{"id":1929,"date":"2022-05-03T07:59:03","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T11:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/?p=1929"},"modified":"2022-05-03T07:59:03","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T11:59:03","slug":"james-earl-rays-first-escape-attempt-may-3-1971","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/?p=1929","title":{"rendered":"James Earl Ray’s First Escape Attempt – May 3, 1971"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this day fifty-one years ago James Earl Ray made his first attempt to escape from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

On May 3, 1971, Ray managed to remove a concrete block in his cell, wriggle his way through it then climb through an air vent and eventually make it to a concrete tunnel that led to freedom outside the tunnel.<\/p>\n

That tunnel was the undoing of his plan.<\/p>\n

It led to the prison steam plant and inside was steam heated to upwards of 400 degrees. He was captured soon after.<\/p>\n

He made another escape attempt in February, 1972, but guards caught him with a makeshift handsaw.<\/p>\n

His third and most successful escape attempt was in June 1977 when he and six other inmates made it over the stone wall of the prison with a makeshift ladder. A manhunt was launched and he was captured in the mountains of Morgan County just a few miles from the prison a few days later. You can hear our podcast episode about that escape at this link. <\/a><\/p>\n

In all James Earl Ray made four attempts to escape Brushy Mountain State Prison, all unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

(Picture of Brushy Mountain prison by Michael Hodge from Wartburg, Tennessee, USA – Brushy Mountain State Prison, CC BY 2.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=29145243)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this day fifty-one years ago James Earl Ray made his first attempt to escape from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee. On May 3, 1971, Ray managed to remove a concrete block in his cell, wriggle his way through it then climb through an air vent and eventually make it to a concrete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"James Earl Ray's First Escape Attempt - May 3, 1971","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,84,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-the-1960s","category-the-1970s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Brushy_Mountain_State_Prison.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6TX4A-v7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1932,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929\/revisions\/1932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}