FL FL - Harry Braswell, 25, Sumter Correctional Institution, 22 Feb 1983

While the New York prison escape saga came to an end last month with the capture of one inmate and the death of another, there remain hundreds of other prison escapees across the country, and one of them hails from our region. Jasper native Harry Dana Braswell Jr., who would be 57 if still alive today, has been on the run ever since escaping from the Sumter Correctional Institution in 1983. Braswell is one of four teenagers convicted of suffocating and killing a 79-year-old Suwannee County man in his home in 1975.

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In 1983, eight years into his sentence at Sumter Correctional Institution near Bushnell, Fla., Braswell and a fellow inmate hatched a scheme to bust out of prison, according to the archives of the TV show America’s Most Wanted (AMW). The duo climbed into filing cabinets that were in the back of a truck at the prison’s loading dock and hid there until the truck drove off, unbeknownst to the driver.

Braswell and his partner in crime jumped out of the truck when they were outside of the prison gates. His partner was caught several years later in Oregon during a routine traffic stop, but Braswell has remained on the loose for 32 years.

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