The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks (13 page)

With that, they walked out into the street, and went round to the adjacent main road. There they caught a cab to the airport, and then the airport bus into Johannesburg, getting to the train terminus around 8 p.m. – the time when the guard would be carrying out his inspection back at Pretoria Prison. Lee parted company with them there, as he had friends in Johannesburg. Jenkin and Moumbaris caught a train east, and disposed of all their escape equipment and the keys out of the window as they passed through the countryside. The only things they retained were the fake gun and the chisel. From the town of Springs, they started to walk towards the border with Swaziland, about one hundred and twenty miles away, and were able to get lifts for part of the way.

Their escape wasn’t noticed until the following morning. Various guards had come and gone through the door which they had chiselled through without noticing anything out of place. The cells had been cursorily checked, but it seemed as if everyone was asleep. A major hunt was begun for three dangerous terrorists – even though no one could work out how they had got out, until a bunch of keys was discovered. The guard on duty was arrested, and police mobilized throughout the country to prevent them crossing the border.

It was too late. The two men were already in Swaziland, but their problems weren’t over. Luckily they approached the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, who told them not to go near the Swazi authorities: they would simply return them to South Africa. They were then passed to representatives of the ANC who got them across into Mozambique and then to Angola, where they were reunited with Lee, who had followed a similar pattern with the ANC.

The South Africans tried a propaganda campaign to blacken the names of some of their opponents by claiming they had masterminded the escape: white ANC member Joe Slovo, and the Soviet ambassador in Lusaka, Vladimir Solodovnikov were both accused. It took the guard five months to clear his name of involvement, and he horrified the court by explaining that he had been forced by the secret police to make a statement admitting assisting the escapees. The discrepancies between this confession and the facts of the case made it impossible for him to be found guilty.

The political prisoners were moved across to the maximum-security wing of Pretoria Central while the security arrangements in Pretoria were upgraded. When they returned, closed-circuit TVs, electrically operated doors, and much more visible cells had been introduced. Escape, it would seem now, would be impossible.

Sources:

Jenkin, Tim:
Escape from Pretoria
(Kliptown Books, 1987)

There may have been more contrived ways to get out of prison, but claiming that a black and white TV set, covered with a blanket, is a bomb that has to be got rid of has to be near the top of the list. But that was the ruse that six desperate prisoners successfully employed to get out of Mecklenburg prison in 1984 in an attempt to evade the death sentences that had been passed against each of them. Speaking nearly a quarter of a century later, the guards who were attacked and placed in fear of their lives were still plainly traumatized by the events of that evening; one had previously told the press on the tenth anniversary, “You don’t ever get over it. You can’t take nothing for granted. The only reason you walk out of here every day is because the inmates let you walk out . . . I’m very aware of that.”

Mecklenburg Correctional Center had only been opened in March 1977, seven years before the escape, and was called “a monument to failure” by the Virginia State Governor, Mills E. Godwin Jnr, since it was designed to house the worst of the worst who would never be allowed to return to ordinary society. It was supposed to be the wave of the future, with keyless cells that were operated from central control booths, but, as novelist Sibella Giorello memorably put it, “ While the keyless design made theoretical sense, in practical terms the place turned into a detached day-care center – for grown men begging for attention.” As the intensive investigation that was carried out following the escape showed, the prison might have been touted as virtually escape-proof, but if security procedures weren’t established properly, or followed correctly, then it was more, rather than less, vulnerable to prisoners taking advantage.

Between 1977 and 1998, Mecklenburg housed Virginia’s death row, and there were plenty of physical security measures in place to keep them from threatening the population ever again. Double fencing topped with rolls of barbed wire, and entrance gates both on the buildings and on the outer perimeter fence, were designed to ensure that only authorized movements were permitted, with sally ports that acted like airlocks – the doors were opened separately on each side.

Death-row prisoners, of course, have nothing to lose. Even the tiniest breath of freedom is worth any risk for them (one of the escapees would later comment at his execution that no one could take away the days he had on the outside from him). On 31 May 1984, six of them were able to show that Mecklenburg was a monument to failure in a very different way.

Linwood Earl Briley had been sentenced to death for the robbery and murder of a disc jockey, just one of the eleven to twenty victims that he and his younger brother James had slaughtered during a ten-month robbery spree. James himself was being executed for robbery and capital murder during rape – he had killed a man, after raping his pregnant wife and killing his five-year-old son. Willie Leroy Jones had shot and killed a pair of married retired shopkeepers, then set fire to their home. Earl Clanton had murdered a librarian. Derick Peterson had killed an office manager during a robbery. Lem Tuggle, the only Caucasian of the escaping group, had shot a fifty-two-year-old woman while on parole following another murder charge. As one of the FBI officers chasing them later said, they weren’t people fit to breathe the same air as ordinary folk.

Others had been part of the escape planning initially, but in the end decided not to join them. One, Dennis Stockton, was also on death row, and kept a detailed diary of his life there – the source of much of the information about the escape.

Discussions about a break out began in late October 1983, when Linwood Briley was rapidly approaching the end of the appeals process, and would soon be given his execution date. His brother James, had been involved in an abortive attempt by three female visitors to smuggle guns and drugs into the prison in October 1981, and as a result, everyone coming in and out was searched thoroughly. The best way to escape seemed to be by taking over the building that housed death row, and then walking out in guards’ uniforms; they would call the gate, warning them there was an explosive in the building, and have them send a van across.

As most prisoners do, they were watching the guards’ routines closely, and picking up as much information as they could. They were particularly making a note of the extension numbers for each part of the prison, and the codes that the guards used for ease of communication. Sometimes if they heard something on the radio when they were chatting with the guards, the prisoners would innocently ask what it meant – or on other occasions, they would intimidate the information out of them. The notoriously bad-tempered Earl Clanton was able to learn a great deal this way. They also discovered what size uniforms the guards wore, so they knew who would be ideal targets when the escape began.

At the start of March 1984, James Briley, who had become the mastermind of the plot, called a meeting of the prospective escapers, and went through the plan. It didn’t change a great deal between then and 31 May, although a number of the “escape committee” ended up not being involved – some because they didn’t think the subtlety involved in the subterfuge was necessary. They’d rather try to get hold of some guns and blast their way out.

The escapers began gathering and preparing weapons from scrap metal, which they hid in their cells. There were numerous searches of the block over the next few weeks, some prompted by information passed by other death-row inmates to the authorities, but nothing was ever found.

A date of 15 April was agreed – the day on which US citizens have to file their tax returns with the federal authorities. The Brileys thought it would be a good way to reward the taxpayers who had subsidized their time in prison. At that point, some inmates started talking about dropping out of the escape. Jones and Tuggle only arrived on death row at this stage, and were immediately brought on board. However, when they took stock, they realized they didn’t yet have enough weapons, so everything was pushed back a month. Although Stockton had received his execution date by this point, he became increasingly concerned about the plan and dropped out.

Despite the ringleaders agreeing to wait, another tip was received by the prison authorities on 19 April, which suggested that the escape was set for the following day; a very thorough search revealed no weapons, and the prison was kept under extra security for a few days. On 3 May, Linwood Briley’s execution date was formally given to him by the court, and again, there were rumours that someone would try to help him abscond when he was out of the prison, but nothing happened. On 13 May, Stockton wrote a detailed letter to the prison security chief, explaining that the prisoners had secreted weapons in hollowed-out parts of the walls, that they planned on taking hostages and killing other prisoners if they didn’t cooperate, and that the escape was imminent. Although the others suspected he was the snitch who had betrayed them earlier, this was the first time that he had done so, and despite all this information the search which followed on 17 May still failed to turn anything up.

No one picked up on the obvious sign that betrayed how close to fruition the Brileys’ plan was: on the morning of 31 May, the six prisoners who were going to escape all had a shave. Linwood Briley removed his beard and combed his hair; Lem Tuggle also smartened up – neither of them now resembled the photos in their police records. The word was spread around the escapers to get ready.

Around 6 p.m. as usual, the prisoners were let out into the recreation yard. Tuggle asked Stockton for advice about the best routes to take from the prison, and Willie Turner, another robber and murderer who had been one of the key plotters, borrowed some masking tape from one of the guards. As the men were called in from the yard, they clustered around the guard at the sally port, and in the confusion he didn’t notice Clanton slip away and enter the guards’ bathroom, opposite the entrance to the control room – as the prisoners had noticed, this wasn’t locked, a fatal error on the prison authorities’ part. This was compounded by the guards’ failure to take a headcount as the men went in and out. No one realized that Clanton hadn’t gone to his cell with the others.

The inmates had made a mistake of their own: they had forgotten that a nurse regularly did her rounds passing out medication. Nurse Barksdale was the focus of attention from the men, but she had been reassured that because of the way the cells operated in Mecklenburg, she was safe. She wasn’t aware that at least two of the escapers hoped that their paths would cross with her before they left the prison.

The nurse tried the bathroom door, but couldn’t open it – Clanton had locked himself in. Thinking quickly, James Briley claimed that the previous guard shift had spotted the problem so the nurse went to the adjacent pod – separated by a locked door – to get some water.

At 9 p.m. everything was set. One of the guards, Corporal Harry Crutchfield, was checking an apparent clogged toilet in one of the cells; Derick Peterson took his knife and held it to the guard’s throat, warning him not to make a sound. At the same time, James Briley called out to Ricardo Holmes, the guard in the control room, asking him if he could pass a book across from his cell to one of the other prisoners on the far side. This wasn’t unusual, but it meant that for the few seconds the guard was out passing the book across, the door to the control room was open.

As soon as Holmes started down the corridor towards Briley’s cell, the killer shouted, “Now, Goldie!”, and Clanton dived out of the bathroom and into the control room, hitting the button that opened the sally port to the outside. Holmes turned, tried to grab Clanton, but was prevented from doing anything further by the two Briley brothers holding their homemade knives. The other prisoners were released from their cells, and quickly overpowered the guards. Most of them were then forced to strip, since the prisoners needed their uniforms. Once they had done so, their hands were tied behind their backs, and Crutchfield’s mouth was also covered with tape. The prisoners who weren’t coming on the escape were also locked up.

Nurse Barksdale wasn’t so lucky. She had finished her rounds before the escape attempt began, but her guard escort mislaid his elevator key, and came back into the death-row pod with her. They were both taken hostage, with Barksdale fearing she was going to be raped by Linwood Briley and Clanton. To her eternal relief, although she was molested by the men, they were stopped from going any further by one of the other prisoners, Wilbert Evans. Around the same time, another inmate, Willie Turner, prevented James Briley from killing a few of the guards, although it was made very clear to the warders that if the escape attempt failed and the men came back to death row, the murderers wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.

Other guards were captured as soon as they approached the pod, enticed in by calls from the control room asking for help with an injured inmate. The most critical one was the shift commander, Lt Larry Hawkins, who was forced to ring the gate and order a van to be brought around to the sally-port gate in the perimeter wall since they had “a situation”. To gain power of the main control booth for the building, and thus the sally port to the general prison yard, the prisoners rang through to the guard there, and told Officer Corlene Thomas that there had been a call for her on an outside line, and that someone was coming over to relieve her temporarily so she could return it. Although Thomas was a little surprised by this, she was reassured by the sight of a guard coming over, and opened the door for him – allowing Derick Peterson to enter, knock her over, cuff her, and take control of the booth. He could then open the doors to allow the men to exit the building and head towards the sally port leading to the outside.