Gary Tison, his three sons and his cellmate, Randy Greenawalt, walked out of Arizona State Prison in Florence on July 30, 1978, without a shot being fired.
At first it was an embarrassment to the state, then it became a nightmare.
While on the run, the Tison Gang, as they became known in the papers, murdered six people — a husband and wife and their infant son, a teen-age girl and a young honeymooning couple.
So begins the New York Times’ 1988 review of “Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison,” published nearly 30 years ago by the Houghton Mifflin Co. The University of Arizona Press has published the paperback edition of James W. Clarke’s “The Last Rampage” since 1999.
Clarke’s book is now the basis for a new movie.
On Friday, “Last Rampage: A True Crime Story,” was released in select theaters nationwide, in addition to On Demand and Digital HD. Its Tucson release has not yet been scheduled.
Robert Patrick portrays Gary Tison in “Last Rampage: A True Crime Story,”which is out in select theaters nationwide. A Tucson release has not yet been scheduled.
Alvaro Rodriguez, whose writing credits include “Machete,” and the “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series,” wrote the screenplay based on the research in Clarke’s book.
Early film promotion credits “Robert Patrick with a tour-de-force turn” as career criminal and convicted killer Gary Tison in a terrifying story about the dark side of family loyalty.
Heather Graham plays his wife, Dorothy, while Chris Browning plays killer Randy Greenawalt.
Clarke, the book’s author, is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, former Fulbright scholar and occasional consultant to the U.S. Secret Service. He is the author of a number of articles that have appeared in leading academic journals and five nonfiction books on violent crime. One of Clarke’s books, “American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics” was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” He could not be reached for comment late last week.
Clarke also had a personal interest in the violent Tison gang and their ill-fated attempt to reach Mexico.
On Aug. 9 1978, Clarke was camping along the Dolores River in southwestern Colorado when he had what he came to call a “frightening brush with death.” He later learned that he and a friend had been around the river’s bend from the escaped convict Gary Tison and his gang. The men were disposing of the clothes and gear of a couple they had killed earlier in the day to get their van.
Five years of research byJames Clarke, an author and University of Arizona professor emeritus, went into his book “Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison.”
Clarke’s near encounter with the gang — and that he had unknowingly crossed their path for days — triggered his interest. “Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison” was the result of five years of research and thousands of miles of travel through seven Western states.
Gary Tison’s three sons had been known as “nice boys” in Casa Grande, their hometown. However, they also believed their father had been framed and unjustly imprisoned.
While all three had dropped out of high school, Donald planned to become a state trooper. The oldest at 20, Donald also argued against the breakout attempt because he felt it would fail and feared people would be killed.
Booking photos of the Tison Gang, which rampaged across Arizona in 1978. From left, Gary Tison, Randy Greenawalt, Raymond Tison, Ricky Tison, Donald Joe Tison.
The family launched their plan in July 1978. According to archived press reports, Tison’s three sons smuggled shotguns in an ice chest into a control room of a medium-security unit of the State Prison Complex-Florence on July 30, 1978. They forced a handful of guards at gunpoint into an office and took off in a truck. They fled to a fully stocked white Lincoln Continental stashed at the nearby hospital.
The three young Tison brothers had no criminal record before that day.
John Rawlinson, one of the Arizona Daily Star’s investigative reporters, praised Clarke’s book when it was released in 1988. He called it a well-researched and documented book that was also “a chilling and disturbing probe into the ineptness and corruption in state government that led to 13 days of terror and horror for the residents of Arizona and Colorado.”
A multi-agency roadblock on State Route 85 during the search for Arizona prison escapee Gary Tison near Casa Grande, Arizona, on Aug. 15, 1978.
Despite their prior convictions, Gary Tison and Greenawalt had been assigned to medium security sections of the prison.
“I found this book very hard to put down,” Rawlinson wrote. “But I was personally involved in this case, having been a Star reporter covering the search for Gary Tison after the shootout.
“In the sandy wash southwest of Casa Grande, I discovered the .45-caliber automatic that he had buried where he had lain down, dying from heat prostration. And, I realized with mounting horror, I had interviewed Tison years earlier for a Star story on conditions at the state prison. He made my skin crawl then, as the book does now,” he wrote. Rawlinson died in 1997.
Eight people, including Gary Tison and his oldest son, died in the statewide crime spree.
The two remaining Tison sons remain in the Arizona State prison at Florence. They were convicted of felony murder in 1979 and sentenced to death. Their sentences were reduced to four life terms, two consecutive and two concurrent, in 1992.