Escape
Linwood and J.B. Briley were the ringleaders in the six inmate escape from Virginia's death row at Mecklenburg Correctional Center on May 31, 1984. During the early moments of the escape, in which a coordinated effort resulted in inmates taking over the death row unit, both Brileys expressed strong interest in killing the officers that they had taken hostage. They went so far as to douse captive officers in lighter fluid and were prepared to toss in a lit match to complete the action.
Willie Lloyd Turner, another death row inmate, stepped in the way of James Briley and forbade him from doing so. Meanwhile, cop killer Wilbert Lee Evans prevented Linwood Briley from raping a female nurse who had been taken hostage while en route to delivering medication to inmates in the unit.
The group's initial plan was to escape into Canada. They almost succeeded, making it as far as Vermont before being captured at gunpoint by Vermont state troopers. The group was held at Marble Valley Correctional Facility in Rutland, pending their extradition back to Virginia. These events were featured on I.D. Channel in Escape from Death Row.
Splitting off from their two remaining free escapees at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Brileys went to live with their uncle in the north of the city. They were captured on June 19 by a heavily armed group of FBI agents and police. Returned to Richmond, Virginia, few sought to plead for their lives to be spared.
Read more about this topic: Briley Brothers
Famous quotes containing the word escape:
“no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,
or thought:
no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:
terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities
of escape open: no route shut,”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)
“A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
“When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.”
—Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870)