The Threepersons Hunt

Scout planes made ground-search patterns and at Florence the operation was coordinated in the warden’s office by the warden, the senior Undersheriff, and Captain Fred Custis of the Arizona Highway Patrol.

Late in the twilight a search plane reported a light-colored car apparently abandoned in a desert draw about a mile off U.S. 80-89 up toward Mineral Mountain. The site was some sixteen miles northeast of the prison and Captain Custis immediately dispatched two Jeeps and a Dodge Power Wagon filled with hounds.

Some time was wasted debating the feasibility of throwing up a cordon of men around the area—the fugitives were on foot now and had only some two hours’ jump on the pursuit; they had to be somewhere in the hills within a ten-mile radius. But the logistics were prohibitive and so was the cost; it was decided to entrust the hunt to the dogs. Still the officers were edgy because if the car belonged to confederates of the convicts it was possible the convicts were now armed. A deputy radioed Florence the license number of the car and the information was put through to DMV Phoenix but it would be a while before they would ascertain the identity of the car’s owner.

One of the deputies affixed a red battery-lamp to the collar of the leading hound and the dogs were turned loose to follow the spoor, which was given by items of clothing from the escapees’ prison cells. The dogs ran baying into the hills and the officers in their Jeeps chased the bobbing red lamp, five men to a Jeep, armed with pump rifles.

The escape car had been abandoned here because the country began to buckle and heave almost immediately beyond it; this was as far as a car could go. The Jeeps ran with full headlight beams but it was hard going; the deputies almost pitched out on some of the hills and several times the dogs got too far ahead and the trainers had to whistle them in. Frequently the headlight beams swept wildly across the sky like air-raid searchlights. Probably the fugitives could see them coming but it couldn’t be helped: a Jeep with a broken axle was useless.

At nine-fifteen the baying changed in volume and tone and the trainers knew the dogs had closed.

The Jeeps stopped on a hillside and one man remained on guard, moving the Jeeps periodically to play the headlights against the opposite slope where the dogs circled a high clutter of boulders.

The police fa

When the police approached within flashlight range they found the convicts in a tight knot around a middle-aged couple and the blade of a pocketknife was pressed against the woman’s throat.

The man and woman were being held by four convicts—a fact which only became important later. The immediate problem for the police was how to handle the situation and it looked like a stalemate. The convicts had two vulnerable and i

One of the deputies went back across to the Jeeps to radio Florence for instructions. On receipt of them he returned to the flashlit tableau and stalled for time with a series of arguments which were sensible but did not reach receptive ears.

The police might not try to stop the convicts as long as they kept their hostages, the deputy said, but this would not prevent the police from shadowing the convicts everywhere they went and if the convicts tried to harm the hostages to discourage their followers, the police would kill them.

At this point a rifle spoke. One of the deputies had slipped up the hill to one side and taken careful aim on the most exposed of the four convicts, a Mexican-American named Ruiz. The orders were to wound, not to kill. In this case either the shooting was imprecise or the deputy exceeded his orders; the convict Ruiz received the bullet through the bridge of his nose and dropped dead.

The other three convicts huddled close behind their frail human screen. The pocketknife drew a drop of blood from the woman’s throat but the convicts were not yet ready to destroy their only means of protection. They began to scream demands at the deputies and step by step the deputies gave ground, retreating across the canyon toward the Jeeps with the convicts in strange pursuit. From the darkness another rifle shot exploded but this one missed and after that the convicts began to move the hostages back and forth around them so that there was too much risk of hitting them.

Guided by the Jeep headlights the warden, the Under-sheriff, Captain Custis and their retinue of pilot fish arrived in a Land Cruiser and the Dodge Power Wagon. There was a whispered conference. Over on the dark hillsides several deputies were practicing psychological warfare by loudly working their bolts to throw cartridges into the chambers of their rifles.

The warden knew his convicts. He could see they were uncertain. He felt that time and resistance would abrade them into surrender.

The warden walked out into the blaze of headlights and offered to exchange himself for the civilian hostages. The offer was refused.

In sibilant Spanish the warden told the prisoners that they were cowards, that they had no macho, no cojones, that they would cook in hell like frying bacon for all eternity because of the unforgivable mortal sin they were committing against i

In the meantime the dead Ruiz was carried over to the Power Wagon and the dogs were set to sniffing out the trail of the fifth escapee—the missing one—but they scented no spoor.

The warden was an effective talker, his Spanish was first-rate. He spoke of mercy and leniency, he tried to impress upon them that if they voluntarily released the hostages he would see to it that federal kidnapping charges were not pressed against them and that they would be liable for trial only on a charge of jailbreak; since they were all lifers the conviction would add nothing to their sentences.

Unfortunately this information had an effect opposite to that which the warden desired. It reminded the convicts of how little they had to lose. They seemed to be arguing and the warden suspended his sermon.

The three prisoners decided it was not fair to kill the i

The three convicts ran in three directions toward holes in the surrounding cordon and although the rifles began to chatter none of the convicts was hit in the first volley; the deputies had to avoid shooting the hostages and their own companions across the circle and therefore they had to aim low, and shooting at the feet of a ru

The second volley caught one of the convicts point-blank. Four bullets entered his body almost simultaneously from four directions and he fell, critically wounded.

Another convict made it to the cordon but by the time he reached it the hole had closed. He was swatted across the face by a swinging rifle. It broke his jaw and knocked him down.

The third man, the Papago, was a good sprinter and made it through the lines and was thirty feet beyond when a bullet broke his spine and dropped him.

One deputy was wounded in the foot by a stray bullet and there was a tired sigh as air leaked out of a Jeep tire.

Of the four convicts only one ultimately survived—the man with the broken jaw. One was already dead; the other two died of injuries within forty-eight hours of the incident. The surviving convict after intense questioning in the prison hospital was tried, convicted and sentenced to an additional twenty years, the sentence to run concurrently with his existing life term.