Inmates awaiting trial bust out of courthouse, kill six, including reverend & kids
It was all so random, tragic cases of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The time was a 10-hour period that started a little before 4 on the afternoon of Oct. 1, 1973. The place for three of the six victims was their home in Lexington, Ky. For the others, it was a motel in Falmouth, in the northern part of the state.
Lexington’s Sayre school classes were about to end for the day, but many parents waiting to pick up their children were unaware of the drama unfolding across the street at the Lexington Federal Building.
Three men had escaped from the third-floor cellblock for prisoners awaiting trial.
Somehow, someone had sawed through a window bar, allowing the men to leap to freedom from a first-floor roof.
To this day, it’s a mystery exactly how an inmate ended up in possession of a hacksaw blade, said librarian Wayne Johnson in a Lexington Public Library “Tales From the Kentucky Room” podcast on the case.
The escapees were among a group of 18 inmates who had been moved on foot from local jails to the federal building. Guards frisked them as they left the jail, but marshals neglected to do so as they entered the holdover cell. A saw somehow got into an inmate’s hands in that time.
One escapee broke his leg when he hit the ground and was quickly snatched by police. The others—Wilmer E. Scott, 35, and William Sloan, 24—bounced down like cats and ran.
Geraldine Ewalt, 42, was waiting for her daughter in her car when the two men yanked open the front door and jumped in. With Sloan behind the wheel, Scott forced Ewalt to give directions to her home, where her son and another daughter were waiting.
The men tied them up, ransacked the house, then fled in Ewalt’s car. Ewalt and her children were not harmed.
The family at their next stop was not so lucky. It was the home of the Rev. John Barnes, 47; his wife, Mary Agnes, 45, and their two children, Francine, 17, and Johnny, 14. The parents were pillars of the community, and the children were well-liked and good students. Francine was hoping to study journalism in college. Johnny was on the intramural football team.
Only Francine was home when the men stormed in through an unlocked door. Her mother was away at a church convention in Louisville, Ky. Her father was waiting for Johnny’s football practice to end so he could drive his son home.
When they arrived, Barnes and his son were greeted by a pair of dangerous felons with loaded weapons.
Hours later, when the fugitives took off again in Barnes’ car, the reverend and his children were dead. Francine had also been raped. The killers had piled their corpses up in the bathroom.
After midnight, Scott and Sloan resurfaced 80 miles north at a motel near Falmouth. After clearing out the cash drawer, they forced the night clerk, Elva Harper, 64, to open the doors to two guest rooms.
In the first room, they shot David Stidham, 32, and Wendell McKenzie, 27, leaving both with minor wounds.
In the second room, they killed brothers David and Monroe Sizemore, ages 26 and 35. All four men were in Falmouth working on a construction project.
Scott and Sloan also murdered Harper before they took off. Then they stole the Sizemore brothers’ car and roared off into the night.
Around 2 a.m., Sgt. Jack Westwood noticed a speeder heading north. Luckily, as he started to pursue the car, he heard an alert about the motel murders.
Westwood pulled the speeding car over but did not approach. Instead, he held his gun on the driver and passenger at a distance, shielded by the door of his police car. It was a wise move.
Scott later admitted they had planned to blow the officer away, but Westwood stayed out of range. “He didn’t play fair,” Scott groused.
On the way to jail, they both confessed to the motel shootings. Then Scott chimed in. “You should have shot me when you had the chance because today I shot a man, woman and child in Lexington,” he said. Until that moment, no one knew about the Barnes bloodbath.
At 4 a.m., Lexington police, following directions offered by Scott, entered the Barnes home and found a horrific scene of carnage.
Scott, who had a long record of violence, was quickly brought to trial for an earlier crime—a 1972 kidnapping and rape — and received a life sentence.
During that trial, Scott told the court, “If I am back on the street, no matter how many doctors I’ve seen, I’ll do it again. If somebody makes a mistake, I’ll escape and kill somebody again, and that’s the truth.”
It took a jury just minutes to find him guilty and send him to jail for life. He probably would have been sentenced to death, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling suspended the death penalty in 1972.
Scott never came to trial for the 1973 rampage. In February 1974, he set the mattress in his cell on fire. Two days later, he died of third-degree burns covering 100% of his body.
At Sloan’s trial in April 1974, a jury found him guilty of 11 crimes committed during those deadly 10 hours. He was sentenced to life with no possibility of parole. Nearly half a century later, he is still incarcerated.
Before his leap to freedom, Sloan was awaiting trial for auto theft. This crime generally carries a sentence of less than a decade.
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