Posted on 03/31/2005 1:33:41 PM PST by nickcarraway
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- While searching for the tunnel used during an infamous 1945 prison break, archaeologists found an intriguing potential clue: a nickel from that very year.
Could one of the 12 Eastern State Penitentiary inmates -- including notorious bank robber Willie Sutton -- have come up five cents short as they made their dash to freedom?
Upon closer examination, maybe not.
"It has wear on it, which says it has circulated and probably wasn't associated with the event itself," archaeologist Alex Bartlett said after inspecting the coin.
Workers came across the artifact about a foot below ground Wednesday, shortly before finding the 97-foot tunnel on their first day of digging.
The now-closed historic prison is sponsoring the $30,000 dig, along with an escape re-enactment set for Sunday, the 60th anniversary. Archaeologists are tracing the tunnel's path under the prison courtyard and into the cell of mastermind Clarence Klinedinst.
The public will be allowed into the cell where Klinedinst started the underground route, and where the convicts plugged in a string of lights to shine their way to freedom. Actors will play the roles of the escapees, springing from the hole where the tunnel rises up.
Klinedinst, a prison plaster worker who had access to plenty of tools, is believed to have done most of the work, along with cellmate William Russell, and covered up the entrance with a metal laundry basket nailed to the cell wall. Sutton at one point tried to take credit for the daring escape, but historians believe he simply heard about it through prison gossip and tagged along.
The tunnel, which took more than a year to dig, ran out of the cell, under the prison recreation area, and below a prison wall before popping up just past one of the prison's huge stone pillars.
Six of the convicts, including Sutton, were captured less than three hours after escaping, while the rest were captured after a citywide manhunt.
Workers on Wednesday found the ash that prison officials used to fill the tunnel after the escape. They also were searching for other artifacts such as a homemade ladder, and plan to use ground-penetrating radar to trace the tunnel's exact path through the prison courtyard.
Prison officials got the idea of tracing the escape path about a year ago, when some concrete on the ground of the prison's recreation area partially collapsed, said Sally Elk, executive director of the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site.
One mystery that has never been fully resolved is what the inmates did with all the excavated earth. Klinedinst likely flushed much of the excavated dirt down the toilet at first, then found a way to start putting it directly into a sewer, project manager Rebecca Yamin said.
"I rob banks because that's where the money is."
-Willie Sutton
ping
Unless I read this wrong, they haven't found the location and the nickel they found has been discounted as being of any help in the search. Yet we have a headline and the first part of the article saying exactly the opposite.
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