Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege at Huntsville, Texas

Five—“I’m scared and sick, just sick.”

43 In the first hour of the takeover, Carrasco instructed the hostage inmates to build a barricade inside the educational complex doorway. File cabinets, tables, and portable shelves were moved in front of the glass doors at the library entrance. Piled on the filing cabinets were boxes of books. Up against the inner side of the filing cabinets was a table, upon which two straight-back, unpadded chairs were placed, facing inward. Those were the chairs for the “honor guard”— the hostages would be seated there with a rope around their shoulders and chair backs, and across their upper legs and under the chair seat. With one wrist handcuffed to a metal filing cabinet, they would sit with their backs to the doors, serving as shields to prevent TDC sharpshooters from firing into the complex and picking off the hostage-holders. After releasing all the inmates, Carrasco’s search intensified for Correctional Officer (CO) Bobby Heard, the twenty-seven-year-old Sam Houston State University student who had retreated into the crawl space above the false ceiling. Heard was six-foot-two, Chapter Five “I’m scared and sick, just sick.” —Betty Branch, wife of hostage, Jack Branch 44 CHAPTER FIVE weighing 230 pounds, and he had been assigned as educational complex guard on a roving basis, on call if a teacher had disciplinary problems. Stationed at the desk at the entryway, he also verified late-arriving prisoners’ passes, checking inmates in and out. Or, if an inmate needed medical attention, the CO determined validity of the need. Many times inmates resented having to be cleared, and the abuse of power by some officers exacerbated that resentment. But Carrasco had nothing against Heard in particular. In general, he just represented the bosses, a term of grudging respect used by inmates when addressing their captors. At the start of the invasion Heard was in Glennon Johnson’s office with an inmate, notarizing some papers for the prisoner. Heard was to be relieved from his duties in the educational complex in less than hour. Johnson saw people rushing to the back of the room and asked Heard, “Why are all those people running?”1 Heard had stepped outside the office door and saw Carrasco standing there with a gun. Knowing he was out-manned and totally out-gunned, Heard dashed to a small storage room where an opening led to the attic. He scrambled up, looking for a way out of the building. It turned out to be an act that made Carrasco despise the guard. The warden said Carrasco told him during one of their first telephone conversations that Officer Heard had “used the women as a shield and ran.” But Husbands found that hard to accept.2 Anthony J. (Jack) Branch, Jr. (Photo courtesy of Texas Department of Criminal Justice) 45 “I’M SCARED AND SICK, JUST SICK.” Unfortunately for Heard, the hostage-takers saw him beat his hasty retreat and ordered him down. When the guard failed to obey, Carrasco fired three more rounds into the ceiling. Inmate Robertson spoke Spanish fluently and heard Carrasco tell Dominguez to “go up there and kill him. If he don’t come down, kill him!”3 The shots and threats were followed by a direct order from Warden Husbands over the prison’s public address system as demanded by Carrasco. “They’re gonna keep firing up there until they kill you,” the warden warned Heard.4 Loud pleas by Father O’Brien and a search of the attic by two inmate hostages brought a shirtless Heard out of his stifling hiding place with his hands up. He was blindfolded, gagged, bound hand and foot, placed in a rickety chair and carted by several inmates over in front of the entrance door. For his escape efforts and because he was a prison guard, he was awarded the label of Number One. As Father O’Brien recalled, “Heard got a lot of verbal abuse. They kept him chained at the doorway. Even if he had to go to the bathroom, they kept him chained there for hours.” According to Husbands, “he went through hell. They threatened to kill him time and time again. His nerves were next to nothing.”5 As soon as they put Heard at the entrance, Carrasco phoned Husbands and told him that if the handcuffs and TV set did not arrive “soon,” he would shoot Bobby Heard. There...