Fifty years ago last month, prisoner Fred Gomez Carrasco and an accomplice, Rudolfo Dominguez, died in a shoot-out during an attempted prison break at the Huntsville “Walls” Unit.
Tragically, two prison educators that Carrasco held hostage, teacher Yvonne Beseda and librarian Julia Standley, were also killed. It was a bloody and tragic end to an 11-day siege that captured the nation’s attention. Questions about prison policies that allowed Carrasco to smuggle guns and ammunition into the Walls Unit and about the final shoot-out have never been fully answered. A review of the siege and the events leading up to it is necessary if we are to learn from it and move ahead.
I was 19 when Carrasco, Dominguez, and another inmate named Ignacio Cuevas took over the education building at the Walls Unit. Carrasco was no stranger to me and others since the media covered him extensively. He was a brilliant criminal who built and oversaw what we today call a cartel. He ran a vertically integrated international heroin smuggling operation.
