Bob Lohr points to bullet holes
Two Escaping Convicts Given Beating The Iowa Board of Control, governing the jurisdiction over all Iowa penal institutions, was summoned to Anamosa by official action to investigate an incident involving the recapture and subsequent beating of two convicts who escaped from the Anamosa Reformatory kitchen at midnight Sunday.
Warden Foss Davis refused to comment on the incident directly, stating that he would leave any public statement up to the Board of Control after they conducted their formal investigation.
The two inmates crawled about 60 feet up a ventilator shaft, went over the roofs and down a drain pipe, and were recaptured in Bob Lohr’s car, which they had stolen, an hour later at the southeast edge of Anamosa on Highway No. 64. The capture was made by the warden, Foss Davis, who was accompanied by his deputy, L. J. Womachka. The two escaping inmates stopped the car after they lost control when a bullet entered the left front tire.
As they left their car, with hands raised in the air in an attitude of surrender, the two convicts were suddenly attacked by the state officers, who were armed with saps, or black-jacks. (Saps are short leather tubes filled with buck-shot and lead.)
Spectators, attracted by the sound of pursuit and capture, reported the ensuing assault as “the most sickening sight they had ever seen.” Begging and crying for mercy, the convicts were knocked to the pavement, beaten as they lay there, and picked up and knocked down again.
Although they were loathe to discuss the matter, spectators agreed the inmates put up no resistance whatever; that they were completely unarmed; and that they were more than willing to be captured and returned to prison. But the attack was not lessened until the pavement was spotted with blood and the convicts had been placed in the warden’s car with the ominous parting remark:
“This is nothing to what you’ll get when we get you inside.”
The convicts were identified as Delbert Puckett, of Henry county, sentenced from Henry county for forgery, and Ralph Hertjes, sentenced from Allamakee county for breaking and entering. One was described as “just another punk” and the other as “a tough guy.”
They were employed in the kitchen on the night shift and had secreted themselves in the dish-washing room, from where they slid their way up to the roof. Reaching the ground, they headed south and finally found Bob Lohr’s car at his home on South Garnavillo street. Meanwhile, they had aroused neighbors in the southeast part of town by trying several cars, all of which were locked.
Harold Birkenstrand, in charge of the kitchen, notified the warden they were gone about 15 minutes after they disappeared. The warden took Birkenstrand and Womachka, and picked up Charles Livingstone, who had been awakened by prowlers in his neighborhood. They were conferring with Marshal William Donnelly and Kenneth Rands, who had been called from the Reformatory to be on the watch for the escaping men, when the convicts drove by them in Lohr’s car at a high rate of speed. The high-speed chase and ensuing violent capture followed.
Other spectators, who followed the pursuit in another car, were Harold “Jeevie” Westphal, Evan Owen, “Heinie” Schoon, and Clarence Dirks.
Feeling has run high in Anamosa since the incident has been aired here, and varying opinions are best summed up by the remark of one of those who saw the attack: “If you think of those guys as criminals who don’t deserve anything from anybody anyhow, it was all right; and then if you think of them as, after all, human beings . . . well, it was just inhumanly awful.” And remember, this is a Reformatory, not a penitentiary.