In 1976, an Oklahoma prison escape and manhunt made headlines
In June 1976, the escape of seven men from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester made headlines for more than a week. One of the escapees was Garland Rex Brinlee Jr., convicted of the bombing death of a Bristow kindergarten teacher in 1971.
The seven convicts had escaped by cutting through a utility tunnel late on a Saturday night, June 19, 1976. Among the prisoners' convictions were murder, armed robbery and auto theft.
Two months earlier, Brinlee, once a Tahlequah tavern owner, had bragged about his plumbing expertise at the prison and said, "After the way I'm working, I'm too dead tired to run." This wasn't his first escape. Brinlee, who had proclaimed himself the "prison's plumbing boss," had escaped in 1973 after a riot at the prison. In that escape, he was at large for six weeks before being captured.
Reporting on the June 1976 prison break, The Daily Oklahoman's staff writer Robert B. Allen reported:
Prison officials said the seven convicts, who have been working on the second floor of F Cellhouse repairing pipe for a new boiler, apparently used hacksaws and blow torches to cut their way through six barred tunnel doors.
For days, multiple law enforcement officers, from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to sheriff's deputies, were looking for the escapees. And during that time, headlines in The Daily Oklahoman read: "BRINLEE, SIX OTHERS ESCAPE," "Governor Orders Gigantic Search," "Supervision Lack Blamed in Escape," "Brinlee Hunt Turns Inside Naval Depot," "Manhunt Shifts to Stigler Area" and "Warden Vows Staff Firings in Wake of Getaway."
The first escapee apprehended was Delbert Harmon Garmon, who was eight blocks away from the prison in McAlester; and 16 hours later, Leonard Boyle of Chickasha was shot in the leg and captured along with William Morris of Minneapolis. By Wednesday, a fourth convict, Robert Nelson, was captured.
Finally, a new headline emerged: "BRINLEE GIVES UP 8-DAY FLIGHT"
On June 27, 1976, eight days after the escape, Brinlee walked into a grocery store near Lake Eufaula, bought a "soda pop and a bag of potato chips" and turned himself in to an off-duty prison guard.
The Oklahoman's staff writer Ed Kelley wrote:
CANADIAN ― Bomb slayer Rex Brinlee Jr., tired, hungry and covered with chigger and tick bites, walked into a small grocery store here Sunday and wound up surrendering to a prison employee he encountered by chance.
It wasn't until July 3 that the last remaining escapees were caught. Cousins William Franklin and Edwin Jones were captured after holding a Stigler family at gunpoint.
Their arrests brought to an end the countless hours many had spent to round up the escapees and place them back in prison.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State Penitentiary escapees led officials on manhunt in 1976
