Polk County GaArchives News.....Cedartown Express (Attempted Jail Escape) May 16 1876
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W. Stephens wend@bellsouth.net July 11, 2004, 6:43 pm

The Constitution, Atlanta, GA
Cedartown Express
---On the evening of the 8th inst., about good dark, Mr. C.P. Gordon, jailor, 
discovered that the prisoners were making an attempt to escape.  The facts 
which led to his suspicion, and also the facts connected with the attempt to 
escape, we give below as we obtained them from Mr. Gordon:
   Mr. Gordon, who is special deputy sheriff, had been absent all day on 
business connected with that office, and returned home about dark.  He had been 
in the house but a few minutes when he heard an unusual noise overhead, which 
sounded like parties cutting.  Upon hearing this noise his suspicions were 
aroused, and pulling off his boots, Mr. Gordon slipped up stairs, and passing 
the door where the cutting was being done, went to the lower end of the hall 
and then came back to the door, and through a small hole saw a man pass the 
door.  After hearing and seeing what he did.  Mr. Gordon was satisfied that the 
prisoners in the cages were out.  Locking the hall door, he went back down 
stairs, and out in town to procure the services of gentlemen to assist him in 
recapturing and reconfining these men in their cells.   In the company of with 
some other gentlemen, Mr. Gordon returned to the jail and went up stairs.  When 
he opened the door the prisoners, Wm.  Meeks and Bud Turbyville, had returned 
to their cells---Meeks’ door partly closed, and Turbyville’s standing wide 
open.  Mr. Gordon entered first, pistol in hand, followed by several, and 
Turbyville upon seeing him said:  “We are all in our cages.”
   At first Meeks denied having any key, but owned that he opened the cage-
doors.  A search was made, and in Meek’s cell, a key, made of bone, together 
with a buck-bale and old case knife, broken in two, were found.  When these 
were found Meeks owned that he unlocked his door with the bone and bucket-bale, 
and then went and opened Turbyville’s door.  He denies making the key, and lay 
it on Ned Larkin, colored.  Ned says he did not do it.  The general opinion is 
that Meeks made it.  
   From the three Negro prisoners, Ned Larkin, Rick Pullen and Eli Adams, Mr. 
Gordon learned that the program was to kill him, and that Meeks had a piece of 
bed-slat, about 3 feet long and four inches wide, standing on one side of the 
door, and that Turbyville had an old case knife, broken with a sharp-point 
standing on the other side, awaiting his debut.
   We have no doubt had Mr. Gordon entered alone, they would have killed him 
and effected their escape.  The jailor deserves great credit for his promptness 
in this matter.  both these men, Meeks and Turbyville, are incarcerated for 
capital offences--Meeks is under sentence of death and Turbyville is bound over 
on a charge of manslaughter awaiting trial at August term of court.
   Mr. Gordon engaged Mr. A.G. West to make some chains, and these fellows are 
now fastened so as to preclude the possibility of escape. (The Constitution, 
Atlanta, GA, May 16, 1876)


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