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By Andrew Murr
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He seemed oddly confident for a convict serving 17 life sentences in the Texas prison system--but then, George Angel Rivas had a plan. "Someday, somehow, by the Grace of our Father, I will see you face to face without these walls," Rivas wrote his father last fall, in a letter made available to NEWSWEEK. At that point, investigators believe, Rivas, 30, and his six handpicked accomplices were already plotting their escape from a prison south of San Antonio, devising a scheme that shrewdly exploited weaknesses in security procedures. Then Rivas showed them how to outthink and outrun one of the biggest manhunts in Texas history. "He really was the leader," said one of his admiring sidekicks, 23-year-old Randy Halprin. "He was just very, very intelligent."
Captured last week in Woodland Park, Colo., a resort village just below Pikes Peak, Rivas and his comrades gave up without a fight--hardly the sort of violent shoot-out one would expect from a gang already notorious as "the Texas Seven." From the moment of their breakout on Dec. 13, the Seven eluded state and federal lawmen for 40 consecutive days. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rivas said an associate left their getaway car, a white Chevrolet Suburban, in a Wal-Mart parking lot near the prison. He refused to name this man, but said police have already questioned him. The Seven pulled off three stickups to equip themselves with police radios, weapons and more than $70,000 in cash, and they bought a variety of cars and trucks to confuse the pursuit. They also allegedly killed a cop during a holdup in Irving, Texas. Rivas said he killed the officer, Aubrey Hawkins, when Hawkins drove up to the store. "I'm guilty," he said, "so I gotta pay with my life."
He and his accomplices will unquestionably face the death penalty when they are extradited back to Texas. Only six are left: when police surrounded their hideout in Colorado last week, 37-year-old Larry Harper shot himself to death.
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Rule 1 in hunting fugitives is that they always try to go home--back to the 'hood, back to a place that seems safe. The Seven were careful not to do that, and once they got the guns and the cash they needed, they kept a low profile. "We were really shooken up" after Hawkins was shot, Rivas said. They wound up in Colorado, bought a used RV and drove it to Woodland Park. On New Year's Day they pulled into the Coachlight Motel and RV Park and paid $125 for a week's stay.
They told the neighbors they were a Christian group traveling to California--and if the story seems laughable now, nobody seemed to question it at the time. Rivas and the gang played Christian music in the RV, and Larry Harper, who had found God in prison, joined a Bible study group run by the park's owner, Wade Holder. A neighbor, Marilyn Murray, thought it was "kinda weird" that seven men were sharing an RV with only two bunks, but shrugged it off. "Everybody here's a transient," she said.
They were tripped up when another park resident recognized them from "America's Most Wanted." The resident told Holder, and Holder called the cops. The next morning Murray watched the SWAT team surround the RV and realized how close she had been to tragedy. "Just two days ago I'd thought of baking some cookies and bringing them over to them," she said. "Thank God I didn't."
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