Apr. 23, 1963 - Four hardened criminals, two of them convicted murderers, escaped today from the maximum-security section of the nation’s largest walled prison. Michigan state police rushed into the area around Southern Michigan Prison to bolster city and county law officials, who immediately sealed off all roads leading out of the region. Planes and dogs were brought into the search, and an official from the State Department of Correction launched an investigation. At large were Richard Mauch, 40, serving two terms of life and 25 years for kidnapping and assault with intent to murder a police officer; Elmer Crachy, 24, serving 25 years as a habitual criminal; Robert L. Gipson, 30, serving 25 years for murder; and James J. Hall, 40, serving a life term for murder. It was only the second escape by more than a single inmate from the maximum-security portion of “Jacktown,” a prison that was in the headlines in April 1952 when 1,000 inmates went on a 4-day rampage. Prison officials said the escape had been planned “for weeks or months” and that it took place between midnight and 2 a.m. The absence of one prisoner was discovered at 2:15 a.m. and the others at 6 a.m. The four men had cut through two sets of thick steel bars and disguised their work from the eyes of guards by filling the saw marks with putty. They left dummies in their beds to fool the guards while they made their way through a chain-link fence (pictured). The breakout was made in a “blind” area that prison searchlights do not reach. Warden George Kropp said all four were “dangerous and desperate.” It was believed they were on foot. They were tracked a half mile by a police dog, but the trail was lost in a swampy area near Interstate Highway 94, north of the Jackson city limits.
