Ironton Register, 5 Jan 1888

A Prisoner Gone

The Italian Burglar Mysteriously Disappears

     The startling discovery was made late Saturday morning that a prisoner had escaped from the new jail.  It was Peter Leon, alias George Rosso, the Italian arrested at Cincinnati for burglarizing Wertheim & Loth’s clothing store, and sent up by Mayor Corns in default of $500 bond.  He was there Friday night and was not there at 10 o’clock Saturday morning, and this is the way it is supposed to have occurred:

     The ward in which Leon and other prisoners were kept is very dark.  It is the dungeon of the jail.  Some workmen who are finishing up the jail were at work there, and as a  precautionary measure, the prisoners were removed to the other side, to reach which they pass from the inner corridor to the outer corridor, thence to the vestibule, and across the vestibule to the opposite outer and inner corridors.  This is done every day the workmen are engaged in the jail.  At night, they are changed back again, and Friday night, when they change was made, under Deputy Sheriff Gates’s supervision, Leon passed along with the rest across the vestibule.  The prisoners went into their cells and the Deputy Sheriff pulled the lever which locked all the cell doors.  Then he took his dingy lantern and walked down the outer corridor to see if all was right, and reaching Leon’s cell he said “are you all right Leon?” to which a voice replied, “Yes.”  But the Deputy now thinks it was Sid Whaley’s voice, and not Leon’s, which answered him, and that Leon was at that time hiding in one of the dark corners of the outer corridor.  Whaley is one of the men in for robbing a man on the grade.  Of course, Mr. Gates never dreamed but that all were safely lodged, and so left the jail.