Prison Escapes

 SCEp. 11: Prison Escapes

(Intro Music)
Intro: 
Hello and welcome to strange circumstances where we explore the strange, mysterious  and unexplained happenings from around the world.  Im your host Edwin Everhart.


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In today’s episode we will look into some of the most astonishing and outlandish prison breaks of our time.  And how creativity and determination can flourish from desperation. But first let's
 take a quick look at some prison & Prison escape statistics. 


When considered in relation to the sheer size of the incarcerated population of the United States, prison escapes are rare and on the decline — and most escaped convicts are quickly caught. 


Still, jailbreak stories are always bound to make the news, tapping into, as they do, our twin emotions of fear and adventure.
 
Over the past 30 years, the number of prisoners incarcerated in prisons within the US has increased by 340%, meaning that for every 11.2 prisoners there are now just 2 guards.


Just 3% of all inmates escape at some point during their time behind bars. 89% of these attempts are committed at minimum security facilities.


Two-thirds of successful escape attempts from prisons are single-person jobs. 20% of escapes involve just two people. Only 4% of successful escapes involve 3 or more people.



Our first story would seem to be one coming straight off the silver screen.  Filled with ingenuity, creativity and a passion to escape.  This is… The escape of Richard Lee McNair.



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Richard Lee McNair
Although Richard Lee McNair is a convicted murderer, it’s his extraordinary ability to escape from prison. This has made him more notorious than the actual crimes that put him there.


Richard Lee McNair escaped from prison three times, which is an impressive feat in itself. But it was his third escape in 2006 that required the kind of creativity and innovation that you very seldom see.


And by all accounts, McNair showed that kind of creativity right from the get-go. 


Born in Oklahoma on December 19, 1958, he was the son of a reserve police officer and was quickly described as keenly intelligent. 
His brother said, “He is about the smartest person I’ve ever met,” adding, “He was a good guy that I always admired — until he made unwise choices.”


On the night of November 17, 1987, in Minot, North Dakota, McNair broke into a building that stored grain with the intention of robbing it. The burglary was botched though when two men surprised him. One of the men was truck driver Jerome Theis, who McNair shot and killed. He also shot at the second man but he managed to survive.


After the police brought McNair in for questioning, he surrendered a concealed handgun and it didn’t take long before he was sentenced to hard time. He was given two life sentences for murder and attempted murder, on top of a 30-year sentence for burglary.


This was when Richard Lee McNair switched from a life of crime to a life of prison escapes.


McNair’s first escape was a relatively modest affair. It came just after his initial arrest, at the Minot police station in February 1988. McNair was in a room with three detectives, handcuffed to a chair. 


In his pocket was a tube of lip balm. McNair managed to use the lip balm as a lubricant, greasing his hands enough so that he could slip out of the handcuffs when the detectives left him alone.


The escape resulted in a foot chase, with Richard Lee McNair leading the cops around town. He ran into a building, where the cops pursued up a few flights of stairs to the building’s third floor and once surrounded, he jumped. 


McNair landed on the ground and injured his back, making it much easier for cops to detain him.


But that was just a warm-up for his next escape.


In October 1992, Richard Lee McNair was serving his time at the North Dakota State Penitentiary when, along with two fellow inmates, he slipped out through a ventilation duct. He managed to remain a fugitive for longer this time, not being recaptured until July 1993 in Grand Island, Nebraska.


McNair was then transferred to a maximum-security federal prison in Louisiana. This was where he would perform his tour de force of escapes.


At the Louisiana prison, McNair’s job was to repair torn mailbags so that they could be shipped out to post offices for use. This was where he planned his epic escape, which took place on April 5, 2006.


He constructed a kind of escape pod out of the materials available to him. He outfitted it with a breathing tube, hid it under a pile of mailbags on a pallet, and got inside it. 
McNair hid there until a forklift carried the pallet (which was shrink-wrapped) to a nearby warehouse outside the confines of the prison.


When the warehouse staff left for lunch, Richard Lee McNair cut himself out and walked to freedom. But perhaps the most astounding part of his escape was still to come.


Just after the escape, a police officer saw McNair jogging near railroad tracks in Ball, Louisiana. And, knowing that there had been a prison escape nearby, he stopped him. The officer’s dashboard camera captured the whole exchange.

(McNair Video)


Despite not having any identification on him and matching the description of the escapee that the officer had received before stopping him, Richard Lee McNair was able to talk his way out of it. He told the officer his name was “Robert Jones” and that he was just a man out for a jog. When he slipped and said his name was “Jimmy Jones” a few minutes later, the officer didn’t notice.


The officer advised him to carry some ID next time and the two shared a laugh before the officer said “Be careful buddy” and McNair jogged on to freedom.
Clearly, Richard Lee McNair was, as his brother said, a truly smart and clever guy. And the authorities had to agree.


“I think he’s a smart guy,” said Tim Schuetzle, a warden at McNair’s prison in North Dakota.


While on the run for the third time, McNair found time to send Schuetzle a Christmas card.


Richard Lee McNair managed to remain free for a year and a half. He was caught 100 miles north of the border in Campbellton, New Brunswick driving a stolen truck on October 24, 2007 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.


In what must have been no surprise, McNair tried to make a run for it once more, but a policeman tackled him to the ground.


Today, Richard Lee McNair resides in a concrete cell at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo. which houses notorious criminals like the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid.


It’s the most secure prison in the United States and Richard Lee McNair has surely earned his place inside.


Not only is it pretty incredible that McNair was able to create an escape pod with a breathing tube out of materials found around him like a real life MacGyver.  



But, he was able to hide in a pallet of mail, get transported and cut his way out to freedom without alerting anyone.  That would either take some good planning or some amazing stealth skills and probably some luck thrown in there as well.



And not only that, but he was caught jogging near the prison by police and was able to talk his way out of it with the officer like they were old pals. 



 I bet when that cop realized later down the line that he had spoken to McNair on those train tracks that day and let him go, he felt pretty dumb and embarrassed. Hopefully that officer made some changes to the way he approaches his duties on the job and used this as a learning step for future events.  



But I have to give McNair credit here.  He was charismatic and convincing.  His plan was crazy enough to work and he was sharp witted when it came to thinking on his feet.  A successful combo of traits for most criminals.  



Our next escape deals with an even more charismatic character. In fact, probably one of the most charismatic people to have ever walked this earth.  And he just so happens to be one of the most infamous American  serial killers of all time.  This is… The escape of Ted Bundy.
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Ted Bundy
Charming, handsome, charismatic, personable…these are just a few words used to describe one of the most prolific serial killers the world has ever known. 


Theodore Robert Bundy, aka Ted Bundy, exploited these personality traits to his advantage and over a four-year spree between 1974-1978 he raped, assaulted and murdered over 30 women across multiple States in America, although it is widely believed amongst those who were directly involved with Bundy that he in fact killed over 100 women. 


His ability to evade the law as well as his uncanny knack of escaping even when the law had caught up with him, allowed Bundy extra time to indulge in his murderous fantasies.


Bundy had already murdered multiple women by the time his now infamous VW Beatle was pulled over by a policeman on the 16th of  August 1975, for acting suspiciously in a residential area in the early hours of the morning.



In Bundy’s car, the officer found a crowbar, handcuffs, a ski mask and pantyhose with eyeholes cut in it. 


At first, it was assumed these were items used for burglary but investigators soon linked Bundy to an attempted kidnapping that had occurred almost a year prior. 


In November 1974, Bundy had posed as a police officer to gain the trust of 18-year-old Carol DaRonch. Once in his car he tried but failed to handcuff DaRonch to the vehicle. Instead, she fled and reported the incident to the police.



With Bundy now in police custody, investigators asked DaRonch if she could pick him out of a line-up…she did and authorities believed they had enough evidence to charge Bundy with her kidnapping. 



On June 30 1976, Bundy was found guilty of her assault and sentenced to between one to fifteen years in a Utah State prison. By that time, authorities from Colorado had also managed to link Bundy to the murder of 23-year-old Caryn Campbell, whose body had been found next to a dirt road by a Colorado ski resort in early 1975. 



After charging Bundy with her murder, he was transferred from Utah to Garfield County jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where he would await trial.


Bundy, a former law student, chose to represent himself in court. The judge residing on his trial decided to excuse Bundy from wearing handcuffs and leg shackles and had allowed him the opportunity to visit the courthouse law library so that he could research his case. 


These privileges granted to Bundy would later come under fire as the accused would take advantage of them to conduct his first escape.
On June 7th 1977, whilst taking a break from court during a preliminary hearing, Bundy spotted an open window in the library and decided to act. 


He would later describe the moment during a phone call with prison psychologist Dr. Al Carlisle saying, 


‘The guard went outside for a smoke. The windows are open, and the fresh air is blowing through. And the sky was blue, and I said, 'I'm ready to go,' and walked to the window and jumped out. Honest to god, I just got sick and tired of being locked up.’


Jumping some 30 feet, Bundy hit the ground hard and sprained his ankle. With no plan, no backup and no money, Bundy shed a layer of clothing and then limped his way towards nearby Aspen Mountain. 


Ten minutes after his escape authorities caught on and began setting up roadblock across town and placed all citizens on high alert.


Bundy hiked up the mountain and broke into a hunting cabin, stealing supplies and a rifle and headed off again. Bundy ended up wandering around the forest for days after becoming lost and disorientated. He finally trekked down the mountain and returned to Aspen in the hope of stealing a car. 


Sleep-deprived and in pain from his ankle,  Bundy did manage to steal a car; he drove it so erratically that it quickly caught the attention of police officers who pulled him over. Bundy was back in custody after 6 days on the run. Although his taste of freedom was short-lived, it wasn’t going to be his last.


Bundy was stripped of all his previous privileges and was now back at Garfield County jail. 


He wasted little time in planning his next escape. Realizing that his last attempt failed through lack of planning he began stashing away money, acquiring around $500 cash over the next six months, most of which was smuggled in by his later wife Carole Ann Boone. 


Bundy also managed to secure a floor plan of the jail and a hacksaw from fellow inmates.


In his cell was an unsecured grate in the ceiling. Bundy planned on cutting a hole around it and squeezing through the tiny one-foot square gap before making his way along the crawl spaces above to one of the jailer’s rooms. To fit into the tiny hole he was going to cut into the ceiling, Bundy needed to lose weight.


By the 30th of December, Bundy had lost some two and a half stone and was ready to put his plan into action. 


With most of the prison staff off on Christmas break, Bundy piled books onto his bed and covered them over with the blankets to make it look like he was sleeping underneath. He proceeded to make his way up through the grate and crawled towards a nearby jailer’s room. 


Once above, he broke through the ceiling and dropped down. The jailer was out for the evening, so Bundy grabbed some civilian clothes from the jailer’s closet, got changed, then walked out of the front door. Bundy was at large…again!


It would be some 17 hours before anyone realized he was missing, by that time Bundy had managed to steal a car, catch a flight and jump on a bus and make his way to Chicago, some 1,100 miles away. 
Nine days later, Bundy made his way to Tallahassee, Florida and although the FBI had added him to their Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, he would remain a free man until mid-February 1978, a month and a half after escaping.


During his time on the run, Bundy would kill again and claim his final known victims. 


In the early hours of January 15th, he broke into a Florida State University sorority house. There he sexually assaulted, beat and strangled two young women, Margaret Bowman, 21, and Lisa Levy, 20. 


Two other women in the house were attacked and suffered severe injuries, although they would survive thanks to the car headlights of a girl returning to the house, which scared Bundy off.


Police estimated Bundy had been in the house for just 15 minutes and had carried out his attacks within earshot of over 30 witnesses, all of whom heard nothing. 


That night Bundy went on to attack another young female student. She would live to tell the tale, albeit without her hearing after Bundy’s vicious assault left her permanently deaf.


On the morning of 8 February in a Jacksonville car park, Bundy attempted to gain 14-year-old Leslie Parmenter’s trust by telling her he was from the fire department. Bundy quickly retreated after her older brother stepped in and challenged him. 


The next day, some 60 miles away in Lake City, 12-year-old Kimberly Leach would not be so lucky. Leach was to become Bundy’s final victim, her body discovered seven weeks later in a pig shed, 35 miles away from Lake City.


Bundy was finally apprehended on 15 February 1978, stopped once again by police officers whilst driving. It seems that cars were Bundy’s unlucky charm. 


As soon as the license plate check came back declaring Bundy’s vehicle as stolen he attempted to flee the scene. He didn’t get far before an officer subdued him and placed him under arrest. Bundy was said to utter the words, ‘I wish you had killed me.’
Within two years Bundy would be tried and found guilty of murdering the two women in the sorority house as well as the 12-year-old girl. He was sentenced to death by electrocution. 


On 24 January 1989, at the age of 42, and after years of successfully managing to delay his execution, Bundy was finally placed in an electric chair and had two thousand volts passed through his body.
At 7:16 a.m. Theodore Bundy was pronounced dead as crowds outside the death chamber cheered ‘Burn, Bundy, burn!’
https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/article/how-ted-bundy-escaped-from-jail-twice
I think the most frightening factors about Ted Bundy that made him such a successful killer were that he was a good looking man, he was smart and he was charismatic. 


 Your first impression when approached by an attractive, intelligent, well spoken person would not be a dangerous sociopath.  
It would probably be more along the lines of “this is a very presentable and respectable person I’m talking to”. 
 Leaving you to let your guard down just enough for him to get you by surprise.   It’s unnerving to think that someone with such strong traits could use them for such evil purposes.  Makes you wanna think twice about anyone you meet that is well spoken, super charismatic and decent looking.   


But this just goes to show that even when you think you are in total control, you really aren’t.  Knowing that he jumped out of the window some 30 ft. to the ground just shows his desperation to be free and to be back in control.  


It's really surprising with how dangerous Ted Bundy was that the courts ultimately would allow him to use the library so freely.  I bet that is not a mistake that they ever make again.   


There were many TV shows and movies made about our next story.  Being a career criminal, the one and sometimes the only thing that might be consistent in your life is knowing you are gonna end up in the big house again.  
For this man, the only thing more consistent than knowing he would be back behind bars at some point, is knowing that he would be able to escape them yet again.  This is… The story of Gary Tison.
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Gary Tison
Gary Tison had just been sentenced to prison for passing a bad check. When the hearing ended, one version of the story goes, he wanted to kiss his wife goodbye before he  returned to his cell but the guard wouldn't let him. 


During the five-minute drive from the courthouse in Florence to the prison, Tison somehow managed to overpower the guard and grab his gun. He then shot and killed the man.  


He left the body at the end of a dirt road and drove off in the prison truck.  A manhunt began, lasting into the next day. 


Someone called the police from Casa Grande saying Tison was in their backyard. Police responded. There was a brief shootout but Finally, officers arrested Tison.


At the court hearing, Tison had received a sentence of about seven months for passing the bad check. Now he would face charges as a murderer.


In 1968, he would be sentenced to life in prison but he would make every effort not to stay there.


The so-called Tison Gang saga is a story of escapes. Three attempted by Tison, and one by another inmate who jumped the perimeter fence with one goal in mind: to let officials know what Tison was planning.


Gary Tison infamously succeeded in busting out of prison in 1978. He left with a fellow murderer and with the aid of his three sons.


Once out, they killed a family, including a baby, in a remote part of southwestern Arizona and also a honeymooning couple in Colorado. They spread fear across state lines, leaving no clue about where or when they would strike next.


Law enforcement tracked them but they were never really on their tail. 


The gang would be caught purely by happenstance. Officers at a roadblock were anticipating a sports car coming at them from the west. Instead, a van came from the east.


Nearly 40 years later, the saga of the Tison Gang’s prison break has lost none of its cinematic sweep. There is a gun-toting escape, unrelenting violence committed by a desperate gang on the run and a bullet-filled ending that has the main protagonist making a futile crawl for cover.


There is also an intriguing cast of characters, revolving around the domineering and sociopathic father and the sons who were raised to see him as an ideal man.
It is not surprising that the violent saga has been made into a movie – twice. The first retelling, “A Killer in the Family,” was made for TV in 1983 and starred Robert Mitchum as Tison, with a  screenplay by best-selling novelist Sue Grafton.


But Gary would be out of his family's life again in 1961. He was imprisoned for five years for stealing weapons from an armory.
The time after that release was recalled fondly by Dorothy Tison to a court-appointed psychologist in 1980. She said the time the family was together on a ranch was the "happiest time of their lives."
But a year later came Tison's arrest for passing a bad check. And the sentencing hearing where the guard wouldn't let him kiss his wife goodbye. And the murder of the guard, James Stiner.
Tison escaped in the prison truck but was recaptured in Casa Grande 19 hours later.
“I killed the guard,” Tison told officers who found him. He led them to Stiner’s body.
Tison was placed in maximum custody in Florence, at the time the state's only prison.
Dorothy Tison, despite the evidence and her husband's reported confession, never believed her husband killed the guard, she told the court-appointed psychologist. That doctor wrote in his report that he believed an idealized version of Gary Tison was passed on to the couple's three sons.


The boys routinely visited their father while he was in Florence. One deputy warden, in an oral history interview, recalled watching the Tison boys grow up from being in diapers.


Tison was seen as a model inmate. Frank Terry, a major in the department, said in a 1990 oral history interview, that Tison was “very mild-mannered" and that "most of the time in there, the man was a model prisoner."


But, Terry added
“If he’d see a chance to escape, though, he’d take it," Terry said, "and if you stood in his way and he had to kill you, he would.”


In 1972, Tison tried once again to escape.


He and two other inmates held guards at gunpoint and took their uniforms. Disguised as guards, the three fooled a guard in a tower into opening a gate and letting them walk through the yard.  But the attempt was foiled before Tison could leave. 


Guards found a long pipe placed up against the wall and reasoned the group had tried and failed to climb it and escape. Tison and the others were found hiding in a laundry room. 


Newspaper clippings from the time quoted prison officials saying they were not sure how Tison managed to have a weapon.




Despite the killing of one guard and his foiled escape attempt, Tison retained favored status as an inmate.


He was given the job of directing the inmate activities, a post that came with a desk in an office and a telephone that gave him access to the outside world.


Tison had convinced officials he was a changed man, looking to make the best of himself within the prison walls.


The Republic, in December 1975, went to the prison to check out conditions and spoke with its warden, Harold Cardwell.  Cardwell suggested to the reporter it would be good to speak to an inmate who had been locked up for a while to get perspective. 


Cardwell suggested Gary Tison. “He’s articulate and won’t try to snow you,” Cardwell was quoted as saying.


Tison was interviewed at his desk, facing a civilian employee in the small activities office. The civilian director of activities, Jeff Martin, told the reporter it took him some time to be able to look Tison in the eye. “He killed one of my best friends,” Martin said.


Tison told the reporter that he used to run the dope and other deals inside the prison, but changed. “I’ve got a wife and three kids,” he said. “I want to get out someday and I know that the only privileges you get from The Man come from working for others and accepting responsibility.”




Tison seemed wistful for the prison conditions of the 1960s. Both guards and prisoners were more professional, more reasonable, he said. The young prisoners coming in today were tougher to control, he said.


Tison suggested an answer would be to build more maximum-security units. Enough with this coddling of prisoners. “No education, no counselors," he said, "just a place where they can move out the hardcore people and work their butts off."


Robert Tuzon never thought about escaping prison. He thought he was innocent of the murder charge that put him behind bars and it would be only a matter of time before he convinced the right people.


In his first day in prison in 1976, Tuzon figured out who was in charge: Gary Tison, the inmate who somehow kept a derringer in his boot.


“He was the chairman, CEO,” Tuzon said during an interview in August. 


While other inmates ran various factions of the populations, mainly drawn on ethnic lines, it was Tison who ran them all, Tuzon said. The prison officers seemed to accept the arrangement.


“When you keep things tranquil, everything is better off,” Tuzon said, “and he could keep things tranquil.”


Tison was the editor of the prison newspaper, “La Roca,” and also ran the audio-visual department where he had access to a phone.


“If you want anything, just go see Gary,” Tuzon said.


Tuzon wanted to call his wife. “So I got to his office and he calls my wife, puts me through, and I get to talk to my wife, which wasn’t allowed at the time.”


Soon, both men would gain an extraordinary measure of privileges.
In September 1977, a federal judge ruled that the state’s prisons were overcrowded and decreed the state come up with a plan either to build more prisons or to reduce its inmate population.


Cardwell came up with a plan to convert the women's prison across the street into a facility for inmates that didn't need as much security, mostly secured by barbed-wire fencing. Contracts were out to fortify it. But inmates would be moved in the meantime.


Cardwell had to determine which ones could be safely placed there.


Tison had shown himself, in the warden's eyes, to avoid trouble. There had been a prison strike the previous year. Tison refused to take part. Tison also wrote pro-warden editorials in the prison newspaper.


Cardwell later would insist such gestures had no bearing on him. 
Tison apparently also knew how to make meals.  Joe Martinez, a deputy warden who was on the committee that screened prisoners for the new annex, said that was a key element. “There’s Tison — good cook,” Martinez said in a 1990 oral history interview. 


Officials knew that Tison was a dangerous man. But they had to weigh those actions with his years of solid behavior inside the institution. In that universe, he was deemed one of the good ones.


Tison soon made the cut.


Joining him was a serial killer named Randy Greenawalt. Although he only had been convicted of killing one trucker — marking his window with an X as the man slept and then firing at it from a distance — Greenawalt had an apparent disdain for drivers of big rigs and there was talk he was responsible for similar slayings.


Greenawalt had also refused to take part in the strike, along with Tison. He also moved to cushier quarters.


Tuzon also made the cut. He had been convicted of the murder of his brother-in-law, but claimed it was in self-defense. He expected to win an appeal. In the meantime, he was assigned to work in the kitchen.


Tuzon said he found Tison waiting for him there. Given Tison’s record, Tuzon told him he was surprised to see him there.


“I got connections,” Tison told him.


The move to the annex meant Tison could have longer visits with his family, outside and lasting most of the day. The family was able to bring in home-cooked or outside food. The Tison boys often carried in boxes filled with books for their father.


On the day Tuzon learned a court had denied his appeal, Gary Tison approached him with a question.


“Don’t you want to leave here?” he asked.


Tison said he knew Tuzon could fly a plane. He suggested they escape and Tuzon fly them to freedom.


Tuzon said he refused to take part. The next week, Tison showed him photographs of Tuzon’s wife and children, along with a newly adopted dog. Tison said he would have them all killed if Tuzon didn’t take part in the escape.


“Before you can do anything they’ll be gone,” Tison said, according to Tuzon.


“So, I decided, well, OK, I’ll fly your plane,” Tuzon said.


Next came a test.


It was a weekend visitation day in the outside courtyard.


Tuzon’s wife, Irma, met Tison’s sons, Ricky and Raymond. Tison ordered Tuzon’s wife to deliver a rifle that Tuzon owned to his sons. Irma initially balked but her husband told her, “It’s deeper than you think.”


The delivery was made, growing Tison’s trust in Tuzon.
Next, Tison wanted Tuzon to teach him how to fly a plane.


Under the guise of taking a class, he had a cardboard replica of a King Air cockpit delivered to the prison, the type used in training. He set it up and had Tuzon show him how to work the controls.


Tison said the plan was to steal weapons from the Casa Grande armory and then fly them to Costa Rica and sell them on the black market. Tuzon said Tison estimated the haul would be worth a couple of million dollars.


 But Tuzon had his own plan. “When I had him in the air, I was just going to crash the plane,” Tuzon said in the interview this year. He figured his life would have been over with after an escape charge, and he didn’t want Tison to hurt any more people.


Tuzon wrote his attorney and told him about Tison’s escape plan. His attorney, in turn, notified prison officials, and word got to Warden Cardwell. Tuzon was summoned into Cardwell's office to tell him what he knew.


At the same time, word about the potential escape also came to the prison through officers working on a drug squad.


Cardwell, in his oral history interview, recalled getting a tip about Tison. He said he had a committee meet and look at the evidence to see if Tison needed to be moved back to maximum.


That March, Tison was given four polygraph exams asking him if he planned to escape but Tison passed all four.
He remained in the lightly guarded prison annex.


In May 1978, Tison said the plane was in place and the plan was a go for the next week. Tison also told Tuzon he planned to kill six guards on his way out.


Tuzon questioned why the guards needed to die when it would be so easy to escape the annex. Tison told him that he needed to do it his way.


Tuzon went to the maintenance shack and snagged a pair of wire cutters during a baseball game in the recreation yard and then snipped the chain link while nobody was looking. 


He then ran across the sand to a fence ringed with barbed-wire. Tuzon knew sometimes there was a guard in the tower; sometimes not. This time, there was. As he hit the top of the fence, a guard popped out his head.


Tuzon rolled over the wire, jumped down and started running as the officer started firing.


Tuzon’s plan was to head six blocks to the Department of Public Safety office and tell them about Tison’s escape plot. He thought maybe they would believe him but that plan changed when the bullets started flying.


He zigged and zagged across the desert, dodging bullets. A prison vehicle pulled up and dogs were released on him and Tuzon was then recaptured.


Tuzon said he was taken to Cardwell’s office, where the warden yelled at him for trying to make the prison look bad.  Tuzon then claimed to have been beaten.


He was charged with escape and was also moved out of the annex and back into the maximum security wing. His plan to alert officials had failed. But he succeeded in getting himself away from Tison.


Weeks later, from his basement cell, Tuzon heard sirens go off in the prison. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but I just had a feeling that Gary had just escaped.” 


Gary Tison's last escape began in what to guards must have seemed like a routine event. His son, Raymond, 18, came to visit him.  But Gary Tison did not have the typical reaction upon seeing his son that July 31, 1978.


“Dammit, you guys aren’t supposed to be here,” Gary Tison reportedly said.




The two sat outside in the yard. Raymond had brought two ham sandwiches and a six-pack of soda. They spoke, presumably Raymond filling him in on the new plan.


Twenty minutes later,  the two came back inside the visitors’ lobby.


The other two sons, Donald, 20, and Ricky, 19, entered moments later holding a cardboard box advertising Salem cigarettes. 


Ricky grabbed a sawed-off shotgun that was concealed in the box and shoved it into the window at the corrections officer in the booth.


Greenawalt held a clerk’s job that put him in that control booth and Donald Tison passed a pistol to him.  Brandishing the gun, Greenawalt ordered the two officers to the floor.


Gary Tison brought in a third guard from outside and ordered him, at gunpoint, into a supply closet. The other two guards were corralled next.




Raymond Tison then ordered the visitors and prisoners into the closet. They locked it and the gang walked out, got into a green Ford LTD and drove away.


They then switched cars at the parking lot of a nearby hospital, getting into a black Lincoln Continental.  Inside the prison, 10 minutes later, the officers were able to bust out of the closet. They radioed in the escape.


Inmates told officials what they had heard of the plan through the rumor mill: The Tisons wanted to drive to Mexico and hide at a ranch in Sasabe. After a time, maybe they would join a drug-smuggling ring there with which Tison had connections.


Police established roadblocks along the highways to Mexico and helicopters joined in on the search. They were looking for  the green LTD.




On the road to Yuma, according to a 1981 Republic story that reconstructed the incident, the gang’s black Lincoln caught a flat so they mounted the spare and kept on driving.


Upon reaching Yuma, the car turned north. One officer speculated in the 1981 article that the gang wanted to rob a bank to get some quick cash. Another speculated that Greenawalt wanted to see a woman he had befriended who lived in Flagstaff.


Either way, the gang was now headed north on a remote stretch of Arizona 95, going from Yuma to Quartzsite.


About 25 miles south of Quartzsite, the car caught a second flat. With no spare, the group was stranded by the side of the road.


The sun had dropped and the gang had started a campfire.


In the middle of the night, a U.S. Marine assigned to the Yuma station was driving that same state highway. With him were his wife, his 22-month-old son Christopher and his niece.
The Marine stopped to help.  The Tison gang would steal the car but would leave no witnesses.  The family was forced into the Continental with the flat tire and were driven out into the desert.


It is not clear whether the family was shot in one flurry of bullets or systematically. It is also not clear if they were shot by only Gary Tison and Randy Greenawalt, or if the sons joined in.


John Lyons was blown from the passenger seat and ended up outside of the car on his back. Christopher was blown into the body of his mother, Donnelda. Teresa-Jo Tyson, the niece, was hit in the hip and buttocks but did not die. She tried crawling for help after the gang left but bled to death near a bush.


The gang got in their new vehicle, an orange Mazda, and headed north.


They stopped in the town of Wenden and bought silver spray paint to change the color of the Mazda, then headed for Flagstaff.


Greenawalt had started a pen-pal relationship of sorts with a woman, Kathy Ehrementrout, who lived there. Greenawalt and Donald Tison went to visit her, leaving the rest of the gang at a campsite in the woods outside the city.


Ehrementrout bought the men a truck and ammunition.  Their path after Flagstaff is not clear.


In the 1981 article, authorities said Gary Tison had arranged for a plane to pick them up in Clovis, New Mexico. Arizona authorities hoped to quietly wait at the airport for the Tisons and Greenawalt. But word leaked out. State police swarmed the airport.


Authorities later determined, according to the 1981 article, that the Tison gang drove up to the airport, saw the officers and left.  


With the plane surrounded by officials the gang drove northeast into Colorado.


Along the way, they confronted a pair of newlyweds from Texas, James and Margene Judge, who were on their way to Denver to see the Dallas Cowboys play the Denver Broncos.
The couple was killed.


The gang drove away in their van heading back to Casa Grande, the town Gary Tison had called home when he wasn’t in prison.


The gang stopped in Casa Grande for at least one day, according to the 1981 article, and visited one relative.  From there, they headed towards Mexico, driving through old back roads to avoid authorities.


They did not know police agencies had set up roadblocks on every intersection of those roads.


Someone reported an attempted break-in at a Border Patrol station in Gila Bend. They also spotted a silver sports car near the scene. If someone was trying to get weapons, it sounded like something Gary Tison would do.  And the gang was last known to be in a silver Mazda.
Along Chuichu Road, four officers sat in two patrol cars parked in the road, nearly blocking it. About 2:45 a.m. on Aug. 11, a van approached. An officer flashed his red lights and then walked up to the vehicle as it slowed.


Two shots were fired, narrowly missing the officer.  The van barreled between the two patrol cars at an estimated 90 mph.


There was another roadblock six miles away. Four deputies there stood on the side of the road with weapons drawn.


The van came into sight,closely chased by two patrol cars. with gunshots ringing out as they approached.  As the van sped past, the officers fired.


Donald Tison was driving the van. One bullet struck him in the head, blowing his brains throughout the van causing the vehicle to slide off the road.


After it came to rest, Gary Tison was heard yelling “It’s everyone for himself.”  Gary Tison was the only one who managed to get away.
A helicopter flew over and illuminated the area. Officers found Ricky and Raymond Tison, along with Greenawalt, hiding in a ditch. All three had weapons although none had used them.


That's when officers started the hunt for Gary Tison.  He would not be found for 11 days. But Tison did not last that long.


His body was found by an employee of a nearby chemical plant who smelled a foul odor. Authorities said it appeared Tison died violently, kicking gouges into the ground where he laid, inadvertently burying his gun underneath him.


Within weeks, then-Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt would remove Cardwell from his job as the warden of the prison.


“That was obviously necessary,” Babbitt said in an interview. “The idea that you had in minimum security a person who was there for the murder of a prison guard was just incomprehensible.”


Greenawalt would be sentenced to death. He was executed in 1997  and Ehrementrout was among a handful of friends and relatives who would be convicted of helping the gang.


Tuzon, for his efforts at trying to warn officials about the escape, had his sentence reduced. He lives in the Tucson area and works as a minister.


Ricky and Raymond Tison initially were sentenced to death. But their sentences were set aside by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1989. They both were sentenced to life in 1992.


As he received his reprieve from death row, Ricky Tison told the court that he had been manipulated by his father.   “I wish I had the insight back then,” he said in court. “It wouldn’t have happened if I did.”


Raymond Tison expressed a similar sentiment at his sentencing a week later. “I’m not Gary Tison,” he told the court. “I don’t think I’m going to be Gary Tison.”


Neither would agree to an interview.


The secrets about what happened during the rampage remain secret, locked up tight at the Arizona State Prison in Florence.


Outro: 
Well my friends, that's it for today's episode.  Please don't forget to subscribe and leave a review, it really does help the show grow and evolve.  Also please go check out my linktree/ red tide studio where you can find my patreon page where I post photos related to our stories to add an extra layer of depth to our discussions.  All my content is free, but if you would like you can donate to the show there as well.  
Also, if you are into UFology, Criptids & conspiracies be sure to go check out the podcast UFO…No.  Ben Austin is always taking  unique subjects and breaking them down for you to help you decide whether these tales have any truth to them or if they are completely bogus.  He is a blast to listen to and I highly recommend checking him out.  You can find him anywhere you get your podcasts.  
Also be sure to join Naked & Afraid’s Stacey McColley as she explores the world of the weird, ponders on the strange and shares motivational musings on her show Fringe With Benefits.  She has great guests and shares some amazing stories. Be sure to find her on Spotify!
Well that's all I have for you today,  Stay curious & until next time.


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