By Paul Grondahl
Times Union
ALBANY, NY — A prisoner from Albany County escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, was tracked by bloodhounds and eluded a massive search by prison guards across the Adirondacks that went on for several weeks before he was recaptured.
Sound familiar?
The dramatic escape last month of Richard Matt and David Sweat and this summer’s tantalizing three-week, multimillion-dollar manhunt became a national media sensation and featured enough intrigue to drive a cinematic thriller.
The Matt and Sweat imbroglio, however, did not eclipse the level of subterfuge in the escape of George Leggins of Coxsackie, who broke away on July 31, 1915, from a farm outside Dannemora’s walls. The 28-year-old trusty — or prisoner who had been given special privileges because of good behavior — was serving an 18-month sentence for grand larceny. He bolted from custody wearing his regulation prison uniform of gray trousers and striped shirt. Warden John Trombly posted a $50 reward for his capture.
The dogs tracked the 5-foot-10, 183-pound Leggins to nearby Chazy Lake, where investigators presumed he drowned.
Instead, Leggins remained on the lam for several months before he was recaptured more than three months later in Coxsackie on Nov. 19, 1915. He broke out of the Coxsackie lockup that same day. He was recaptured in Albany four days later and returned to prison at Dannemora, where he was stripped of his trusty status.
Leggins, aka Leggings and Leggett, was among nearly 70 prisoners who escaped from Dannemora between 1914 and 1922. Their escapes were recorded on a typewritten list compiled by prison staff and kept in the collections of the State Archives. Most inmates slipped away from the farm, road gangs or other less-secure surroundings. But a dozen escaped from within the walls, including breakouts from the boiler room, chapel and hospital wing.
The majority were recaptured within a few days, but dozens remained at large for months, and there is no record that at least seven of the escapees from that era were ever recaptured.
The lengthy list of Dannemora escapees turned on its head the initial narrative of the impenetrability of the prison nicknamed “Little Siberia.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo toured the prison and inspected the derring-do of the June 6 escape by Matt and Sweat that included cutting through thick cell walls and a metal steam pipe, and crawling through a municipal sewer’s manhole to freedom. Cuomo said: “This was the first breakout since 1865, and I want to make sure that it’s the last.”
He also told reporters in Dannemora that he was offering a state reward of $50,000 for each escapee from state funds, an unusual move. Cuomo said: “I’m sure they knew that since it was the first escape it was going to be a big deal.”
It was a big deal, but it was far from the first escape.
“I saw that the governor said that and it spurred me to consult our local newspaper,” said Harry Sturges, historian for the town of Coeymans. “I didn’t think Cuomo was correct, and I wanted to check the record.”
Sturges thumbed through bound copies of the News-Herald of Coeymans and happened upon the extensive coverage of Leggins’ escape and his months on the lam a century ago.
He also consulted the Plattsburgh Sentinel and other local papers that covered the Dannemora escapes.
“I’m fascinated by the story of the escapees and especially this Leggett or Leggins or Leggings fellow,” said Sturgess, 87, a retired high school teacher and a founding member of the Ravena-Coeymans Historical Society. He writes a column on local history for his hometown paper, the Coeymans Herald.
The Plattsburgh Sentinel reported that Leggins was recaptured by Albany police a few hours after his breakout from the Coxsackie lockup on Nov. 19, 1915.
“Warden Trombly was notified of the second capture of the prisoner and he asked the Albany chief of police to guard the man carefully and that he would send an officer from the prison after him on the first available train,” the Plattsburgh Sentinel reported. “The Albany police chief informed the warden that there was not a chance of Leggett making another getaway and he would again sleep in a cell in Clinton prison that night.”
Cuomo’s comments were picked up and repeated, including by local residents. Even a small local museum exhibit maintained by village historian Pete Light, 67, a retired correction officer at Dannemora, focuses on the Clinton prison yet manages to skirt mention of the dozens of escapes.
“The record of no breakouts stood for 150 years speaks for itself,” John Egan told the Times Union. Egan is a former state Office of General Services commissioner whose father was the prison’s head of maintenance when the son started working in the boiler room of the prison in 1947.
Others echoed such sentiments.
But Jeff Hall, a history professor at Queensborough Community College in Queens, buried the no-escape myth in interviews with the New York Times, NPR, CNN, NBC Nightly News and other national news outlets. Hall wrote a doctoral dissertation, “Prisonland: Environment, Society, and Mass Incarceration on New York’s Northern Frontier, 1845-1999,” for his 2014 Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. He plans to turn it into a book for University of Massachusetts Press.
“No prison is 100 percent secure,” Hall said by phone Wednesday. His research turned up the numerous Dannemora escapes, although breakouts from the maximum-security prison portion built in 1865 were far more rare.
“There’s a lot of myth-making that goes on around that prison,” said Hall, who grew up near Dannemora. His father, Clarence Hall, was a correction officer at the prison for 25 years and is now retired.
The original wing of the prison was opened in 1845. It was built by inmates and the first escape at Clinton took place just weeks after the prison opened, according to Hall. Two inmates serving time for burglary scaled the stockade wall and fled into the deep woods. Instead of crossing over the border into Canada, they got lost, inadvertently circled back and were recaptured a few hundred yards from the prison walls.
“There’s a lot of blind defensiveness going on around town that doesn’t serve the public well,” Hall said. He has friends who still work at the prison. He said his father was adamant that his son would not work inside its imposing walls and machine gun towers.
“He forbid me from working there or in any prison,” Halls aid. “It wasn’t a career he ever wanted and it changed him. It made him bitter and hard. Prison is a career nobody wants.”
Hall traveled to Dannemora last weekend and took pictures of the prison, including the manhole cover where Matt and Sweat emerged last month after cutting and crawling their way to freedom.
“It is very securely soldered into place now,” Hall said.
Hall plans to give talks about the history of the prison’s escapes in and around Dannemora later this summer.
“It will be interesting to see how my remarks are received in town,” he said. “There’s a lot of anger and defensiveness on social media from the prison community. They blame Cuomo and the state for the escapes. There’s no sense of irony that the state is also their benefactor and responsible for their livelihood. It’s a strange culture.”