Randy Greenawalt was a convicted murderer who, with Gary Tison and Tison's three sons, took part in a 1978 prison escape that set off what was described as the largest manhunt in Arizona history. In the summer of 1978 he was serving a life sentence for shooting a truck driver asleep in his cab at an Interstate 40 rest stop. He also had a murder conviction in Arkansas for the shooting of another truck driver. On July 30, 1978, Tison's sons brought guns into the Arizona State Prison at Florence, and the five men left without a shot being fired. Within days a young Marine sergeant, his wife, their toddler son and their teenage niece had been shot dead in the desert near Quartzsite. A honeymooning couple from Texas disappeared in Colorado soon after. The group was stopped at a police roadblock near Casa Grande on August 11. One of the sons was killed, Gary Tison died of exposure in the desert, and Greenawalt and the two surviving brothers were captured.
Greenawalt was convicted in 1979 of the four Yuma County murders and sentenced to death. The two Tison brothers, who did not fire the shots, were also sentenced to death, and their case went to the United States Supreme Court. In Tison v. Arizona (1987) the court ruled that a person who plays a major part in a felony that ends in murder, and who acts with reckless indifference to human life, may be sentenced to death even without killing anyone. The brothers' death sentences were later replaced by life terms. Greenawalt's appeals ran for about 18 years, KNXV-TV reported. He was executed by lethal injection at Florence on January 23, 1997.
Very little about Greenawalt's early life appears in the court record or in reliable press accounts. KNXV-TV in Phoenix gave his date of birth as February 24, 1949. He was 47 when he was executed, according to the Associated Press and the Tucson Citizen. Time magazine gave his age as 29 in September 1978, and a 1978 Arizona Republic editorial quoted by the Arizona Supreme Court gave it as 28. His sister, Darlene Anna Greenawalt, was close to him to the end; she spent about five and a half hours with him on the day before his execution and was among the witnesses.
At his 1979 sentencing a defense psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Melendez, testified that Greenawalt had what he called a borderline personality structure that severely affected his judgment and his grasp of reality. A psychiatrist called by the prosecution, Dr. Michael Cleary, found no sign of the psychotic features such a diagnosis would require and said Greenawalt had no mental disease or defect that impaired his capacity. The court accepted Dr. Cleary's view.
Greenawalt's first murder conviction in Arizona came in 1974, for shooting a truck driver. The Tucson Citizen described it as the shooting death of a trucker in Flagstaff, and a 1978 news report in The Pampa News said he had been convicted of killing a truck driver in Coconino County. Later accounts in The Arizona Republic and on KNXV-TV placed the shooting at an Interstate 40 rest stop near Winslow. According to those accounts, the driver was asleep in his cab; Greenawalt drew an X on the truck door near where the man's head lay and fired through the door. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Greenawalt spoke about the killing after his recapture in 1978. Lieutenant Tom Brawley of the Pinal County Sheriff's Office testified at the 1979 sentencing that Greenawalt told him he had learned of a good way of getting money from truck drivers, and that he had shot and robbed a driver while the man slept in his truck.
Arizona was not the only state where a truck driver died. At the same sentencing hearing, the prosecution put in certified records showing that Greenawalt had been convicted of first-degree murder in Arizona and of first-degree murder and robbery in Arkansas. George Ford, the sheriff of Mississippi County, Arkansas, testified that Greenawalt told him he was broke and needed money, armed himself, and decided to rob a truck driver who had gone into a rest stop restroom. Ford said Greenawalt told him he shot the man, whose surname was Weber, in the head as he stood up. The Arizona Supreme Court later referred to Greenawalt's "two former convictions of other ruthless murders," and the Ninth Circuit noted in 1991 that he had already been twice convicted of murder. Brawley later told The Arizona Republic that Greenawalt had also confessed to killing a man in Colorado. No charge for that death appears in any source found.
Gary Tison, the man Greenawalt escaped with, had a long record. According to Time, he was first imprisoned at 25 for holding up a grocery store and escaped from a jail visiting room during a meeting with his wife, Dorothy. He was recaptured and later paroled. In 1967 he faced a parole violation for passing a bad check. While a guard was escorting him, he overpowered the man and shot him dead with the guard's own pistol. He was sentenced to life and sent to the state prison at Florence.
Inside, Tison became what officials regarded as a model prisoner. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1979 that he set up a prison television station, organized inmate entertainment, edited the prison newspaper and refused to join a 1977 inmate strike. He was moved to the medium-security annex. The Arizona Republic reported in 2003 that both Tison and Greenawalt had been made trusties because of their close relationship with the warden, Harold Cardwell. The Supreme Court's opinion in Tison v. Arizona describes Greenawalt as Tison's cellmate and says Tison insisted that he be included in the escape. In the trusty annex Greenawalt had access to the control center.
Tison and Dorothy had three sons, born about ten months apart in Casa Grande: Donald, Ricky and Raymond. Accounts of their ages in 1978 vary. Time gave Ricky as 18, Raymond as 19 and Donald as 20; KNXV-TV gave Donald 20, Ricky 19 and Raymond 18. The Supreme Court recorded that at sentencing in 1979 Ricky was 20 and Raymond 19. None of them had a criminal record. Donald, the eldest, had studied law enforcement at Central Arizona College, according to the Los Angeles Times. The brothers believed, the Arizona Daily Star later reported, that he had been wrongly imprisoned. The Supreme Court said the family assembled a large arsenal for the escape. The Arizona Supreme Court found that Raymond and Ricky arranged with an uncle to obtain a car and weapons.
Sunday, July 30, 1978, was a visiting day. Raymond went into the prison's picnic area to see his father. Ricky and Donald came into the reception lobby carrying an ice chest. They took out sawed-off shotguns and took control of the lobby and the control room in seconds, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Arizona Supreme Court found that Greenawalt, who had access to the trusty annex control center, received a shotgun and a pistol, used the shotgun to force guards to the floor, and helped lock guards and visitors in a storage room. Time and KNXV-TV reported that he cut the telephone and alarm lines.
The five men walked out the front door. A tower guard took them for departing visitors and raised no alarm. No shots were fired at the prison. They drove off in a green Ford sedan, which was later found abandoned about two miles from the prison, and switched to a white Lincoln Continental that an uncle had provided. The group spent time at a house before setting out toward Flagstaff on back roads. In a separate trial in Pinal County, Greenawalt was convicted of escape, possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner and 13 counts of assault with a deadly weapon arising from the breakout.
John F. Lyons was a 24-year-old Marine sergeant from Yuma. Time reported that he and his family were on their way to visit relatives in Nebraska. His wife, Donnelda, was 24 according to Time and 23 according to a 1978 Arizona Republic editorial. Their son, Christopher, was 22 months old. Traveling with them was Donnelda's niece, Theresa Tyson, who was 15 according to the Supreme Court and the Associated Press and 16 according to Time. Her name is spelled Teresa in some news reports. Despite the similar sound of the names, Time noted, she was not related to the Tisons. The Arizona Supreme Court found that the family left Yuma on the evening of July 31, 1978, in a late-model Mazda, heading toward Las Vegas.
The sources give little more about who they were. They were a young military family on a summer trip, with a toddler and a teenage relative along, and the family dog traveled with them.
On the desert highway north of Yuma the Lincoln had a second flat tire. Raymond stood by the road to flag down a passing car while the others waited with their weapons. The Lyonses stopped to help. The group forced the family into the back seat of the Lincoln and drove both cars down a side road into the desert. They moved the family's belongings into the Mazda, and Gary Tison shot out the Lincoln's radiator.
According to the Supreme Court's account, drawn from the brothers' own statements, Ricky said John Lyons pleaded for his life and that his father said he was thinking about it. KNXV-TV reported that the family asked only to be left with some water. Gary Tison sent his sons to fetch water from the Mazda. Raymond said he was filling the jug when the shooting began. The brothers said they saw Greenawalt and their father fire shotguns at the four captives. Both later said the shooting took them by surprise, and neither tried to help.
The group then left in the Mazda. Theresa Tyson had been wounded. She crawled away from the car and died in the desert after the group left. When she was found, the remains of the family's small dog lay near her.
On August 6, 1978, the bodies of John, Donnelda and Christopher Lyons were found in or near the abandoned Lincoln near Quartzsite. According to the Arizona Supreme Court's account in the Tison appeal, John lay near the car and Donnelda and Christopher were inside it. The Arizona Supreme Court later wrote that the child had been held in his mother's arms. Theresa's body was found on August 11 in a wash about a fifth of a mile west of the car. Experts estimated that the deaths had occurred between July 31 and August 2. The Associated Press put the killings on the night after the escape. Greenawalt's palm print was found on the Lincoln, Raymond Tison's fingerprint was found inside it, and the shotgun shells matched guns later recovered from the group. The Arizona Supreme Court found that the killings were committed to get a car in which to continue the flight.
The group drove north. In Flagstaff a woman friend of Greenawalt's helped Donald Tison buy a blue four-wheel-drive Chevrolet pickup, which Greenawalt had asked for, and supplied two guns and ammunition, according to the Arizona Supreme Court. The Lyonses' Mazda was later found in a forest near Flagstaff, spray-painted gray, partly buried and covered with pine boughs. Greenawalt's and Raymond's fingerprints were inside it.
The Arizona Republic reported in 2003 that, about four days after the escape, a Coconino County detective, Bill Pribil, went to a mobile home near Flagstaff to interview a friend of Greenawalt's. Greenawalt was behind the door with a shotgun but took Pribil for a salesman. Years later, Brawley said, Greenawalt told him he would have shot the detective had he known he was police. The Republic also reported that the group tried without success to get a plane in eastern New Mexico to fly them to Mexico.
The group then went into southwestern Colorado. The Arizona Supreme Court found that they left the Flagstaff pickup at a Chevrolet dealership in Colorado. They returned to Arizona in a silver and blue Ford van with Texas plates.
The van belonged to James Judge Jr., 24, of Amarillo, Texas, and his new wife, Margene. According to Time, the newlyweds were on their honeymoon in Colorado. They had called home to say they would be in seats 20 rows up at the five-yard line for a televised preseason game between the Denver Broncos and the Dallas Cowboys. The seats were empty. The Arizona Daily Star, drawing on James W. Clarke's research, reported that on August 9, 1978, the group was near the Dolores River disposing of the clothing and belongings of a couple killed that day.
Police believed the escaped group killed the Judges near Pagosa Springs, the Associated Press reported, but no one was ever prosecuted for their deaths. The Arizona Republic later reported, from the investigators' account, that Tison and Greenawalt killed the couple to take their van. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1979 that the bodies lay in a shallow grave and were found only after Greenawalt led authorities to the site. Because no court ever heard the evidence, the deaths of James and Margene Judge remain attributed to the group, not proven against any one person.
By August 11 the group was back in Pinal County, driving the Judges' van. Pinal County deputies had set up two roadblocks south of Casa Grande. Just before 3:00 a.m. the van slowed almost to a stop at the first one, then sped past. Shots were fired from the van, and officers in two patrol cars gave chase. Officers at the second roadblock, about five miles on according to Time, saw muzzle flashes and fired at the van. Donald Tison, who was driving, was shot in the head. The van left the road and stopped in the desert.
A helicopter searchlight found Greenawalt, Ricky and Raymond hiding nearby after a gun battle that Time said lasted half an hour. The Los Angeles Times reported that Greenawalt tried to run but dropped to the ground when a deputy fired a rifle shot over his head. He was carrying a rifle and a .357 magnum pistol. Donald Tison died of his wound. Gary Tison, who had shouted "Every man for himself," according to the Los Angeles Times, ran into the desert alone. In the Pinal County trial, Greenawalt and the two brothers were each convicted of 17 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a stolen vehicle and unlawful flight from police.
More than 300 officers and hundreds of volunteers searched the desert near Chuichu, about ten miles south of Casa Grande, in temperatures that Time said reached 120 degrees. It was described as the largest manhunt in Arizona history. They found nothing for days. The following week a chemical company worker, Ray Thomas, noticed a smell while getting rid of trash about a mile and a half from the crash site and found Tison's body under a mesquite tree. He had no gunshot wounds and had apparently died of heat exposure. A loaded .45 pistol and a sock of cactus berries were found near him, the Los Angeles Times reported. A Yuma County prosecutor, Jose de la Vara, told Time that Tison had been "released to a higher authority."
After his capture Greenawalt was disarmed, stripped and shackled. Officers held him in a pickup until they gave him a wool blanket. Warden Cardwell read him his rights, and he asked for a lawyer. Through the morning officers from the sheriff's office, the prison system and the state Department of Public Safety tried to question him. Each time he answered little or asked again for a lawyer. A lawyer was assigned to him late in the morning and was allowed to speak to him for 10 to 15 minutes through a slit in a cell door.
At about 2:00 p.m. Lieutenant Brawley woke him at the Pinal County Jail, gave him coffee and a cigarette and read him his rights again. Greenawalt would not sign the waiver form but talked. About Theresa Tyson, Brawley testified, he said that the group had not kidnapped the girl, that she had not been sexually assaulted, and that she had been left in the desert, where searchers would find her if they looked. That statement, made after he had asked for a lawyer, became the main issue in his federal appeals. The Ninth Circuit noted that he knew most of the officers who arrested him personally.
The Tison brothers first agreed to testify against Greenawalt. The Yuma County Attorney told the jury in his opening statement what they would say. When the brothers refused to testify about how the breakout was planned, the agreement was withdrawn and the court declared a mistrial. At the second trial the prosecution relied on felony murder: under Arizona law a killing committed during an escape, a robbery or a kidnapping was first-degree murder. Evidence of the escape and capture was admitted to show the murders were committed to make the escape good. The jury convicted Greenawalt of four counts of first-degree murder, two of armed robbery, three of kidnapping and one of theft of a motor vehicle.
At the sentencing hearing the judge found that Greenawalt had prior convictions carrying life or death and a prior violent felony, the two truck driver killings. The defense argued that Greenawalt had been nervous and shaking during the escape and that the Tisons controlled him. The prosecution answered that he had been armed throughout. The judge found nothing to show that Greenawalt's part in the murders was minor and sentenced him to death. The Los Angeles Times, writing on April 1, 1979, reported that he had already been sentenced to death.
Ricky and Raymond Tison were each tried separately in Yuma County and convicted of the four murders under felony murder and accomplice rules. The trial judge found that each brother's part in the crimes was "very substantial" and sentenced both to death, while noting their youth and lack of records.
In November 1978, while awaiting trial, Ricky Tison and two other prisoners overpowered a guard and fled the Pinal County Jail, The Pampa News reported. The other two were caught within hours. The source does not say when Ricky was recaptured.
The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Greenawalt's convictions and death sentences on January 23, 1981. Chief Justice Struckmeyer wrote for the court. Greenawalt raised 23 points of error. The court rejected his arguments about pretrial publicity, refused to require a public opinion survey at state expense, upheld limits on investigator funds, and found that his statement to Brawley was a valid waiver of his rights because he chose to talk to officers he knew and answered only what he wanted to. On sentence, the court cited "the wanton disregard for human life, the brutal nature of the killings" and his two earlier murder convictions, and held the death penalty was not excessive or disproportionate.
A month later, on February 24, 1981, the same court affirmed the Pinal County convictions. Greenawalt received terms of 30 years to life, plus shorter terms, all to be served after his existing life sentence. On October 5, 1981, the United States Supreme Court declined to review his death sentence. Sandra Day O'Connor, on her first day as a justice, was in the majority. Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall dissented. Greenawalt's lawyer, Robert C. Brown, told The Arizona Republic that the appeal was not over.
Greenawalt filed his first federal habeas corpus petition in December 1981. A federal district court denied an amended petition in 1984. In 1986 the Ninth Circuit sent the case back, ruling that he was entitled to the benefit of Edwards v. Arizona, a Supreme Court decision that bars police from questioning a suspect who has asked for a lawyer unless he starts the conversation himself. The district court then granted the petition, finding that Brawley's questioning broke that rule.
The state appealed. On August 22, 1991, the Ninth Circuit reversed. Chief Judge Wallace wrote that applying the rule as later extended would mean using a new rule on collateral review, which the law did not allow. The court found his earlier statements voluntary and the final one untainted. It also rejected his claim that the trial judge had never made the findings on intent that Enmund v. Florida (1982) requires before a person convicted of felony murder can be executed. The court said the state courts had found that he showed reckless indifference to human life and was a major participant. The opinion noted that the Tison brothers had identified Greenawalt as one of the men who fired. The Supreme Court declined review in 1992.
The brothers' case took a different path. After the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Enmund, which barred the death penalty for a robbery accomplice who neither killed nor intended to kill, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the brothers' sentences in 1984 on the theory that they could have foreseen that lethal force might be used. The United States Supreme Court took the case. On April 21, 1987, in a 5 to 4 decision written by Justice O'Connor, the court held that the Eighth Amendment does not forbid the death penalty for a defendant whose participation in a felony that results in murder is major and whose state of mind is reckless indifference to human life. It found that Arizona had applied the wrong test, since foreseeability alone was not enough, and sent the case back for findings. Justice Brennan wrote the dissent. He argued that the brothers neither killed nor intended to kill and that the trial court had not found that they had.
On remand, the brothers' death sentences were set aside. The Associated Press reported that their sentences were overturned in 1992 and that they were resentenced to life in prison. The Arizona Daily Star described the new sentences as four life terms, two consecutive and two concurrent. As of 2003, The Arizona Republic reported, both brothers remained in prison.
In January 1993 Greenawalt filed a second petition for post-conviction relief in state court, claiming his sentencing lawyer had been ineffective and offering new evidence about his mental condition. The superior court denied it in March 1995, and the Arizona Supreme Court refused review in October 1996 and reconsideration in December. On April 23, 1996, the day before the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was signed into law, a federal public defender filed a preliminary federal petition in his name to protect his claims. The district court dismissed it in September 1996 because the claims had not been through the state courts, and no appeal was filed in time.
On December 23, 1996, Arizona set his execution for 12:05 a.m. on January 23, 1997. His lawyers asked the federal courts to reopen the dismissed petition, to allow a new petition and to stay the execution. On January 17, 1997, the Ninth Circuit denied every request. It found no extraordinary circumstances, said the new law's limits on second petitions applied, and found no substantial grounds for a stay. The Arizona Supreme Court rejected a claim that the clemency board had acted improperly.
The state Board of Executive Clemency held a two-hour hearing the Friday before the execution. Greenawalt's lawyer walked out after the six-member board refused to hear certain evidence, and the board voted unanimously against recommending clemency. Tom McGovern, a special assistant to the Arizona attorney general, told the Tucson Citizen there were better candidates than Greenawalt for the argument against the death penalty. The United States Supreme Court turned down his final appeal shortly after 8 p.m. on January 22.
Greenawalt spent his last day with his sister. For his last meal he had two cheeseburgers, french fries, coffee and milk. The injections began at 12:07 a.m. on Thursday, January 23, 1997, at the Arizona State Prison in Florence, and he was pronounced dead about three minutes later. Twenty-eight witnesses were present, among them his sister, his lawyer, Jeffrey Kelleher, two officers who had helped capture the group in 1978 and eight reporters. No one attended for the victims.
He told the corrections director, Terry Stewart, not to worry about him and that he would be fine, the Associated Press reported. The Tucson Citizen reported that he also told Stewart he had prayed for him many times. As the drugs were given, he smiled, wiggled his feet and appeared to mouth "I love you" to his sister. He was the seventh person executed in Arizona since 1992 and the 363rd in the United States since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. He had spent about 18 years on death row.
The Arizona Republic reported in 2003 that residents of Yuma slept with guns in their beds during the manhunt, and that the brothers' supporters, including James W. Clarke, a University of Arizona professor, argued for their release while Brawley warned against it. Clarke's book, Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison, was published in 1988 and reissued by the University of Arizona Press in 1999. A film based on it, Last Rampage, was released in 2017, with Chris Browning as Greenawalt.
The Colorado killings. No one was charged with the deaths of James and Margene Judge. Police believed the group killed them, and Greenawalt led authorities to the grave, but no court heard the evidence and no sources found say who fired.
The Colorado man. Brawley told The Arizona Republic that Greenawalt confessed to killing a man in Colorado. No charge, name, date or court record for that killing was found.
The Arizona victim and place. The Arizona truck driver's name was not found in any strong source opened. Sources disagree on the place: "Flagstaff" (Tucson Citizen), Coconino County (The Pampa News), and near Winslow (The Arizona Republic; KNXV-TV).
The date of the Lyons killings. The family left Yuma on the evening of July 31, the AP put the killings on the night after the escape, and experts estimated the deaths between July 31 and August 2. No strong source opened gives an exact date.
Ages. Sources give different ages for Donnelda Lyons (23 or 24), Theresa Tyson (15 or 16), Greenawalt in 1978 (28, 29 or 30) and the Tison sons.
The total number of deaths. The Tucson Citizen linked Greenawalt to at least nine deaths, counting the two truck drivers, the Lyons family, the Judges and the two Tisons. He was convicted of the two truck driver killings and of the four murders of the Lyons family.
February 24, 1949: Randy Greenawalt born (KNXV-TV).
1967: Gary Tison kills a guard while being taken to prison and receives a life sentence.
1974: Greenawalt shoots a sleeping truck driver at an Interstate 40 rest stop in northern Arizona; convicted of first-degree murder; life sentence. He is also convicted of first-degree murder in Arkansas for shooting a truck driver at a rest stop in Mississippi County (date not given in strong sources).
July 30, 1978: Greenawalt and Gary Tison escape from the Arizona State Prison at Florence with Donald, Ricky and Raymond Tison.
July 31, 1978 (evening): The Lyons family leaves Yuma; the family is stopped and killed in the desert near Quartzsite within the next day or two.
Early August 1978: The group in Flagstaff; the Mazda is hidden in the forest; a pickup is bought.
August 6, 1978: Bodies of John, Donnelda and Christopher Lyons found.
About August 9, 1978: James and Margene Judge killed in southwestern Colorado (attributed; never prosecuted).
August 11, 1978: Roadblocks south of Casa Grande; Donald Tison killed; Greenawalt, Ricky and Raymond captured; Theresa Tyson's body found.
Mid-August 1978: Gary Tison found dead of exposure in the desert.
November 1978: Ricky Tison briefly escapes from the Pinal County Jail.
1979: Greenawalt convicted in Yuma County of four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death; the Tison brothers also sentenced to death.
January 23, 1981: Arizona Supreme Court affirms Greenawalt's death sentences.
February 24, 1981: Arizona Supreme Court affirms the Pinal County convictions.
October 5, 1981: United States Supreme Court declines review.
March 20, 1986: Ninth Circuit orders a review under Edwards v. Arizona.
April 21, 1987: Tison v. Arizona decided.
August 22, 1991: Ninth Circuit reverses the grant of habeas relief.
1992: Supreme Court declines review of Greenawalt's case; the Tison brothers resentenced to life.
January 17, 1997: Ninth Circuit denies a stay.
January 23, 1997: Greenawalt executed by lethal injection at Florence.