Female Prison Escapees Who Almost Got Away With It
About 2,200 inmates escape from U.S. penal institutions every year, most recaptured within a few days or weeks and returned to prison to finish their original sentences and answer new charges. Sometimes, prison escapes break all the rules and inmates live the next 10, 20, even 30 years or more on the run from authorities. Even rarer, sometimes women escape prison and elude capture year after year.
Margo Freshwater
In 1966, an 18-year-old Margo Freshwater met a 38-year-old Memphis lawyer and the two went on a multi-state crime spree resulting in three deaths. Although Freshwater did not commit the murders, she was sentenced to serve 99 years behind bars.
Eighteen months into her sentence, Freshwater and another inmate scaled a wall, escaping from the Tennessee Prison For Women in Nashville. Freshwater seemed to vanish into thin air.
She hopped a train and returned to her hometown in Ohio, changing her name to Tonya. She applied for a new social security number and in 1984, her family had her declared legally dead. She birthed three children, married three times, and became a friend to many, a woman who…
