- Prison for the worst of the worst.
- The worst people ended up at Brushy Mountain.
You had murders, rapists, child molesters.
- A place where hope goes to die.
- When you walked out on a yard, in this prison,
you are thinking about getting robbed, stabbed.
That's how dangerous it was.
- If the murderers don't catch him...
- If you can get away, you try your best to.
- The mountain will.
- Once you climb over for 20 miles,
there's nothing but rocky bluffs, rattlesnakes.
[gunshot]
- All hell broke loose here.
- For whatever reason, they chose to roll the dice.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- Some of the greatest stories ever told start behind bars...
♪ ♪
Locked up in their most notorious prisons
in the world, spied on by guards and fellow prisoners.
♪ ♪
It takes a devious mind to find a way out.
It could lead you to freedom
or it could cost you your life.
[gunshot]
But wouldn't you try when you have nothing left to lose?
♪ ♪
[suspenseful folk music]
♪ ♪
- Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
For most prisoners, coming here is a one-way ticket.
That's why they call it the end of the line.
For decades it meant 12 hours a day of hard labor
in the coal mine.
Your bunk is not your own.
You shared it with the prisoner from the other shift.
Slack off in the mine, and you'd be whipped.
The mine closed in 1967, but now this place
is filled with Tennessee's most violent criminals.
Owe the wrong guy a couple of bucks,
look at someone the wrong way, and you could get stabbed.
To be an inmate here is to live in fear.
♪ ♪
- Brushy Mountain is probably
the most notorious prison in the state of Tennessee.
It's a maximum-security prison built in 1896.
- It looks like a medieval castle.
When you're driving up to it,
it is literally at the end of the valley.
It is the end of the road.
There is nothing beyond it and you can kind of feel
the area closing in around you as you get closer to it.
- It's a smaller prison, but it was very dangerous.
When you walked out on a yard in this prison,
in your mind all the time,
you're thinking about getting robbed, stabbed, or something.
That's how dangerous it was.
- The odds of breaking out of this place
once you are sent here,
no matter how ingenious a criminal you are,
are very low.
The man who decides he'll take those odds,
is one of the most infamous assassins in American history.
♪ ♪
April 4th, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King Jr. Is killed
by a shot from a .30 caliber rifle.
Petty criminal James Earl Ray is arrested
and pleads guilty to King's murder.
Sentenced to 99 years in prison,
Ray arrives at Brushy Mountain in March 1970.
Ray enters the prison system there
with a well-earned reputation for escaping.
- We knowed he was escape artist before he got here.
He escaped prison in Missouri.
♪ ♪
- James Earl Ray is at work in prison bakery.
He notices that every day,
the truck arrives and leaves with the bread.
He and another prisoner are talking about
how you could maybe escape in that truck.
The other inmates put a tray of bread on top of him.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
He gets loaded into the truck.
As he's on the road, he jumps from the truck.
He hides in a junkyard until nightfall.
He is able to get away.
♪ ♪
- Ray is on the Lam for 50 weeks
after his first escape from the prison in Missouri.
After his murder of King on April 4th,
Ray is on the run for nine more weeks.
He is eventually captured at Heathrow Airport,
London, England, on June 8th, 1968.
♪ ♪
He confesses to the murder
and ends up remanded to Brushy Mountain State Prison.
♪ ♪
There, he keeps a low profile.
Or tries to.
- He knows any amount of attention
that you attract in prison is going to be bad attention.
It's going to work against you.
- The guards are told to keep an eye on Ray too,
but time is on a prisoner's side.
- Listen, everybody in Tennessee knew
he was an escape risk.
He was gonna leave if he gets a chance.
It's just up to us to keep him here.
♪ ♪
- A life sentence in this hell hole
makes many prisoners dream of escape.
But this isolated fortress
is built to make that dream impossible.
♪ ♪
- The walls that were built here from the stone
for about 14 feet high.
They are about two, maybe three foot thick.
Some of these rocks that's in this wall
are approaching 3000 pounds.
At the top of that wall,
you have not only the razor wire
or the concertina wire, but you also have barbed wire.
That barbed wire and concertina wire
surrounded the top.
Each strand of that barbed wire had 20,000 volts on it.
So that was a big deterrent on anybody
trying to get over the wall.
- In addition to the wall and the electrified barbed wire,
there are nine guard towers around the prison's perimeter
each manned by a correctional officer
armed to the teeth.
- Each gun tower, the officers had a 12-gauge shotgun,
a .38 caliber pistol,
and at one time, they had a .22 rifle.
- With all of these above-ground deterrence,
James Earl Ray figures the best way out
is probably underground.
♪ ♪
Ray spends months poking around his cell,
looking for weak spots. He decides it's too risky
to attempt sawing his way through the bars,
so his attention turns to the air vent
at the back of the cell.
- It's about a ten-inch to 12-inch square piece of metal
that has holes in it.
And it's bolted to the concrete.
And once you got that plate off of the wall,
then you could dig at that concrete with a spoon
or any kind of piece of metal or something.
- He chips away at the whole night after night,
replacing the vent every morning
and covering his tracks.
- He would set it back down
and you take toothpaste and squirt
around with toothpaste, look just like mortar,
like caulking.
♪ ♪
- Once it got big enough, then he went through that hole
and would get in,
what we would call the pipe chase,
which is just access to the plumbing.
- Ray explores the pipe chase
and spots a potential escape route.
The larger exhaust fan that vents air
to an enclosed courtyard area outside.
If he can get through there, Ray estimates
that he can crawl to a manhole 20 feet away.
While on the exercise grounds at an earlier date,
Ray had noticed that the powerhouse
is outside the exterior walls of the prison.
Now he figures this manhole must lead to a steam pipe
running between the prison and the powerhouse.
If he can get into those pipes and over to the powerhouse,
he can escape.
But the bars in front of the fan are made of metal
and he doesn't have a saw.
This route seems like a dead end.
♪ ♪
Ray keeps thinking about getting out of that air vent.
It's his best chance to break free.
He realizes he's going to need help
from someone on the outside to get him a saw blade.
The murderer turns to his brother, Jerry,
who was sympathetic to Ray's cause.
♪ ♪
The two brothers come up with a scheme
to smuggle the blade inside.
- Jerry cuts off the bottom of his shoe
and inserts very small hacksaw blades
and then attaches the bottom of the shoe.
He goes into the prison for a visit.
Has the shoes on,
his brother has the exact type of shoes on,
brown shoes and the same size. They wait for the guard
to go to the back of the visiting room
and they casually shuffle their shoes off
and switch shoes.
♪ ♪
So now Jerry has James Earl Ray's shoes
and James Earl Ray has Jerry's shoes
with the hacksaw blades in them.
♪ ♪
- Ray is able to smuggle the blades
back to his cell undetected.
He spends the next several months
sawing through the bars and the pipe chase.
But once again, Ray's plan hits a snag.
The thick fan blades behind the bars
are nearly impossible to bend.
The escape route is still impregnable.
But Ray is not going to give up easily.
This time, he realizes he will need help,
not from his brother Jerry on the outside,
but from someone inside the prison.
He needs an accomplice to help bend the blades.
He turns to one of his few friends in prison,
Jake Morlock.
♪ ♪
- Jake Morlock was a friend of James Earl Ray's in prison.
He was a man he trusted. He was a plumber.
As a matter of fact,
James Earl Ray called him Jake the plumber.
And Jake the plumber had access to tools,
tools that would help aid Jimmy
to get out of Brushy Mountain.
- Morlock agrees to escape with the Ray
and steals the pipe wrench
they can use to bend the fan blades.
But once again,
there was a roadblock on the path to freedom.
Morlock and Ray aren't cellmates.
That's got to change for their plan to work.
♪ ♪
- James Earl Ray,
he knew that he needed to get Jake the plumber in his cell.
- Ray figures if he can change names on the ledger
in an unlocked office near the cell floor,
he can get Morlock into his cell.
But there are usually plenty of guards on the cell floor.
He needs to figure out
when is the best time to make his move.
- He did it on a day
when the guards that were usually there had days off,
so they were the substitute guards.
So he snuck in the office and he erased names
and he put Jake's name as his cellmate.
- It's a risky move, but Ray manages to avoid
being caught by the substitute guards
who generally do not move about the cell floor
as much as the regular guards.
- So that's how Jake was able to make his way
in a James Earl Ray's cell.
♪ ♪
- The new cellmates wait until the guards
make their nightly rounds to escape.
If they can get out of the prison in the next hour or so,
they will have three hours until the morning headcount
at 6:00 a.m. before they are discovered missing.
- James Earl Ray and Jake fashion dummies in their beds
so it looked like
they were sleeping in their cell at night.
♪ ♪
- Working as quickly and quietly as possible,
Ray and Morlock finished removing the bars
and bend the fan blades back with the pipe wrench.
- James Earl Ray slithered right out through there.
His poor cellmate, Jake, was a little bit overweight
and so he couldn't get through and he had to turn around
and go back to the cell.
- But Ray isn't all on his own.
His brother is waiting on the outside.
- There was a getaway plan.
And Jerry was supposed to meet him in a church parking lot.
He got prepared though.
He got a pistol and he got a bunch of bullets
and he taped them under the chassis of his car.
He did that because he didn't want to put them
on his person just in case he got searched
because you realize this is aiding and abetting
and Jerry could be in big trouble.
♪ ♪
- Back at the prison, Ray has made it
out of the pipe chase and into the prison courtyard.
- James Earl Ray got out on the yard.
Then the manhole was over here that led outside
to the powerhouse down on the road where you come in.
- It looks like Ray's going to pull off this escape
as he opens the manhole cover.
- Ray took the lid off and the steam was still on.
- Ray gets a face full of steam.
The pain is almost unbearable.
He has mere seconds to decide what to do
before the patrol guards see him in the yard.
Does he go back to his cell and give up his escape,
or does he risk being burned
and climbed down into that tunnel?
After all, the tunnel leads to his freedom.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- James Earl Ray is a sitting duck.
Any second, a guard could spot him out here
in the prison courtyard
in the middle of an escape attempt.
But the steam tunnel he plans to follow under
the prison wall is boiling hot.
He climbs down anyway.
♪ ♪
- The steam pipes, they were very old
and the insulation around them was all gone.
And so, it was just pure, hot pipes.
♪ ♪
- Meanwhile in the getaway car,
his brother Jerry runs into trouble.
- So Jerry went to the parking lot
and all of a sudden
here came a prison vehicle from Brushy Mountain
and he thought for sure he was caught.
But on a pure instinct,
Jerry just laid over in his car
and pretended he was taking a nap.
♪ ♪
And lo and behold,
the police just looked around a little bit
and they took off
and they never searched Jerry's car.
♪ ♪
- In the tunnel, things aren't going as well for Ray.
- Those pipes were so hot, that they burned him so badly
that he had no choice
but to turn around and go back.
♪ ♪
- Sure enough, this time Ray is not so lucky
in the courtyard to go undetected.
And the guards see him
the second he sticks his head up out of the manhole cover.
♪ ♪
- As he just went out there and run into a snag
and then they finally just found him.
Brought him back and locked him back up.
- Morlock is caught, too.
The guards discovered him and the hole in their cell.
♪ ♪
- Jerry waited a little bit longer,
and then he decided, I guess he didn't get out.
So he left, he turned on the radio and there it was
blaring all over the radio.
James Earl Ray had tried to escape Brushy Mountain,
but was caught.
- James Earl Ray is treated in the infirmary for second
and third degree burns.
♪ ♪
James Earl Ray and Jake Morlock
each get two months in the hole for their escape attempt.
Once Ray is out of the hole, he decides on a new tactic:
getting another day in court.
- James Earl Ray pled guilty.
Although after that initial plea,
he recanted his plea and said he did not kill King.
- I had several interviews with him
and he would say that he was innocent.
- Ray claims that it was a conspiracy,
that he was a fall guy for an organization.
It seemed like a very convoluted story.
A lot of the problem that he had in court
was that I don't think he ever articulated
what the purpose of him being the fall guy was.
- All of Ray's attempts to get out through legal means fail.
In the eyes of the law, he's guilty as charged.
So he becomes more determined than ever to escape.
♪ ♪
Five years have passed
since Ray's last failed escape attempt.
His determination once again meets opportunity
when he comes across a lucky find.
♪ ♪
- Ray is working in the prison laundry,
and he notices some three to four-foot sections of pipe
that had been left behind during some repairs
there in the laundry.
So he just manages to grab a couple and stash them aside,
you know, just in case they come in handy later.
James Earl Ray is not so much smart as cunning.
He looks for opportunities.
He keeps his head down until he sees an opening,
then he darts for it. And that's what he does here.
♪ ♪
- Ray bids his time until the spring of 1977
when one day out in the yard, he notices something peculiar
where the prison wall meets the mountainside.
- In one spot,
there's about an 18-inch gap between the wire and the wall.
Just enough for a man to slide under.
- He was looking at that step with no electricity on it.
That was what he was shooting for because there was
a nice level spot at the top of that wall
where you could just go right over.
- On the other side of the wall due to erosion
and just dirt that has collected over time,
there's just enough of a spot that can cushion the drops.
Theoretically, you could climb up to the top,
slide under the wire, and drop to the ground
without breaking anything important and run away.
- If you're trying to figure out
how to get out of here, that's how you do it.
You just pay attention.
Eventually, you'll find the soft spot in the armor.
There's always a chink somewhere.
And apparently, Ray thought,
"Well, that's the chink right there."
- Ray has spotted his out,
but how will he get over this wall?
He is going to have to think of something
and it has to be good.
Or this will be just another failed escape attempt.
[dramatic music]
- Six years after his previous attempt
to escape Brushy Mountain,
James Earl Ray thinks he sees another way out.
A small gap under the electric fence
on top of the prison wall. He's got his hands
on a couple of short sections metal water pipe.
Now, how can he use these
to get all the way up there?
- He realizes
what a great ladder all his pipes would make.
- But he doesn't have enough pipe
to reach the top of the wall.
He needs to figure out a way to get more.
- So he got with a fellow named Shelton
and they talked about it.
♪ ♪
- Doug Shelton is another career escapee.
He has a reputation for breaking out of jails
and prisons.
He loves the idea. He loves that it's simple easy, quick.
He and Ray basically are made for each other on this.
- He was the plumber and he would have had access
to different tools, different plumbing material.
And over a course of time,
he was able to put away a piece here and a piece there.
These weren't tools, these were materials.
So they were probably easier to push to the side
when no one's paying attention, or drop or, you know,
kick up under something and just go on about your day.
♪ ♪
- Ray brings one more member on to his escape team,
his cellmate, Earl Hill.
♪ ♪
- Earl Hill, Doug Shelton, I know both of them.
Most of them are good prisoners.
They didn't bother anybody. They were dangerous,
but they wouldn't tell another prisoner to get out.
A person that found out that James Earl Ray
was going to escape and did what he did,
a lot of prisoners would have told that.
They would get something in for telling them,
maybe get out of prison.
But these two guys were what we call solid.
- The team slowly steals more pipes and hides them
at the back of the yard.
- There's a small indention in the ground.
And that's where the pipes was laying until they needed it.
And because of the way that indention was,
you had to be
pretty much standing right on top of it to see it.
- At the same time,
they studied the routines of the guards in the yard.
- Each guard tower was manned by one man,
and he sat up there and looked out the window in a big chair
and it--it's kinda nerve-wracking.
You never know, prison, unexpected things happen.
You just gotta be on your toes when you're on the gun turn.
♪ ♪
- The watch officer, Floyd Hooks, especially closely.
He's the guard in tower four,
the tower nearest to their escape route.
- These inmates, everybody, and especially escape risks,
they watch everybody, every man that are around.
They know me better than I know myself.
And that guard got a newspaper every day
and while they were on the recreation yard,
they watched everything.
- Now, James Earl Ray watched this guy
reading his newspaper for months. He watched it.
He knew every day he'd come in certain time,
he would read the newspaper.
He'd read it from the beginning to the end.
- It is all routine and it's real easy
to fall into a routine with any job,
but especially being a prison guard.
You get bored after a while.
- At the same time, he's scoping out the guards.
Ray is also focusing on making money to use for bribes.
♪ ♪
- Most prisoners don't have a TV.
Some of them have burned all the bridges.
They don't even have a family to send them a TV.
So when somebody leaves, James Earl Ray
would make a deal with them to keep the TV and buy the TV.
Most of the time they would give it to him.
If I want a TV, I don't have a TV,
I'll just pay him $3 to $4 a month.
He worked in the laundry. He had 30 [inaudible]
customers. He would charge them $3 a month to do the laundry.
If you didn't pay somebody to do your laundry,
it's gonna come back in a pillowcase,
it's all wadded up, so everybody pays.
He--he made a lot of money doing those things.
- And of course, once again, Ray turns to his brother Jerry
to be his man on the outside.
♪ ♪
- James Earl Ray would write coded letters to his brother.
He'd sign his name Jim,
and then he'd underlined it twice.
You would start with the first word
and count seven words down. That would be the code.
And Jerry would know what to do.
♪ ♪
On May 17th, 1977,
one of these coded letters disclosed that a package
was to be buried somewhere along the highway.
Jerry Ray had got a duffel bag
and he had stuffed it full of things
that he thought his brother could use when he escaped.
He put in there some hair dye, a poncho to stay warm,
some non-perishable food items,
a first aid kit, a pistol, some bullets,
and a few other miscellaneous things.
He zipped this bag up and he buried it
at the cemetery near Brushy Mountain.
♪ ♪
- On the evening of June 9th, 1977,
James Earl Ray, Doug Shelton, and Earl Hill,
huddled up for one last meeting in the prison yard.
They decide they have enough pieces of pipe
to reach the top of the wall.
Tomorrow, June 10th, they're going over the top.
That is if someone doesn't rat them out before they leave.
It's a sweltering day here in Eastern Tennessee.
The mountains are rugged and full of snakes,
but it's a darn sight better
than life here in Brushy Mountain.
Once Twilight falls, three convicted murderers
will attempt to climb this 14-foot wall,
pass under the ribbons of electrified barbed wire,
and escape to freedom.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
In the afternoon, Ray stays late at his job in the laundry
to smuggle out the last few pipes
they need to build their ladder.
- He had taken a pipe and hid it inside of a washing machine
that he had opened the back of it up
and put the pipe inside of there
so that it was undetectable and then use the excuse
of servicing the machines to go back in.
As soon as the guard would make his rounds,
he would get the stuff out
and then close everything back up
before the guard come back around on his circuit.
- Ray hides the pipes in his shirt and his pants
and makes his way out to the yard.
♪ ♪
- He was going out of the cell block area.
He saw another inmate who was fat.
They made sure that this inmate
was walking inside of Ray
and where the prison guard wouldn't see him.
Sometimes prison guards would stop you and search you,
but they were smart enough
or knew the routine of some of the guards
and we're able to hide the piping.
♪ ♪
- When they went out on the yard for exercise
that was in the afternoon.
That was after supper, simply because it was summer.
Didn't get dark until later.
- Ray uses some of his bribe money
to pay another inmate to create a diversion.
- They had a guy to start a fake fire
down on the lower part of the yard.
James and Doug and all of them are walking around the yard.
They noticed the officer in the tower
wasn't paying attention.
- The prison has nine towers along the wall.
Only eight are manned. At the tower closest to the gap
and the wire, Floyd Hooks, was the guard on duty that day.
Hooks had a reputation
for liking to read the evening paper
while he sat there on his shift.
About 7:30, the sun begins to set behind the mountains
and men begin to break away from the horseshoe stakes,
the baseball diamonds.
♪ ♪
- Ray and his co-conspirators
make one last lap around the yard
to give the signal for the fight to begin.
♪ ♪
- They came by the weight bench.
Ray supposedly said, "This time by."
Then when they got about halfway from the tower
to where they were gonna make the escape,
is when the fight started.
♪ ♪
You would have one man in each gun tower.
You'd have about 200 inmates on the yard.
Sometimes you'd have as many as three other officers
on the yard too.
So you didn't really have a whole lot of help.
It can get pretty hairy. Pretty hairy, pretty quick.
- When you're an officer,
you can't leave your post until you're relieved.
So if you're on a post right here
and something happens over on the other side somewhere,
you can't leave your post
because that thing going on over there making a racket,
may be to get you to come over there
'cause they got something planned where you are at.
♪ ♪
- Hooks' not looking when the fight breaks out
and these three guys head to the spot at the wall
and immediately whip out their sections of pipe,
start whirling them together.
- Once they kneaded it, they put it together
just in a few seconds,
they made a hook on the top, similar to a shepherd's hook
so that it would stay attached to the wall.
When they put it up, it would hook on the backside.
- Everything is going as planned.
With the ladder assembled, Ray, Sheldon, and Hill
head for the wall, but then disaster strikes.
- James Earl Ray takes that ladder.
He puts it at the spot. He wants to escape.
Head over.
He puts the ladder right on the electric wire.
[electricity zapping]
It knocked him back about 10 feet.
- 20,000 volts course through Ray's body.
He lies twitching on the ground.
It seems the escape attempt is over before it has even begun.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- A massive fight rages in the prison yard
at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
Meanwhile, in the back corner,
James Earl Ray has just received a massive shock
from the prison's electric fence during his attempt
to escape via a metal pipe ladder.
His accomplices, Doug Shelton and Earl Hill,
check to see if he's still alive.
- When James took the ladder up for the first time
he hit that hot water, it knocked him down.
Meanwhile, Doug was checking on James
to make sure he's all right, he's telling Earl,
"Put the ladder back up. Put the ladder back up."
- Ray recovers from the shock and Hill
gets the ladder on the wall.
The circuit breaker has been tripped
and the barbed wire is no longer hot.
- James Earl Ray makes his way over the wall first,
followed by Doug Shelton and Earl Hill.
- Now, when he goes over the wall,
you've got about two, three-foot cushion
of dirt build up over the years that when you land,
you know, less impact on you.
- Other inmates see the ladder
and they seize the opportunity.
We have Larry Hacker, Donald Caylor, Jerry Ward.
David Lee Powell is working in the kitchen
and sees the action from the window and decides he wants in.
He starts running across the yard to make it to the ladder.
He's wearing a white kitchen uniform.
That catches a guard's eye and he turns
and takes aim at the ladder. David makes it over.
♪ ♪
- Officer Hooks was in tower four,
and he was the failure that was reading the paper.
And the tower eight, we called it, was unoccupied
next to where they went over.
And the next tower around, the officer,
he'd seen it happening and he'd come out on his wall
and he shot across range, probably 60 yards
and hit the last one going over.
[gunshot]
- Jerry Ward is bringing up the rear.
He's shot off the ladder and lands
in the middle of the courtyard.
At this point, all the inmates are getting in on the act.
Everybody starts cheering,
"Over the wall, over the wall!"
Which was apparently the popular cry
whenever anybody was trying to get out.
[gunshot]
- Even amidst the noise of gunfire
on the cheering crowd, Officer Floyd Hooks,
the guard in the tower closest to the escape, fails to act.
- Up here, you couldn't close your eyes. You just couldn't.
You just had to keep them open and that's why you were here.
You know, if you could go read a newspaper,
they wouldn't need you here.
The thing I've always wondered about
was why when the rifles started firing in tower three,
why in the God's name didn't he react to that?
If he'd reacted, he could have had a shot
at somebody on the other side of the wall behind him,
because they had to get down the wall.
Then they had to run a little bit
before they hit the mountain.
So I always wondered how in the world,
with all this going on without him getting shot off.
- Hook's own explanation for his inaction is laughable.
- He says that when James Earl Ray went over,
he raced to get his rifle and he fell,
hit his head on the door.
Closed the door on him, locked him in.
That don't sound right.
If I'm inside the guard tower,
I lock the door on me. I can't get out?
That don't make sense. I don't understand that.
- It's too late. The horses are already out of the barn.
- All hell broke loose here. [laughs]
But they went up mountain.
They crossed over,
but I don't think they really knew where they were headed.
They just got the hell out of here.
♪ ♪
- As the sun begins to set, a total of six escapees
are fighting their way
through the rugged mountains of Eastern Tennessee.
The guards at Brushy Mountain
scramble to lock the prison down,
organize a manhunt,
and alert the townspeople.
- One of the things about Brushy Mountain is every day
at noon, a whistle blows. [whistle blows]
But if there is an escape,
the whistle is blown at that time, too.
And then it's according to how many people escaped.
[whistle blows six times]
♪ ♪
So those whistles went up.
And so the guards and people in the community
know that something has happened.
Know that there's an escape or an escape attempt.
- I heard the whistle blow and I was eating supper
and I told my wife, I said, "God, listen to this."
And it just kept tootin'.
And then it just kept with the long blasts.
And I told my wife, I said, "Oh, my God, honey."
I said, "Half of 'em gone."
So I run back up here and this goes along with it.
Our telephone system went out.
♪ ♪
- We have a small, simple phone system
here in the county.
And everybody calling the prison,
and it clogged all the systems up, and it just went dead.
And the governor trying to call in and people like that,
you know, of importance, they couldn't get in.
It got hectic for a while and it was just like a circus.
They probably running wide open
and not knowing which way to go.
- The scene at the prison is total chaos.
They're responsible for one of the most
infamous prisoners in America
and they just let them get away.
[dramatic music]
- James Earl Ray, along with five other inmates,
has just escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
As night falls, they go their separate ways.
Ray is alone in the harsh, snake-infested mountains,
trying to find his way to nearby Route 116.
- When James Earl Ray got out of Brushy Mountain,
he was expecting to find that survival kit
that Jerry had buried for him
at the cemetery by the highway.
However, he zigzagged into the woods
and actually got lost in the woods
and never got a chance to get that survival kit.
- Meanwhile, hundreds of law enforcement agents
from across the country descend on the area.
- You have FBI agents,
the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, its agents,
the Tennessee Highway Patrol,
state troopers with local Sheriff's departments,
constables, prison guards and self-deputized posses
of everybody who lives within,
you know, miles of the prison and wants in on the action.
♪ ♪
- This little community was turned upside down.
I mean, there's only 500 people that lives here.
And when you've got ABC, NBC, CBS,
every news agency in the country,
biggest thing to hit this place in a long time.
Sure was.
- Now, James Earl Ray's escape was a huge embarrassment.
The governor of Tennessee expressed embarrassment.
You have members of Congress demanding answers.
How could this possibly happen?
What's behind this? Why was nobody watching?
- One told me after, "We don't give a damn what you tell me.
You bastards turned him loose and we're gonna prove it."
Well, we didn't turn him loose.
One guy sat on his rear end and that's how he got away.
- [barking]
- But it's critical to everyone involved in this manhunt
that James Earl Ray be caught alive, if at all possible.
Nobody wants another Lee Harvey Oswald-type situation
where the only person who might know the truth
is killed.
♪ ♪
- After 48 hours, four of the escapees have been caught,
but James Earl Ray is still on the loose.
- You know, that had to be miserable
'cause she had rocks, stumps, trees, thorn bushes,
and they didn't have nothing to eat, you dehydrate,
days without sleep, that drains your system.
- The FBI still searches in vain,
but the Brushy Mountain police dogs have picked up a scent.
♪ ♪
- About 10:30 that night,
the dogs get a scent and they take off.
Takes them over the railroad, up the mountains,
through the woods, drags on for about three hours.
♪ ♪
Around 2:00 a.m.,
the dogs stopped and alert on a pile of leaves.
♪ ♪
And under the pile of leaves...
is James Earl Ray.
He lies there as still as possible.
Try not to even breathe, but the dogs have found him
and he knows it ultimately.
One of the guards says, "Are you hurt?"
James Earl Ray says, "No, I'm okay."
He didn't resist.
He gave himself up once they found him.
♪ ♪
- After 54 hours on the run,
James Earl Ray was brought back to Brushy Mountain.
A short while later, the last escapee is caught.
- If he had turned to the left, six miles,
he would have got away.
Because six miles is a highway
and they went the wrong way.
Now, the way that they went,
there was not another town or anything for 20 or 30 miles
and he only got six miles in a little over two days.
That's not a very far.
♪ ♪
- James Earl Ray tried to escape
from Brushy Mountain again two years later, but was caught
before he could even get over the wall.
He spent the rest of his life behind bars.
He had always maintained his innocence.
In 1998, gravely ill with hepatitis,
Ray told a reporter,
"If they're waiting for a deathbed confession...
they can go to hell."