Sheriff Walter Fellers holding the escape “rope” attached to the Comal County Courthouse gutter on Jan. 1, 1963.

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

I recently found a note in Oscar Haas’s archive collection, “Zeitung, Thursday, July 6, 1899. Use story some time concerning a jailbreak.” He never published the story.

I felt like he was “speaking from the grave” and I should look into it.

The first purpose-built Comal County Jail was a log structure constructed at the location of the current Elks Lodge’s parking lot on South Seguin Street. It was used until 1854, when a new jail was built at what is now 509 W. Mill St.

The earliest reported jailbreak in the New Braunfels Zeitung was from the Mill Street jail in February 1859. The prisoner, William D. Harris, had committed a brutal murder in Seguin. Eight days prior to the escape, the sheriff heard unusual sounds from the cell. Opening the door, he discovered that Harris had broken free of his chains and that an attempt had been made to break through the cell wall, from both the inside and the outside, with a crowbar and a file. Two men were put on constant guard outside the building. At 11 p.m. on the night of the breakout, about 15 men on horseback descended on the jail and broke the boards and one lock of the two oak doors. The chain and cuffs attached to prisoner Harris were broken off with a heavy hammer.

Don’t know if Harris was ever caught. That’s research for another time.

In 1866, a suspected horse thief and another prisoner attempted an escape by creating a hole in the cell wall. Fortunately, the sheriff arrived before the hole was big enough for the escapees. The two men were put in irons.

An extremely inventive jailbreak was attempted in July of 1874. Two prisoners used the bacon they had been given for supper to grease and set fire to the heavy oak planks of the door that separated their cells. One of the escapees got through and began working to make a hole in the outer jail wall. The second man began coughing from the smoke and got stuck in the burned opening. Prisoner One soon went back and pulled his comrade through. The process scraped quite a lot of skin from the man’s torso; he refused to help make the second hole in the outer wall. Daylight brought the sheriff and ended their creative jailbreak.

Eventually, the Mill Street jail proved inadequate both in size and reliability. In 1879, a new two-story cut-limestone jail was erected behind the 1860 Comal County Courthouse (located where the Chase Bank building is on Main Plaza). This jail was built with an iron roof and doors and cost the county about $10,000; it could hold 20-30 prisoners.

Crime must have been on the rise.

In a humorous, Andy Griffith-like moment, a prisoner escaped from the brand-new jail by simply walking out of his unlocked cell and through an unguarded front door. He was caught later across the bridge in Comaltown. The editors of the newspaper printed the question, “Why don’t we close the doors?”.

The year 1866 saw another jailbreak. James Alexander, incarcerated for the involuntary manslaughter of Walter Krause, simply disappeared from the jail. On the morning of the escape, he was heard playing his flute. When lunch was brought in to him, he was gone. The sheriff, who was in Seguin at the time of the jailbreak, located Alexander in San Antonio the next day. The newspaper never shared how the jailbreak was accomplished.

Now the 1899 story that motivated me to check out this subject. The Neu Braunfels Zeitung article is quite tongue-in-cheek.

Three prisoners escaped from “our break-in and escape-proof county prison” in the wee hours of the morning when the sheriff was away. The men had not been sentenced so were not locked in a cell. Having freedom to move in the corridor between the cells and the prison wall, they managed to fashion an axe with a piece of iron attached to a broken broom handle. With this implement, and the use of a water hose used to clean the cells, the three “very cleverly” used the water hose to soften the mortar and then scrape it away so that the stones of the wall could be pulled in or pushed out without much effort. The last paragraph is priceless:

“These guys really deserve recognition for their job. They probably didn’t want the free room and board from the County any longer… But rumor has it that the intelligent escapees, after celebrating July 4th outdoors, will want free quarters and will decide to break into the prison again. However, all precautionary measures have been taken to prevent this…”

I do love a journalist with a wicked sense of humor.

The escape route led through a steel trapdoor bolted and chained to the concrete ceiling.

The 1879 limestone jail was replaced by an addition to the Comal County Court­house in 1931, although it wasn’t torn down until 1958. I found several references to jail­breaks from this newest jail. A rather spec­tac­ular one occurred in 1963. Two prisoners joined forces and escaped via a large steel trapdoor to the third-floor roof. The trap­door was chained to a steel ladder which was bolted to the concrete ceiling of the jail. The two prisoners worked the large steel bolts out of the concrete enough to slide the ladder and trapdoor over to give them space to escape. From the roof, they used an angled corner of the court­house to climb down the rock face to the roof of the first floor. There, they connected a rope made from two blankets and a jacket to the downspout of the gutter. Once on the ground they each went their own way. The other jail inmates said the breakout occurred around 9:45 p.m. The jail­break was not discovered until morning at 8:30 a.m. by a passer­by who saw the blankets fluttering on the building and informed the jailer. The alarm was sounded and by 9 a.m., one of the fugitives was rearrested at his home in Comaltown. The other, who had served time for murder, had been waiting to be trans­ferred to Mexico by immigrat­ion authorities. It is thought he may have made his way home on his own.

Thanks for the nudge, Mr. Haas. It really did need to be used in a story.

(“Around the Sophienburg” is published every other weekend in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.)