Edward F. Regenhardt built the combination fire/police headquarters for Cape Girardeau in 1909 at the northeast corner of Independence and Frederick streets. Today, it houses the recently renovated River Heritage Museum.

In June curator Charlotte Slinkard and her husband, Bill, were kind enough to give me an exclusive tour of the building. The tour was thorough -- upstairs and basement, addition after addition.

I took the tour, thinking I might find some evidence of how the building's interior was configured when it opened June 9, 1909, specifically the layout of the second-floor jail. But, aside from a fire pole that once allowed firefighters to swiftly descend from the second-story sleeping quarters to the first floor, the only remnant I could see of the original building was a dingy cell in the basement. Newspaper clippings frequently refer to a "drunk tank" in the basement. They also mention that one of the chiefs kept a log of those housed in the basement cell, either sleeping off a binge or providing brief shelter for the homeless.

The basement cell, June 2022. (Sharon Sanders ~ Southeast Missourian)

What sparked my interest in the museum was my research into escapes from the city jail from its opening in 1909 until the pokey was moved in 1959 to the old Grace Methodist Church a block away.

Here are the escapes I found in the files of the Southeast Missourian:

Sept. 16, 1910: Two prisoners managed to saw their way to liberty during the night. One of those, a federal prisoner, made his escape in spite of his wooden leg.

April 15, 1921: Ralph Brashear, who was being held in connection with the murder of Policeman Willis Martin and for a number of robberies, escaped at 3:20 a.m. by sawing off the bolt that held the lower hinge on the door leading into the cage, working the bolt out with his fingers, pushing the door out at the bottom and squeezing through the opening. He then made his way to the front window in the southeast corner of the main corridor, where he sawed off two of the bars over the window. He bent them back and climbed through, using a blanket as a rope to slide to the ground. (He was recaptured in July 1921.)

Sept. 20, 1925: A burglary suspect secured his freedom by walking out of an unlocked jail cell.

Jan. 2, 1926: A 21-year-old man, arrested the same day on check forgery charges, escaped during the night. Taking advantage of the liberties allowed "trusty" prisoners, the man opened a door to the "bullpen" before being locked in his cell for the night. He walked down the stairs and escaped through the jail's side door. (He was captured several days later in Cairo, Illinois.)

Feb. 22, 1926: Frank Casey escaped by digging a hole through the brick wall on the south side of the building, under a second-story window. He jumped to the pediment over the front entrance and from there to the ground. (He was captured in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, in August 1926.)

Oct. 31, 1926: A Belleville, Illinois, bootlegger, who was serving a term in the city jail for transporting whiskey. When his escape was discovered the next morning, the locks on the doors of his cell and to the "bullpen" were intact. There was no evidence that he had escaped through the bars over the second-floor window or cut his way through the brick wall.

June 23, 1929: One of three people being held in connection with the shooting of police officer Robert Wilson in Cape Girardeau a week earlier escaped in the evening. Immediately after the getaway was discovered, a posse composed of the entire city police force and county officers, led by police chief H.F. Wickham and Sheriff Nat M. Snider, scoured the city and surrounding country to no avail.

Oct. 15, 1930: A 25-year-old robber and four-time convict made a daring escape, sawing two bars over a window of the cell room on the second floor of the jail and sliding to freedom by means of an improvised rope made from blankets. Despite an intense manhunt throughout Southeast Missouri, he was not recaptured.

Jan. 29, 1932: An hour after sawing away two bars over a second-floor window and escaping, police captured the 30-year-old fugitive, returning him to the lockup. He was making his escape in a taxicab, when he was recaptured on South Sprigg Street by patrolman Morris Huckstep in front of the Blue Hole Garden barbecue stand.

Of all these jailbreaks, the one I find most interesting is that of Frank Casey in 1926. According to later newspaper articles, Casey's claim to fame was that he was the first man to establish a roadhouse in Cape Girardeau County. It was located on "the Bend Road" north of Cape Girardeau. Like most roadhouses of that Prohibition Era, Casey's did not have a good reputation.

Published Feb. 22, 1926, in the Southeast Missourian:

Opening a hole (Measuring 18 inches, according to the Cape County Post newspaper. - Sharon) in the wall of the city jail here late Sunday night or early this morning, Frank Casey, lone prisoner in the bastille, made his escape through the aperture. Cape Girardeau police had no information this afternoon about the whereabouts of the escaped man.

Casey, charged with various offenses including theft, was arrested on a state warrant Saturday and lodged in the Cape Girardeau city jail awaiting action of state authorities.

The prisoner, who is owner of a roadhouse on the Bend Road, according to officials at police headquarters, had been left in the "bullpen" alone, he being the only person held at the time.

Police Capt. H.F. Wickham, who has charge of the station at night, left headquarters about midnight to eat a lunch at a nearby restaurant and to drive over town to see that no unusual trouble was going on. When he returned, being gone less than an hour, he learned that Casey had gained his liberty.

Casey had removed four layers of brick from the heavy wall beneath a window on the second floor of the building facing Independence Street, made the aperture wide enough to allow his body to pass through and crawled outside. From the stone above the main entrance of the building he probably leaped to the ground. It is not known what sort of a tool he had with which to work.

Frank Casey made a mighty leap from the top of the pediment over the front doors of the police/fire headquarters to the sidewalk below in 1926, making his escape. (Sharon Sanders ~ Southeast Missourian)

This was not the Illinois native's first brush with the law. In 1922 at the age of 33, Casey, then a resident of Anna, Illinois, was fined $200 and sentenced to 90 days in the Vermillion County Jail at Danville, Illinois, by Federal Judge George W. English, having pleaded guilty to illicit possession and sale of liquor. In an interesting detail, Casey asked English if he could serve his time at the jail in Cairo, Illinois, which would have been closer to his family. However, English refused saying, "I will not send a man to the Cairo jail because I do not consider it a fit institution for human habitation. Prisoners sentenced to longer terms in that jail often take malaria and become sick otherwise and then pleas of clemency are made because of this poor health. I will not be a party to the inhumanity of confining a prisoner in an unhealthy place."

On Aug. 18, 1926, the fugitive was arrested at Ash Hill near Poplar Bluff, Missouri, on charges of jail breaking (from Cape Girardeau), burglary, larceny and safe blowing, the additional charges stemming from burglaries of the Missouri River and Bonne Terre (Missouri) Railway station; the Frisco rail station at Festus, Missouri; the Missouri Pacific station at Pevely, Missouri, and three "oil filling stations" at Festus. Those arrests came after the testimonies of several accomplices.

Casey was returned to Cape Girardeau County in November 1926, but this time was housed in the county jail at Jackson. Book Z of the Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court Record -- supplied by director Marybeth Niederkorn of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center -- indicates Casey pleaded guilty to jail break and was sentenced to two years in the Missouri State Penitentiary on Jan. 3, 1927. The sentence was to run to Oct. 2, 1928, but he was released Dec. 2, 1927, for good behavior.

That good behavior apparently didn't follow Casey on the outside, as he was again arrested during a raid at a roadhouse near Benton, Missouri, in March 1928. This time he was accused of being one of three bandits who robbed the Bank of Qulin, Missouri. However, those charges were dropped in May by the prosecuting attorney for lack of evidence.

In August of that year, Casey was again picked up in Poplar Bluff, along with another man and a woman, for violation of federal narcotic laws. It was alleged they operated a drug ring, selling cocaine and morphine from a room at the Marion Hotel. Casey again pleaded guilty in federal court at Cape Girardeau to the sale of narcotics. He was sentenced to four years and six months in Leavenworth Penitentiary.

River Heritage Museum, June 2022. (Sharon Sanders ~ Southeast Missourian)

Casey's name resurfaced again in the Southeast Missourian on Jan. 3, 1933, when a wild shootout occurred in a second-floor flat at 105a Water St. Cape Girardeau police shot and killed two alleged burglars in the flat belonging to Casey. The latter was arrested, unharmed, along with a man named Edward McBee. McBee, probably in an effort to lighten his own charges, fingered Casey as being a member of the gang of yeggs that had been operating in Illinois and Missouri. Casey's trial was moved from New Madrid, Missouri, on a change of venue to Caruthersville, Missouri. He was charged with burglary and larceny in connection with the burglary of the Frisco Inn, a cafe or roadhouse near Morehouse, Missouri. In April 1933 he was given a sentence of five years.

However, by April 1936 he was back in Cape Girardeau and back in trouble. On the night of April 29, 1936, Casey, brothers Clarence "Rusty" Benson and Ruel "Happy" Benson, and sisters Evelyn Jackson and Edna Parker were arrested for robbery. The Southeast Missourian described the crime: "Three men and two women were in jail today, facing robbery charges, in the wake of an investigation of a reported holdup Wednesday night on South Main Street of Henly K. Gentry, 47, of St. Paul, Minnesota, a man with but one leg. Gentry was on crutches at the time two men grabbed him, threw him on his back and went through his pockets, he told police... He was robbed of $17 and a pocket watch... "

Once again, Casey pleaded guilty and was sentenced in May 1936 to five years in prison.

Frank Casey passed away March 10, 1939, at the Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City from pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 49. The body was returned to Cape Girardeau, where it rests in an unmarked grave in Fairmount Cemetery.

I hardly ever comment on these-tidbits---even though I read each and every-one! (No, I ain't THAT-old. I mean, some of these are from before my Dad & Mom were being "considered", lol!)

But I gotta acknowledge the effort you put-forth in perhaps literally-digging these out.

Oh, if only I had half the brain-moxy it takes you to search-out these old archives, but instead, I'll say Thank You, for yours...!

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