Time Machine Stone City hostages

STONE CITY - The house on the hill near Stone City served for two summers in 1932 and 1933 as headquarters for Grant Wood and Marvin Cone's art colony. In the 1950s, it became the summer home of Iowa Writers' Workshop Poet Paul Engle and his wife, Mary, and their two daughters.

The 12-room, three-story stone mansion, built in 1883, had a magnificent vista of corn, trees and rocky bluffs. It was originally the home of quarry operator and State Sen. J.A. Green. Built of local stone, each of its seven fireplaces was made from a different imported marble. Each fireplace was adorned with a mural over the mantel.

The peaceful, historic setting was abruptly disturbed one August afternoon in 1959.

Mary was sewing on a side porch when Larry Morrison, 21, and Donald Sills, 25, freshly escaped from Iowa Men's Reformatory Prison Farm No. 1, west of Anamosa, entered the home through the kitchen, grabbed four knives, and searched the house. They 'borrowed” some of Paul Engle's clothes and shoes to replace their wet things. When they found Mary, they told her, 'If you do exactly like we say nobody will get hurt.”

The two had crossed the Wapsipinicon River and walked on old, unused railroad tracks toward Stone City, about four miles from Anamosa. When they came across the Engle home, which stood in a wooded area, it was about 10 minutes before 3 p.m.

They told Mary they wanted a car and would wait until dark before leaving. They found an old .22-caliber rifle in the house. The only ammunition Paul Engle had was pellets.

About an hour later, the Engles' daughter, Sara, 14, came in from a horseback ride. She was forced to join her mother, and the fugitives settled in to wait for Engle to come home with a car they could steal for their getaway.

While they acted tough at first, they relaxed as they talked with mother and daughter. Nevertheless, Mary became apprehensive when Sills went with Sara to feed and water the horses, but he made no attempt to harm the girl. Back in the house, Mary ironed and sewed while Sara worked on a project. The fugitives made a bundle of extra clothes and took money from Mary's purse. They raided the icebox for cold drinks as they waited.

Paul Engle and his daughter Mary, 18, arrived home from Iowa City at about 8 that night.

As they neared the house, they encountered a roadblock and learned of the prison escape. Engle's daughter joked to her father, 'They're probably over at our house. We'd better get home and put on the coffee pot.”

His daughter entered the house first. Her mother was standing in the kitchen and gave her a strange look. His daughter went back out and told her father, 'There's something wrong.”

'I knew right away what had happened,” Engle said. 'I had to decide whether to try to get back to the car or go in the house and stay with the family. I decided it would be best to stay with the family.”

When Engle went into the house, he had already decided to try to have an 'ordinary evening.” He invited the men to supper, but they declined. His wife, however, asked to use one of the knives to peel potatoes. While the family ate, Engle took $20 from his pocket and hid it under a mat. When the men asked for money, he had a $10 bill and a $5 bill. Debating about which to take, they decided to leave the $10 and take the $5.

After dinner, Engle told his captors that he needed to work. He sat down at this typewriter and wrote two book reviews for the Chicago Tribune.

Shortly after 11 p.m., the criminals cut the telephone wires and tied the Engles to chairs. They then gagged Engle and his daughters, but skipped his wife when she pretended to faint in her chair.

When the men had left, Sara, who had hidden a pair of scissors under a bird cage next to the chair to which she was tied, managed to cut her bindings. 'They did a terrible job of tying me,” she said. 'I was able to get my arms up and reach over to where the scissors were.”

With the family freed and certain that the men had gone, they ran down the hill in the dark to a neighbor's house.

The fugitives in the Engle car took a wrong turn on a country road and ended up at a dead end near a quarry. When they turned back, the car was spotted by a deputy sheriff who recognized the car, but not the occupants. He gave chase, firing a couple of shots. The fugitives turned onto Highway 151 and headed toward Springville, but the deputy couldn't follow. The transmission on his car gave out. He radioed ahead to Springville to set up a roadblock. The fugitives turned onto a dead-end street a block away and abandoned the Engle car.

Sills was nabbed a short time later hiding under a truck near the Springville creamery.

Morrison stole another car, abandoning it on Highway 261 in Mount Vernon. The next day, two Mount Vernon city employees noticed a man walking down the street carrying a heavy coat. It was noon and the day was hot and the men became suspicious. After the man went into a bakery, they reported him to Deputy Sheriff Phil Hoover, who then arrested Morrison without incident.

When they were back at home, the girls and their parents sat up and talked the whole thing over until 4 a.m. They were awakened at 5 a.m. when the sheriff returned their car.

As a result of the events, the story was among the top 10 in Iowa in 1959, it made an August edition of Life magazine, and the Engle daughters appeared on the TV show 'To Tell the Truth.”