n March 22, 1881, convicted murderer Big Nose George Parott, having filed the rivets off his shackles with a smuggled pocketknife, tried to escape from the Carbon County Jail in Rawlins, Wyo. After striking jailer Bob Rankin over the head, however, Parott was persuaded at gunpoint by Rankin’s wife, Rosa, to return to his cell. Parott was just a couple of weeks shy of his scheduled execution for the ambush killing of Union Pacific detective
