Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part series about Vonda Jean Mullenax and her criminal history.
Vonda Jean Mullenax, of Terra Alta, West Virginia, killed her husband in 1965. The following year, a jury found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to at least 10 years in the West Virginia Women’s Prison in Pence Springs.
United Press International ranked the murder case as the top West Virginia story in 1966.
She was only there for 23 days before she escaped … for the first time. She was riding in a truck with another inmate, with two guards riding in the truck cab.
The prisoners jumped from the truck and disappeared into the woods in a matter of seconds.
Although they were still inside the fence at the time, Eva Willey, supervisor of officers, told reporters, “But it’s an easy matter to get over the fence after she gets into the woods.”
Vonda was caught five hours later.
“Mrs. Mullenax was found barefoot with her legs bruised and scratched from running through the woods,” the Cumberland News reported.
She offered no resistance when the police found her.
She said she wanted to see her children and boyfriend.
Vonda’s actions in killing her husband had severely changed the lives of her nine children.
Two of them had been sent to live with an uncle. Six of the children were in an orphanage and one child was in foster care.
At the end of September 1966, Vonda and another prisoner, Pearlie Blankenship Bell, escaped. Bell was serving 25 years for armed robbery.
The two, occupying separate rooms, broke window bar locks, cut holes in screens and lowered themselves two stories to the ground on ropes made from sheets, The Morgantown Post reported.
The search for the prisoners was hindered by fog. They managed to stay free for nearly a week, but authorities caught her when she tried to visit her boyfriend, Allen Dale Gank.
When Vonda contacted him, he called the prison and said he would persuade her to surrender as long as he would not be prosecuted.
The prison officials agreed, and Gank made arrangements for her to turn herself in. Her penalty for that escape was solitary confinement.
In March 1967, Vonda and prisoner Martha Jewell escaped. They were captured within an hour, just a few miles from the prison.
In December 1968, she and Martha removed the security screens from their windows, dropped to the ground, and used blankets to get over the 12-foot-high fence. They were caught a short time later in Virginia.
The Cumberland News noted, “She has never tasted freedom for longer than five days in any of her escapes.”
However, after four escapes and four captures, an arrangement was worked out allowing Vonda to see her children. That calmed Vonda, and she became a model prisoner.
She was paroled in April 1977 after 11 years in prison. Although she had been found guilty of first-degree murder in 1966, the judge had granted her mercy.
This meant that although the guilty verdict came with a life sentence, she was eligible for parole after 10 years. Due to her escape attempts, though, an additional year had been added to her sentence.
She died in 2022 at the age of 89 and is buried in the Terra Alta Cemetery.