SHOOTING TO FREEDOM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16474, 19 October 1927, Page 10

SHOOTING TO FREEDOM

CONVICTS' DiiAMATIC ESCAPE

NKW VOiMv, Aug. 20

Tvro murderers shot their way to freedom late yesterday afternoon from Alleghany County (jaol, Pensylvania. They were Paul -Jawarski, leader of a bandit gang that dynamited two armored ears, killing several guards and stealing £20,OU'J worth of property belonging to the Pittsburg Coal Corporation, and John Vasbinrter, who killed a man because he refused to give him a few pence demanded as alms. Both the convicts were awaiting execution in the electric chair. >

Their escape from gaol started with dramatic suddenness. An unidentified visitor, was speaking with the . two prisoners in the presence of two warders when the visitor whipped out two revolvers and covered the warders. Then he threw other revolvers to Jawarski and Vasbinder. The convicts immediately shot botli warders, and then walked down a corridor to an office occupied by three women, who dodged their bullets. Having forced the-bookkeeper to give up his keys, the desperadoes opened the massive gates of the prison, walked into the street, entered a. waiting motor-car occupied by a man and a woman, t and escaped in the dense traffic behind a. fusillade of bullets.

Armed detectives were promptly sent m pursuit of the two convicts and the mysterious visitor, but they are still free. The police estimate that 'SO shots were fired during the escape. The commotion inside the gaol attracted a crowd outside, through ;which the three men, brandishing their weapons, strode unmolested.

Alleghany Gaol -was the scene of another sensational escape 23 vears ago, when the two Biddle brothers—also convicted murderers—made, love to the warder's wife, got the keys from her, stole some horses, and tied.