National Affairs: Death Visits Marquette

On the shore of Lake Superior, cut off from the world by a dense forest, stands Marquette prison, strong, grim, forbidding. In it are confined Michigan’s worst criminals—bandits, kidnappers, murderers—for Michigan has no death penalty. Few of them can hope for an early release; many have no hope of ever being allowed to go free. Marquette is a home of desperate men.

Desperation gripped four of Marquette’s long-term convicts last week. The week before, a kidnapper, Edward Wiles, had died. His last words, whispered to the prison physician, were: “If I die in this hole my pals will wreck the place.” Last week the prison physician was away. In his place was a past president of the Michigan Medical Society, Dr. Alfred W. Hornbogen. To Dr. Hornbogen in the prison hospital early one morning came three convicts: Andre Germane, serving 35 to 50 years for wounding a policeman; Leo Duver, a life-term robber; Charles Roseburg, sentenced to 20 to 40 years for robbery. Dr. Hornbogen might have recognized them as three of Wiles’s “pals.”

“I’m sick,” said Germano.

Dr. Hornbogen ordered him to take off his shirt, approached to examine him. Germano whipped out a pistol, pressed it against the doctor’s heart and fired. As the doctor fell, two trusties ran toward the convicts. Bullets dropped both. One died.

The convicts ran out into the rotunda, shooting down a guard as they ran, firing shots at the warden and his deputy. As the warden ran to sound the alarm they cornered a turnkey, took the keys to the buildings, headed for the main gate. Before they reached it the alarms began to go off and guards closed in on them. They swerved, rushed into a factory building, held up two guards, and keeping the guards and 30 other prisoners as hostages, locked themselves in the third floor of the building. There they prepared to fight it out.

For two hours guards & police fired pistols, shotguns, machine guns at the factory windows. The three convicts returned the fire. As their ammunition began to run low, failure stared at them. They forced one of the guards to write a note to the warden, demanding his car to take them from the prison, threatening to blow up the building if he refused. Desperado Germano added: “Have plenty of explosives.” They threw the note out of the window. Finally the answer came: a tear gas bomb. Another followed. When the third bomb came hurtling through the window Germano said:

“I guess she’s all up, boys.”

Roseburg turned his pistol on himself. Germano sent a second bullet into Roseburg’s head, then shot himself. Duver shot Germano again, put the muzzle of his pistol into his mouth, pulled the trigger. The hostage guards threw open the doors.

Police and guards immediately began a search for more weapons in the prison and for an armored car reported seen outside. As the hunt began, two shots rang out in a cell block. The searchers found a guard unhurt and Convict Frank Hohfer, a confederate of the other three, in his cell dead by his own hand.