Despite Guy Cobb's numerous escapes from Alabama prisons, no photograph or wanted poster of him remains. This poster of W L. Rice is representative of those circulated to help law enforcement agencies apprehend escaped convicts. (Courtesy Alabama Department of Archives and History) When Guy Cobb died at the Tuberculosis Prison Hospital at Wetumpka, Alabama, in 1932, few marked his passing except perhaps the clerk who made the citation in volume nine, Record of State Convicts. Cobb's prison career, however, which included at least seven escapes, was anything but unremarkable, and the details of that career, along with those of hundreds of other convicts, are part of the Alabama Department of Corrections and Institutions records which have recently been made available to researchers at the Department of Archives and History.
The twenty-two-year-old Cobb was arrested in Anniston in May 1925 for the "strong-arm" robbery of T. T. Bagley, a local grocer. On the night of May 8, while awaiting trial in the Calhoun County jail, Cobb and four other inmates sawed through the bars of their cell window, scaled the tall fence surrounding the jail, and crawled through a large drain pipe to the rear of the Manhattan Hotel where they stole an automobile and made good their escape. The Anniston Star reported that "the minutest details of the escape had been carefully worked out. Care was taken to cut the telephone cord leading to the jail before their departure." Authorities later discovered that a second car had been stolen and determined that the men had separated, some headed for Birmingham and the others toward Atlanta.
The twenty-two-year-old Cobb was arrested in Anniston in May 1925 for the "strong-arm" robbery of T. T. Bagley, a local grocer. On the night of May 8, while awaiting trial in the Calhoun County jail, Cobb and four other inmates sawed through the bars of their cell window, scaled the tall fence surrounding the jail, and crawled through a large drain pipe to the rear of the Manhattan Hotel where they stole an automobile and made good their escape. The Anniston Star reported that "the minutest details of the escape had been carefully worked out. Care was taken to cut the telephone cord leading to the jail before their departure." Authorities later discovered that a second car had been stolen and determined that the men had separated, some headed for Birmingham and the others toward Atlanta.
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