The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 21

THE TENNESSEAN, SunJoy, June 19, 1977 3-B Mountains Are Part of Walls at Brushy LV V4VfoW vf. cell mainTi net ii fY, 'Kfsxrrrljlrf (Continued from 1-B) There were 40 or more news people around the building, and usually in situations like that, rapid-fire questions are put to the person walking by a row of reporters. This situation was different. Ray was not on the walkway that long, and he gazed away from reporters' stares and the cameras clicking. Not a single question was put to Ray.

Then Ray was back inside, ending 55. hours of "freedom." It was Ray's third escape attempt from this mountain fortress, and the first time he had actually gotten outside the walls. v-y. rf-Tr-' I here fj gym i This photo of the Brushy Mountain State Prison recreation yard shows where inmates staged a diversionary fight during the escape, the escape route and the towers with the guards who tried too late to stop the breakout with their rifles. WARD two tower guards.

To establish such diversions meant bringing more people into the escape plan and increasing the risk of a leak to prison officials. Ray knew that no inmate at Brushy Mountain had ever successfully escaped over the walls and out of the mountains. He himself had tried two previous escapes from Brushy Mountain. In 1971 Ray, in an elaborate, time consuming scheme, removed a concrete block from his cell and escaped through an air duct into the prison courtyard. But he picked the wrong tunnel leading out of the prison: It was full of steam.

He was forced to back out of the tunnel and was caught. In 1972, Ray was caught by guards after he attempted to saw his way out of the prison movie theater. This time, Ray was determined to give himself an edge. From inside the prison, he managed to obtain a map of the area. An escapee could travel 40 miles and never see civilization even if he were looking for it.

Ray also knew he would need money at some point. By saving money he had earned and perhaps selling some of his possessions to other inmates, Ray accumulated $290. The final decision Ray and other escapees had to make was the timing. Brushy Mountain inmates do not have free run of the recreation yard at just any time. Every evening at 6 p.m.

the prisoners are allowed in the yard to play softball, horseshoes or other games. The inmates usually remain in the yard until about a half hour before dark. Ray decided the best time to escape would be just before the end of the recreation period. Such a time would give the escapees the advantage of running the entire night when neither helicopters nor men could easily see them. It was not known whether Ray knew that Brushy Mountain Warden Stonney Lane would be on vacation June 10.

It is also not known whether he knew that Safety Commissioner Joel Plummer and his top assistant, Col. Richard Dawson, would be out of the state, too. And it is not known whether Ray knew or cared that Dr. Martin Luther King father of the man he had slain, would be preaching in a Knoxville church that weekend. But the decision was made to go about 7:30 p.m.

Ray, Shelton and Hill gathered in the northeast corner of the recreation yard where some inmates were pitching horseshoes among a crowd of 35 to 40 prisoners. Also standing in the VLLL S-: k.1 Ll 1 DINING HA I Sir- MANNED BY? rjT, GUARD BUTL FR bur reported a change of men's clothing had been stolen from a car In. a parking lot, and the thieves had not touched cameras or jewels in the car. In an adjacent parking lbtj a car had been stolen. Authorities suddenly expanded the search areas north and east of the prison to a distance of 25 miles.

After the rain stopped Sunday afternoon, searchers began their sweep of the other side of the mountain east of the prison. The dogs turned up "hot tracks" that led first to the capture of Hill, a two-time murderer serving two life sentences, and then Ray himself. With the capture of Ray, Blantoi decided the National Guard was.ndt needed after all. But the search for-the remaining two fugitives continued. At 8 a.m.

Monday, police officers in Oak Ridge spotted Caylor walk;" ing down a city street. Caylor-serving 51 years for armed robbery, attempted murder and attempted escape, offered no resistance. Warden Lane drove to Oak Ridge to pick up the prisoner, but he was told the FBI had already taken him into custody. Blanton said later the FBI agents refused to turn Caylor over to state-officials because they wanted -to parade him before the Lane went back to the prison to-resume the search for the last esca-. pee.

That search ended at 9 a.m. Tuesday when Shelton, who was serving a 68-year sentence for.as-" sault and murder, was found in qn area not too far from where Hill and Ray had been captured. In the aftermath of the have been some changes at Brushy Mountain. Floyd Hooks, the guard on the wall over the escape occurred, was fired. "There was no question the-mah was derelict in his duty," Hendeiy son said.

Henderson and prison officials have begun making plans to install a fence outside the prison wall. If inmates ever do scale the Wall, again, guards will have a chance to; fire at them while they climb the second fence. Corrections officials are discussing building another guard tower on the corner where Ray escaped. The unmanned tower will now have'a guard when prisoners are in he recreation yard. Meanwhile, Blanton has asked.

President Carter to order the federal government to take custody of Ray. Blanton said the search cost Tennessee more than Ray really should be a federal, prisoner. Blanton said Ray would, not have been able to escape if 'a federal court had not said prisoners in similar circumstances are to be. treated the same. The ruling said prisoners may not be locked, in solitary confinement without hear-, ings and a review each 30 State officials interpreted ruling to mean Ray had to.

be allowed to mix with other maximum security prisoners at Brushy Mountain. But Ray is back in administrative, confinement, separated from the other prisoners. Blanton and Henderson vow Ray ill remain separated as long as they are in. office. No matter what happens to Ray, Henderson said he will make Brushy Mountain the most escape-proof prison possible.

He said he expects no problem getting additional funds from the State Building Commission. This will be done, he said, even" though there has never been1 a successful escape over the walls at Brushy Mountain. At Brushy Mountain, they consider those 3.000-foot mountains' and snake-infested woods a part of the walls. 4 a 4 ft i Plans for the escape began long before the men went over the wall. The details of the escape were first formulated in the cell occupied by Ray and Hill.

Douglas Wayne Shel-ton was also brought into the plan. "We have Ray really being the leader," Henderson said. "All the evidence points to him, Hill and Shelton. They could have been others involved, we don't know." Henderson said he was not sure whether Larry E. Hacker, a member of the notorious "Dawson Gang" which robbed banks all over the Southeast, was originally involved in the escape.

"He was the most intelligent of the entire group," Henderson said. "He was also the most dangerous." As Ray and the other inmates plotted their breakout, they looked for the weakest link in Tennessee's rribst escape-proof prison. They decided on the northeast corner of the prison wall for a nurnber of reasons. Brushy Mountain Prison has only three man-made walls. The fourth wall is a rock bluff rising 60 to 75 feet on the east side of the prison.

"Wire carrying 2,300 volts of electricity tops all three walls and runs along the side of the bluff. Ray knew that others who tried to escape over the walls had tried to short out those Wires. Ray had another idea. The harsh winter and snows had caused some of the bluff to erode, with loose rocks and dirt tumbling to the bottom of the bluff. While the electrified wires were only 12 to 18 inches above the tower walls, the erosion on the bluff had filled in the area so that escapees could actually step over the wire along the bluff.

Then running along the side of the bluff, they could reach a part of the wall over which there were no wires. This solved the problem of getting past the wires. They still had to go over the wall which was built into the side of the bluff. At its lowest point, the wall next to the bluff was about nine feet high. Obviously, they needed a ladder or a rope.

Ray and his cohorts decided to make a ladder out of plumbing pipe with a huge hook on one end to grasp the top of the wall. The inmates had access to such material because the plumbing shop was inside the walls. Working over several days, Ray and his fellow conspirators gathered lengths of pipe, threaded on each end, which could be put together with joints. The top of the ladder, which was to go over the wall, had to be in the shape of a semicircle, so right angle joints were found. The escapees needed a foothold at the bottom, so they fashioned a bar at the other end of the ladder.

Given that first foothold, Ray and the others figured they could shinny up the pole to the top of the wall The top and bottom of the ladder needed to be especially stable, so the joints at those ends were probably tightened with a pipe wrench long before the pipes were taken into the yard. The rest of the ladder could be put together once the group was in the rdcreation yard. There was still another reason for selecting the northeast corner as the escape route. There were three guard towers on the recreation yard walls two on the north wall and one on the west wall. But Ray knew that the tower nearest the planned escape point was unmanned except in cases of emergency.

The other towers were 80 and 175 yards away. Still, at that distance, the two guards could foil an escape attempt. Ray decided they needed to create diversions in the huge recreation yard that would distract the 'FIGHT HERE "nAc? rjTSi mil i. iTOWER MANNED? BY GUARD HOOKS f-n governor knew too well the political and national implications if Ray were to be killed. The one report that Henderson worried about was speculation that the escapees had managed to get beyond the area cordoned off by officers.

But the commissioner stood firm: "There are only about four ways to get out of those mountains. We have them all cut off." Then as midnight approached Saturday, a team of dogs picked up a scent along a creek bed six miles northeast of the prison. Trackers followed the trail for more than an hour, at times hearing noises ahead of them. Hacker knew the dogs were after him, and he was not losing them in the creek bed. When the creek neared a road, Hacker crossed the road and ran into the small Beech Grove Baptist Church.

Exhausted, he could do nothing but hide and wait, For 20 minutes, nothing happened, and he hoped he had lost them. But a few minutes later, two deputy sheriffs and an BI agent searched the church and arrested him. It was 1:45 a.m. State officials speculated upon Hacker's return that he may have been the "mastermind" of the breakout, but prison officials now say that was just a hunch. After dawn Sunday, helicopters returned to the search.

The bloodhounds were having difficulty following and holding scents because the ground was dusty and officers had often criss-crossed trails. But in the middle of the day Sunday, searchers got two breaks. The first blurted out over police radios: "Two suspects" were seen crossing a fire road by a tower just over the mountain east of the prison. Authorities quickly devised a plan to flush them out: They would clear the side of the mountain of searchers and dogs and take a group of men to the top of the mountain. This force would then move down the side of the mountain, forcing the escapees toward a road at the base of the mountain.

Every 100 yards along that road was at least one officer in sight of another. The plan was momentarily stalled when authorities learned newsmen were in the search area. Henderson dispatched a van to escort the reporters and photographers out. Then nature provided the second break rain that would clear the air and ground of dust which bothered bloodhounds' sensitive noses. The searchers decided to wait for the rain to end.

Meanwhile. Blanton and Adj. Gen. Carl Wallace toured the area by helicopter and then the governor announced at a prison press conference he was activating two units of the Tennessee National Guard. About 150 guardsmen in the Ripley military police unit and as many helicopters "as needed" from the Smyrna avaiation unit would arrive at the prison Monday, he said.

Blanton also announced that Safety Commissioner Plummer would head the search operation, assisted by Henderson and Wallace. Also, prison authorities were putting together a special task force of Brushy Mountain guards who grew up in the backcountry and knew streams and other areas where the escapees might hide. Then there was a startling piece of news: police in Careyville, Tenn 14 of the entire length of wall on which their tower sits. During the diversions, Ray and the others were placing the ladder over the wall. "Most people say Ray was the first over the wall," Henderson said.

"Some say he was the second." Shelton and Hill were right behind Ray. The others may or may not have been in on the plan. Powell, the only black in the group, was obviously not prepared for the escape he was wearing white pants and no shirt. He just saw the ladder there and went. Ray, on the other hand, was wearing sneakers that prison officials allow inmates to have.

Butler said his attention was on the west wall's fake fight when "I heard someone in the yard yell." "I don't know whether it was a guard or an inmate." Butler said. "They yelled, 'Look at the wall! Over the wall! I turned and started shooting." Butler first fired two blasts from his pump shotgun. "When I opened fire with this Old Betsy, they (inmates around the horseshoe game) hit the ground," he said. Then he picked up his 22-caIiber rifle, filled with long rifle cartridges, and began shooting from 175 yards away. "I was shooting at a body at the top of the wall," he said.

"Then I saw two men. They were scrambling as hard as they could up that hill on the other side of the wall. One of them either tripped or I hit him." Hooks said he did not see the escape attempt until he heard Butler shooting. "I immediately started shooting," Hooks said. "I could see what they were using (the pipe ladder).

They kept going over while I kept shooting." From Hooks' vantage point, he could shoot at inmates on either side of the wall, about 80 yards from his tower. "While I was shooting, one of them fell off the bank on the other side of the wall," he said. "I think I hit him." Both Hooks and Butler say they think they shot one escapee. Ward, a bank robber serving 20 to 40 years, was shot twice in the leg and was immediately captured about 15 feet outside the wall. Ray and the other five escapees fled through the woods and began the long night of climbing the mountains whose tops reach more than 3,000 high in a natural barrier around the prison.

The prison alarm sounded, signaling the escape. The alarm can be heard all over Petros, and when the townspeople heard it, too many of them picked up their telephones to find out what was happening. The overloaded Petros telephone system went dead. Deputy Warden Herman Davis had to send a messenger several miles to notify the Morgan County sheriff's office of the breakout. Meanwhile, at the prison some thought one or two of the inmates might have slipped into a tunnel just beneath the section of the wall they scaled.

The tunnel carries a creek that flows under the entire length of the prison. "We immediately sealed off the other end of the tunnel," Davis said. "Nobody got out that way." Hpnrfprsnn and numerous other state officials drove immediately to the prison. Reporters from Tennessee and across the nation also poured into the tiny town. Henderson, in between hourly briefings for the press, devised a search strategy with prison officials: Contain the escapees within a mile or two of the prison until daylight when a major search with helicopters and dogs and men could be launched.

The helicopters were using an infrared device used extensively during the Vietnam War that could detect human body heat. "But the helicopters were not of too much use as far as the search is concerned," Henderson said. "Their main use was psychological, keeping them from traveling too much and keeping them inside the area." All Friday night and Saturday morning, Henderson kept telling reporters he believed the escapees were "boxed in" by a five-square mile perimeter correctional officers had set up. Dogs would pick up scents and lose them. Fresh dogs would try again.

"They are running in circles," Henderson said. "We feel like we have got them contained." About 12:45 p.m. Saturday, a helicopter spotted Powell walking along a road eight miles north of the prison. Powell, serving 100 years for shooting and killing a Memphis clerk, surrendered to officers without a fight. Powell's capture at that distance from the prison forced officials to expand their search area to a 10-mile radius.

But it would be 13 hours before another escapee would be caught. Ray, meanwhile, was traveling with Hill and Shelton, having parted company with the other three almost immediately after the breakout. At 49, Ray knew the need to conserve energy even if he had worked in prison to keep in shape. While they had traveled all night up the steep mountain, Ray and the other two were extremely cautious about daylight movements. When they did move in daylight hours, it was slowly and with maximum concealment.

Saturday morning the state brought in every man and piece of equipment officials believed could be helpful in the search. That included five Tennessee Highway Patrol Tactical Teams (the state's version of SWAT) and an 18-wheel mobile command post with a communications center to coordiante radio communications and to replace the beleaguered Petros telephone system. FBI agents also arrived. There was an announcement from Washington that Ray was on the FBI's "lOMost Wanted the FBI was now directing the search. Henderson said the FBI was never in charge of the search, which was directed by state authorities.

President Carter and Gov. Ray Blanton announced they were keeping tabs on the search, getting hourly progress reports. The House Select Committee on Assassinations, which only a few weeks before had interviewed Ray about his murder of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis nine years ago, sent two staff members to observe the search. There were charges of conspiracies of different types: Ray was kidnaped; Ray had outside help; the escape was a plot to kill Ray.

Henderson would interrupt his search operation to deny the rumors. Blanton issued orders that Ray be taken alive, if possible. The Gov. Ray Blanton 'Take Ray alive' group were Hacker, Jerry Ray Ward, David Lee Powell and Donald Ray Caylor. Suddenly, there were loud noises in the southwest corner of the yard.

Some inmates were staging a fight. Guards walking in the yard rushed to the scene. Ray's plan had begun. Linwood Butler was the guard manning the tower nearest the fight scene. Watching the fracas, he held his shotgun.

Near the fight scene, another inmate pretended to fall down an embankment. "I broke my ankle, I broke my ankle." the inmate screamed. The disturbance also had the attention of the north wall tower guard, Floyd Hooks. "Then I saw an inmate by himself in the (northwest) corner," Hooks said. "He was threatening like he was going to escape, walking over to the wall and then backing away." Prison rules say inmates are not allowed within 10 feet of the wall.

The guards have the responsibility With the assistance of Corrections Commissioner C. Murray Henderson and other state officials, The Tennessean has been able topiece together this account of the escape and capture of James Earl Ray and his six fellow Brushy Mountain.