The ride from San Quentin (in Marin County, near San Francisco) to the California Institution for Men at Chino (in San Bernardino County, approximately forty miles from Los Angeles) was a long one and consumed nearly twelve hours; yet, for me, every mile and every minute of that ride was fascinating. The last two years of my life had been spent in a walled and womanless place called prison, and now I was rediscovering the face of the world beyond—the face of a world at war. That face excited me, stirred me deeply. I was, it possible, on beholding it, more eager than ever to try my hand at stalking a Fuhrer.
At dusk we arrived at our destination, a unique and wall-less institution today deservedly famous. We were told that the fence around the grounds was not there to keep the inmate population in, but to keep the public out. And the atmosphere, as we found the moment we stepped from the bus, was friendly; the stresses and tensions often found in and inevitably a by-product of the high-custody prison were absent. Truly, here was a new kind of institution.
Just as Warden Clinton T. Duffy had been blazing a penal trail at San Quentin, so too had Superintendent Kenyon J. Scudder at Chino.
At Chino the man serving time encounters trained personnel genuinely interested in helping him be successful when released. He isn’t surrounded by high walls, bristling gun towers. Custodial regimentation doesn’t smother his individuality. Everything isn’t all figured out for him down to the last tiny detail. It isn’t the coercive presence of a gun bull, but his own sense of responsibility that restrains him from running off—to brief and dearly bought freedom. So he learns to face up to other problems and responsibilities confronting him And valuable trade training is available. Moreover, he’s allowed to visit with his family and friends under ideal conditions.
To the prisoner, and hence to society, all of this means much. In point of blunt fact it often means the difference between success (the harmonious and productive readjustment of the ex-inmate to and in his community) or failure (the return of the ex-inmate to crime). . . .
I did exceptionally well at Chino. Assigned to the Farm Construction Crew, I became an inspired digger of fence post holes and repairer of barbed wire fences. I loaded and unloaded trucks with unfeigned enthusiasm. Work, manual labor, was what I wanted; the tougher the better. My object was to toughen the physical machine, to ready it for maximum efficiency under the most rugged conditions. And not only did I work with a happy vengeance, but in my spare time I played with an equal vengeance. I swam in the Chino pool, lifted weights, boxed.
To keep as mentally sharp as possible, a couple of other prisoners and I formed the Chino debating team. For opponents, Mr. Scudder lined up teams from nearby universities and colleges. We more than held our own against them.
I volunteered for duty as an airplane spotter. A previously unused guard tower had been put to use as a post for reporting to the Interceptor Command in Los Angeles the presence and description of all airplanes sighted in the area. On a purely voluntary basis, pairs of men worked together in four-hour shifts (around the clock). I worked two and sometimes three nights a week on the twelve midnight to four in the morning shift. The tower we used was situated in a pasture, away from the other buildings.
Judy visited me almost every Sunday. And my parents found it possible to make the trip from Los Angeles once or twice a month. (I was granted special permission to visit with my mother at the car.) These three people, who meant so much to me, were happier than I had seen them in a long, long time. I was near them again and their hopes were high.
And all the while I was secretly making arrangements, contacts with the outside world. A friend of mine made me a key that would open the lock on Chino’s unguarded back gate. While on duty spotting airplanes, I had two visitors, Jay and Gabriella. On three occasions we held whispered midnight conferences. To the man on duty with me, I passed these visits off as clandestine meetings with a girl triend. My policy was never to let my left hand know what my right hand was doing.
Dick, a handsome smoothie in his thirties, fitted neatly into my plans. By happy coincidence, he was scheduled for parole in the near future and without plans, funds or friends in that part of the state. I had a talk with him. I wanted to help him and, in return, I wanted him to do me a few small favors. The first one was to pair off with me spotting airplanes. He readily agreed and we had no difficulty arranging to go to the tower together a couple of nights a week on the midnight to four in the morning shift. That solved my final problem.
I received word from the outside. All was ready.
The day was Sunday. Judy visited. I dared not tell her what the immediate future held. The time passed too quickly, and as I held her and kissed her goodbye I knew, angrily, that if I failed I would forfeit all right to her. I vowed I wouldn’t fail. “Judy Baby,” I told her fiercely, “I love you!” I added, “No matter what happens, remember that—and try to believe in me.”
Judy’s violet eyes searched a pair of glittering brown ones. “But what can happen, Daddy?” she asked.
I grinned. “Nothing, Judy. Nothing at all.”
“ ’Bye,” she said softly.
“ ’Bye,” I repeated, and my grin softened to a smile. My Judy was a fine, beautiful woman. God, how I loved her! And I was such a romantic fool, such a wild dreamer, I wanted to slay a dragon to prove it.
A group ot us were lying around on the grass in front of the entrance to the mess hall waiting for it to open. Talk got around to Chino and what a fine place it truly was. One of the guys said, “Anybody who’d run off from this place would have to be crazy.”
I agreed, repeating the words, “Anybody who’d run off from this place would have to be crazy.” And eight hours later I had run off.
The details of flight and a tight time schedule had been worked out with patient care. I don’t mean to imply that the escape itself presented any problem, since virtually all I had to do was walk off unchallenged. But unplanned, haphazard or spur-of-the-moment escapes have a way of getting one promptly back into jail. Actually, the escapee’s real problem doesn’t begin until the escape itself is an accomplished fact.
No one had been given any reason to suspect I intended to abscond. The remaining few hours were passed in a routine way. I spent the early part of the evening chatting with friends in the dormitory, ribbing and talking about everything and nothing. My boss, who was also the football coach, paid the dorm a visit and signed me (and others) for the coming football season. Then I wrote letters to Judy and my mother, telling them both how much I looked forward to seeing them next Sunday. After that, with nothing left to do but wait, I read. At eleven p.m. I stretched out on my cot, intending to relax for a few minutes before I checked out for airplane spotting duty. I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, the supervisor in charge of the dorm was shaking me gently.
“Hey, wake up!”
I sat up with a jerk, looked at my watch. Five minutes past midnight! I’d overslept twenty minutes. I jumped up and hurriedly put on a light jacket. “Must’ve dozed off,” I said.
The supervisor nodded. “When you failed to check out at a quarter to I figured that was what had happened. Thought I’d better check.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Dick, whose quarters were in another building, was waiting for me at the desk. His look was quizzical.
I grinned and said, “Fell asleep.”
We hurried to the administration building, got the sandwiches and the thermos of coffee prepared for each pair of spotters, and were then driven to the tower by a supervisor who patrolled the grounds. As soon as this supervisor drove off with the two men we relieved, I quickly set the scene.
Entrance into the tower was made by climbing up steel ladder rungs set in the concrete and then by passing through a trap door in the floor. I took off one shoe and made a long heel mark next to these rungs just below the trap door. I then ripped off the heel of this shoe and dropped it. Next, I climbed back down to the ground, cut myself with a knife, let blood drip around the base
of the tower. After bandaging the cut, I took out a cheap pocket watch I was known to carry habitually and banged it against the cement base of the tower. Just then an airliner flew overhead and I scrambled back up into the tower and reported it, making sure the local operator in the institution’s control room recognized my voice. I asked for and was given a time check. Then I hung up. Dick was looking out into a dark night.
“Well, Dick, I’m all ready and I’m late. I’ve got to get moving on the double. But first, are you sure you have everything straight?”
He nodded. “Everything,” he assured me.
“All right, then I’m on my way into the wild blue yonder. Take it easy. I’ll be seeing you in a couple of weeks.”
“Check,” Dick said. “And good luck.” We shook hands.
I disappeared through the trap door, swiftly descended to the ground and stepped out to the center of the road leading to the institution’s back gate. I hadn’t gone fifty feet before I was beset by some hellish variety of night bird. This feathered monstrosity squawked at the top of its lungs at the sight of me and hurtled in to the attack. I responded by cursing it roundly and throwing an assortment of rocks and clods. At this affront, its outrage seemingly knew no bounds and I found myself confronted by and the target of an insane, squawking, diving, darting ball of winged fury. This being my first—and I fervently prayed my last—encounter with a psychotic night bird, I didn’t know what to do except to get the hell out of there just as fast as I could. So that is what I did, remaining under attack all the while.
I continued on the double to the back gate, passed myself through with the aid of that key a friend had made for me, crossed the road and followed an irrigation ditch across a field toward a row of towering eucalyptus trees. Just as I reached the first tree, my tormentor was joined by a friend; salutations were squawkingly exchanged and both made one last pass at me before flying away, still squawking. I breathed a sigh of relief at their passing from the scene. Believe me, it is not a happy experience to be put to rout by an insane night bird at the outset of a prison escape. In fact, my relations with night birds as a class have been strained ever since.
Reaching the ravine, I dropped into it and uncovered a waterproof box which had been buried there for me in case anything prevented my meeting Jay and Gabtiella, who were to be waiting for me a short distance away. I removed the automatic pistol and the money, and placed the thick sheaf of papers I had brought with me from the prison in the box and reburied it, hurriedly. Then I followed the eucalyptus trees to where a dirt road began. Jay and Gabriella were parked there in an almost new, powerful sedan. Seconds later, we were speeding on our way.
Back at the prison, Dick gave me an hour’s head start before phoning in. “We’ve had an accident out here,” he reported. “Nothing serious, I don’t think. Chessman slipped and fell out of the tower. He banged himself up quite a little, cut his head and acted dazed at first. He’s walking back in to the hospital and should be there in about four or five minutes.”
They waited—five, ten, fifteen minutes. Still Chessman failed to put in an appearance. They checked. They searched. No doubt about it: Chessman had disappeared. Superintendent Kenyon Scudder was notified and gave the order. Law enforcement was notified. Teletypes began to clack. An escape bulletin was issued. Use caution in apprehending, it advised. Subject may be armed and is considered dangerous.
Subject was armed with a dream—and a gun.
We reached our destination, a dwelling place in a city I shall not identify. And then everything began going wrong; the dream became a violent nightmare. Jay went off to transact some business; he didn’t return. He had a wild time of it and ended up doing time in one of the nation’s toughest prisons. Gabriella left for another purpose; she didn’t return—in time. Several big men with drawn guns came to this dwelling place.
I had just dried off after showering. I looked out a second-floor bedroom window and saw them below. I had only time to pull on a pair of pants, slip on a shirt and kick into a pair of shoes before I snatched the automatic pistol and ran out a back way, past them, and dove headlong from the stairway, squeezing the trigger of the gun, hearing its staccato bark. I missed by inches being impaled on a stake fence. A stake gouged the fleshy part of my right hand and I lost the gun. But I won respite. The big men had been too disconcerted by my impromptu firing swan dive to shoot. I picked myself up and ran, ducking out of sight.
The big men came pounding after me. Pursued, shot at, I ran, hid, ran, until I thought my lungs would burst. I gasped, cursed—and ran some more. Just as I was leaping a low fence, two shots rang out; I was knocked sprawling and threw myself under some shrubbery. Two big men ran past me. They kept going. I regained my feet, promptly collapsed, got back up, fell back down. I’d been shot. I still didn’t know where and I didn’t have time to find out. I had to get out or. there—fast. I got up and, by putting most of my weight on my left leg, managed to stay up. I followed a fence, using it for partial support. Next, I did the same with the side of a house. By then I could walk again unsupported. Or at least I could stumble and stagger. So I dodged big men with guns and stumbled and staggered for ten or fifteen blocks, making my way toward the business section of the city. Finally I stood in the shadows of a home behind a gas station.
A big rig, motor running, was parked at the side of the station and its driver was gabbing with the attendant. When a passenger car drove in and stopped at the pumps, both men walked around to the front of the station. That was my cue. I made for the sleeper behind the cab, crawled in and closed the little door after me. A minute or so later I was on my way. I didn’t give a damn where.
I had a nasty flesh wound on the outside of my right leg about eight inches below the belt line. I had also been shot, of all places, in the right, little toe. I dabbed at both wounds with a handkerchief and then felt around in the sleeper and found a leather jacket and a pair of field boots. The jacket was warm, and the boots, though a size or more too large, were better than my own shoes, the right one having been shot nearly off my foot. The shot toe kept bleeding. Three times I had to take off the boot to pour the blood out of it. My foot had swollen so badly I had difficulty getting the boot off the third time.
I grew woozy from loss of blood and either fainted or slept. The next thing I knew someone had jerked the sleeper door open and was tugging at me.
“Hey!”
I looked up. There stood the truck driver, a short, blocky young man with the face of a perplexed pug.
“Hello,” I said, pulling my thoughts together. “Good morning. Or is it morning?”
It was morning. The truck driver told me it was. Then he asked, “When did you get aboard?”
I told him. “By the way, where are we?” I added.
We were just inside the Los Angeles County line. That meant I was virtually back where I started!
The truck driver said, “I was highballing into L.A. but the damned engine conked out on me and there ain’t a garage nowhere along here. I’m in a helluva fix.”
“Then that makes two of us,” I told him. I tried to climb out of the sleeper and couldn’t. “Give me a hand, will you, Mac?”
He helped me out. I had to grab at the cab to stay upright. While I held on, the truck driver looked me over. He saw I was wearing his jacket and boots. He saw my pants were blood-soaked.
“Mac,” I said, “I know you must be wondering what my story is and . . .”
He interrupted. “The cops after you?”
I admitted they were.
Two and two suddenly made four. “Say, you must be the guy they were looking for back . . .”
It was my turn to interrupt him. “That’s right, I must be. And so now you got a chance to make a big hero out of yourself by snatching me. I’m afraid I’m not in very good shape to resist.”
“Shot?”
“Shot.”
“Bad?”
“Not too bad.”
A man in a Chevvy came along and stoppe
d when he saw us. He rolled down a window and asked, “In trouble?”
The truck driver nodded and said, “Yeah, truck broke down on me.”
“I passed the highway patrol up the road a ways. Want me to go back and tell them?”
“Sure, if you will.”
We watched the Chevvy U-turn. Then the truck driver said, “Look, buddy, I’m paid to drive a truck, not capture guys that are on the lam. Can you walk?”
“If I can’t, I sure as hell can crawl.”
“Well, you better get moving then.”
“How about the jacket and boots?”
“You can have ’em.”
“I’d pay you for them if I wasn’t busted.”
The truck driver took out his wallet, removed a five-dollar bill and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re a right guy.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I’m paid to push this rig.”
I stumbled off through an orange orchard, carrying my shot-up shoes. Walking was a punishing proposition. Well away from the main highway, I paused to bury the shoes. Then I stumbled on. The mountains were near but I doubted if I could reach them. Suddenly my thirst became fierce. I came to a small grape vineyard and ate some dusty, hot, half-ripe grapes. I walked some more. Thirst once again became consuming. My right leg was on fire. My thoughts didn’t want to connect. Adolf was a long, long way off; the horse trough ahead wasn’t. I staggered to it and buried my head. I drank the cool water in great gulps. With difficulty I removed my right boot and pants and washed the wounds; they weren’t pretty. They needed more than a washing in a horse trough. The realization sunk in that staying alive had suddenly become a very real and immediate problem. Regardless of the risk of capture, I had to get to Los Angeles without delay. Bleached bones couldn’t dream.
So back I hobbled to the highway and stuck out my thumb. An old farmer driving a flat-bed truck came along and picked me up. He had a dead horse on the back which, he informed me, he was taking to a tallow factory. Spotting the blood on my pants he asked, “Butcher?” I nodded. From that point on we got along famously. He let me off in the industrial section of Los Angeles, on Alameda Street. It was mid-morning. I made it to a nearby eating place, cus-tomerless at that hour, and told the waitress, “A double order of ham and eggs for a hungry man, My Pretty.”
Cell 2455, Death Row Page 27