Parker was thereupon moved upstairs to the maximum-security cellblock of the County Jail, adjacent to the section where mental patients were held. Jail officials and... B.I. agents searched Parker’s cell for the $1,000.00, which he offered to pay to the trusty. Parker was even required to strip his clothing and to be examined by a physician as part of the search. Parker’s shoes were taken to a local shoemaker for examination. The shoemaker tore the heels off the shoes and discovered two packets made of black electrician’s tape, each of which packets contained five one-hundred-dollar bills. Each packet was secreted in special indentations, which had been cut out of the heel of each shoe. The shoemaker who made the examination expressed the opinion that the work had been done by a skilled shoemaker. Further investigation showed that the shoes had been taken to a shoemaker in Canton, Ohio, to have the work done. The packets of money were already made up for insertion under the heel in each of the shoes.
Parker managed to smuggle out of the jail, plans of the jail to certain persons to enable those persons to deliver to him the tools necessary for escape. At this time, Parker was confined in a cell to the left of which was a cell occupied by a person named [deleted entry]. Immediately to the left of this person’s cell was a cell in which there was located a bathtub for the use of prisoners. [Deleted entry] had been the trusty detailed to empty the garbage from the basement kitchen of the jail. At the time the practice of the jail had been to entrust the cook in the kitchen with the key that unlocked the barred door from the kitchen that led directly to the outside. [Deleted entry] had secured the key, had unlocked the barred rear door of the kitchen and had gone out to empty the garbage. He did not return and was later apprehended and returned to the jail cell next to the cell occupied by Parker. Parker inquired and learned from this prisoner how he had secured the key.
On a stormy night prior to Tuesday, June 10, 1958, two men scaled the wall of the County Jail with an extension ladder. One of these men carried a dark oilcloth bag tied around his neck. He was able to get onto a roof below the barred window of the jail cell used by the prisoners for bathing. He tied the bag to the end of a rope, the other end of which had been previously tied to one of the cell bars of this cell. The rope had been painted black and was long enough to allow the bag to lie on the jail roof in such a way as be unnoticed from the window. The bag contained a .45 automatic pistol, ammunition, hacksaw blades, and money. Perhaps $75 to $80 dollars.
Parker himself admitted that he took a bath and concealed this black bag under his clothing when he returned to his own jail cell. Parker spent three nights trying to saw through the bars of on the window of his jail cell. The bars were of such hard steel, that he was unable to make any headway. Then he commenced working on the bolt which locked his jail cell door, discovering in the process that it was of a softer steel and that he was able to cut through it.
On Tuesday morning, June 10, 1958, a jail guard and a trusty came into the cellblock to feed the prisoners. Parker did not eat that morning, and the trusty and the jail guard continued on past Parker’s cell to feed the patients held in the mental section. Thereupon, Parker opened the steel barred door of his jail cell, menaced the jail guard and the trusty with a .45 caliber pistol, and compelled them to get into one of the jail cells. He compelled the jail guard to take off his Deputy Sheriff’s uniform. Parker then put the Deputy Sheriff’s uniform on himself over his own clothing and fled downstairs into the jail kitchen. There he was unable to obtain the key to unlock the door that led immediately outside, because after the other prisoner’s escape from the kitchen, the practice had been changed. The cook was no longer entrusted with the key.
Parker then went back upstairs into the jail office. With his .45 caliber pistol, he shot the lock off the door of the jail guard’s office. The office was completely bullet proofed except for one little spot just behind the door’s lock. Parker compelled the guard on-duty to press the button, which electrically unlocked the iron barred door to the front of the jail.
Parker then fled out of the jail, through an alley behind the jail to an intersection at which traffic was regulated by stop-and-go lights. There he commandeered the private automobile of a Fort Wayne mail carrier, who had been stopped by the red light. At gunpoint Parker compelled the mail carrier to drive him out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the direction of the Ohio state line. Parker became lost on the back roads, which they followed and ran into a roadblock. The roadblock was manned by the Chief of Police and by an Ohio State Policeman. A gun battle followed in which the life of the mail carrier was gravely endangered. Parker was shot in the hip by the Ohio State Policeman and thereby recaptured. He had been free from the Allen County Jail a total of approximately five hours. Subject was then confined to the Terra Haute Penitentiary in the hospital, and also in the Federal Medical Center at Springfield until he was well enough to appear before the court. He was sentenced to fifty years in a Federal Penitentiary for his crimes.
Daryl Lee Parker arrived at Alcatraz May 29, 1959, as inmate #AZ-1413. Even prior to his attempted escape from the island, Parker’s incarceration was problematic. For example, on March 15, 1960 he was placed in the closed-front solitary confinement cell for exploding a homemade bomb, and only one month later he was caught behaving intoxicated after having ingested a specially concocted homebrew.
John Paul Scott
A mug shot series of John Paul Scott.
J. Paul Scott was born on January 3, 1927 in Willisburg, Kentucky, the second of six children in the family of Buelah and William A. Scott. His father, who served as the postmaster of Springfield, Kentucky from 1950 until his death in 1966, was an affectionate parent. He provided a good living for his family and offered all of his children a college education. His mother was also a college graduate and she never worked outside the home. From all indications, the home situation was most amicable.
In 1944 Scott graduated from Springfield High School in Springfield, Kentucky. He entered the University of Kentucky in 1950, and subsequently attended Western State Teachers College, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University. During his attendance at these universities, he maintained an above-average academic standing and amassed a total of 170 hours of credit toward his Bachelors degree. The last school he attended was Georgia State University, during the winter quarter of 1970.
Scott enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve on July 13, 1944, and entered active duty in June of 1945. He left the U.S. Air Force with an honorable discharge on December 28, 1946. He also enlisted in the Aviation Cadet Program on September 24, 1949, and was honorably discharged on November 2, 1949. He experienced minor disciplinary problems while in the Air Force, but was discharged because it was discovered that he had a prison record. The highest rank he attained was that of private.
Scott’s first arrest occurred in February of 1949, and he was charged with possession of stolen merchandise. During the years following, he would be arrested on various other charges including burglary and armed robbery. On the weekend of December 15, 1956, J. Paul Scott and his brother Don R. Scott forcibly entered the National Guard Armory at Danville, Kentucky with accomplice Earl Morris, and stole two .45 caliber submachine guns and three .30 caliber rifles, with a sizeable quantity of ammunition. On January 6, 1957 J. Paul Scott and the same two accomplices entered the Farmers and Traders Bank of Campton, Kentucky, armed and carrying acetylene cutting equipment. While in the bank, Scott was struck in the mouth and the arm by two bullets fired by a bank guard. Meanwhile, Morris was perched outside of a window and Don Scott was on the roof of the bank, standing guard. As the robbers fled from the bank they engaged local officers in a gun battle, which resulted in the wounding of a Wolfe County Sheriff.