The six of them had committed a total of 44 murders and were slated for
execution, so they had nothing to lose by attempting a getaway. What was
surprising was that the attempt succeeded. The prison was new, built at a
cost of millions and touted as one of the country’s most secure.
Two newspaper men, Joe Jackson and William F. Burke, Jr., both with
Norfolk’s VirginianPilot, have collaborated on Dead Run: America’s
Only Mass Escape from Death Row and the Retribution that Followed. The
authors shared a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage on the story in 1984 and
have won or been nominated for additional Pulitzers.
After being on the run for nine days, the dirty half-dozen were captured;
and yes, they met their appointed fates. Dennis Stockton, a prisoner who
decided not to participate in the escape although he helped plan it, is a
focal character in the story. Author or two unsold novels and
publisher-writer of a prison newsletter, he kept a journal from his first
day on Death Row. Jackson and Burke relied on this for much of their
documentation. Insisting to the end that he was innocent of the crime for
which he was convicted, Stockton was denied a retrial on the basis of a
Virginia law limiting the admission of new evidence to 21 days after
conviction. At the end of an 11-year fight, he too was executed.
Noah Lukeman, who sold Dead Run to Philip Turner at Random
House’s Times Books, has also made a UK sale. Jamie Byng, publisher at
Canongate, has acquired the rights through cooperating agent Stella Wilkins
at Abner Stein. Times, which is to publish in November, has an offer from
William Styron to contribute a preface.
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Another Lukeman sale involves a novel bought by Esther Margolis of
Newmarket Press. Newmarket is well known for its books about movies and the
people who make them. (Next month it will publish a series of hitherto
withheld interviews conducted by Jeff Young in 1973-74 with Elia Kazan.
Among other matters, the director discusses his role as informer before the
U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee. Young is an ex-studio
executive.) The Press’s newly acquired novel, Black Star Rising,
has a link with its movie list through Gene Hackman, co-author with an
eminent under-water archaeologist, Dan Lenihan. What they have concocted
between them is 19th century sea adventure saga. Newmarket brought in former
Dutton publisher/editor-in-chief Richard Marek, now freelancing, to work
with them on revisions.
The fact that Hackman, a two-time Academy Award winner, has agreed to
stump vigorously for the book in its hard- and soft-cover editions, both at
home and abroad, made Dark Star Rising particularly appealing to
Margolis.
She has a strong background in promotion, her company controls world
rights and it has six figures tied up in the deal.