The Great McNeils Island Prison Break
Two convicts who vanished while building jetties for the government spark a frantic, bloodhound-led manhunt across the Puget Sound.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Federal officers, under the leadership of Chief Deputy F. L. Crosby, left Tacoma this afternoon for McNeils Island to aid in the search for two convicts, W. Meinberg and S. Chester, who escaped from the penitentiary yesterday afternoon. The two men were working on the island, building jetties for the government, when they seized a moment while guards' backs were turned to row to a boat nearby. They made their escape without attracting attention. A party was organized and, after tracking them to Devil’s Island, bloodhounds were brought in to follow them into the woods. The surrounding country is on high alert as the search intensifies to recapture the men, both of whom were previously convicted in Nome, Alaska.
“The bloodhounds kept at the prison were taken to the point where the boat was abandoned, and placed on the track of the men.”
McNeils Island served as a federal penitentiary for decades, and its history is deeply intertwined with the isolation of the Puget Sound. While the prison has since closed and the island returned to more public use, the tension between the island's geographic isolation and the reach of local law enforcement remains a defining feature of the area's history.
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