BY ANDREW KNAPP
November 14, 2010
OCALA It was the late 1960s, and Paula Carroll was a poster child
for American counterculture but a pariah to her family.
At 16, she rebelled against her parents' politics and left her
hometown of Kissimmee for the runaway capital of the Southeast, Daytona Beach.
There, the police didn't hassle her. She slept on the beach. She
stayed in an apartment with 40 others. She panhandled. She hitchhiked.
Carroll partied on a bus with Lynyrd Skynrd. She met Dickey Betts of
The Allman Brothers. She paid $3 to see Led Zeppelin, $9.75 for Bob Dylan.
But her carefree life -- one she called "glamorous, in a way" -- was
destined to self-destruct, Carroll said in a jailhouse interview Thursday.
Nearly every day after she turned 15, she used drugs, often for free
-- not usually marijuana, she said, but "pretty much everything
else." She was convicted of credit card fraud, carrying a concealed
weapon and trespassing.
And there were crimes she was never arrested for.
In another five years, Carroll figured, she'd be dead.
As an 18-year-old, she gave birth to a child -- whom she wouldn't
discuss -- and returned to Kissimmee. She held a job for a time but
eventually slid back into her old ways.
"It was all about drugs and rock 'n' roll," she said. "I was really
out of control."
In 1975, her escalating criminal behavior and history of drug use
moved an Osceola County circuit judge to sentence Carroll to five
years in prison for concealing a stolen TV, radio and toaster in her apartment.
"I got the maximum, based on my previous record and local politics,"
she said. "And it might have been a favor to my family."
But more than 40 days into her time at Lowell Correctional
Institution in Marion County's Ocala, she awoke in her prison bunk
one evening and had an epiphany.
"I knew if I got out and I went back home, it would be the same," she
said. "I would not change because I would hang out with the same
people, doing the same things.
"I just needed to get far away . . . and become someone different,"
she said. "So I did it."
On Sept. 3, 1975, Paula Carroll escaped -- and became Sharon Edwards.
'Euphoric' a while
For three days, Carroll schemed to break free.
She said nothing about her tactics, only that they couldn't be
executed in the eye of modern prison technology.
She disputed the version of events presented by the Marion County
State Attorney's Office: that Carroll, clad in pajamas, threw a
blanket over a razor-wire fence near her dormitory and disappeared
into the night, only 47 days into her five-year sentence.
However she did it, she couldn't believe that it actually worked.
"It was pretty euphoric for a while there," she said, "until the panic set in."
She caught rides to South Florida, called herself Sharon Ann Edwards
and got a job that paid under the table.
The Florida Department of Corrections reported this year that she
stole the Social Security number of a West Virginia woman. Instead,
she said she acquired one through legal means -- a claim verified by
the Internal Revenue Service.
She didn't cut her hair. She didn't dye it. She still looked like
Paula Carroll.
"In the beginning, you think you're going to get caught all the time
-- all the time," she said. "And then after a while, you get
complacent. You live your day. I didn't have time to think about it."
Carroll was intent on staying free and nothing else, but in a moment
of serendipity, she got to know Ray Brown via CB radio. They would
chat, and they eventually met in person -- only a few weeks after she escaped.
They had a baby, Jeremy, in 1976. He was premature, and the couple
had little money. Carroll dedicated her time to the newborn.
"I'm not going to say that there weren't days when I thought, 'What
the heck am I doing here? I could be out there,' " she said. "But it
wasn't worth the sacrifice to my family for the momentary pleasure in
doing something that wasn't appropriate."
They soon were married in a small ceremony in Lakeland. Two more sons followed.
"You just went day by day," she said. "At some point, it's like,
'Yeah, maybe I'll be OK. Maybe I won't get caught.' But it's still
there. It's always there. You could mess up."
'A normal person'
In the 34 and a half years after her escape, Carroll never meant to
become a model citizen or a second mother to troubled children, as
many of her acquaintances have described her in letters to FLORIDA TODAY.
"I'm a normal person," she said. "I don't always make the bed. I'm
opinionated. And I don't like sharing."
Carroll volunteered to read to her children's classmates in South
Florida because, she thought, "everybody does it." In 1986, when she
moved to Melbourne for her husband's new job, she became a Cub Scout
den leader because, she thought, "everybody does it."
She taught children in Brevard Public Schools about poisonous snakes,
campaigned for Brevard's sheriff, raised thousands through yard sales
for children to attend summer camp and led hiking trips in the
Carolinas. She also guided all three of her sons to become Eagle Scouts.
"Let's face it: A lot of it I did just because it was fun," she said.
"I had a good time. I went backpacking, went canoeing, went
whitewater rafting, taught wilderness survival. Those are awesome
things to do."
But there were things she could not do, things that were too risky.
Because of vision problems, Carroll said, she never drove. She never
traveled overseas, never went on the Scotland vacation she always
wanted to. She never visited her previous family, never saw anyone
from her former life.
"I would go days or weeks without thinking about my past," she said.
"Sometimes . . . a whole year would go by, and then it would be like,
'Oh, wait.' I really, truly became another person.
"I really became Sharon Brown."
But she really wasn't. And living a lie weighed on her.
In the late 1980s, when Florida offered amnesty to criminals with
nonviolent histories, Carroll thought about turning herself in. But she didn't.
She told her new family of her raucous youth -- her arrests, her drug
use, her estrangement from family. Not wanting to make her loved ones
legally vulnerable, however, she left her real name unsaid.
"I just couldn't see any way to do it without causing too much havoc
and emotional upheaval," she said. "Maybe that's being a coward."
'OK with this'
April 20, 2010, was the day Paula Carroll never wanted to come. But
she knew it would.
As she sat in her boss' Toyota Prius outside her Albert Drive home,
Carroll saw the sheriff's cars pull into the driveway. A man knocked
on her window. She got out and was handcuffed.
The two co-workers also in the car -- with whom she staged homes in
preparation for estate sales -- were confused and upset. Since
starting a family, Carroll had never been in trouble with the law.
But she knew exactly what was happening.
An anonymous tipster -- whose identity Carroll refuses to theorize
about -- gave state and local authorities her whereabouts.
Of all days, though, the one on which her time as a fugitive would
end also was her 56th birthday.
"It's not a good thing, but it's not a bad thing either," she said.
"If this was going to happen, this was a pretty perfect time in my
life for it to happen. My children are grown. They understand."
At first, there was no relief, only panic -- a fear of what others would think.
Before she was taken to jail, she apologized to her husband and asked
him to apologize to everyone else -- to her sons, her eight
grandchildren, her neighbors, to everyone who knew her name to be
Sharon Brown. That was her moral obligation, one she never could
bring herself to fulfill in more than three decades.
"At some point, you have to atone," she said. "It's not enough to
talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, too. I'm OK with this."
'Do your time'
The inmates at Lowell Correctional Institution learned about Carroll
through TV news reports.
"I'm really getting tired of being called a celebrity," she said.
"That's what they called me when I walked back into Lowell."
She returned to the same prison she escaped from and was locked in
disciplinary confinement. When that ended, she was permitted to pull
weeds near the prison chapel.
Carroll traded soup for a sweatshirt and lost 50 pounds. She started
cussing. She played cards, completed crossword puzzles. And she slept a lot.
Then, she got letters from family, from friends, from former Boy
Scouts, from "people that I don't even know." Hundreds also were sent
to Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Parole Commission, commending
the woman everyone knew as Sharon Brown for her commitment to the
communities she lived in since she escaped.
But volunteering doesn't make up for her crime, she said.
"It's helped me a lot. I'm really surprised and grateful for that,"
she said. "But I don't see how one outweighs the other."
Citing the letters of support from residents and from officials --
including the chief judge in Osceola County, where Carroll was caught
for concealing stolen items -- the state converted the remainder of
her five-year sentence to parole.
But on Tuesday, Carroll pleaded no contest to escape and received an
additional sentence of one year and one day in prison -- a deal that
made her "ecstatic" but frustrated her husband and sons.
"I feel bad that they feel bad about it," she said. "But I'm very
fortunate that they seem to be understanding, and they have not abandoned me."
The parole commission assured Carroll's defense attorney that it
would speed the process in freeing her, but she doesn't expect that
to happen until early next year.
But Carroll does want freedom. She wants to hug her husband again, to
see her first great-grandchild's birth. She wants a double cappuccino.
She wants to get out of the orange-and-yellow inmate clothes that
make her look "like a Creme Saver."
Carroll said that escaping from prison worked for her: It was the
decision that set her on the new course -- and maybe saved her life.
"It was the solution for me. It worked out for me," she said. "But I
would not recommend escaping from prison. Ever. Do your time. Get
out. And go change your life."
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Contact Knapp at 321-242-3669 or aknapp@floridatoday.com.
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