One night, a man escaped from the jail in the county seat.

There was a lady who was a friend of my Aunt Lizzie's.  She worked the night shift out at the hospital.  When she would come in to work sometimes, the parking lot would be full so she would have to park along the windbreak.

Well, this one morning early, she went out to her car and got in.  No one in Prairie Cross locks their doors when they're just going in to work - the police know everyone's car here and no one steals them.  So she didn't think anything about it, she just got in her car.

It was the middle of winter, so it was still dark out.  She didn't notice that the blanket of her winter emergency kit was lumpier than usual.  She was tired, and she wanted to get home.

But she had to get fuel first.  So she drove out to the self-service station a block away.

The guy came out and started pumping her fuel.  I think she took diesel.  Anyway, she paid him with a credit card and was about to pull away when he told her to wait, there was something wrong with her account.  He told her to go into the office with him.

When they got into the office, he told her he'd seen the top of a guy's head in her back seat, so he was going to pretend he was calling the credit company when he was really going to call the police.

The police came by and pulled the guy out of the car.  He had an axe with him that he'd gotten from a truck whose driver he'd killed on the way into town.  They found the truck parked on the other side of the windbreak by the hospital.

This guy had escaped from the jail the night before and probably started hitch-hiking along the highway where the trucker picked him up.  He was crazy.  He'd been in jail for having killed a whole family with an axe.  He admitted it!  But his lawyer was having a hearing about his mental competence, so he hadn't been shipped off yet.