Tunica is a small town in the northwest portion of Mississippi. The town may be small in population, but it is big on historic preservation. The historic district boasts a wonderful collection of residences and commercial buildings, but of particular interest is a historic public building – the Old Tunica County Jail.
Built on School Street in 1894, the two-story, brick Romanesque Revival building now sits forlorn in a parking lot with boarded up windows and vine covered walls. The imposing entry tower with Romanesque arch and metal off-center door does not welcome inmates into its cold and dark cells any longer.
The tales, though, that this building could tell. In April of 1909, all eight prisoners of the jail made a daring escape by sawing through steel bars and making a hole through the wall large enough for a man’s body to pass. A rope, made from canvas bunk mattresses, was lowered to the ground. Where were the guards? Who knows?
In 1949, a Mrs. Yerkay was held in the jail for the murder of her husband and two friends and the attempted murder of her 17-year old daughter, Rosalie, and another male friend. Apparently she cooked them a meal laced with a high concentration of arsenic, most likely Rough On Rats rat poison.
