Trouble in Little Siberia

Downtown in the convivial warmth of Canon City's Elks Club, barrel-shaped Warden Roy Best bull-roared with the boys and waited for his dinner. It was a nasty night outside. Snow swirled heavily about the high, menacing walls of Roy's place of business, the Colorado State Penitentiary, on the edge of town. On the grey stone towers, guards paced uneasily and strained to see through the swirling blizzard.

The time was 4:50 p.m. The 1,200 prisoners had finished supper. In Cell Block No. 6, known as Little Siberia, where Warden Best keeps the toughest 232 of his charges, a guard stepped out on a routine cell check. Suddenly, he was cracked over the head with an iron bar.

That was the signal. Twelve convicts, many of them lifers, began the escape that had been plotted for weeks. They slugged four other guards, threw a switch that opened the electrically locked cell doors.

Armed with shotguns made from steel pipe, taking four guards with them as shields, they stumbled through six inches of snow in the prison yard to the north gate. Then the crop-headed convicts, shivering in their grey prison denims, battered off the gate lock and made a getaway.

The hunt was on. The chill moan of the prison sirens yanked Roy Best out of his cosy retreat. Back in his office, he telephoned for help, rounded up city and state police, a National Guard company, and volunteers--300 men in all.

The posse fanned out over the frozen countryside. The hunted convicts sought shelter. Werner Schwartzmiller, 35, who vas doing 40 years for a murder attempt, chose Laurence Oliver's farmhouse. There he held the Olivers at bay until plucky Mrs. Oliver, firmly clasping a claw hammer beneath a capacious apron, worked her way close enough to bash him on the head.

Murderer Orville Turley, 54, a paretic, and Kidnaper Richard Heilman, 24, were trapped in a trailer. "Come on in and get us," snarled Turley. A blast of shots killed him, wounded Heilman. Killer A. B. Tolley, 21, was shot and captured after a wild exchange of gunfire.

In ones and twos, wounded or half-frozen, eight more were tracked down. They left a lot of their blood in the snow. A prison guard and a rancher were also shot during the long night, but 24 hours later only one man was still on the loose. He was 29-year-old Jimmy Sherbondy, who had once killed a policeman.

Two days later, baby-faced Sherbondy holed up in George Bauer's farmhouse. Mrs. Bauer pleaded with him. Her seven-year-old son had appendicitis. Would he let a neighbor drive them to a hospital? He would. "I knew they would tell the cops," Sherbondy said, "but I couldn't let the little kid die." When the guards came for him, he just about caved in. His legs were frozen to the knees.

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