. Although the authorities at first thought that the pair had scaled the walls when they departed from the prison on the afternoon of Sunday 23 April 1978 – with various guards at risk of negligence charges for not spotting them in time – certain evidence given to them by the first person the pair came in contact with led them to suspect the tunnels. Put bluntly, the pair smelled of shit. The tunnel that they had located, which ran beneath Tower 6 and then under the OSP walls, was a sewer outlet, and even though they disposed of their shirts soon after the escape, they still had a definite odour of the lavatory about them.
Around 3 p.m., Dennis and Lancaster took stolen tools they had obtained – including a sledgehammer, a crowbar and a shovel – and entered the tunnel. They were able to get through a thirty-inch-thick concrete plug before finding the tunnel to freedom. They headed first for the home of one of the prison correction officers, Sam Keys, a block or so north of the OSP, getting there around four o’clock. Keys had left for his 4 p.m. to midnight shift only a few minutes earlier when the two desperate men broke in to find Keys’ wife and ten-year-old daughter on the premises. While one of them threatened Mrs Keys with a knife, the other stole a 357 magnum pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun, a 30-30 rifle and ammunition for the weapons. The two debated taking the little girl as a hostage, but Mrs Keys made it clear that that would only happen over her dead body. The daughter was able to run to a neighbour’s house, from where she called the police to tell them that “two men, dressed only in blue jeans” were holding her mother at knife point. After a brief scuffle Mrs Keys was able to flee to the neighbour’s house, before the police arrived. The convicts sped off in the Keys’ family car, a blue Datsun 210, similar to so many in the area.
Notified by the police of the incident, the OSP authorities began a headcount and realized that Dennis and Lancaster were missing from F Cell House, and they found evidence that indicated that the fugitives had been planning their escape for some time. Lancaster had written to Dianna Taylor, an inmate in the Wyoming State Prison, telling her about the plans, and letting her know that he was coming to get her out of prison. For whatever reason, this never happened.
A massive manhunt inevitably was begun, with dogs and helicopters all trying to track the fugitives. The car was eventually found near Holdenville, Oklahoma, near an area where a pickup truck was reported stolen on 24 April; its owner was never found. The trail seemed to go cold for six days, but then evidence of their activities was provided in the worst possible way: on Saturday 30 April, the body of twenty-six-year-old Kenneth Bobo from Garland, Texas, was found buried under some brush in Collin County, near Farmersville, Texas, not far from Highway 78. Bobo’s car and fishing equipment were missing.
That green Ford was spotted on 2 May 1978 at 10.06 p.m. at the Sigmor Service Station some twenty-five miles further south on Highway 78. Lancaster went in and asked for a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, but instead of paying for them, produced a revolver and demanded the money from the cash register. If there was ever any doubt about the two fugitives’ murderous intent, it was wiped away then: when attendant Mathal Thannikal Mathew stepped round from behind the counter, Lancaster shot him in the lower stomach, killing him.
Their next probable victim (although his body was never located) was minister James Dowdy of Hemphill, in Sabine County, Texas, who was reported missing on 5 May. He had taken his Chevrolet pickup to the local rubbish dumping ground, but had never returned. The truck was itself dumped after Lancaster and Dennis’ next murder.
On 10 May, around 9.30 p.m., the two men went into the Rogers Sports Center, in Denison, Grayson County, Texas, Lancaster taking the lead. Waving the same revolver around that he used to shoot the gas station attendant, he told Mrs Loretta F. Spencer to open the cash register. Meanwhile Dennis ordered her husband, Bobby Lee, to go into the office. Lancaster took all the cash from the register, and a load of packets of cigarettes from the shelves, then tied a brass chain around Loretta Spencer’s wrist and led her out to a gold-and-white pickup truck – the one they had obtained from James Dowdy.
Loretta was absolutely petrified. Everyone knew of the escaped convicts, and that they had already killed. She was forced into the back of the pickup truck, lying alongside two rubber life rafts, which had already been inflated, clothing, and other camping equipment. As Lancaster lay beside her, Loretta heard what she thought was the sound of a door slamming inside the store. Dennis then came out, started up the truck, and drove along to the Red River Bridge, where Lancaster forced Loretta out of the car and tied her to a tree. He and Dennis then emptied the truck, and Dennis went to abandon it a quarter of a mile away. While he was waiting for his partner in crime to return, Lancaster told Loretta that his name was Mike, and that they were both escapees from OSP.
Untying Loretta from the tree, Dennis pushed her into the raft and lay on top of her, fondling her during a three-mile trip eastwards on the river. Once back on dry land, they hid their equipment in some trees, and then Dennis raped Loretta twice. When the two men had fallen asleep, Loretta was able to open one of the links in the brass chain with her teeth, got free from the padlocks, and headed for the nearby highway. She was picked up by a passing driver and taken to Denison Police Department. There she learned that the “slamming door” sound had been the noise of the shotgun blast that blew her husband’s face off. His body had been found fifty minutes after the pair of convicts had arrived at the store.
Based on Loretta’s information, the manhunt focused its attention on the river area, with nearly six officers involved in the search including Oklahoma state crime bureau agents and Texas Rangers, as well as county officers and highway patrolmen from the two states and Corps of Engineers Rangers. Tracking dogs were brought to the scene, but in the end they weren’t used.
Loretta’s escape forced Dennis and Lancaster to change their plans. An hour after she raised the alarm, they came out from the woods, and approached fifteen-year-old Chris Bowling, who was mowing the lawn outside his home. They kicked the door of the house open, pushed him inside, and forced him to lie down on the floor. Lancaster asked him for the keys for the blue 1966 Chevrolet parked outside; Dennis got them from the cabinet, while Lancaster tied the boy with electrical cable. Warning Bowling that if they saw him come out of the house “I will blow your f***ing head off” Lancaster and Dennis stole the car. The car was believed to be spotted a few hours later, but by the time the officers who noticed it had turned around to begin pursuit, it had gone. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol set up a roadblock but the car didn’t pass it.
Around 8 p.m. that evening, Mrs Judy Clemmons (or Clement) had a very lucky escape. She went to answer a knock on the door of her farmhouse near Mill Creek, Oklahoma, some sixty miles north of Denison to find two men there. She refused to let them in, even though they pulled a gun on her.
When she screamed and slammed the door, they drove off in the stolen Chevrolet, which was found abandoned about twelve miles away the following morning.
After stealing a Ford Explorer pickup from a farmhouse nearby they continued on their spree, hitting a service station in Kewanee, Mississippi, on Monday 15 May around 10.50 p.m. and then changing cars for a red Camaro. Five hours after their raid on the service station, they were stopped by officer Larsen Dean Roberts in Butler, Alabama, for a routine traffic violation. As he came round the car to talk to Dennis, who was driving, Lancaster stepped out from the car, and fired a shotgun five times at him. Roberts was hit in the left shoulder and arm, but was able to run to the nearby Choctaw County General Hospital.
They were ordered to stop again two days later, this time by Alabama state trooper John Christenberry, in their latest stolen vehicle, a black-and-yellow Mercury they had obtained from Choctaw County. Trying to stop them a few miles north of the county line, Christenberry turned on his blue lights, but Lancaster opened fire, blowing out one of his tyres and shattering the windshield. Christenberry, whose wife was expecting a baby later that week, was miraculously unscathed. “The good Lord was riding with me,” he commented later.
A number of false leads were followed up over the next couple of days. Two men were identified as Dennis and Lancaster by a store owner, but turned out to be local residents; another pair seen boarding a night train were simply vagrants looking for a place to sleep.
The next positive lead came on 19 May when a trailer was broken into near the Shalom Church, near Whitfield, Alabama, and firearms, goods and pillowcases were taken. Local law enforcement officers searched the area, and found what they believed was the stolen Mercury but they didn’t approach it, waiting for fingerprint officers. The officers involved were later convinced that Dennis and Lancaster had been in the car at the time, and couldn’t understand why the two escapees hadn’t killed them. The next day the search was stepped up when it was confirmed that this was the fugitives’ latest car. More than a hundred officers, helicopters and bloodhounds were involved. But despite the numbers, and the promises of more forces if needed, Dennis and Lancaster remained at loose.
Retired school teacher, sixty-eight-year-old Stacie Beavers, was not going to let the threat of two dangerous convicts in the area frighten her, and she carried on with life as normal. However, returning from a women’s club meeting at her church in Cuba, Alabama, on the night of Monday 22 May, she was accosted as soon as she turned the key in her front door. According to one police report, Dennis and Lancaster then hit her on the head and shot her behind the ear, although most contemporary newspaper reports suggest that her throat had been slashed. They stole the keys to her home and car, and a plate of food that she had brought back from the meeting.
Her body was found the next day after relatives hadn’t been able to get through on the phone – one of the escapees’ regular tricks was to cut the phone lines at the houses that they burgled – giving Dennis and Lancaster a good ten hours’ head start. Her station wagon was found around 9 p.m. on Wednesday 24 May, abandoned in a ravine not far from Little City, Oklahoma. Little City is part of Bryan County. Claude Eugene Dennis had come home.
Believing that he might try to make contact with them – either to gain help, or for less pleasant purposes – the sheriff’s department kept an eye on Dennis’ former wife (she had divorced him about eighteen months previously, keeping custody of their three children), his mother and other relatives. They also tightened their own security. Dennis had made it abundantly clear that he regarded the sheriff as responsible for framing him for the murder of Arthur Lake, and there was no doubt that the law enforcement officers who had been attacked so far were merely an appetiser compared with what he wanted to do to those who were responsible for taking away his freedom.
No sign was found of either man on Thursday 25 May, despite the FBI becoming involved, after federal warrants charging them with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution were filed. Off-duty policemen joined the many different agencies searching the entire area, going through farmhouses, barns, sheds, and the heavy brush and oak.
On Friday 26 May, the hunt came to an end. It began with an encounter at the home of rancher Russell Washington, who had spent the previous night staying at his parents’ home. When he got back, his dachshund began acting up, as if she sensed that there was someone in the house. He and farmhand G.D. “Buzz” Busby were suspicious, and took a rifle with them into the house. Busby went into the living room where he saw Dennis and Lancaster. The convicts told Busby to call Washington in, and then made the two men lie spread eagle on the kitchen floor. Lancaster cut electrical cord to tie the two men with, then went back to eating the sandwich he had been preparing when Washington and Busby had arrived.
As the two men lay on the floor, wondering if they would survive the meeting, Dennis said to the rancher, “I’ll bet you don’t remember, but you let me come hunting on your place one time.” Washington did remember him: Dennis and some friends had dove hunted on his land about three or four years earlier. Dennis assured him that he wasn’t going to kill him: “I know you’re a family man and a hard-working old boy.” Anxious to keep Dennis in a stable frame of mind, Washington kept chatting with him about hunting, although from time to time the murderer would mention something about the killing spree he and Lancaster had been indulging in. “Dennis told me ‘People make you kill them. They know you’ve got a gun on them and they still try to get away’,” Washington recalled later. He also told Washington that had the rancher been on the jury that convicted him of the murder of Arthur Lake, he would have killed him on sight.
Once they’d finished their meal, Dennis and Lancaster took some food and money, and the keys to Washington’s pickup truck. As soon as they were gone, Washington used his pocket knife, which the convicts had failed to find, and cut himself loose. He called the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, who, for the first time, had almost real-time information on the fugitives’ whereabouts.
Within minutes Dennis and Lancaster ran into the police: mobile patrol unit 54, manned by patrolmen Houston Summers and Billy Young. Without any warning, Dennis and Lancaster opened fire on them from around seventy-five feet distance, blasting away with a rifle each. Both patrolmen were killed: Summers survived the initial onslaught and was able to let headquarters know they had been hit before being shot with a shotgun at point-blank range.
The Highway Patrol airplane, which had been assisting with the search for the men, was immediately dispatched to the scene. Pilot Trooper Lloyd Basinger dropped down and saw a blue Ford pickup matching the description of Washington’s truck travelling at a high speed – as he commented later, no farmer was going to drive like that. He made sure that Dennis and Lancaster were well aware of his presence, and bird-dogged the truck as it headed rapidly towards the west edge of the town of Caddo.
At the same time, a highway patrol car driven by Lt Hoyt Hughes was also heading towards Caddo, and by the time the fugitives reached the town, the two vehicles were only about four blocks apart. Although Dennis knew the area moderately, the pressure of the chase was telling on him: he kept turning into dead ends and had to turn the truck round. In the air, Basinger was telling Hughes and his partner Lt Pat Grimes where to go.
Both vehicles turned into Court Street from opposite ends. Dennis pulled the pickup into a yard, mowing down a honeysuckle bush and skidding to a stop beneath a tree. They jumped from the vehicle and took up position crouching in front of the truck. As Hughes drove past, they opened fire, killing Lt Pat Grimes instantly. Hughes was shot in the shoulder.
Hughes stopped and exited from the car, knowing he was in a fight for his life. He fired at Lancaster, the bullet hitting the back of his head and exiting through his mouth. Lancaster fell to the ground and was dead within minutes. Dennis hid behind a tree, armed with the sawn-off shotgun. By this time Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Lieutenant Mike Williams had arrived at the house, along with others. A gun battle ensued th
at lasted a mere thirty seconds, but whose outcome was never in doubt. Williams shot Dennis eight times, bringing the murderous spree to an end. Three state troopers and at least five civilians had died before Dennis and Lancaster was stopped.
Fact vs. Fiction
The Real Prison Breaks reconstruction of the final shoot-out is based on Lt Pat Grimes’ brother’s account as given in the show, which doesn’t completely tally with the facts recorded at the time – in particular the way in which Lancaster was shot. It also confuses the chronology of the fugitives’ trail across the states.
Sources:
Jerry D. Wiggins, Grayson’s County Sheriff’s Department, 1 June 1978: “Supplementary Investigation Report” (chronology mainly derived from here)
The Durant Daily Democrat, 24 April 1978: “Convicted murderer of Countian escapes from prison”
The Durant Daily Democrat, 11 May 1978: “Store operator murdered, woman believed kidnapped”
The Durant Daily Democrat, 12 May 1978: “Escapees are sought in death of Texas man”
The Durant Daily Democrat, 14 May 1978: “Trail cold in search for Dennis, Lancaster”
The Durant Daily Democrat, 15 May 1978: “Escapees continue to evade officers”
The Durant Daily Democrat, 18 May 1978: “Officers comb County in search for killers”
The Durant Daily Democrat, 19 May 1978: “Manhunt ended after mistaken ID revealed”
