A Prison Mutiny

   About mid-afternoon on November 24, 1905, four prisoners at the Missouri State Penitentiary; Harry Vaughn, George Ryan, Charles Raymond, and Hiram Blake; finished their work in the prison's boot and shoe shop early and went to their mutual cell. There they procured revolvers, cartridges, and nitroglycerin from the hiding spots where they'd hidden them after they'd recently been smuggled into them. The desperate quartet then burst into Deputy Warden R. E. See's office and demanded his surrender. He resisted and was shot in the arm. The inmates then marched See as their prisoner to a big, iron, inside gate and ordered it opened. The guard on duty, John Clay, opened the gate and was promptly shot in the head and killed. The four men then marched See to a big outside gate and ordered him to open it, but he told them he couldn't without a key and said they'd have to go back to the office to get it.
   Instead of going back to the office, they marched the deputy to a smaller gate and ordered it opened. As they hurried through the gate, they shot and killed Officer Ephraim Allison, who happened to be standing nearby. They also shot and wounded See a second time. Rushing to a big outside gate, they blew it open with the nitroglycerin, making a hole three feet in diameter that they could crawl through.
   Outside, they made a dash for the railroad tracks with prison officers in close pursuit, and Jefferson City Police officers quickly joined the chase. One of the prisoners, Blake, was shot and mortally wounded soon after their escape. The other three reached the tracks and jumped in a wagon at the freight depot. They then drove the team through the streets of Jefferson City, and a running gunfight ensued. Raymond was seriously injured, Vaughn was slightly wounded, and one officer was wounded during the melee before Ryan and Vaughn were finally corralled. The fallen Raymond was also taken into custody.
   Soon after the recapture of the would-be fugitives, Ryan confessed that H. E. Spencer, who'd recently been released from the prison, had supplied the four men with their revolvers and nitroglycerin. He'd smuggled them in one night by scaling a stockade near the shoe and boot shop, where no inmates were allowed at night and where no guards were stationed, and hiding the items in a pre-arranged spot near his buddies' work stations. Spencer was nowhere to be found, though.
   Vaughn, who was in prison on a robbery charge and was implicated in the shooting of three St. Louis lawmen, was considered the ringleader of the jail break attempt, but all three of the surviving would-be escapees were charged with murder. Their first trial in early 1906 ended in a mistrial when the jury failed to agree, as two or three jurors voted to acquit. The three were retried just a month or two later, convicted, and sentenced to die in April 1906. The verdict was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, and the sentence was stayed. The high court sustained the verdict the following year, and Vaughn, Raymond, and Ryan were hanged simultaneously in the Cole County Jail on June 27, 1907.