Mecklenburg Prison Escape: Manhunt, Recapture, and Executions

The Mecklenburg prison escape happened on the night of May 31, 1984, when six condemned inmates walked out of the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in Boydton, Virginia, using stolen guard uniforms, a fake bomb, and a prison van. It remains the largest death row breakout in American history.¹ All six were caught within 20 days. All six were eventually executed, the last in December 1996.

Who Escaped

The six men were all convicted murderers awaiting execution at what was then Virginia’s death row:

Linwood Briley, 30, sentenced to death in 1979 for the murder of Richmond disc jockey Johnny Gallaher. The Briley gang was linked to 11 killings in Richmond in the late 1970s.²
James Briley, 28, Linwood’s younger brother, convicted of the rape and murder of a pregnant woman and the murder of her five-year-old son.²
Earl Clanton Jr., 29, convicted of strangling a librarian.
Derick Peterson, 22, convicted of killing a supermarket worker.
Willie Leroy Jones, 26, convicted of robbing and killing an elderly couple.
Lem Tuggle, 32, convicted of killing a woman.³

Investigators identified the Briley brothers as the masterminds. Mecklenburg had opened in March 1977 and was considered escape-proof.⁴⁵

How They Got Out

The plan took months. The men hid homemade knives in cracks in their cell walls and painted over them. They listened in on guard conversations through the intercom system to learn shift changes, officer names, and daily routines.³

On the evening of May 31, during recreation, Earl Clanton Jr. slipped into a bathroom next to the control room and hid. Around 8:30 p.m., another inmate asked the officer running the control room to open the door so he could retrieve a book. The officer, believing the inmate to be well-behaved, opened it. Clanton came out. The inmates overpowered the guard and took the console that operated the building’s doors and locks.³⁶

Armed with shanks made from lawn equipment, the inmates put on stolen correctional officer uniforms and used the intercom to summon other staff into the building one by one. Over about 90 minutes they took 14 employees hostage, stripped them, bound them, and locked them in a cell.³

Around 10:30 p.m., they forced a hostage to radio an emergency call: there was a bomb on death row, and a prison van was needed to take it out. They loaded a television set onto a gurney, covered it with a blanket, and sprayed fire extinguishers at the fake device as they wheeled it through the building. Wearing riot gear and uniforms, they walked past unsuspecting staff, climbed into the van, and drove through the prison gates.⁷³

Jerry Davis, a records manager at the prison, later said: “They walked out; they did not break out. You have to remember that. It took human error for them to escape.”³

The Manhunt and Recaptures

The escape set off a national manhunt involving hundreds of officers. The six men split into three pairs. All were back in custody within 20 days.⁸

Clanton and Derick Peterson were caught first, on June 1, at a coin laundry in Warrenton, North Carolina, only hours after the breakout.⁸

Lem Tuggle and Willie Jones got much farther. On June 8, Tuggle was stopped at a roadblock in Vermont after robbing a gift shop. Jones was picked up the same day after calling his mother in Richmond, a call authorities traced to his location.⁸

The Briley brothers were the hardest to find. They fled to Philadelphia and hid near an uncle’s home. FBI agents captured them in a neighborhood garage on June 19. According to the Los Angeles Times, they were barbecuing chicken when they were taken in.³⁷

What the Investigation Found

Virginia prison officials concluded that guards had committed at least three major security violations that night.⁶³

Five correctional officers were fired. One of them, Coraleen Epps, had recently given birth and was taken hostage and tied up during the takeover. Epps said Clanton had protected her, telling her he would not let anyone hurt her. She was later given a polygraph, told she had failed, accused of being involved in the escape, and dismissed. She said the process left her feeling “worthless” and “unappreciated.”⁹

Officer Prince Thomas, who was held at blade-point by James Briley and Lem Tuggle and separately threatened by Linwood Briley with a lawnmower blade, kept his job and later retired from the Department of Corrections. In 2019 he said: “I have not slept the whole night since 1984.”⁹

Reforms and the Facility’s Later Years

The escape drove sweeping changes at Mecklenburg. Death row inmates were confined to their cells for most of each day, and evening recreation was eliminated. The number of officers authorized to handle keys was cut. Stairwells the inmates had used were blocked off, a new locked wall was added to the death row cellblocks, and guards were given the ability to lock themselves inside their stations. Security cameras were installed throughout the facility. New officers were hired, most senior officials on duty during the escape were transferred, and new procedures required incoming staff to be introduced to the full prison team.⁷³

The breakout was also the main impetus for the development of Virginia’s supermax prison system.⁴¹⁰

The Executions

All six men were put to death by the state of Virginia over the course of 12 years. Linwood Briley was the first, executed by electric chair on October 12, 1984, less than five months after the escape.¹¹¹²¹

Lem Tuggle’s case took longer. In June 1994, a judge overturned his original conviction and ordered the state to release or retry him.³ He was retried and sentenced to death again. In April 1996, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the sentence, and a Smyth County judge set his execution date.¹³ Tuggle was executed on December 12, 1996, the last of the Mecklenburg Six.¹

Virginia abolished the death penalty in March 2021, when Governor Ralph Northam signed repeal legislation into law. It was the first former Confederate state to do so.¹⁴

1
Guinness World Records. Largest Prison Breakout From Death Row
2
United Press International. The Briley Brothers Most Feared on Virginia’s Death Row
3
Los Angeles Times. Mecklenburg Escape Story
4
Southside Virginia Now. About Mecklenburg Correctional Center
5
The Christian Science Monitor. Dead Run Book Review
6
The Washington Post. VA Officials Cite Guards’ Errors in Prison Break
7
WRIC. 35 Years Later: Mecklenburg Six Prison Break and Its Lingering Impact on Virginia
8
The Washington Post. Prison Plugs Security Gaps After 1984 Death Row Escapes
9
WRIC. Mecklenburg 6 State of Fear: 35 Years Later, Corrections Officers Are Haunted by Death Row Breakout
10
Southside Virginia Now. Mecklenburg Correctional Center Shutdown
11
The New York Times. Organizer of Death Row Escape Is Executed in a Virginia Prison
12
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Virginia’s Execution History
13
The Washington Post. Execution Date Set for Figure in Death Row Escape
14
Death Penalty Information Center. Virginia – State Information