In this vintage photo 1993, Peabody Award-Winning Investigative Reporter Robert Riggs stands on a guard tower overlooking Texas Death Row.

Poking up behind him to the right of the large spotlight is the steeple of the prison, the chapel, where seven condemned prisoners made their daring break for freedom five years later. 

29-year Martin Gurule, a cold-blooded killer from Corpus Christi in South Texas, made it over the prison’s fence on a foggy Thanksgiving night under a hail of rifle fire from guard towers.

The last time condemned killers had broken out of prison in Texas was in 1934, when two members of the notorious Bonnie and Clyde gang made a daring escape.

Prison guards were killed by machine gunfire.

That set off a manhunt led by legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hammer that ended in the deadly ambush of Bonnie and Clyde.

Sixty-four years later, hundreds of officers scoured thousands of acres around the Ellis Prison Unit near Huntsville, Texas, looking for Martin Gurule.

Robert Riggs was there until the very end.

In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® Podcast, Riggs dusts off an old reporter’s notebook about this sensational escape from Texas Death Row.

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