With long years of prison ahead of them, Ralph Roe, Muskogee, Okla., robber and Theodore Cole, Cushing, Okla., kidnapper, defied science, the natural hazards and the guns of guards, escaped and shattered a national byword, the legend of "escape proof" Alcatraz.
ESCAPE ATTEMPT #3
Date:
May 23, 1938
Inmates:
Thomas Robert Limerick
James Lucas
Rufus Franklin
Location:
Model Industries Building
The third escape attempt at Alcatraz would forever stand as one of the most vicious and violent ever seen on The Rock. It would result in the tragic murder of a well-liked senior correctional officer, and the death of an Alcatraz inmate. The plan was uncomplicated and essentially required no more than a few simple tools. These circumstances, combined with the desperation of the convicts, created a deadly formula for tragedy.
Thomas Robert Limerick
Thomas Limerick
Thomas Robert Limerick was born in Council Bluff, Iowa on January 7, 1902. It was recorded that he lived in a harmonious family environment until his father’s death, when Robert was only fifteen years old. His father worked as a farm equipment mechanic, and the family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle until his untimely death. Thomas was the oldest of one brother and three sisters, and the family quickly fell into extreme poverty living in a “tar-paper shack” in a poverty-stricken farming community. Thomas was forced to leave school, and took a job as a laborer in a self-sacrificing attempt to help support his stricken family. The circumstances of his father’s death are sketchy, but Thomas would later assert that his father had been “murdered” by the police, and that because “nothing was done about it” he had decided that he would “even the score” himself.
At the age of nineteen, Limerick found himself convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to serve five years at the Iowa State Reformatory. Records also show that Limerick had difficultly adjusting to the conditions of his confinement. Immediately upon his release he again found his way into more trouble when he traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, violating his parole and stealing an automobile. He served seven years in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, after which was sent back to Iowa to serve additional time for his parole violation.
Following his release on June 20, 1934, Limerick continued to be implicated in various crimes throughout the state. He was retained for questioning in Sidney, Iowa for the suspected burglary of a railroad boxcar, but no charges were filed. A string of robberies followed, and officials were starting to close in on Limerick as the culprit. Then at thirty-two years of age, Limerick met Catherine Cross and they married in September of 1934. The couple had been married for less than two months when Limerick would permanently seal his fate.
On November 7, 1934, using a sawed-off shotgun and a pistol, Limerick and an accomplice “forcibly, violently, and feloniously” robbed the First National Bank in Dell Rapids, South Dakota. They were able to secure $4,812.51 in cash, and $6,900 in stocks and bond certificates. Limerick and his accomplice took three bank employees hostage at gunpoint, and fled. By 1935, Limerick was known as the “No. 1 bank robber of the Northwest.” He was captured that year and sentenced to life in prison. Limerick arrived at Leavenworth Penitentiary as inmate 47036-L on June 4, 1935, and was transferred to Alcatraz in October of the same year as AZ-263.
James C. Lucas
James “Tex” Lucas
Another accomplice in the escape would be twenty-six-year-old career criminal James “Tex” C. Lucas, who was serving out a thirty-year sentence for bank robbery, in addition to sentences for attempted murder in Texas and an escape while incarcerated in Huntsville. His prison record featured a series of violent outbreaks. In June of 1936, Lucas attempted to stab Al Capone with a single scissor blade while Capone was working in the clothing room. Without warning, Lucas pulled the concealed shear from a handkerchief and started jabbing at Capone, managing to inflict several minor stab wounds. He would later claim that Capone had threatened to have him “ snuffed.” Capone denied the allegation, stating that Lucas had earlier demanded money, which he had refused to give. As a result of the stabbing, Lucas had all of his “ good time” earnings revoked and was sent to serve time in solitary confinement.
Rufus “Whitey” Franklin
A mug shot series of Rufus Franklin. Rufus was a violent criminal who spent nearly his entire adult life behind bars.
The third accomplice, Rufus “Whitey” Franklin, was born on January 15, 1916 in Kilby Alabama, and began his career in crime when he stole an automobile at only thirteen years of age. He was born into a large family of ten siblings as the middle child. At age sixteen Rufus was arrested for carrying a pistol, and only one year later he was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder. When he was allowed a temporary parole to attend the funeral of his mother, he and an accomplice named John Austin Cooper held up a bank in Cedar Bluff, Alabama, taking $558.65 in cash. Because of his long criminal record, the nature of his offenses, and what was documented as “an assaultive and vicious demeanor,” he was sent to Alcatraz in August of 1936, and there he was registered as inmate AZ-335.
The Escape
Senior Officer Royal C. Cline was brutally murdered by Thomas Limerick during the escape attempt. In his final moment of bravery Cline refused to aid the escapees, and subsequently was killed.
The Model Shop Tower, where Officer Harold Stites was attacked by the would-be escapees. Stites opened fire on the inmates, fatally wounding Limerick.
The image labels indicate the sequence events of the escape: (A) shows where the inmates climbed onto the roof to execute their attack against tower officer Stites; (B) shows the barbed-wire where Franklin was subdued; (C) the tower where Stites was barricaded; (D) the area where Limerick was fatally shot. Lucas would be found cowering under the tower.
Warden Johnston described the escape in great detail in a formal memorandum to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, James V. Bennett. The memo, dated June 4, 1938, was written following an intensive investigation of the escape. It chronicled the following events:
Immediately following the attempted escape of prisoners Limerick, Franklin and Lucas, their assault on Senior Officer Royal C. Cline, their assault on the guard tower manned by Junior Officer Harold P. Stites, I reported the matter to you by telephone and followed it by making additional telephonic reports on the following day, informing you of the death of Officer Cline and death of prisoner Limerick.