1973 OSP riot hostage: 'He saved my life'

Jul. 28—Former correctional officer E.L. Coplen faced two life or death situations during the devastating July 1973 riot at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

While held as a hostage, he saw the worst — but also the best — of rioting inmates at the prison.

Coplen and 22 other Oklahoma Department of Corrections employees were seized as hostages when the prison riot at OSP broke out 50 years ago on July 27, 1973.

During a July 22 event held at the Tannehill Museum in McAlester and in an interview with the News-Capital, Coplen told for the first time what he experienced as a hostage as the riot raged around him.

"For the past few days, I've been trying to remember what for 50 years I've been trying to forget," Coplen said.

Coplen said he went to work at OSP in late June 1972. He turned 23 the month before.

"I was just a young man," he said. His assignment brought him into close contact with prison inmates in what was dubbed the prison yard — a then-large outdoor area filled with inmates when released from their cells for outdoor exercise and recreation.

"We were called gang guards," Coplen said. "We were to mill around the yard and take care of any trouble."

Coplen said he treated the inmates with respect unless they gave him a reason not to.

"A lot of them were good guys," said Coplen. Some of them just got caught doing something other people got away with, he said.

"There were several hundred inmates out in the yard and we would mingle with them," Coplen said of conditions at the time.

Inmates caught in violations were sent to "jail," he said — a term for a more restricted lockup area inside the penitentiary. One day he and another officer arrested two inmates in the yard for a violation and put them in the prison "jail."

"They beat us back to the yard," Coplen said. He learned the two were what were called "snitches" — inmates who would report to prison officials regarding inmate activities.

After that, Coplen was removed from yard duty and reassigned to the inside jail area correctional officers and inmates alike called Weed Row.

"That's where I was when the riot broke out," Coplen said.

Taken Hostage

It didn't take long for Coplen to sense that something was amiss — not from what he could see, but from what he heard.

At that time, Coplen was on a third floor tier inside the prison.

"We could hear noise and things happening down below us," Coplen said. "We were pretty-well isolated."

Coplen said he and the other officers locked themselves inside the "jail" run. Still, rioting inmates broke through by using self-styled battering rams to smash through concrete walls.

He and other officers soon joined the group of hostages held in a central location.

"They took us over and around and up in the mess hall area," Coplen said.

He saw another officer violently struck by an inmate. Coplen described the officer as a "good guy" and said he didn't know why the inmate hit him. Some were struck for what appeared to Coplen as no reason at all.

"Every once in a while, an inmate would flare up and hit a guard," he said.

Under such trying conditions, the hours wore on as rioting inmates burned outside buildings and destroyed as much of the prison as they could.

Outside the prison, a small army consisting of correctional officers, state and local law enforcement officers and up to 1,000 Oklahoma National Guardsmen made sure the riot remained contained to the prison and no inmates broke out of the OSP perimeter.

Coplen and the other hostages had no way of knowing that at the time.

Every once in a while an inmate would panic and yell that the troopers and the Oklahoma National Guard were coming in with guns to retake the prison by force. If that happened, some inmates had already threatened to kill the hostages.

That's when Coplen dug deep into his Christian faith.

"I was a saved man," he said. "I asked the Lord to take care of my wife and my unborn baby."

Coplen said he found out the saying that "the Lord works in mysterious ways" is true.

Inmate confrontation

"We were still in the mess hall when an inmate came in and said the troopers and National Guard were going to come in and take the hostages," Coplen said.

That's when the inmates holding the captives decided to move them to other parts of the prison.

"They began separating us," Coplen said, as inmates moved a group with himself and another hostage named Oscar Martin through prison corridors. At several points inmates held knives pointed close to his neck, Coplen said.

As the inmates moved the hostages, an inmate Coplen identified as Jimmy Blevins, the leader of a prison gang, approached the group. He pointed to Blevins and Martin, and said "I'll take them."

He said "You come with us," Coplen recalled.

Blevins had several other inmates with him. Coplen said he had no idea why Blevins took them, although he knew him from the prison yard when he'd been a gang guard. He also had no idea where they were going — or what would happen when they got there.

"It was a pretty scary time for a big ol' kid," Coplen said. They finally ended up in an area Coplen believes was in the East Cellhouse, where he and Martin were placed inside an unlocked prison cell.

Throughout the long night the riot raged on. Coplen could hear things breaking, lots of yelling.

Then sometime in the middle of the night, another group of inmates approached.

An angry inmate made demands to take Coplen away with him.

There was already bad blood between them. The inmate had once threw a cup of bodily fluid on Coplen, who responded by firing a tear gas bullet. Coplen had no doubts what would transpire if the other inmate took him from the cell.

That's when Blevins, who was in a corner in the back of the cell, stepped forward.

"Jimmy had a big old shank that looked like a butcher knife," Coplen said, referring to the prison term for makeshift knives made by inmates.

"Jimmy said 'If you come in here, you're going to have to go through me."'

The other inmate fumed, but backed down. "They just turned around and left," Coplen said.

It didn't take Coplen long to figure he and Martin had been taken to the East Cellhouse because Blevins figured they would be safer in that location.

"Jimmy and his guys stayed there and protected us," Coplen said.

The long night gave way to the next day, then, another extraordinary thing happened.

'Don't shoot! Don't shoot!'

'"That morning the inmates told the two officers they were taking them to a cellhouse door," Coplen recalled. "I didn't know what was going on."

He and Martin were taken to a door leading to the prison grounds and Blevins told them they were free to go. That didn't necessarily mean they were home free.

"From the East Cellhouse to the East Gate was less than 100 yards," Coplen recalled. That meant he and Martin had to traverse approximately the length of a football field — with rioting inmates still on the grounds — before reaching freedom.

Coplen had forgotten about one detail though. With the blue jeans and blue t-shirts they wore, he and Martin could easily be mistaken for a couple of escaping inmates looking to escape..

That ran a risk of them both being shot down, similar to what happened to some correctional officers killed by so-called friendly fire during the Attica prison riot in New York state.

Coplen wasn't thinking about that when released as a hostage. All he saw was freedom ahead.

"Martin and I took off for the East gate," Coplen said.

Suddenly some yelled "There's two of them running."

They could have been gunned down on the spot by officers and troopers who misidentified them as escaping inmates — but fortunately, a fellow correctional officer recognized them.

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot! That's Coplen and Martin," the officer yelled.

Coplen said Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers, who weren't yet convinced he and Martin were not inmates, frisked them for weapons. Ultimately, their fellow officers convinced the troopers that they were indeed correctional officers too.

Coplen and Martin were taken to an area for a debriefing, then were released to go home.

At home, Coplen's wife, Marsha, and the rest of his family had not been notified of his release, nor had they been updated by the Department of Corrections since he had been taken hostage.

Marssha Coplen said she did not know her husband had been released until he arrived at home that day and walked through the door.

Former Oklahoma State Penitentiary Warden Dan Reynolds, who, along with Jake Tannehill hosted the July 22 event at the Tannehill Museum to remember the riot's 50th Anniversary, said the lack of communication with the hostages' families would not happen today.

Today, the DOC would have representatives with the families to keep them updated, he said.

Aftermath

All of the hostages were released by the day after the riot broke out, on July 27, 1973, but the riot lagged on until Aug. 4.

That's because inmates damaged much of the locking mechanisms to the cells, so many of them remained outside, contained on the prison grounds until the mechanisms were repaired.

Then-Oklahoma Gov. David Hall agreed to meet with inmates representatives to hear their grievances. Demands to have the news media present were also met.

With $22 million in damage in 1973 dollars and with 24 buildings destroyed, Reynolds said it's the most destructive riot in U.S. history in terms of property damage. A total of 35 correctional officers and inmates were injured. Thee inmates were killed by other inmates and another died of natural causes.

For a time, the state considered tearing down the prison because of the immense destruction. Instead, it was rebuilt as a super maximum prison, which it remains today,

Following the riot at OSP, Coplen returned and continued to work at OSP — but he never again worked as a gang guard in the prison yard.

Prison officials received a note from an unknown source which they took seriously.

"It said 'Don't let Coplen back in the yard or we'll kill him."

The inmate who Coplen identified as Jimmy Blevins who protected him by standing down other inmates who wanted to harm him, was later killed by other inmates inside the prison in an unrelated altercation.

Still, Coplen has no doubt what would have happened if Blevins had not stepped forward with that big shank to face down other inmates who wanted to harm him.

"I think the Lord intervened," Coplen said.

"Jimmy saved my life."