Lansing Break

Two prisoners escaped from the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City last week. Two others broke away from the Oklahoma Penitentiary at McAlester, were soon caught. And the jailbreak of the year occurred at Lansing, Kans.

On Memorial Day morning, Warden Kirk Prather stepped out into the prison yard of the Kansas State Penitentiary. In one more day Warden Prather, a bald, big-nosed man, was to complete his two-year tour of duty. He had just come back from Washington where, as a deserving Democrat, he felt he had made a good impression. There was a chance that he might become head of the Federal prison at nearby Leavenworth ("The Bankers' Institute"). He turned his attention to the ball game in progress between two American Legion teams from Topeka and Leavenworth. Guards and most prisoners were watching the game attentively, for the score was 2 to 2 in the fifth inning. Suddenly Warden Prather felt a wire noose slip around his neck, a pistol barrel jab into his back.

The convict who pinioned Warden Prather was Wilbur Underhill, "The Tri-State Terror" who had pleaded guilty to killing a man in Kansas (which has no death penalty) to avoid being extradited to Oklahoma, where he had killed two others. Three of his four years in the Kansas penitentiary had been spent in solitary confinement. He and Harvey Bailey--leader of the $2,000,000 Lincoln (Neb.) Bank & Trust Co. holdup in 1930, who was finally caught while golfing in Kansas City--directed what happened next. They threatened to kill the warden, "pile up the guards in heaps," unless they and nine companions were allowed freedom. Warden Prather, choking in his noose, led the party of eleven desperadoes, all armed, to Post No. 3 in the rough stone wall.

Clambering down the outside wall with a hemp ladder the prisoners had made, the party seized the prison farm superintendent's car. A guard shot Harvey Bailey in the leg, but no further resistance was offered the convicts. The convicts retaliated by shooting a guard in the arm.

As soon as another car could be seized, Bailey, Underhill, the warden, two captured guards and four convicts split away from the rest, a group of five who went their way in the second car. Both groups headed south for the Oklahoma badlands.

The convicts with the warden changed cars frequently as they fled. One of the cars they commandeered was occupied by a tipsy driver. He did not seem to mind their taking his car and bottle, but swore that "no damned Irishman can take my hat away from me." A convict named Brady returned the hat. After that there was no further threat to kill the prison officials. "The liquor warmed them up," explained Warden Prather, who not long ago had allowed Underhill to take up a collection for an operation on his sick mother. Near Welch. Okla., the warden and guards were released about midnight. They were given a dollar to "get some eats and smokes."

The other group fell on a car belonging to one M. J. Wood of Kansas City (Kans.), who was taking his wife, daughter and the daughter's girl friend to decorate his grandfather's grave. The convicts pushed Mr. Wood out, put on the women's coats, drove to a wooded spot near Pleasanton, Kans. They behaved good-naturedly when Louise Wood, 17, declared: "You can shoot me if you want to, but I'll not sit on your lap." That evening the women and the convicts appeared at a farmer's house. The men cut the telephone wires, demanded food, clothing, firearms, got them. They left the women there, unharmed.

From then on the trails of both parties converged and became bloody. A dead nightwatchman surrounded by cartridge shells bore evidence that the second band had passed through Chetopa, Kans. after leaving Pleasanton. When the Wood car was swapped for another next day at Siloam Springs, Ark., a gunfight with peace officers took place. One convict group marched into the Bank of Chelsea (Okla.), ran out with $2,500 in cash under a barrage from officers and townsfolk. One of the convicts, Lewis Bechtel, was captured while eating at a farm house near Dripping Springs, Okla. Another, Frank Sawyer, was captured two days later at Chickasha after a gun fight during which a man he had kidnapped and was using as a shield was seriously wounded. It was guessed that the rest had holed in among the ravines and abandoned lead and zinc mines of the Ozark Plateau, which once harbored such oldtime bandits as Jesse James and the Dalton Brothers.

Back at Lansing, Governor Landon announced six-month "good time" allowances for 1,850 convicts who did not take advantage of the break. The State Prison Board exonerated Warden Prather and his staff of all blame. "The six men who planned the break were lifers, killers and desperadoes," the board found, ". . . desperately willing to gamble for freedom."

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