Remembering the siege of Huntsville State Prison in 1974

AUSTIN, Texas — From the outside, the Texas State Prison in Huntsville is a stark, forbidding building. But behind those thick prison walls, 50 years ago, America was riveted by daily news coverage of one of the longest prison sieges in history.

It happened in the summer of 1974, when Fred Gomez Carrasco, who was serving a life sentence for attempted murder of a police officer, and two other prisoners took mostly civilians hostage in the prison library. They had smuggled their weapons in canned ham, while the ammunition was hidden in cans of peaches.

For nearly eleven days, Carrasco tried to negotiate with prison officials. His plan was to escape to freedom and flee to Cuba.

During the long ordeal, Carrasco threatened to kill the hostages if the officials did not comply with his demands.

Nearly eleven days after the ordeal began, Texas prison officials finally agreed to provide Carrasco and his fellow inmates with an armored truck and the opportunity to escape in exchange for the safe release of his hostages.

The prisoners had built a sort of Trojan horse out of two rolling tablets and padded it with books from the library. As the prisoners, who had handcuffed themselves to six of the hostages, walked down a ramp inside the rolling tablets to the supposed safety of the armored truck, they were met by fire hoses. Because a water pump had failed, the jet was not strong enough to knock the escapees down as hoped.

The prisoners began shooting at their hostages. The police officers returned fire. Carrasco, the prisoners and two female hostages died during the escape attempt.

Houston television journalist Cal Thomas wrote: “It is a tragedy that two hostages died. That all the others survived is a miracle.”