In spite of appearances, I was not adjusting to prison life at the hospital unit. Although my friendship with Dr. Mac had broken through my stereotypes, that was just the first step of what would be a long journey. My racism was still intact, and my commitment to the Cause was as strong as ever. And I had no intention of remaining at Parchman. Just like a captured combatant in the military, I considered it my duty to escape, evade being recaptured, and rejoin the war. I was merely biding my time while analyzing the security system for weaknesses. Once I gained a thorough working knowledge of the prison’s general security operations and of the hospital in particular, I began planning my escape.
One of the reasons prison officials, most of whom shared my racial and political views, trusted me was my attitude toward them. I respected them and readily accepted their authority. This contrasted with the majority of inmates, whose attitudes were resentful toward authority in general, and particularly toward prison authority. As a result of my attitude toward them, prison officials grew more confident in their attitude toward me.
Although I was friendly to the officials and liked some of them, I refused to stay in prison. I believed that the United States was still being undermined by the Communist-Jewish conspiracy. I needed to break out and get back in the thick of the battle against it. Many people seemed to be content to study and speak out about it. I felt that the time had come for action, to press the terror campaign against America’s enemies until it caught on elsewhere.
I concluded that a successful escape would require the assistance of one or two other inmates within the hospital. The first person was not hard to find. Louis Shadoan was a clerk in his midforties who worked the identification office and was very intelligent. He had worked as a journalist, but his real profession was robbing banks. He was quite good at it, having robbed several in the Midwest. Moreover, Louis was looking at a long time in prison—when he finished his sentence at Parchman, he was to be transferred to a federal prison for violating his parole on a separate bank robbery charge.
Overall, Louis seemed like a solid potential recruit who could be trusted. He agreed to join me in an escape. We quietly began our planning in his office. We observed the day-to-day operation of the hospital unit, noting in detail the times and manner of garbage pickup, supply deliveries, changing of the guard, and so forth. The hospital closed at 5:00 p.m., and until five the next morning there was only one prison employee on duty in the compound. This particular guard was in his fifties and was slow, quiet, short, and slightly overweight. We determined the route of least resistance would be to overpower him late one evening and to bribe one or more of the trusties working as outside tower guards.
Once we had formulated the basic plan, we moved into more intensive planning. The escape would have three distinct phases. First, we had to leave the hospital compound safely; second, we had to reach a secure hideout; finally, we would split up and go our separate ways to final destinations.
Plans for implementing phase one went smoothly. Louis cultivated a rapport with the trusty on one of the two front guard towers with the intention of bribing him at the proper time. I contacted a reliable inmate I knew and secured a map of the terrain and roads around the eighteen-thousand-acre (twenty-eight-square-miles) prison farm. With this we could plan for our pickup. Louis and I then began compiling a list of supplies we would need once we were free. Arms, ammunition, hand grenades, food, clothing, camping gear, and other items, such as radio monitoring equipment and medical supplies, were all included.
I established and maintained contact with a close Klan colleague by smuggling letters in and out through an inmate’s family. The Klan member and another friend began securing the supplies right away from sporting stores and surplus centers.
The second phase, getting from the prison grounds to our hideout, presented no problems at all in my mind. My Klan friends made trips to the Parchman area to reconnoiter the prison grounds and the hospital unit. On one of these reconnaissance missions, one of them made his way through the fields to within a stone’s throw of the hospital compound. On another occasion, one of them had car trouble some forty miles from the prison. County sheriff’s deputies, the highway patrol, and the FBI investigated but apparently did not connect the incident with any planned escape from Parchman.
Our prison break was going to be a tricky operation. Everything had to work as planned or we might well be killed. As Louis and I continued to plan our escape, we both recognized the need for a third person to assure adequate manpower in taking over the hospital. Anything less might increase the chance of resistance on the part of the guards and night watchman. After careful consideration, we decided that we could safely approach Malcolm Houston, a thirtysomething inmate orderly in one of the wards. Since he had attempted to escape before, we felt that he would be interested. Louis, who knew him better than I, made the initial approach and found Malcolm receptive. Then I talked with him. We both felt that he was the man we needed and included him in our plans.
By this time, our accomplices in the free world had secured all needed supplies, carefully reconnoitered the prison area, and secured a safe place for our hideout—an old abandoned farm in a heavily wooded, rural area just outside Jackson, Mississippi.
All we needed to do now was coordinate the time of our pickup. This was a crucial part of the plan. We had to know for sure that they would be at the rendezvous point before making our break. Because unforeseen developments might arise to keep them from being there, we had to confirm it on the day of the escape. Phone calls in or out of the prison were forbidden in those days. We had to devise an alternative means of communication. Smuggled letters were too slow, and walkie-talkies were too risky. A newspaper was the only other source of daily communication accessible to us. So, we decided that they would place a classified ad in the Jackson Daily News, an evening paper, on the day they would be at the rendezvous point. If placed early in the morning, the ad would appear in the afternoon edition, which was delivered to the hospital each day. The ad would be innocent to everyone but Louis and me; it would read: “Lost: German shepherd. Name Sam. Black and silver in color. Large size,” with a specific phone number. This would be our signal that they would be at the spot that night.
Even if they were able to be at the rendezvous point, unforeseeable developments within the prison might still prevent us from attempting an escape. We needed some flexibility in the schedule, so we set three consecutive days for my friends to be waiting for us. If we did not make our break the first night, then we could fall back on the second or third. They would be there each night. But what if there were unforeseeable developments on their end that kept them from being there? There was no way for them to alert us. If that happened, we would be sitting ducks for the well-armed prison search teams and vulnerable to whatever they decided to do to us. This was a big risk, but we decided to take our chances. We were so far into our planning and our relishing of the idea of freedom that it was hard to turn back.