Raleigh, May 18—Freedom was in his grasp but conscience triumphed over instinctive desire, so Wesley Johnson came back and asked to be taken back to prison to complete his term of three years for larceny. Wesley, in company with two other prisoners, escaped from a road camp near Waynesville just nine days ago, on May 9th.
But instead of going to the warden’s office at the prison, he went to the governor’s office in the State capitol, because he had been told that H. Hoyle Sink, commissioner of pardons, was in the governor’s office and he wanted to surrender to him. Wesley didn’t want to take a chance of not getting in “according to Hoyle” although he left somewhat abruptly and without official leave. Mr. Sink was standing in the governor’s office shortly past noon, when the door opened and someone called him into the corridor. There stood Wesley Johnson, accompanied by his father, and Wesley told his story.
Wesley lives in Guilford county near High Point, but was sentenced from Davidson county to a term of three years for larceny. He is still a young chap, hardly out of his teens. His father did most of the talking, explaining that Wesley thought he had better come first to see Mr. Sink, evidently under the impression that he had some connection with the state prison.
It had so happened that when Wesley had first entered the prison Mr. Sink had heard of it, as his home county is Guilford, and had sone and talked to the boy, advising him to abide by all the prison rules and regulations. The boy had remembered this, he said, and that was why he sought him out in order to surrender to him.
From the front page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Tuesday, May 18, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-05-18/ed-1/seq-1/
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