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Hovering Helicopters. The morning after their break, the four trapped rebels allowed twelve of their fellow convicts to return to the main part of the prison, held the remaining six as additional hostages, and forced them to start digging a tunnel through the concrete floor of Cherry Hill. The escape tunnel was abandoned when water seeped into it. The desperate four demanded that Governor Christian Herter send them a getaway car. "One shot, one gas bomb," Green shouted across the prison yard, "and all five of your screws die." Massachusetts Attorney General George Fingold replied over a public-address system: "If one of those guards dies, you all die in the electric chair." As news of the big break spread, the public and the press swarmed to Charlestown. Press helicopters whirled overhead, and photographers swung perilously above the prison wall on a crane. State troopers converged on Charlestown, and a Walker Bulldog tank lumbered up to the prison gates. The Rev. Edward Hartigan, the prison's Roman Catholic chaplain, was permitted to enter Cherry Hill to hear confessions and give Communion to some of the hostages. The prison physician was allowed to minister to a sick guard. Pretty Toby Green, 16, made a telephone call to her besieged father. Excerpts: Toby: Hey, Dad? Green: Oh, Toby! . . . Toby: What are you doing?, Green: I just want to get out. Toby: Dad, that's silly. How can you get out that way? Green: Toby, Toby, you know Dad. Toby: I know you. Green: I'll get out! . . . Honey, Toby, honey, I am awfully sorry . . . Wait a minute, dear. Some of the boys are wondering who I am calling "dear" and "honey." One says who am I talking to, the warden? . . . Toby: W7hat are you doing with the guards ? Green: Oh, playing a little bridge with them or something like that. Toby: What about the man who is sick? Green: Who? Oh, he's lying down—throwing up ... Toby: What are you going to do to them? Green: I would rather not talk about it, honey . . . Toby: If anything does happen to them, by God, you won't be a father to me . . . Green: I am sorry, Toby, but if that warden don't let me out in the car, I positively will. That is the way I feel about it and that is that ... I am sorry, Toby, you got hurt this way, but it is one of them things. I got to have my freedom and get all that money that is put away and I have to get it for you and Ma and the kids. If they give me a car like I want to get out of here, I won't bother them . . . My God, it is driving me out of my mind to get that money ... It is too much money lying in the ground ... I don't know no politicians so I have to get out my own way. I want out, and that's the whole darn thing . . .
Toby Green put down the phone and wept.