Sing Sing Break

Convict McGovern Miller, abed in Sing Sing prison hospital, woke one murky morning this week to a nightmare sight. Out of their beds leaped three fellow felons, fully clothed and armed with guns. Quick as murder they shot and killed the guard in the hospital ward, vanished through the door. That was the last Convict Miller saw of them.

Outside the ward, the fugitives jumped a second guard and a trusty, hustled them, into a sub-basement and locked them up. Through a tunnel used for steam pipes and electric cables they fled, unlocking two doors with keys which they had long since prepared. The tunnel opened on the side of a railroad embankment, down which they slid and ran along the tracks. In Water Street they were spotted by two cops. They fired, killing Patrolman James Fagan. Patrolman William Nelson fired back, drilling Convict James Waters through the heart. The other two, Joseph Riordan and Charles McGale, pelted river-wards. On the bank they found a shad fisherman, forced him to row them across the Hudson.

Shrieking prison sirens roused the countryside. A State police plane roared overhead. Coast Guard cutters put-putted up & down river. Bloodhounds sniffed along the western shore. It was still only 9 a.m. when William Mullen, veteran woodsman and member of the Palisades Interstate Park Police, leading a posse along the side of Hook Mountain, heard a noise in the brush and saw a flash of white shirt. "You're surrounded," a posseman hollered. "Put up your hands." All fight gone out of them, Riordan and McGale stumbled out, gave up.

It had been a lethal morning. Dead lay four men: Prison Guard John Hartye, Patrolman Fagan, Convict Waters, and Convict Miller, who had died of excitement in his hospital bed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.