EDMOND, Okla. (AP) — Fearing failure and pain, a convicted murderer reneged on a suicide pact with a fellow inmate and ended up going back to prison alone, eight days after the men escaped from an Oklahoma prison by hiding in a mail cart.
The state's second major prison break this year ended late Saturday with William Davis dead of a gunshot wound to the head, police said. Within half an hour, Douglas Gray walked out and surrendered.
"He went from wanting to kill himself to not wanting to get hurt," Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel said.
Two hostages, Mildred and Gilbert Tuepker, had been let go without harm after being held hostage in their own home while the two inmates bathed, ate pizza and watched a movie during a lengthy standoff with police, authorities said.
Police had been hunting for the convicted murderers since March 16, when the men allegedly hid in a mail cart that was being hauled by truck to a post office from the Mack Alford Correctional Center. The pair allegedly used a knife to overpower the prison worker driving the truck, and later stole and abandoned two other vehicles, one of which contained firearms.
On Saturday, the escapees barged into the elderly couple's home, according to the Tuepkers, who both have heart conditions.
Mildred Tuepker, 72, was on the phone with a daughter in Delaware.
"Call the police," she said, then hung up the phone as her daughter heard a man say "We're running from the police. Get inside."
The daughter called a sister in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, who called local police.
More than 100 police were at the Tuepker home within minutes, evacuating neighboring houses and attempting to negotiate with the fugitives by telephone.
During the talks police indulged the inmates' requests for pizza, phone calls to relatives and enough time to finish watching a movie, "The Net," starring Sandra Bullock.
"We were kind of speechless," Mildred Tuepker said Sunday. "We didn't do any screaming. We tried to stay calm."
The Tuepkers said Davis and Gray had a pact to kill themselves rather than return to prison, and that after they released Mildred Tuepker they asked her husband for the best place to shoot themselves.
Gilbert Tuepker suggested the kitchen and went to wait in a bedroom, said Mildred Tuepker.
Davis' failed suicide attempt apparently left him writhing in pain before he was shot by Gray.
Police said Gray told them he used a handgun to help Davis carry out his plan. "'I had to shoot Willie again because we had a pact. He didn't die,"' they quoted him as saying.
"Everybody is going to think I'm a coward," Gray said after his arrest, according to police Capt. Rick Barrow.
In January, three inmates fled the Oklahoma State Penitentiary by removing toilets from their cells to gain access to a service corridor.
One was caught on razor wire trying to get beyond the prison walls. The other two inmates, James Robert Thomas and Willie Lee Hoffman, were captured three days later at a rural home about 40 miles from the prison.