Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

It was an exciting time for Officer William Ryan of the Lock Haven police. He’d just recently started the job; he’d been a guard at Rockview Prison and applied to Lock Haven, and had been accepted as a new officer. It was May of 1940, and just after Ryan’s twenty-seventh birthday on May 19.

And then things got more exciting. This was reported by the Clinton County Times, always something of a hotbed of thrilling stories. The article hit the front page on May 30, 1940, and Ryan was the headline.
“Ryan Credited With Capture of Two Convicts,” it read.

Two prisoners had escaped from Rockview. Norman Hicks of Clearfield and Raymond Randalls of Renovo had gotten loose and were suspected to be heading to Lock Haven. Hicks was twenty-six years old, and Randalls was forty-three.

They were sighted on Monday morning lurking around the railroad yards on the east end of the city, the police were notified, and several police officers and volunteers were dispatched to find them.

Officer Fred Miller saw the men running away, and shouted for them to stop. But that has never actually worked, and he wound up firing his gun into the air. They still didn’t stop, and Miller sent a man to bring back more help. More police and guards came out, including the state police, and the search intensified.

“Coming upon a man he asked him to take the police patrol and go for help,” the Times reported,” and in a short time several local police, state police, and guards from the penitentiary were making a complete search.”
The prisoners split up, and Hicks hid in some brush near a water tower. Ryan spotted him, came up behind him, and arrested him without a problem. Hicks was transferred back to the prison, leaving only Randalls as a problem.

After the capture of Hicks, Chief Martin Peters and local pilot Glenn Englert took off from Piper in a plane and searched from the air. Piper Aviation had only recently moved to Lock Haven, setting up shop in the summer of 1937, and having planes available was still something of a novelty. After a dozen flights over the area, they gave up, not having spotted Randalls anywhere.

Later on, Randalls was reported as walking along Clinton Street—Nobody was sure exactly how he’d managed to remain unseen all day, but Ryan arrived at Clinton Street and arrested Randalls, too.

The Clinton County Times reported, ”Officer William B. Ryan, recently appointed to the city police, proved himself this past week when he captured two escaped convicts from the Rockview Penitentiary who had been hiding in this city since their escape last Thursday.”

The Clinton County Times noted that there had been a fifty-dollar reward offered for the capture of the two men, and in fact, Ryan qualified to receive it. The newspaper never reported whether or not Ryan actually accepted the money.

Ryan went on to organize the police department’s files and become the local police photographer, creating a darkroom in the basement of city hall. Unsurprisingly, he became captain of the detective department, a position he held until his retirement in 1978.

William Beck Ryan died of cancer in 1993 at age seventy-nine, and is buried in Rest Haven. He was remembered as a good police officer….Right from the very beginning.