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PAGE TWO
GEORGIA’S PRISON
HOUDINI
Not Even the Death Cell Could Hold
Leland Harvey, Georgia’* Mbit
Escaped Priioner, Who Won an
Hour of Freedom Recently When
He Squeezed His Body Through a
Hole Which Measured 9x6 Inches;
Serving 110 Years Sentence.
(By Fred Denton Moon, in .Atlanta
Journul)
Prison officials have known for a
long time that stone walls and steel
bars mean little more than cardboard
and broomstraws to Leland Harvey,
notorious young Georgia “escape
artist,” and now they ure wondering
if Harvey hasn’t added the art of a
circus contortionist to his stock of
Iloudini-like tricks.
And no wonder the officials are
wondering. For in making his ninth
and most daring jail break, at the
State Prison Farm at Milledgcville,
April 25, Harvey escaped from the
death cell itself—by squeezing his
body through a hole which measured
barely 9x6 inches!
“If 1 hadn’t seen Harvey inside
the death cell at midnight and out of
it a few hours later, 1 would refuse
to believe that he, a full-grown man,
passed through that narrow crack,”
declared Deputy Sheriff S. G. Davies,
of Fulton County. “Why, honest,
that hole was so small I couldn’t
even get my head through it!”
Nr. Davies and K. W. Coggins,
another Fulton County deputy, were
asleep in the death house when Har
vey wormed his way through the tiny
opening and made his bold but brief
bid for freedom. The two Fulton
officers also accompanied prison au
thorities to Macon to return Harvey
to Milledgeville, after the fugitive
had been captured by police at the
end of a wild ride of thirty miles in
an automobile stolen from Mr.
Davies.
Harvey, who is under sentences
for highway robbery and automobile
larcency, which total 110 years, has
constantly boasted that he can escape
from any jail. In view of his latest
exploit, the prison attaches are in
clined to take him at his word. The
Milledgeville death house is conced
ed to be the strongest lock-up in the
state, and Harvey was placed in it
as a last resort in February, 1931,
after he had chalked up the impres
sive total of eight successive escapes.
The death house, a small rectan
gular structure of concrete and
stone, consists of two rooms; the
lethal chamber at the rear, where
the electric chair is located, and a
larger chamber at the front which
contains two cells and a narrow U
shaped run-around. The building has
but one out-side opening, the en
trance, and this is guarded by a solid
steel door. The rear and end walls
of the two cells are of solid concrete,
while the front wall is formed by a
concrete parapet as high as a man’s
breast, above which one-inch steel
bars, set four inches apart, extend to
the ceiling. Each of the re-enforced
cage doors fastens with three mas
sive locks.
Following his recapture in Macon
an hour after his spectacular get
away, Harvey admitted that he had
been planning his escape for months.
With a “horse tail” saw which he
claims to have purchased from an
unnamed smugglar for $35, he spent
countless hours cutting one of the
bars in front of his cage. The marks
made by the saw he plugged with
double sheets of ink-stained blotting
paper, which exactly matched the
color of the painted steel. Then he
sat down to wait until a condemned
man was brought to the death house.
Meanwhile, he practically lived with
out food in order that he might lose
as much weight as possible.
“The law requires that a guard
sleep in the death house with con
demned men, and I was counting on
that guard being a heavy sleeper,”
Harvey grinned. “I knew that if the
guard slept soundly, 1 would have a
chance to steal his key to the death
house door. Luck sure played into
my hands, didn’t it?”
Didn’t it! When Deputies Davies
and Goggins were ordered to set out
from Atlanta at midnight, Sunday,
April 23, to deliver Rader Davis,
negro slayer of Mrs. Sam Henderson,
to the executioneer at Milledgeville
both of them had already been with
out sleep for twenty-four hours. As
members of the night squad they
work from dusk till dawn and sleep
during the day, but extra duty had
kept them on the job throughout
Sunday. They reported for work at
the usual time Sunday night, how
over, and were told that they had
been assigned to escort Davis to the
death house. By the time they
reached the prison farm and con
cluded all the formalities attendant
to locking their prisoner in the cell
adjoining the cage in which Harvey
was confined, it was long past their
bedtime Monday morning. But still
| they remained on the job, with no
chance of getting to bed until late
Monday night.
“When we finally turned in, at
11 :16 o’clock Monday night, we had
! been without sleep for more than
| seventy-two hours,” Mr. Davies ex
plained. “I wa# so completely ex
hausted that I barely remember
stretching out on my cot, and Gog
gins was already snoring when I
dropped off to sleep. Neither of us
knew a thing that happened until one
of the outside guards aroused us a
bout 3 o’clock to tell us that Harvey
was gone.”
Harvey, when returned to the pri
son farm after his brief hour of free
dom, readily told the story of his
escape.
“I talked to Davies and Goggins
while they v/< re undressing Monday
night, and when they told me how
tired they were, 1 knew the time was
ripe for me to make a break,” he ex
plained. "While they were making
up their cots in the run-around in
front of the deatL jouse door, I re
moved the shaving mirror in the
toilet and fastened it to the bars on
the front of my cage. By standing
off in the corner of my cell, I could
look in the mirror and watch the two
officers, who were behind the wall of
the cell block.
“I saw Davies when he fastened
the door of the death house and
dropped the key into the upper pock
et of his vest. The cots were on
either side of the door, and each of
the men had brought in a chair on
which to hang his clothes. They stor
ed their guns out of sight under their
cots. Two minutes after they crawl
ed under the covers they were both
snoring like logs.
“It was almost midnight when
they turned in, and I decided that I’d
give them about two hours in which
to get sound asleep. I didn’t have a
watch, but when I heard the roosters
crowing outside, I guessed that it
must be about 2 o’clock in the morn
ing. Rader was moving around in
the cell next to mine, and I called
him over to the wall and whispered
my plans. He told me to go ahead,
that he wouldn’t squeal on me.
“I stripped off all my clothes and
took a piece of laundry soap, which
I had obtained for the purpose, and
lathered my body all over. Then I
stepped to the front of the cage and
pulled out the sawed bar. The hole
looked lots smaller than I w r as ex
pecting, but I decided that I’d try to
get through it. I worked my head
out and then my shoulders. Then I
got stuck. I was stuck so fast that
I thought for a moment I’d have to
call for help, but I finally pulled my
self back. I left most of the hide
of my neck, shoulders and chest
hanging on the sharp edges of the
broken bar.
“ ‘You can’t make it,’ Rader caljed
from the next cell. ‘Wait and I’ll
show you,” I answered. I lathered
myself with soap again and went
back to the hole. This time I got all
my upper body out of the cage. Then
I got stuck again. In all, I g'St stuck
five different times. But at last I
slipped through.
“I tiptoed around the end of the
cell block and took a look at Davies
and Goggins, who were still sleeping
like the dead. Then I fished my
clothes out of the cage and dressed
myself. Rader shook hands with me
and wished me luck, and I dropped
down on the floor and began to crawl
toward the door. When I was about
halfway to Davies’ cot, he groaned in
his sleep and raised himself on his
elbow. I though the game was up,
and I was ready to call out that I
would surrender. But he only turn
ed over and began to snore again.
“I went first to the chair beside
Davies’ cot and took the key to the
door and his automobile keys out
of his vest. In the pocket of his
trousers I found SSB and some silver.
I took the bills, but put the silver
back. Then I fumbled around under
his cot and found a gun. It was a
.32 automatic, and I learned after
ward that it wasn’t loaded. Davies
had put his own revolver under his
pillow, and the automatic was an
extra gun that he had bought for a
friend in Milledgeville. W T hile I was
getting the gun, Davies turned over
again.
“I left Davies and crawled over to
the other cot where Goggins was
sleeping. His gun, a police revolver,
was sticking out from under his
clothes, and I dropped it into my
pocket. I also took his money, which
amounted to SB. His watch was lying
on the chair, and I started to take
that too; then I saw the Masonic
charm on the watch chain and re
membered that Goggins had told me
once that the watch was a present
from his lodge. So I didn’t take it.
I looked at it, though, and found
that the time was 2:15.
“Leaving Goggins, I stood up and
walked to the door of the death
house. I turned the key in the lock,
waved goodbye to Rader, and walk-
THE JACKSON HERALD JEFFERSON, GEORGIA
ed out, locking the door behind me.
A bench was lying on the ground
near the door, and I propp< it a
gainst the wall and climbed over.
When I jumped down on the other
side of the wall, 1-almost land'd on
top of an automobile. It was i tour
ing car, and I knew it belonged to
Davie*. I took it and set out to
ward Macon as fast as it would
travel.”
The noise of the starting motor at
tracted Night Guard G. W. Pittman,
who arrived on the scene just in
time to see Davies’ car disappear in
to the night. Pittman hurried over
to the death house, found the key
sticking in the outside lock, and a
roused the sleeping Fulton deputies.
Fifteen minutes after Harvey drove
away. Superintendent B. H. Duna
way, veteran prison farm head, was
in communication with police at Ma
con. Harvey, headed off by Macon
policemen as he drove into the city,
leaped from the car and darted un
der a house. However, he surren
dered propmptly when the officers
flashed their lights upon him and
called him by name.
“I saw that the jig was up before
I jumped out of the car, and for
that reason I took the two guns out
of my pocket and left them behind,”
Harvey explained. “I’ve always
been afraid of guns, even my own,”
he added. I never used a loaded
weapon in any of my hold-ups.”
Harvey, who is a native of Macon,
Ga., is now 25 years old. He began
his career of crime, as far as the
records show, when he held up an
Atlanta cigar store in May, 1924.
Sent to the prison farm to serve a
sentence of from eight to twenty
years for this robbery, Harvey escap
ed four times within eighteen
months. He was pardoned on Au
gust 7, 1927, but by the following
December he was again in the toils
of the law. Resuming his record of
escapes immediately after he was
sentenced, he escaped from the Hen
ry County chain gang within ten
days. He was recaptured and sent
to Milledgeville in May, 1929. A
month later he participated in a pri
son mutiny, but was overpowered by
guards before he could reach the
world beyond the bars.
Harvey’s sixth escape was made on
February 20, 1930, but he was re
captured two days later. On July 16,
1931, he made another dash for
freedom, this time being accompan
ied by thirteen other convicts, who
used a wooden pistol which Harvey
had carved with a pocketknife to in
timidate the guards. A few months
after his spectacular getaway, Har
vey was taken into custody on a
highway robbery charge in Chicago.
The eighth flight of this young
Houdini of the Georgia prisons oc
curred on January 21, 1932, when
he and Jack Martin, another life
termer, sawed the bars of their cell
at the Milledgeville farm. Harvey
was caught in Detroit, and upon be
ing brought back to the prison farm
was placed in the death cell, from
which he made his most recent es
cape.
MOTHERS DAY
Mothers day has come again,
A mile-stone of the years,
To some it brings its happiness,
To others it brings its tears. •
To me it brings heart aches,
Sorrow and tears combined,
For you have gone to Heaven,
Little mother of mine.
Mothers day has come again,
A mile-stone of the years,
So we will look to Jesus
To dry away these tears.
And also heal the heart aches,
And to Him we will be true,
And some day meet our mother,
In that land beyond the blue.
Mothers day has come again,
A mile-stone of the years,
But with the promise that God gave
us
We should have no fears.
For we can meet our mother
In that land of love and light,
So in her honor on this day
We will wear a rose-bud white.
D. J. M.
Renew Your Health
By Purification
Any physician will tell you that
“Perfect Purification of the System
is Nature’s Foundation of Perfect
Health.’’ Why not rid yourself of
chronic ailments that are under
mining your vitality f Purify your
entire system by taking a thorough
course of Calotabs, —once or twice
a week for several weeks—and see
how Nature rewards you with
health.
Calotabs purify the blood by acti
vating the liver, kidneys, stomach
and bowels. In 10 ets. and S5 cts.
packages. All dealers. (Adv.)
FOR SALE—One fine cow, soon
fresh in. See Albert Plummer, Jef
ferson, Ga.
TAKE YOUR CHOICE AT
TODAY’S PRICES
jjj|- k |
IT* :i ♦ ' ?* 11
■ id | la "
||ll<M? : STANDARD JKODEL RJSI'VIN ATDR
KELVINATOR-
. GENERAL ELECTRIC §j§L_J jH
Present Prices Can’t Last! . | TJTXm -1
Buy your electric refrigerator at today’s prices—lower :;:.tWi*v*ViV*VitiiViV
than ever before. They represent the greatest values Gen- See "* Hat-top
eral EJectric or Kelvinator ever offered. Every indication i GKNKRALJELECTRICS
points to higher prices soon. We cannot guarantee the :j: r/QQ . r ,o Plug Freight and ?
present prices to last through our sale now in progress. r-'-' installation.
So don’t wait! Take your choice of the two refriger- ■ • Jit
ators which have, for years, stood for the finest in electric tX£. .
refrigeration. Models to suit your needs; terms to suit 7= xxvxpw:
your budget. • . 9
$lO Down~-30 Months to Pay! 11§1 |8
Now during our sale, only $lO down installs the model of your XvSxxxx V
choice—General Electric or Kelvinator. You can pay the balance in
30 months. Buy now and avoid possible higher prices later. Don’t xxxxix-x
--wait! >•* I ;;
OE O BkG IA I KELVINATOR I
x R-MODELS
POWER COMPANY Prices a, low as
<(O7 Plus Freight and
: r' 7/ Installation.
Claud Y. Daniel, Local Manager ‘-. l J
A CITIZEN WHEREVER WE SERVE
r*? ■ ?
• • •
Want a cook,
Want a clerk,
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Advertise and succeed,
Advertise consistently,
Advertise judiciously,
Advertise or bust,
Advertise weekly,
Advertise now,
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JEFFERSON, GA., MAY i8 t jgjj