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In the early 1900s
train robber and gunrunner, Roy Gardner, began his career of thievery
in Arizona
and
California. On April 16, 1920 the curly-headed young man
stole $78,000 in cash and securities from a mail truck in San Diego,
California. Though it was a smooth job, the outlaw was arrested just three days
later. Soon his name would become as well known to the lawmen of
California
as Jesse James.
Sentenced to 25 years
in McNeil Island
Federal Penitentiary near Tacoma, Washington, Gardner vowed to never
serve the sentence, even though no one had successfully escaped this
high security prison. On June 5, 1920, Gardner was on his way to
Washington to serve his sentence, but when he and two other prisoners
were being returned from the diner to their compartment, the outlaws
attacked the guards and escaped.
On May 19, 1921,
Gardner boarded the mail car of a Southern Pacific train, tied up the
clerk and fled the train in Roseville,California,
with $187,000 in cash and securities.
Two days Gardner
was arrested again while playing a game of cards in a Roseville,
California
pool-hall. Attempting to reduce his long sentence, he offered to lead
the lawmen to the money. However, he must have changed his mind
when, after leading the officers on a wild goose chase of the
surrounding hills, he announced, "I guess I have forgotten where I
buried that money."
Gardner was given an additional twenty-five years at McNeill's Island
and on June 10, Deputy Marshals Mulhall and Rinckell set out from San
Francisco with their prisoner. Gardner again vowed that he would not
serve the sentence and the very next night just before the train was
nearing the Portland, he managed to escape once again.
However,
he was soon recaptured when an alert hotel proprietor in
Centralia,
Washington
alerted
the law.
This time a heavily
ironed Gardner traveled once again to Tacoma,
Washington
,
on June 17, 1921. Four miles long and two miles wide, McNeil's Island,
surrounded by an expanse of icy water and swift tidal currents, would
make escape impossible -- no one had ever managed it before.
However, on the afternoon of Labor Day, September 5,1921,
as Gardner watched a baseball game between two prison teams, he would once
again make an escape. Sitting between to fellow prisoners by the names of
Lawardus Bogart and Everett Impyn, Gardner suddenly said "Now," when a
batter sent a ball far out into center field. As the guards in the
towers had their eyes on the ball and the runners, the three men crawled
through a hole in the fence and were on the other side before they were
spotted.
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