event calendar

Texas' largest manhunt happened here

EDITOR’S NOTE: Gilmer Mirror editor Mac Overton was editor of the Big Sandy and Hawkins Journal at the time Jerry “Animal” McFadden abducted and murdered three Hawkins-area young people in May, 1986. In 1999, as editor of The Mirror, he was one of three newspaper or TV reporters allowed to witness McFadden’s execution. He described the three people McFadden murdered as “cream of the crop.”

By MAC OVERTON

Today (Wednesday, July 9) marks an important anniversary in the criminal history of Gilmer and Big Sandy.

It is the 22nd anniversary of the escape of mass-murderer Jerry Walter McFadden from the county jail, which was then on the top floor of the Upshur County Courthouse. He would be captured two nights later in Big Sandy, after the largest manhunt in Texas history.

This year the dates, July 9, 10 and 11, match the days Wednesday through Friday like they did 22 years ago. McFadden had overpowered a jailer and took then-dispatcher Rosalie Williams hostage in pulling off his daring Wednesday night escape.

He had asked to use a phone in the hallway outside the jail. Deputy Kenneth Mayfield, who was escorting him turned his back and McFadden hit him in the head with a piece of metal.

Then he took Mrs. Williams hostage and they went down a stairway and exited the south side of the courthouse and left in Mrs. Williams’ car.

Then-Sheriff Dale Jewkes said that “human error” on the part of Mayfield, Mrs. Williams and another deputy, Stacy Mullinax, allowed McFadden to escape. He said that the hallway should have been locked when a prisoner was in it, but was not.

Mrs. Williams’ auto was found abandoned in Big Sandy. On Thursday evening, July 10, Mrs. Williams escaped from a boxcar on a siding in Big Sandy and made it to the home of Mancho Martinez, who lived near the intersection of Tyler and Gilmer Sts. just west of downtown Big Sandy.

Martinez sent one of his sons to the Sandy Center Market, about a block and a half from Martinez’ residence. The boy called police and said “I’ve got the girl that was taken hostage.” She had escaped about 28 hours after being taken hostage.

Big Sandy Police Chief Richard Lingle and two Big Sandy officers sped to the location, which ironically was about a block from the police station.

Once he confirmed Mrs. Williams’ safety, Lingle called dispatch at the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office and requested backup.

It was answered by peace officers from all over Texas, and some from Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Some estimates were that at one time or another, more than 1,000 officers from at least 30 agencies participated.

“I could not have asked for a better sheriff to work with than Dale Jewkes,” Lingle said. Jewkes has since died.

He said that about 100 to 200 peace officers showed up “in the first wave.”

A SWAT team from Collin County found McFadden hiding in an empty house at the intersection of Wildcat Drive and College St. in Big Sandy on Friday evening.

When law enforcement officers returned him to the jail in Gilmer, a line of officers was on hand to make sure the estimated 700 citizens gathered to watch did not storm the courthouse and mete out their own justice.

Mrs. Williams, who was then the wife of a State Trooper, was honored with a parade a few days later.

McFadden, who had two previous rape convictions, would eventually be put to death by lethal injection Oct. 14, 1999 in Huntsville.

He had been convicted in July, 1987, of the capital murder of Suzanne Harrison, one of three young people he had abducted from Lake Hawkins on the evening of Sunday, May 4, 1986.

According to an article at the Texas Execution Information Center web site, posted Nov. 25, 2002 by David Carson, McFadden, then 38, abducted Miss Harrison, 18, Gena Turner, 20, and Bryan Boone, 19, while they were on their way to an outing at Lake Hawkins.

“He raped and sodomized Harrison and then strangled her with her panties,” the article summarized. “McFadden dumped her body in a state park about 25 miles north of the lake. He then drove another 15 miles to the northeast, shot Turner once and Boone twice with a .38-caliber pistol, and left their bodies in a ditch.”

The ditch was near Ore City, where McFadden was staying at the time.

Miss Harrison’s body would be discovered by a park cleanup crew at the now-closed Barnwell Mountain park, off Hwy. 155 about eight miles north of Gilmer. Boone’s pickup truck was found at Lake Hawkins about 1:20 a.m. on May 5, 1986. Both women’s purses were inside.

A couple at Lake Hawkins told police that a man using a revolver stole beer from them on Sunday. Convicted of that, under the then 3-time-loser law in Texas, McFadden received a life sentence. A reporter in the Northeast part of the U.S. tried to use that to show how harsh Texas law was, leaving out the part that McFadden’s other crimes were rape and attempted murder, for which he had been released early under the state’s then-Mandatory Release laws.

“McFadden, who called himself ‘Animal,’ had a history of violent crime,” the web site article stated. “In 1973, he was convicted of rape and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served 6 1/2 years of that sentence. In 1981, he was convicted of aggravated sexual abuse and sentenced to prison again. He was paroled in 1985.”

An article posted online at www.prodeathpenalty.com said that at McFadden’s trial, “the most damning evidence . . . was court records from McFadden’s three previous convictions. The first, in 1973, were two rapes in Denton and Haskell Counties that netted a 15-year prison sentence from which he was paroled in five and a half years.

“After being released, he received a cumulative life sentence for aggravated robbery and was paroled under mandatory release in July of 1985,” the article continued. “The last case involved a 3-county spree in 1979 in which McFadden kidnapped, raped and sodomized a Shackelford County secretary.

“The crimes resulted in a 15-year sentence, and a half-dozen charges stemming from the same incident went untried. Less than one year after his release in July of 1985, he killed Suzanne, Gena and Brian.”

McFadden was tried on a change of venue in Belton in Bell County. A reporter said that the entire row behind the defense table in that trial was lined with armed deputies.

His defense attorney, Vernard Solomon, tried to convince the jury that it was a case of mistaken identity. He claimed that because of “sloppy police work, the real killers went free,” according to an article posted at www.prodeathpenalty.com. That possibility was based on testimony that a nervous, jumpy hitchhiker covered with scratches was seen near the vicinity when the murders occurred, Solomon said.”

The trial was held before then-115th District Judge F.L. “Tiny” Garrison, and the jury took four hours to find McFadden had raped and murdered Miss Harrison. The same jury took 45 minutes to sentence McFadden to death. Testimony had taken 90 hours over 16 days, according to prodeathpenalty.com article.

McFadden declined to make a final statement at his execution.

He was given an injection of chemicals, including, in this order, sodium thiopental (truth serum), to put him to sleep; pancuronium bromide, to stop his diaphragm and collapse his lungs; and potassium choride, to stop his heart. They flowed through IV lines attached, amid his tattoos, to his right and left arms.

Jerry Walter McFadden—who directly or indirectly destroyed so many lives in the Big Sandy and Hawkins area and elsewhere, who had brutalized and raped and tortured his victims, who was kept alive at taxpayer expense for 12 years after his final conviction—peacefully and painlessly slipped into oblivion.

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