From the Richmond Dispatch, 10/21/1862, p. 1, c. 6
Escape of a Condemned Man. – David W. Rogers, the soldier condemned to be shot on Saturday, for desertion, escaped from Castle Thunder Monday morning, between the hours of 2 and 3 o'clock—Rogers was to have been shot about three weeks since, but was respited until Saturday by the President. Rogers was imprisoned in a room fronting on Cary street, the door leading to which was watched by a sentinel. It seems that he escaped between 2 and 3 o'clock Monday morning. By cautiously lifting the window of his room he was enabled to get on the perch used for drying tobacco. By watching, when the sentinel below had turned his back, he was able to crawl to the end of the porch over the office door. When the sentinel again turned his back, he went down the small wire that surrounded the end of the porch, and swung himself to the ground by means of the iron bracket that supported the structure. A sentinel down below heard the fugitive strike the ground and called to his companion, and gave the alarm. While search was being made the prisoner was making tracks up Cary street. He had not been caught up to last night.