“teeth intact” 3 x 3 inches, acrylic on photopaper.
Part three: “Those fellows couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
Roy Gardner did not elude the police for long. He was captured in Tacoma when the hotel owner, where he was about to check in, found him suspiciously bandaged up and called the authorities. Imprisoned at McNeil Island, Gardner vowed he could escape. Whether he had planned it out in advance with his fellow inmates Lawardius Borgart and Evert Impyn (portrait above) is not sure, but on Labor Day, 1921, during the fifth inning of a prison baseball game someone hit a “Babe Ruth” and all eyes were on the field. Gardner along with Borgart and Impyn, who were in for life, made a run for it. Gardner had wire cutters and ripped open the fence. Rifle fire from the prison guards began, Borgart and Impyn were shot. Chaos followed as more prisoners tried to escape and guards tried to prevent them.
“Gardner told us those fellows couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” were Impyn’s last words. Borgart was dead too.
Gardner was again on the run…
Pulled from a combination of articles in the Ogden Standard Examiner and the Oakland Tribune, 1921.