Prison escape

When residents of Beaufort County opened their newspapers in August 1978, they were greeted by a headline that must have seemed almost impossible to believe.

A prisoner had escaped from the Beaufort County Jail.

That alone was newsworthy. What nobody knew at the time was that the escape was only the beginning of a story that would stretch from a small country store in Pritchardville to the rooftops of New York City, involve multiple manhunts, a hacksaw blade hidden inside a Bible, and even a connection to the Murdaugh family long before the name became known nationwide.

Like many of the best stories buried in old Lowcountry newspapers, it started in a place that no longer exists.

The Pritchardville Country Store was once a familiar sight along the road between Bluffton and Hardeeville. Long before the subdivisions, shopping centers and endless traffic of today, Pritchardville was little more than a crossroads community. The country store was where people bought groceries, picked up supplies and exchanged the latest local news. It was the sort of place where a stranger would be noticed and where everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business.

In late 1977, that quiet routine was shattered when armed men reportedly entered the store and robbed it. The crime quickly became a topic of conversation throughout the area. Before long, authorities arrested a Savannah man, whom we’ll call Erick Wilson, and charged him in connection with the robbery.

With Wilson locked away in the Beaufort County Jail awaiting trial, most people assumed the story was nearing its end.

Instead, it was about to become far more interesting.

According to newspaper reports, Wilson somehow obtained a hacksaw blade while being held in jail. Investigators would later discover that the blade had reportedly been concealed inside a Bible. Exactly how it made its way into the jail remains one of the more intriguing details of the story.
What is known is that Wilson put the blade to work.

Day after day, while jailers went about their normal routines, he slowly cut through the steel bars of the jail bullpen. The work required patience. It required secrecy. Most of all, it required time. Yet somehow, he managed to complete the task without anyone realizing what was happening.

Then came the early morning hours of Aug. 20, 1978.

Sometime before dawn, Wilson squeezed through the opening he had cut into the bars and began making his escape. Getting out of the cell area was only the first obstacle. He still had to cross the jail grounds, make his way through the exercise yard and climb two barbed-wire fences.

Standing between him and freedom were three German shepherd guard dogs.

How he managed to avoid them remains unclear. Newspaper accounts offered few details, and perhaps no one ever truly knew. What is certain is that when deputies conducted their count later that morning, Wilson was gone. The realization set off immediate alarm.

Sheriff Morgan McCutcheon and his deputies launched a search. Law enforcement agencies throughout South Carolina and Georgia were alerted. Leads were investigated. Roadways were watched. Tips were followed.

Nothing. Days passed with no sign of the fugitive. Then weeks. Then months.

For residents around Bluffton, Beaufort and Hardeeville, the story became one of those mysteries that seemed to grow larger with every passing week. People discussed it at restaurants, barber shops, church gatherings and around kitchen tables. Everyone had a theory. Some believed Wilson had fled the state within hours of escaping. Others were convinced he was hiding much closer to home.

Meanwhile, newspaper reporters kept checking in with authorities, only to receive the same answer.
They still didn’t know where he was.

As one month turned into the next, the escape became less of a crime story and more of a legend. The fact that a man had managed to break out of the Beaufort County Jail and simply disappear seemed almost unbelievable.

Then, more than a year after the escape, authorities finally got their answer.

Wilson had not remained in South Carolina, nor had he remained in Georgia.

In fact, he had made his way all the way to Brooklyn, New York.

For many local readers, that revelation alone would have been shocking enough. Yet the story was about to take another unexpected turn.

When federal agents attempted to arrest Wilson in Brooklyn, newspaper reports stated that he fled across the rooftops of city buildings in an effort to escape capture. Imagine reading that in Beaufort County in 1979. The man who had escaped from a local jail cell was now running across New York rooftops like something out of a movie.

Eventually, authorities caught him and prepared to return him to South Carolina. At long last, it appeared the story was finally over.

It wasn’t.

After being returned to custody, Wilson was eventually taken to a Columbia hospital for medical treatment. According to newspaper accounts, he reportedly faked an illness and managed to escape once again.

A second escape.

By this point, one can only imagine the frustration felt by the officers responsible for keeping track of him. Every time authorities seemed to have the situation under control, Wilson found another opportunity to disappear.

Unlike the first escape, however, this chapter did not last nearly as long. Authorities eventually recaptured him and returned him to prison, where the long-running saga finally came to an end.
Eventually, Wilson’s luck ran out for good.

After his second escape and recapture, a judge sentenced him to two years in prison for the escapes that had kept law enforcement officers chasing him across multiple states and fascinated newspaper readers throughout South Carolina. It was a fitting end to a saga that had begun with a robbery at a small country store in Pritchardville and somehow expanded into one of the most unusual criminal stories Beaufort County had ever seen.

One interesting footnote to the story involves a name many readers will recognize today. During the effort to extradite Wilson from New York back to South Carolina, paperwork passed through the office of Solicitor Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh. Decades before the Murdaugh name would dominate national headlines, it was simply another familiar name appearing in the pages of Lowcountry newspapers.

Today, the Pritchardville Country Store is gone. The quiet crossroads community that surrounded it has largely disappeared beneath neighborhoods, shopping centers and busy roads. Thousands of people pass through the area every day without realizing that one of Beaufort County’s strangest stories began there.

Yet hidden away in old newspaper archives is the tale of a robbery suspect who reportedly hid a hacksaw blade inside a Bible, cut his way through steel bars, slipped past guard dogs, vanished for more than a year, resurfaced in New York City, led authorities on a rooftop chase through Brooklyn, escaped custody a second time and somehow managed to stay one step ahead of the law longer than anyone thought possible.

When we look back at the history of Bluffton and the surrounding communities, we often focus on the people who built churches, ran stores, harvested oysters or helped shape the Lowcountry we know today. But every once in a while, an old newspaper reveals a different kind of story, one so unbelievable that it sounds more like fiction than fact.

This is one of those stories, and it all started at the Pritchardville Country Store.

Paul Tollefson is the Director of Tennis at the Hampton Hall Club. After moving from Hilton Head to Bluffton he became enthralled with the history of the town and the people and cultures that call it home. He has found a passion in writing and enjoys being able to share the stories and pictures of long-time locals. He is the co-creator of the Facebook page “Bluffton Then and Now.”