Warrior Run, Pennsylvania was piloting an open prison concept before it was cool:
Breaking out of jail at Warrior Run to engage a lawyer to defend them at their trial, Joseph Widemsky and John Prolesky made a new record in escapes.
After getting out by prying open the bars on their cell door and squeezing through them and breaking open the outer door of the jail, they walked two miles to Sugar Notch, aroused Attorney McDonald, engaged him to appear for them and then calmly walked back to the jail and squeezed into their cells again.
Surely that good behavior should earn these local cell-ebrities some time off, right?
They with two other men and three women were arrested last night, charged with disorderly conduct. Burgess Thomas sent them to jail to await trial and refused to let them send for a lawyer.
They were sentenced to jail by the Burgess to-day, but were later released by Judge Fuller. They charge the policeman who arrested them with robbing them.
This wasn’t even the first time the Warrior Run jail’s security systems had failed that year:
Two masked burglars smashed their way into the county jail at Warrior’s Run, Pa., a few days ago, entered the cell of the only prisoner, robbing him of all his money, $29, and escaped.
The prisoner, Stanley Janders, was locked up in default of bail on a charge of disorderly conduct. No one lives at the jail and after Janders had been locked up he was alone.
About 2 o’clock, according to his story, he was awakened by noise and saw two men break the glass, bend aside the iron bars protecting the window, and enter. One of them thrusting a revolver through the cell door at Janders, ordered him to hand over his money.
Talk about an inside job.
Janders refused and the men, who had found a heavy axe, began battering at the cell door and quickly broke the lock. Then the two jumped on the prisoner and quickly went through his pockets and got his money.
Janders, after the men left, got out of the jail, ran to the home of the chief of police, aroused him and told of the burglary. Not until he had seen the jail did the chief believe what Janders told him.
The only trace of the burglars is their footmarks in the snow, and these were lost as soon as they got to the main road.
We can only hope that the burglars used those $29 to take a train to South Dakota, where a much warmer welcome was waiting for them:
I was reading in The Bee or some other paper about a burglar breaking into the jail at Warrior Run, in Pennsylvania, and robbing a lone prisoner of $29 and 11 cents. And then I thought how much happier a fellow is even on a South Dakota claim in winter than if he was in jail. Sometimes, on gloomy days, I used to imagine this claim holding stunt was a good deal like being in jail.
Now I know different, for if a burglar came along he’d be wasting his time. I’d make him stay over night and give him a good, strong dose of fat pork and biscuits you must eat quick before they get heavy.
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Disclaimer: The modern era is far from the first to grapple with rampant “fake news.” As I am neither a historian nor journalist, I make no claims about the accuracy or lack thereof of the above sources. I assert only that they make for a good story.
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Breaking INTO jail sounds almost as bright as these two:
https://cnyhistoryunfiltered.wordpress.com/2022/04/05/someone-call-mensa-i-think-we-have-a-new-high-score/
At least breaking in was more remunerative.
Maybe it was the same guys! One dumb run-in apparently wasn’t enough for them to learn their lesson.