Tour of Brushy Mountain Prison

[Ronnie]

Sunday I toured the Brushy Mountain Prison that closed in 2006. The private tour was arranged by my local car club. About 40 of us attended. We were the first group who were allowed to tour the prison since it's closing. The prison is in a bad state of repair.

 

This prison is famous for being the home of James Earl Ray for many years. Ray was incarcerated at Brushy Mountain after being convicted of assassinating Rev. Martin Luther King in 1968. A guard who worked at the prison for 32 years was our tour guide. He told us that James Earl Ray was stabbed 14 times while he was in Brushy Mountain and survived.

 

As we wandered through the prison the guard recounted story after story of how prisoners would stab and kill each other and he pointed to the spots were it occurred. In the third photo you can see the guard (in black) telling us that the building behind him (with no windows) was solitary confinement. Prisoners were held there for weeks and months at at time for punishment. The only thing they were allowed to have in their cell was their underwear, a pillow, and one blanket. As he put it, "in that building all they got was three hots and a cot". This tour really hit home for me how brutal prison life can be...

 

 

 

 

[DAVES89]

That's interesting Ronnie. Question needing clarity, was James Earl Ray attacked 14 times and stabbed or attacked once and stabbed 14 times?

I believe he also escaped from there buit didn't get far. Is that correct?

[Ronnie]

James Earl Ray was attacked more than once but he was stabbed 14 times in one attack. The stabbing occurred in the building in the photo below. It was last used as a Chapel for the inmates. When Ray was stabbed it was the inmates law library where he spent as much time as possible trying to get an appeal and to prove his innocence.

 

I asked the guard how Ray was able to live through an attack like that. He said the "shank" the attacker used was a small one made of soft metal. That allowed the tip of the blade to bend when it hit a bone causing it to be harder to penetrate Ray's body. Even though Ray almost died from the amount of blood he lost, he would have died on the spot if the blade had penetrated deeper.

 

Ray attempted an escape several times. He was successful in getting over the wall once and was loose in the mountains behind the prison for about two days. The guard said it was a big deal according to the news reports but he said the guards really didn't consider it an escape unless a prisoner got out of the mountains behind the prison. He said those steep mountains are filled with rattlesnakes and copperheads. They could have caught him sooner but even the guards with their blood hounds had to move slow and carefully in those rugged mountains. Ray and a few other inmates were able to scale the wall with a makeshift ladder made from scrap pieces of pipe one of the inmates working as a plumber had saved. In the second photo you can see where they escaped. It was where the wall and the rock bluff come together.

 

 

 

[rmoduser]

Interesting story. Thank you for sharing this.

[DAVES89]

I read up a bit on this prison on Wikipedia and they told a story about a shooting of two correctional guards [one died] that happened in Kingston, Tn. The male convict was held in Brushy Mountain Prison.

[Ronnie]

I have an interesting story about that...

 

The correctional officer that was killed was known around here as Cotton Morgan. He was friends with the guard that showed us around the prison and he was the brother-in-law of one of Kat's best friends.  We talked with the guard (our tour guide) about the incident while we were inside the prison.

 

I don't know how the prisoner's wife got the gun to the courthouse but she did and the officer was killed. They fled in what was described at the time as a WHITE SUV.

 

It just happened that about the same time Kat and I left for North Carolina to see our daughter not knowing what had just taken place at the courthouse in Kingston. As we got on the interstate and headed east we could see a lot of State police cars on the opposite side of the interstate with blue lights flashing headed west and getting off at the Kingston exit. (Knoxville is the headquarters for them) We though it was unusual to see so many State police in Kingston. 

 

When we got a couple of miles up the interstate we heard a helicopter overhead. Kat said she thought it was following us. When we hit a long straightaway that had no overpasses the helicopter passed us up and then turned around and came back toward us really low and slow. We knew something wasn't right so we slowed down. The helicopter came close enough that we could see that Tennessee Highway Patrol was written on the door. We could also see the people in it and we think they were looking in our windshield to see who was in our WHITE SUV. The prisoner who escaped was black so I guess they decided I wasn't the person they were looking for and they quickly moved on up the road. That was a day I will never forget.

[Frogware]

I had a similar situation

 

When I was about 19 (A long time ago) Me and my girlfriend were on our way to see her Grandparents. It was around 8pm and the sun had just gone down and the radio was playing. Just as we turned into the neighborhood off the main road only 6 houses away from her grandparents an announcement came over the radio that a violent robbery had taken place and the man was armed and dangerous driving a white car; and it had taken place in the same area. All of a sudden we found ourselves surrounded by police cars with their guns pointing at us shouting on the bullhorn to shut the car off and put our hands up where they could see them and don't move. We both were scared out of our minds, my girl was asking me what I did wrong and we had no idea why or what was going on. We didn't think about the radio announcement, but after about 5minutes of holding our hands up an officer approached cautiously with his gun on me and asked for our licenses and registration the whole time with a gun pointing at me and another officer on the other side of the car pointing a gun at my girl. They then slowly backed off and after about another 5 minutes they put their guns away and came back to us and said "sorry about this but your car fit the description of a crime that happened just recently, you are free to go thank you for your time again sorry". We then realized what had happened and we were still in shock but drove the rest of the way to her grandparents house. That story was quite the joke in the family for years because they all could see what was going on from their house, not sure if they ever caught the guy that really did it but we were very glad that we didn't have it any worse than what we had.

[Teresa]

i lived in Petros Tennessee at one time. Brushy Mountain employed a few of my close friends