Texas Town Recalls Jailbreak, Dispatcher Kidnapping

There are still some residents of Big Sandy (Tex.) who remember what happened 25 years ago—Upshur County dispatcher Rosalie Williams was kidnapped by a high-risk prisoner who escaped from his cell, and held hostage for a day until she escaped from a railroad boxcar. The 25th anniversary of the incident was Sunday, but was not really observed by Williams, whose last name is now Turner. “When people are going through a traumatic experience, they want to forget about it,” Williams-Turner told a reporter for the Longview News-Journal newspaper. On July 10, 1986 prisoner Jerry McFadden was being held on murder charges in the county jail, which was adjacent to the dispatching area where Williams-Turner worked. When a deputy opened his cell door, McFadden struck him with a piece of metal ripped from the window frame. McFadden had Williams-Turner and a co-worker drag the deputy into a cell. He then locked up the deputy and the co-worker, but took Williams-Turner hostage. He unlocked the deputy’s gun from a drawer and forced Williams-Turner outside to her car and the pair drove off. They drove out of town, but ran into a tree when they heard a helicopter overhead. They hid in a boxcar during the day in triple-digit heat until Williams-Turner was nearly unconscious. Finally, when McFadden went to find water, Williams-Turner struggled to her feet and ran to a nearby house for safety. Read more details about the incident and Williams-Turner resolve to survive here.