Fifty years ago it was a Sunday that fourteen inmates escaped from the then newly opened Milhaven Institution Maximum Security Prison.
The significance of the event also inspired the Tragically Hip hit song “38 Years Old”, released in 1990.
It was July 10, 1972, though—not 1973 in song, when 14 prisoners, not 12, cut a hole in the fence after an evening softball game.
The ensuing searches over the course of a few months still burn in the memories of many who still live in the area today.
Theresa Miller lived with her children at a farmhouse near Napani at the time, and when she saw her son walking home with a strange man a few days after escaping, she knew it meant trouble.
“He came to the door. I tried to grab the door by the sun porch and he pushed it a little bit and he said ‘I won’t hurt anyone, but I need something to eat, please,'” Miller said.
She later learns that the man standing at her door was Richard “Buddy” Smith, who had been convicted of seven counts of armed robbery.
She says he was hiding in the barn on his property before his son and his friend saw him.
After feeding him sandwiches and pies – as soon as he remembers – Miller turns away to call the police. She says he snatched the phone from her – and told officers she was ready to leave – and go she did, pie still at hand.
“When the police arrived they arrested him in our yard. My kids and I all say he was arrested in the yard. There were stories that he was put under house arrest and dropped his pie… when he found the handcuffs he gave a blow, threw it in the air and opened his mouth and grabbed it,” Miller laughed. remembered.
At the time, just 15 years old, local amateur historian Steven Silver remembers that time well.
“I was excited. I wanted to catch one of them so bad. I wanted dad to get me a .22 rifle and I could sit outside—he says no, he says no gun, nothing, he Said if you see one of these, you call me or you call the police,” Silver said.
That’s because it was serious business.
Some of the group of escapees were charged with murder, robbery, sabotage and entering, and most of them had multiple charges to their name.
“There was a sense of restlessness in any countryside, it was ‘Well, you hear some noise, could that be it? He said about the community at the time.
A sentiment echoed by Miller and his family.
“My kids were … were like … they didn’t like to go to bed at night, for fear that something would happen at night,” she said.
It took until November of that year to capture them all, the last of whom was Sreto Dzambas, who was captured and imprisoned in Yugoslavia.
Documentation says he fled there in 1976, and was never heard from again.
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