Reward for Escapees Doubled; Media Reports Called Misleading

Officials doubled the reward to $200,000 Saturday for the arrest and indictment of seven fugitives still on the run from a Texas prison. They also said a leaked memo detailing the escape had been misconstrued and that supervisors had never left the inmates alone.

Part of the memo describing an inmate “picnic” during the lunch hour that preceded the Dec. 13 escape was inaccurately reported by the media, said Glen Castlebury, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

According to the memo, six inmates working in the maintenance department of the medium-security Connally Unit told their civilian supervisors they were not going to the inmate dining room but planned to eat in the maintenance area.

Castlebury said media reports indicated the inmates were left alone when the supervisors left for their own lunch, when in fact a maintenance supervisor had stayed in the room. “It wasn’t like everybody walked away and said ‘OK, inmates, take over,’ ” Castlebury said.

A seventh inmate probably joined the others after the supervisors left, the memo said.

Castlebury said the inmates overpowered the remaining supervisor, then took the 10 civilian workers and a guard hostage one at a time when they returned from lunch, Castlebury said.

He said a report on the investigation of the escape would be released around the middle of the week. The memo was disclosed Friday by KHOU-TV of Houston, which did not say how it obtained the document.

After overpowering the supervisors, the memo said, one of the inmates called a guard tower, pretended to be a prison supervisor and said he was sending a crew to work on surveillance equipment.

An inmate dressed in stolen civilian clothes then tricked the tower guard into letting him and three other inmates inside, the memo said. After they overpowered that guard, they had control of the tower, an armory and the prison gates.

All seven then were able to leave the prison in a truck they had loaded with provisions, 14 pistols, a rifle, a shotgun and ammunition.

The fugitives are wanted on capital murder charges after the robbery of a sporting goods store in a Dallas suburb on Christmas Eve. Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins was shot 11 times.

Authorities had received more than 1,200 tips by Saturday.

DNA evidence indicated that two of the inmates probably were injured during the robbery. Police said blood from Hawkins and two other people was found in a vehicle stolen at the scene and later abandoned.

George Rivas, 30, is believed to be the ringleader. He was serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery and kidnapping in El Paso.

The others are Larry Harper, 37, serving 50 years for aggravated sexual assault in El Paso; Randy Halprin, 23, serving 30 years for injury to a child; Michael Rodriguez, 38, life for capital murder in San Antonio; Donald Newbury, 38, 99 years for aggravated robbery; Joseph Garcia, 29, 50 years for murder in San Antonio; and Patrick Henry Murphy Jr., 50 years for aggravated sexual assault with a deadly weapon and burglary in Dallas.

A Saturday night broadcast of the crime TV show “America’s Most Wanted” featured a story on the escapees and yielded 66 tips in the minutes after the program aired, hotline supervisor Jim Layton said.