Escaped Convict Attacks Women

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30534, 1 September 1964, Page 23

Escaped Convict Attacks Women

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

MURPHY (North Carolina.), August 31. A convicted rapist crept away from his guards in a prison cornfield on Saturday and raped two women within shouting distance of his cell. He tried to rape a third but she escaped unharmed. A posse of nearly 200 men, many of them armed, followed a bloodhound along a creek on the fugitive’s trail. The convict was identified as Seth Gibson, an honour grade prisoner and an epileptic, who was convicted c." rape and sentenced to 40 years ip prison in 1948. Mr H. M. Lilly, the field director of prisoners, said Gibson slipped away from his guards while working on a cornfield and raped Mrs Harvey West, aged 70. and Mrs Melvin Day, aged 22; Less that half an hour later, while police and neighbours were converging on the house,

Gibson sprang out of the woods behind a house across the road and grabbed a 30-year-old woman who had gone out to empty rubbish. The woman managed to wrench herself free. She ran screaming away. Gibson flew back into the woods. The search was concentrated along a section of Peachtree creek. A winding stream lined with trees and bordered on each side by cornfields. Corn in the fields was higher than a man’s head. The posse surrounded the area and began beating through the fields.