The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks (68 page)

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 that 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.

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”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
22 May 1978: “Alabama officers seek 2 Oklahoma fugitives”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
23 May 1978: “Elderly woman killed in Alabama by fugitives”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
24 May 1978: “Alabama officers find Dennis, Lancaster crafty fugitives”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
25 May 1978: “Hunt for fugitives shifts back to Texoma area”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
26 May 1978: “3 Troopers, convicts die in gunbattle”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
28 May 1978: “Past meeting saved life of Washington, Busby”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
28 May 1978: “Teen credited for saving children”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
28 May 1978: “It cost them their lives”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
31 May 1978: “Trooper-Pilot sees fugitives’ final minutes”

The Durant Daily Democrat,
8 June 1978: “Missing rancher is feared victim of Dennis, Lancaster”

The Meridian (Mississippi) Star,
29 May 1978: “An Odyssey of Frustration”

The Tulsa World,
27 May 1978: “33-Day reign of terror ends in Caddo gunfight”

The Victoria Advocate,
27 May 1978: “Five Killed in Shootout”

OHPTrooper.com
: “OHP’s Darkest Day: Remembering Caddo”

Real Prison Breaks,
Cineflix Productions, 2011

Some of the largest escapes in the first twelve years of the twenty-first century have come as a result of the conflicts that followed the bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iran against the Taliban. On a number of occasions dozens of Taliban members have been freed – or come very close to freeing themselves – from the prisons and US Army camps around the area in which they are being held. During the latter half of 2012, as this book was being compiled, there were three incidents in which large enough numbers escaped that they were deemed worth reporting by the world’s news agencies – but, as more than one pointed out, escapes are so common that they are not deemed newsworthy simply because they happened.

One of the first attempts came from the US Army Camp Bucca in Iraq in March 2005. Between the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the discovery of a huge tunnel shortly before at least 200 detainees made their escape on 24 March 2005, over 40,000 people were arrested by the US military. Over 10,000 were still being held at the three main prisons – Bucca, Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper – at the end of that period. Many should never have been there in the first place: the commander of Bucca, Colonel Austin Schmidt, guessed that around a quarter of the prisoners had been swept up during raids, or had been victims of personal grudges.

Bucca, named after one of the fire marshals who died in the 9/11 attacks, operated between 2003 and 2009. Built near the border with Kuwait, it had a two-mile perimeter fence surrounding twelve compounds where the prisoners lived in canvas tents or air-conditioned plywood buildings, guarded by soldiers bearing automatic rifles, watching from three-storey wooden towers. There were teething problems: in January 2004, one detainee was able to escape through the wire, and the official report blamed inexperience, complacency, poor leadership and lack of communications. Five days after that, seven more escaped during the night, of whom five were recaptured; a fortnight later, several were able to crawl under the fence during a very heavy fog – visibility was down to ten to fifteen metres.

In January 2005, a riot broke out, which led to the deaths of four detainees. Around the same time, work on a tunnel started. It began underneath the wooden floorboards of one of the tents: the prisoners dug down three feet through the sand, put in a false bottom with plans, and then tunnelled down a further twelve feet where the sand was replaced by packed dirt. After the entrance was reinforced with pieces of plywood and sandbags, the tunnelling began in earnest, with over 200 inmates involved at some point.

The work could only be carried out at night, with teams of ten men operating between 1 a.m. and the dawn call to prayer, which preceded the daily headcount. With air provided by homemade bellows, the diggers, who used flattened tent poles wrapped with canvas grips, were only able to move forward three feet a day. Each would stay at the dirtface for five minutes at a time, filling up five-gallon water jugs and passing them back to be redistributed around the camp. Sacks from their bread rations were filled, and then spread across a soccer field.

It was that which alerted the Americans initially. Although it was invisible to the naked eye, satellite imagery showed that the field was changing colour because of the different dirt that was being tramped into it. Additionally, there were complaints of showers being clogged up, and two dozen portable toilets ceasing to function. Some guards even complained that the floor in some of the tents seemed to be rising.

By the end of March the tunnel was complete. It was 357 feet long, and the width of a man for the majority of its length, with around a hundred tons of soil moved in about eight weeks. It was illuminated with homemade torches built from radio diodes, and the walls were as smooth and strong as concrete, after being sculpted with water and milk. The plan was for groups of twenty-five men to go through at a time starting after midnight on 24 March.

Although the Americans were aware that something was wrong, they couldn’t work out what. Informants within the camp weren’t able to tell them anything other than yet another tunnel was being built – three others had been detected at very early stages during the first part of the year. However, when the tunnel was finished, one of the informants said that it began in Compound 5; his reason for betraying his friends was apparently that he feared there would be a bloodbath if the Americans caught the Iraqis escaping.

The Americans moved swiftly. The detainees were transferred into a holding area, and a bulldozer sent across the centre of the compound. That caused part of the tunnel to collapse, but they were unable to find the exit, despite bulldozing parallel with the compound fence. It was only by luck that it was found, considerably further away than the Americans had believed possible.

Oddly, it wasn’t completely filled in: on 16 April, eleven detainees were able to access part of the tunnel and use it to escape. All of them were recaptured. As a result of the tunnel’s discovery, and another riot that took place at the start of April, Camp Bucca was reorganized: the tents were replaced by buildings with proper concrete foundations. Although detainees tried to dig a further tunnel, unsuccessfully, there were few other reported escapes during Bucca’s period of operation.

The first breakout which really attracted the attention of the world’s press came when suicide bombers blew up trucks outside the main gates of Kandahar’s Sarposa prison on the night of Friday 13 June 2008. This had followed unrest at the prison, with hundreds of the 1,100 prisoners going on hunger strike the previous month – forty-seven of them stitched their mouths together in protest – complaining about being held for over two years without trial. There were also allegations of torture.

The prison itself was meant to be a showcase for Western methods in Afghanistan: Canadian prison officials had been sent over to train the guards and teach them about human rights. New uniforms were issued to the guards, and the towers of the sixty-year-old building were freshly painted.

This made it even more of a tempting target for the Taliban, who had been increasing their operations in the area around Kandahar, traditionally regarded as the home of the rulers of Afghanistan. At 9.20 p.m. a water tanker filled with explosives was driven to the front gates and detonated, destroying part of the mud walls of the prison. In the confusion following the explosion, a group of around thirty insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles rode in on motorcycles and began their attack, massacring fifteen guards, and heading for the political section of the prison, where the Taliban suspects were held. Another suicide bomber tried to destroy the rear gates, but the explosion didn’t have the desired effect.

Initial estimates suggested that 1,200 inmates were freed over the next half hour, including around 450 hardline militants – non-political prisoners took advantage of the situation and ran for the pomegranate groves surrounding the prison. Coalition troops were based on the far side of the city: by the time they got there, the inmates had dispersed, with many of the Taliban boarding minibuses that were waiting for them outside the prison walls. Some early reports tried to claim that the guards had prevented 200 prisoners from leaving, but it soon became clear that no one had remained incarcerated, making it one of the largest ever prison breaks in history, dwarfing the 798 who escaped from Fort San Cristobal in 1938 (see
chapter 7
).