At 3:00 pm on the afternoon of August 17, 1922, four inmates started a minor riot in the prison's tailor shop. It was just a distraction. Armed with knives they'd fashioned from prison dinnerware, they attacked two Deputy Wardens, seriously wounding one and causing lesser injuries to the other. Prison Warden George Jameson went to investigate and was taken hostage. The four inmates marched the Warden out through a prison gate, tied him up, and tossed him into a car. They drove north, stopping at a country church near Crooks, about ten miles northwest of Sioux Falls. The left the Warden in the church and drove off. Warden Jameson was eventually able to free himself and walk to a nearby farm for help. So began a multi-state manhunt.
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Joe Forman -
Henry Coffee -
J.B. King -
Joe Teel
The suspects were reportedly seen near Arlington, in east-central South Dakota. Several days later, they were spotted near Niobrara, Nebraska. Along the way, they stole three more cars and somehow acquired a .22 caliber rifle and a shotgun. Newspapers account of the day report that when the criminals weren't actually on the move, they hid in cornfields. Their week-long run ended in the early morning hours of August 25, 1922, when three Murdo men caught up to them on a dark country road.
What follows is the edited transcript of an interview with Wayne Esmay, a life-long Murdo resident and local expert on the history of Murdo and Jones County.
Wayne Esmay: "I could tell you about these (Murdo) men a little bit. M.L. Parish, and Jay C. Babcock, and J.A. Robertson were the three people that first encountered these escapees and they were shot for their work. M.L. Parish, he was the State's Attorney here in Murdo at the time. Later on, he would become a judge of the third district court in South Dakota. Jay C. Babcock, he was the Jones County Sheriff at the time and he had three or four year terms as sheriff in Jones county. J.A. Robertson was a real estate dealer here in Murdo.
As for what happened, maybe I would read you a quote out of the "Murdo Coyote" (newspaper). It came out on August 31st 1922. 'The shooting and seriously injuring of Jay C. Babcock, States Attorney Parish and J.A. Robertson is recorded as one of the most cold-blooded criminal attempts known in South Dakota. No one but the most desperate criminals would have tried to carry out such a plot. It is supposed that the criminals tried to do away with the officers in order that they might make good their escape to the Black Hills country. In order to not be captured, these convicts decided to kill these three Murdo men and cover their tracks. They marched the men over a hill into a draw and they attempted carry out their dastardly crime, binding them with strips taken from Mr. Robertson's rain coat, knocking them into a washout in the draw, shooting them and covering them with an innocent looking pile of hay and left them for dead. If anyone can think of a worst criminal attempt it would take some study we believe.'"
Wayne Esmay: In the middle of the night on August 25th, someone was stripping this Mr. Robertson's car of parts and tires and someone reported it. So Robertson, Babcock, and Parish took off looking for these vehicle parts, thinking it was just a bunch of kids, teenagers that had been stripping parts off of a car. They tracked them (the suspects) close to Stamford, which is a small little town that used to be 25 miles west of Murdo on the old highway. They encountered these guys just quarter mile outside of Stamford. All of a sudden the convicts pulled guns on them and took them hostage and things got worse from there."
Edited content from the 'Murdo Coyote' article: When M.L Parish tried to resist, he was shot twice with a shotgun. After the hostages had been bound and pushed into the draw, one of the suspects, allegedly Henry Coffee, shot all three men in the head from point-blank range using a .22 caliber rifle. The four escapees left the Murdo men for dead, but all of the Murdo men had somehow survived the shootings. They were able to free themselves and walk away, sounding the alarm once they reached help.
Wayne Esmay: "Then four other men from Murdo went out looking for them. There were already police officers all over the state looking for them of course, but they formed a posse. A.T. Wilson, he was appointed a Special Deputy. He took Mr. Hubble, Mr. Townsend and Mr. Klein with him. They jumped into a car and went west looking for these escapees. Mr. Wilson was a Special Deputy, Hubble was a farmer, Townsend was a banker. Klein, he was the pool hall manager. What possessed them to take off and do that? I think it was probably because their friends got shot. At the time, I don't think they thought Parish was going to live.
The way I understand it, there's a town north of Wall about 30 miles. Creighton is the name of the town and I think at the time it was probably just a post office and grocery store and a filling station. There were maybe was a few houses but there's not much there today. But anyways, the posse caught up to a car they thought might be the getaway care and they passed this car of escapees thinking that's maybe them. They turned around and followed them closely, not real close but at a distance so they wouldn't alarm them. After a few miles these escapees pulled into Creighton and filled up with gas. The posse didn't want to alarm them so they just drove by and they kept going south. They went about a mile and a half south up over a ridge, parked their car, got out with their guns and waited for them (the escapees) to top the hill. The four escapees come over the hill and the Murdo people motioned them to stop. They wouldn't, so they started shooting."
SDPB: "What was the result of that?"
Wayne Esmay: "Well, the leader, Joe Forman, he was driving. He was supposedly the leader of these four escapees. Henry Coffee was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. Deputy Sheriff Wilson shot Coffee in the head. It was one of the very first shots and there's several accounts here, but the way it sounded, Coffee then slid around in the car and made it go in the ditch because he was in his death throes. So they slid into the ditch and started a bit of a shootout. They were all shooting at each other and Joe Forman got hit in the leg, they all bailed out of the car. They ran into a cornfield and headed across the cornfield to a wooded area. I suppose they were going to make their last stand or try to get away but the four deputies ran them down. They stopped and arrested two of them. The one that got away, he didn't want to surrender. That was J.B. King. He went up over a hill and down into a valley, down into a draw and he was later captured by some deputies from Pennington County."
SDPB: "I think you mentioned when we were talking beforehand that your parents told something about this?"
Wayne Esmay: "My dad and mom repeated this story over and over at different times because their mothers and fathers lived in the county here close to Murdo and they knew all the story. I remember my grandma and my grandpa telling this story at around the coffee table or around the kitchen table. And I'm sure this story was repeated for decades in Murdo around kitchen tables because it was so intertwined in Murdo's history. Seven Murdo people were intimately involved in this."
SDPB: "It must have had an impact on generations of families around here."
Wayne Esmay: "It did, and this story was repeated for decades."
The three surviving escapees were eventually returned to the South Dakota State Penitentiary and tried on several charges, including attempted murder. All three were released on parole during the 1940s.
According to the 'Murdo Coyote', Mr. M.L. Parish, lived a long and prosperous life after the incident but, sadly, the .22 caliber bullet lodged in his skull for the rest of his days caused him frequent headaches. Parish eventually moved to Phoenix, Arizona where he died in 1958.