Official Ft. Leavenworth mugshot of Tom Johns, prisoner #826 (reg. no. 475). From a negative in the author’s possession. The original is housed in the National Archives Kansas City depository.
Tom Johns (alias Charles Burton), part of an 82-man detail sent from the old Fort Leavenworth prison to work on the new penitentiary, watched ringleader James Musgrove for the cue. It wasn’t yet eight on the morning of June 2, 1898, and already the sun had begun pounding the turf where the prisoners labored.
The men, most serving five-year sentences of hard labor for crimes varying from post office theft to rape, worked in unbelievably harsh conditions. In twelve-hour shifts, they toiled to construct the wall of the new prison facility. If a convict complained, prison authorities gave him a companion: a twelve-pound ball chained to his leg. By June, they apparently had had enough and decided to attempt a risky escape. For guidance, they turned to James Musgrove, who was doing five years for grand larceny committed in Indian Territory. Due to be released in October 1899, Musgrove had been a constant irritation to his jailors and earned more than one stint inside Fort Leavenworth’s “dungeon.”
Eight guards accompanied the prisoner detail. Six manned the sentry towers around the stockade while two—Duffy and Ernest, each armed with a pistol—entered the work area with the prisoners.
Johns watched as Musgrove rushed Duffy. He wrestled the guard to the ground. Fists flew as the two rolled around the ground, kicking up a dust cloud. During the fray, Musgrove wrenched away Duffy’s revolver. Before Ernest knew what was happening, Musgrove sprang to his feet, darted toward the frozen guard, and shoved Duffy’s gun into his nose. Ernest handed over his handgun and slowly raised his arms. The escape, planned in detail by fourteen convicts, was underway.
The other prisoners in on the scheme grabbed the two guards, turned them, and pushed them toward the gate. Using the two frightened men as human shields, they shuffled over to the sentry box, forced the sentry to relinquish his double-barreled shotgun, and darted out of the compound. Once out of range, they left Duffy and Ernest on their knees in the dust while they bolted toward the hills.
As they fled, the escapees formed small bands, which went in different directions. This, they reasoned, would make it harder for the authorities to collar them.
The prison’s response was swift. Sentries telephoned news of the escape to Fort Leavenworth, and search party was immediately organized. Captain Bannon enlisted the help of local Sheriff Everhardy and Police Chief Cranston, who in turn enlisted the help of willing citizens. Within an hour, their posse number over a hundred and fifty, most of them motivated by the promise of $60 to bring the fugitives in dead or alive.
Musgrove didn’t get far. By ten in the morning, Prison guards cornered him leading a small group in the hills behind the rifle range not far from the Fort. When Musgrove heard footsteps, he began to turn, in the process raising his shotgun to shoulder level, but the wary guards didn’t give him the chance and opened fire before he could fully turn around. Lead shot peppered his side and back. “Don’t kill me boys,” he groaned as he slumped to the ground like a sack of damp laundry. He died of his wounds a few hours later.
Prison authorizes spent the rest of the afternoon desperately hunting escapees, including Tom Johns, and knocking on doors to warm residents about the fugitives.
They had reason to be worried. Like the others, Johns was a habitual criminal and a particularly dangerous man with a lengthy rap sheet.
A native of Arkansas, John left home at nineteen and quickly fell into a life of crime. He had already served two terms in Arkansas prisons (ten years for murder and two years for counterfeiting) when a second counterfeiting conviction landed in the Little Rock Penitentiary for another six months. It was during this last term that he earned a ticket to Fort Leavenworth.
Scheming with a guard, Johns made Plaster of Paris molds and began counterfeiting coins. Acting on a tip, prison authorities tossed his cell, in the process discovering Johns’ counterfeiting operation. This crime landed him in Fort Leavenworth as prisoner #826 (registration #475) serving a five-year sentence “at hard labor.” For Johns, that “hard labor” meant toiling on construction of the new prison facility.
Tom Johns’ official Ft. Leavenwoth prison booking sheet. Original in the author’s collection.
So when Musgrove hatched the plot to escape, he found in Johns a willing accomplice. The forty-two-year-old one-time bricklayer wanted to return to Little Rock and his wife and three children.
Johns managed to slip through the posse’s dragnet and remained on the lam for a year and a half. Sort of…
Outside of Leavenworth, Johns just couldn’t stay out of trouble. Under the alias Charles Burton, he was convicted of manslaughter in Lawrence County in March, 1899, and sentenced to a year. He experienced the onset of the twentieth century inside the Arkansas State Prison at Little Rock.
In February 1899, Lawrence County Sheriff C.C. Childers, recognizing Burton as Tom Johns, wrote to Leavenworth authorities informing them that their escapee was about to complete his sentence. He requested the $60 reward offered for Johns’ return and suggested a marshal travel to Arkansas to take Johns into custody.
Thus, when Tom Johns/Charles Burton finished his term in March 1900, he found a Federal marshal waiting to take him back to Kansas. Johns was dragged kicking and screaming to Leavenworth, where according to his official Leavenworth Prison file he was “put in stripes and ironed.”
The escape cost him dearly; he lost “all good time,” and his original release date of April 12, 1902, was pushed back to January 18, 1904 (roughly the same amount of time of his “unofficial” furlough). During this period, all four his Johns’ children—Florence, Angie, Dottie, and Jack—visited.
The recalcitrant convict returned to his wayward ways. A constant irritation for guards, over the next few years, Johns was disciplined for refusing to trim his mustache, communicating “from cell to cell” with neighboring cons, talking during work hours, and loafing on the job. His persistent threats and bullying of other inmates earned him three separate stints in solitary. During this last stint in solitary confinement, handed down after Johns threated to brain a guard with a brick, Johns was further disciplined for “whistling and singing.”
No doubt the guards of Ft. Leavenworth collectively sighed when, on January 18, 1904, Tom Johns’ sentence came to an end and he walked out of the prison a free man.
Thomas Johns died in Pulaski, Arkansas, on May 24, 1934, at the age of eighty.
Primary source:
Johns, Thomas, prisoner #826 inmate case file. Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, US Penitentiary, Leavenworth. Record Group 129: Record of the Bureau of Prisons, 1870-2009. Inmate Case Files, 7/3/1895 – 11/5/1957. National Archives at Kansas City (RM-KC).
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