A brazen Texas prison escape that put seven dangerous convicts on the run ended in tragedy when a young father was killed on Christmas Eve.
Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins was struck by a barrage of gunfire as the fugitives fled an armed robbery at a sporting goods store. The inmates had raided the business for guns, sleeping bags and camping supplies to help them survive while hiding from authorities. The case is featured in the season three premiere of Oxygen’s Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler.
For weeks, investigators pursued the Texas 7 in a sweeping manhunt before finally locating the fugitives at an RV park in Colorado.
One of the escapees died by suicide, and authorities arrested the remaining fugitives. Yet their capture marked only the beginning of the fight to bring them to justice.
“Catching them was only half the battle,” Siegler said. “The State still had to hold all of these defendants accountable for capital murder.”
Who Were the Texas 7?
The group, identified by the media as the Texas 7, consisted of seven highly dangerous inmates:
“They were acting as a very close team of criminals, which you don’t find often,” Shook said. “That made them even more dangerous.”
How Did the Texas 7 Escape From Maximum Security Prison?
Six of the seven inmates held jobs in the maintenance department at the Connally Unit prison in Kenedy, Texas, when they carried out what became the largest prison escape in the state’s history on Dec. 13, 2000.
Working under civilian supervisors from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the prisoners appeared to perform their regular duties. In secret, however, the Texas 7 were planning their escape and fashioning shivs from scrap iron.
Once armed with the makeshift weapons, the inmates ambushed maintenance workers returning from lunch, bound them and locked them inside a closet.
“There were at least a dozen hostages taken,” said John Moriarty, chief of special operations for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “The inmates are putting on the clothing that they take from the employees, and then went out to the tower. They jumped the guard that was in that building, tied him up, and put him in the bathroom.”
The tower also housed the prison armory. The escapees seized a shotgun, an AR-15 and roughly a dozen pistols before taking a prison truck and driving away from the facility.
“To have that many escape,” Moriarty said, “is a massive, massive security failure.”
During their search of the prison, investigators found a note left by Murphy accusing the prison system of being unjust.
“Today I fired the first shot in the new revolution,” the note read. “You haven’t heard the last of us yet.”
What Happened to Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins?
Several weeks later, about 300 miles away in Irving, Texas, nine-months-pregnant Misty Simpson was getting ready to spend Christmas Eve with her fiancé, Michael. He was a department manager at Oshman’s sporting goods store.
As she waited in the parking lot for Michael to finish closing the store, Simpson spotted a suspicious man inside the locked business. She also saw employees moving in a single-file line, each person with their hands on the shoulders of the worker ahead. Alarmed, she went to a pay phone and called 911.
“I just knew that this was off,” she later explained.
Several police units were dispatched, but Officer Aubrey Hawkins was the first to reach the scene. He drove to the rear of the store with his emergency lights flashing.
After pulling into the loading dock, Hawkins made his final radio call at 6:30 p.m. saying that he’d arrived at the store.
Moments later, he was killed in a hail of bullets as the Texas 7 were fleeing the store with their stolen goods—including 44 guns, more than $70,000 in cash, camping equipment and winter clothes—in tow.
When Hawkins’ backup arrived a few minutes later, they discovered him lying dead on the ground.
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“He had been shot in the car. There were bullet holes through the windshield, gunshots through the driver side door,” recalled Irving Police Sgt. Jeff Spivey, the lead investigator. “We think he’s drug out of the car and run over. What that kind of action demonstrates is just a lack of humanity.”
The 15 hostages inside the store were safely recovered.
On the ground, authorities found a gun that was ultimately traced back to Connally Unit Prison, connecting the crime to the earlier prison break. The witnesses also provided descriptions of their kidnappers to sketch artists that matched the missing men, providing further evidence the crimes were connected.
Were the Texas 7 Ever Caught?
Authorities launched a massive manhunt to try to find the missing prisoners, sharing the story with media outlets and America’s Most Wanted.
In one broadcast, host John Walsh remarked, “We’re tracking down one of the most ruthless gangs of lawbreakers we’ve ever gone after.”
Then on Jan. 18, 2001, authorities got a tip that the group could be hiding out in the Coach Light RV park in Woodland Park, Colorado. A tipster had seen two of the men at a local bible study group.
Once the information was confirmed, federal and Texas agents headed to the area.
Knowing the Texas 7 had police scanners, listened to radio traffic, were heavily armed and had positioned their RV so they could see others coming, the team had to be strategic about how they planned to capture the convicts.
They devised a plan using their own RV to get into the park undetected. But before they could descend on the inmates, they learned that some of the men were planning to flee.
They captured the three men—Rivas, Rodriguez and Garcia—at a convenience store on their way out of town. After taking them into custody, they closed in on the RV.
Though Halprin—who had been shot during the earlier robbery—surrendered, Harper died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The final two men, Murphy and Newbury, were tracked to a hotel in Colorado Springs and gave themselves up after doing an interview with the local media demanding prison reform.
“With all the suspects in custody, there was a collective sigh of relief,” Spivey said. “But there’s still a lot of hard work to do to convict them of capital murder in the murder of Officer Hawkins.”
Prosecutors Spent Years Prosecuting Texas 7
For three years, Shook prosecuted the surviving members of the Texas 7 in one capital murder trial after another.
Prosecutors tried the men under the Texas law of parties, arguing that the men were equally responsible for Hawkins death, regardless of whether they’d fired the fatal shots, because they had acted together.
At the center of each trial was Hawkins’ widow Lori Acosta who emotionally recounted the agony of losing her soul mate and her stepson’s father.
“I just had to describe the evening to the court and the jury,” she told Prosecuting Evil. “That was really hard.”
Ringleader Rivas was the first to go to trial and was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001. Over the next three years, the five other defendants followed suit.
Where Are the Texas 7 Today?
Rodriguez, Rivas, Newbury and Garcia have all been executed.
Halprin’s conviction was overturned in 2024 due to the judge’s antisemitic bias and he is awaiting a new trial.
As of October 2026, Murphy remains on death row.
“As hard as it was, justice for the most part has been served,” Acosta said. “I would say to anyone who has a loved one who’s a first responder, is a police officer, hug them tight, because it can be gone, as in my case, in 15 minutes.”