The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks (19 page)

Once Thompson’s absence was discovered, a major manhunt began. The primary concern was that he would go after those he had threatened. Dennise Hayslip’s mother was blunt: “They say all he wants to do is run. I don’t believe that. I really think he wants to get revenge,” she told reporters before heading for hiding.

Finding no trace of him in Houston, apart from the clothes he had abandoned behind one of the other jails, the search was widened. On 4 November the US Marshals office offered a $10,000 reward for his capture, and charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, designating him a federal fugitive and allowing them to bypass normal extradition proceedings between states. They believed that the discovery of the clothes he used during the escape meant that he had an accomplice who had provided him with a fresh set, not realizing he had simply lost a layer of clothing.

There were various sightings that the marshals investigated: deputies were sent to Tidwell, north-east of Houston, after a county employee thought she had seen Thompson. It turned out to be another convict, but one released properly. Thompson was in fact miles away. He was well on his way through the southern states: on Friday morning the train on which he was travelling entered Louisiana, and Thompson saw up close the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which had devastated the area at the end of August that year. When the train reached the end of the line in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Sunday morning, Thompson masqueraded as a worker trying to get home after the storm. People took pity on him, allowing him use of a shower, and feeding him – they even gave him $25 to help him out and gave him a lift to a truckstop. The money was to prove his downfall.

Thompson knew he needed larger sums of money in order to escape out of the country, probably to Canada. He therefore located a pay phone and made contact with what he would only describe later as “an international assistance agency” that promised they would arrange funds via Western Union. Thompson would need to call them later that day to receive the code word that he’d have to give in order to collect the money.

While he was waiting, he bought a six-pack of Natural Light, a beer with about 4.2 per cent strength. It was the first alcohol he had drunk in a long time. Borrowing a bicycle from in front of a store, he cycled to a nearby park and had a drink. That went straight to his head, and when he returned to the payphone to make the call, he was drunk.

And that’s where the US Marshals found him just after 8 p.m. on 6 November, speaking on the phone. The Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force tracking Thompson had received a tip that he was in Shreveport, and contacted the local US Marshals office. According to Deputy US Marshal Mickey Rellin, who carried out the arrest, Thompson didn’t try to get away. “I asked him, ‘Who are you?’ No answer,” Rellin recalled to CNN. “‘Who are you?’ No answer. ‘Who are you?’ I then made sure that he could see my badge and my credentials, and he said, ‘Are you the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force?’ And I looked at him and said, ‘What do you think?’ He says, ‘Then you know who I am.’ And I said, ‘Well, who are you?’ And then he said, ‘Yes, I’m Charles. I know you’re looking for me.’”

Thompson’s own account mentions the beer, but plays down the effect it had on him – he blames the woman to whom he was speaking on the phone for his arrest. She had just mentioned the $10,000 reward she had seen on
America’s Most Wanted
when the marshals arrived. She’s not named, but “was not only a friend, but a woman Charles had come to love and respect. She was a woman he entrusted with his life and his future.” Certainly, he was in contact with a woman named Kyla based in Australia, who vigorously defended Thompson in an online forum after the resentencing hearing but stopped posting about him once the escape was under way. All he had left to his name when he was captured were the contents of his pockets: a black shoelace and a bottle of shampoo.

His lack of resistance surprised the officers involved. “You got to keep in mind he’s been twice sentenced to death,” Harris County spokesman Lt John Martin told CNN the night he was arrested. “He has absolutely no incentive to cooperate with law enforcement officers, and frankly, nothing to lose by strenuously resisting being taken into custody. So you know, of course, we imagine the worst. We imagine him putting up a fight, maybe gaining access to some type of weapon. And you know, my big concern was for the safety of the officers while they were trying to take him into custody, as well as the general public who’s obviously in danger just by him being out there on the streets. So again, we were greatly relieved that he was taken into custody without incident.”

The fugitive was taken to Caddo Parish Jail, and from there he went back to Harris County Jail. On 8 November, a judge ordered that he was barred from contact with the outside world, except to meet with his lawyer until he was returned to death row, and while he was in Harris County, he was to have a two-deputy escort when he left his cell and to be strip-searched when he returned to it. Lt John Martin drily commented, “I think he should immediately recognize the futility of future escape attempts. He will be much more scrutinized. This will not happen again.”

There were multiple repercussions following his escape, which the Harris County law enforcement authorities put down to human error. According to Lt Martin, “We have a number of procedures that simply weren’t followed.” Sheriff Tommy Thomas fired a twelve-year veteran of the sheriff’s office for not restraining Thompson properly and failing to lock the visitor booth. One sergeant chose to resign rather than face disciplinary action. The others – who had unwittingly aided Thompson by not scrutinizing his documentation carefully and buying into his story – received punishments ranging from a letter of reprimand to a ten-day suspension without pay.

It was a little embarrassing for the Houston authorities when it was revealed two weeks after Thompson’s return that they had lost track of another convicted felon, who was based at a halfway house in the city. Christopher Wilkins, who was imprisoned for firearms offences, walked out of the Leidel Comprehensive Sanctions Center on 2 October 2005, and didn’t come back. US Marshals were alerted but in the six weeks that he was on the run, he became a suspect in three murders, an aggravated assault and two auto thefts. At least Lawrence Darnell Thomas, a carjacker who managed to get away from members of the Houston Police Department as he was being transferred to jail on 15 November, was recaptured within hours.

In October 2008 Thompson lost one of the statutory appeals against his sentence. As of this writing he remains on death row. “I think my second bite at the apple was my retrial,” he told the
Houston Chronicle
a month after his escape. “I think my fate is determined . . . But, I’m a prisoner of hope.”

Sources:

Rodriguez, Robert:
The Grass Beneath His Feet
(AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana: 2009)

Houston Chronicle,
7 November 2005: “German group not involved in escape, authorities say”

Houston Chronicle,
14 December 2005: “An interview with escapee Charles Victor Thompson”

USA Today,
5 November 2005: “Search on for Texas death row inmate”

Houston Chronicle,
4 November 2005: “Victim’s mom says the ‘Chuckster killer’ wants revenge”

Houston Chronicle,
5 November 2005: “Somebody is helping him”

Houston Chronicle,
7 November 2005: “Escaped killer is captured”

Houston Chronicle,
9 November 2005: “Thompson had no money when arrested”

Current status:
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/dr_info/thompson-charles.html

CNN, Nancy Grace show (broadcast 7 November 2005)

Details on the murders:
http://www.murdervictims.com/Voices/CainHayslip.htm

Houston Chronicle,
15 December 2005: “Thompson says jailbreak was easy”

Prisontalk Online Community Forum: “Charles Thompson Resentenced to death (my side of the story as well)” archived September 2012

Houston Chronicle,
29 October 2005: “Jury sends Tomball man back to death row”

Houston Chronicle,
23 November 2005: “Fired deputy faults jail policies”

Houston Chronicle,
22 November 2005: “Deputy fired, 7 others disciplined over jailbreak”

Houston Chronicle,
9 November 2005: “Judge limits visits, tightens security around killer”

Houston Chronicle,
9 November 2005: “Jailhouse ramble heads should roll after killer’s escape revealed intolerable negligence”

Houston Chronicle,
8 November 2005: “Captured killer back home”

Houston Chronicle,
24 November 2005: “Escape of suspect in 3 killings sparks outrage”

Houston Chronicle,
15 November 2005: “Escaped suspect captured”

The Lansing Correctional Facility, originally known as the Kansas State Penitentiary (KSP), has housed many well known and infamous prisoners since it opened its doors in July 1868. The Barker-Karpis Gang that terrorized Americans in the early 1930s was formed when Al Karpis (aka Alvin Francis Karpowicz) met Fred Barker when they were both serving time within its walls. Truman Capote’s novel
In Cold Blood
gave publicity to the case of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who were held at the prison following their murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in November 1959. Serial killers Francis Donald Nemechek and Richard Grissom, Jnr have both been incarcerated at the KSP.

It is also the home for a different sort of prison industry – the Safe Harbor Dog Program, which helps bring new life to dogs who would otherwise be destroyed. Safe Harbor began in 2004, when a small group of unwanted dogs was taken into Lansing. Since that time, around a hundred inmates have been trained as dog handlers. They start by socializing the animals, and then, once they are better equipped to deal with others, they house-train the animals and work on obedience training. Safe Harbor has operated for nearly a decade – but nowhere on their website now will you find reference to the woman who set it up and was the primary force behind its growth.

That’s because on 12 February 2006, Safe Harbor’s founder, Toby Young, assisted murderer John Manard to escape from Lansing. She went on the run with him, and, after a high-speed car chase, was captured alongside him. Toby Young is not the sort of role model Safe Harbor wants to adopt.

The problem was that John Manard said what Toby Young wanted to hear. As “Jennifer”, a former Lansing correctional officer, posted at the time of the escape (before Young’s complicity was confirmed):

“IF” (sic) she is guilty (innocent until proven guilty), yes, it wouldn’t surprise me. In the time I worked at LCF, I saw many staff ‘walked out’ for getting caught up in an inmate.

All it takes is one mistake, and a clever inmate will use it against you. If you give an inmate something they shouldn’t have, no matter how innocent, they have something to use against you, and it is all downhill. They have blackmail material, and life as you know it is over. That is just how things are.”

Prison volunteers, like correctional officers, receive training that is supposed to help them to deal with this sort of situation. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the training is going to stick, particularly if an inmate does their best to make them feel special. Toby Young fell for Manard, hook, line and sinker.

John Manard was found guilty of what Judge Peter Ruddick described as a “vicious, unprovoked and totally random” felony murder and aggravated robbery. Aged just seventeen, Manard and his friend Michael Yardley shot Donald England on 13 June 1996, when they tried to carjack his vehicle as he was waiting for his ex-wife to have a haircut. Since the state couldn’t prove decisively which one of them was responsible, they were both held accountable under the “felony murder” system (any participant in a felony is held criminally liable for any deaths that occur during or in furtherance of that felony). On 23 April the following year, Manard was sentenced to life imprisonment, to be followed by a ten-year term, and told that he would not be eligible for parole until 2019 at the earliest. (Manard later claimed that he didn’t think he would get a chance at parole until 2028.)

At his trial Manard claimed through his attorney that he had simply signed up for a robbery and hadn’t intended anyone to get hurt, describing himself as “a seventeen-year-old kid who was simply scared to death”. After sentencing, he apologised to England’s widow and sons for what he had done. Perhaps understandably, he also felt aggrieved that even though he hadn’t fired the fatal shot (and the prosecutor in the case believed this was probably the case), he was still given the same punishment as the man who had.

Sent to Lansing initially as a maximum-security prisoner, Manard kept his head down, and earned his way into the medium-security section. That was where he first came in contact with “the dog lady” as Toby Young was described by the prisoners. The former business professional who worked for the Sprint Corporation until 2001, and was married to her high-school sweetheart had recently survived a brush with thyroid cancer.

Working at a veterinary clinic, Young realized how many stray dogs there were around Kansas City, and, on the suggestion of a colleague, looked into the possibility of setting up a program at the local prison for prisoners to help retrain the dogs so they could be given to new owners. A TV series had featured these so-called “cell dogs” around the country earlier in 2004, and after discussions with the warden at Lansing, the first canines were brought into the prison on 13 August that year.

Over the next couple of years, Young became a regular visitor to the prison, bringing supplies for the dogs, exchanging the animals, and working with the prisoners. She received all the training that the state deemed necessary for being among the inmates of the prison, so was granted pretty much clear access to whatever she wanted when she needed it. The Lansing authorities were delighted with the positive publicity that the program was bringing the prison, and Young became a trusted part of the prison’s extended workforce.