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“We go tonight,” is often the dramatic movie line you hear in the prison escape epic,
but in the case of escapes, fiction doesn’t need to embellish hard facts.
It’s some endeavor for the prisoner to break out of a cell, go over a wall, dig tunnels
under the ground, sometimes tie up a guard, and for the criminal with some cash behind
him, perhaps get a helicopter out of there.
We’ve already told you about possibly the only escape from the notorious prison of Alcatraz,
of El Chapo’s escape tunnel, and we’ve gone over some pretty terrible failed escapes,
but what we have for you today we can say are some the most ingenious prison escapes
on record.
9.
Explosive Fruit In 1996 the New York Times reported that a
man who had been serving an 18-year sentence in France for armed robbery managed to escape
from prison.
This was a 34-year old called Michel Vaujour, who had previously escaped from prison in
France three times.
This escape was said to be his most brazen, worthy of a trophy if they were awarded for
such criminal activity.
It was reported that Vaujour flew away in a helicopter with a woman, who it was later
said was his wife and who had been taking flying lessons in preparation for the escape.
What the Times didn’t say was that to get to the roof Vaujour had an ingenious ways
of getting past guards.
He was holding grenades and threatening to throw them at anyone who got in his way.
Except those grenades, according to CNN, were nectarines that he had earlier painted to
look like grenades.
CNN said that he was later captured, but then says he ended up doing another bank robbery
only to be shot in the head and survive.
We are not sure where he is right now, but it seems he’s written a book and is a free
man.
8.
More Food Stuff Prior to this 2015 escape no one had ever
escaped from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.
At around 5 am guards discovered that two men were missing from their cells, and they
were the convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat.
It was soon found out that these men had painstakingly made a tunnel whose ending, called an external
breach, was 500 feet (150 meters) outside the prison walls.
This would of course take some doing with a spoon, but it’s said the men managed to
get hold of tools from contractors inside the prison.
Those tunnels were partially already made, but still a lot of digging, breaking and cutting
had to be done.
The New York Times said that the men first had to cut through the cell, and for that
they used a hacksaw.
A prison tailor later admitted he’d been smuggling in blades hidden inside frozen hamburger
meat.
The escape has been compared to the one in the movie "The Shawshank Redemption,", but
it ended badly after a massive man hunt resulted in Matt being shot and killed by U.S. border
patrol and Sweat being shot and then sent back to prison.
7.
Tight Fit This is the story of a man nicknamed the Korean
Houdini, and we very much doubt anyone will ever repeat what he did to get out of prison.
That’s because he didn’t require any fancy tools, helicopters, or weapons, he just needed
to lose a bit of weight and become more flexible.
On the day of the escape in 2012 he covered himself in a kind of gel and then proceeded
to squeeze his body through a 15-centimeter-high, 45-centimeter-wide food slot.
Take a moment please to imagine what that must have looked like.
The police at the detention center in Daegu police station in Korea were rightly stumped.
It was only when they looked at surveillance footage that they saw the 165 cm (5 foot 4),
114 pound (52 kg) man slipping through the small hole that they knew how he had gotten
away.
The man was said to be very flexible because during the 23 years he had been incarcerated
during his life he had practiced yoga and become a master.
He was recaptured anyway a few weeks later.
The Korean authorities later told the press that they had now given him a cell with a
smaller food slot.
6.
The Studious Serial Killer There is no doubt you’ve all heard of Ted
Bundy, perhaps one of the most demented and violent serial killers in American history.
What you might not know is that he escaped from cells twice during his incarceration
in the 1970s.
The first time was perhaps the most ingenious, with Bundy telling authorities he needed to
study law as he was representing himself.
He’d already studied law as a free man, but during a court trial he said he needed
to read up on something.
He was given access to the library during recess, and as he wasn’t wearing restraints
because he was both lawyer and prisoner, he went to that library unimpeded.
He then jumped out of a second story window and went on the run.
He was recaptured but then when imprisoned at a later date he used books again to escape.
This time he simply got through the jailhouse roof, and then left books under his blanket
so guards would think it was him sleeping.
According to Bundy, one of the more educated serial killers we’ve seen, escaping was
easy.
This is what he said to a prison psychologist on the telephone, “Over the months, I had
noticed a number of opportunities to just walk right out.
I'd thought a great deal about escape, and I didn't know if I had the guts to do it,
quite frankly."
5.
A Simple Plan This next one might sound simple, but it took
guts and you could say there was genius in the simplicity.
The escapee was called Charles Victor Thompson and he had been sentenced to death for murdering
his girlfriend in 1998.
During his time behind bars he conceived a simple plan, and that was to walk right out
of prison.
For this he first had to smuggle in ordinary clothes, and in 2005 he arranged a meeting
with his lawyer.
Apparently at one point the lawyer left the room and then Thompson got into his civilian
clothes.
He opened the door and started walking, and then after that he said later he just walked
anywhere he could find open doors until he found himself next to a door that led to freedom.
He didn’t last long on the outside, however, and while he was sheltered and fed because
he pretended to be a Hurricane Katrina evacuee, the cops got him after he made a drunken phone
call.
He is now back in prison and has written a couple of books.
Oh, and to this day no one knows where he got the handcuff key from and Thompson doesn’t
want to tell.
4.
The Escape Artist Here we have a notorious British criminal
with quite a brain, and that’s because not only did he break out of prison three times
but he learned law while inside and represented himself.
His name was Alfie Hinds, and he was to serve a 12-year stint for armed robbery in the 1950s.
During one of those escapes he’d gotten fellow inmates to do some work on a toilet
door, and that meant attaching metal screw eyes to the door.
When Hinds asked to go to the toilet he was escorted by two officers, but then Hinds pushed
the officers into the toilet and attached a padlock he’d earlier smuggled in to the
screw eyes.
His freedom lasted all but five hours.
Nonetheless, after escaping another two times he was eventually given a pardon for his crimes
because of his vast knowledge of the British legal system.
After that he acquired celebrity status in the UK.
3.
A Sticky Situation The BBC reported in 2017 that a whole bunch
of inmates had escaped from an Alabama prison after tricking a guard with peanut butter.
The article tells us that the inmates were well aware that one of the guards was new
and perhaps didn’t know his way around very well.
It’s said the prisoners used peanut butter to cover up a number on an exit door.
In a statement the sheriff’s office explained exactly what happened.
That statement read, “The inmates took advantage of a new guard by using peanut butter to conceal
an exit door number.
When the inmates called for the guard to open the door and let them in a cell, the guard
inadvertently opened the exit door.”
The BBC, having fun with this wrote, “It was not clear which variety of the paste was
used by the prisoners, or whether it was crunchy or smooth.”
The U.S. authorities did say the men were clever, but they weren’t that clever because
they were all rearrested shortly after tasting freedom.
2.
The Transvestite The year was 2012, a year when a drug trafficker
from Brazil decided he didn’t want to spent any more time behind locked doors.
His name is Ronaldo Silva, and during a visit with his wife he just walked out of the prison.
We are not sure what happened to the wife.
What he had done was switch clothes with his loved one while she was visiting him.
He then put on some lipstick that she had brought in, and also donned a woman’s wig
and some high heels.
Prior to this we should say that he had had a very close shave.
He apparently got out of the prison, but someone later told police that a strange looking man
not walking very well was hanging around a bus stop.
Police then arrested him.
You can see the photos online of how he looked dressed as a woman, and you might agree with
us that it’s frankly amazing he got one foot out of the visiting room.
1.
Mass Escape From The Maze This might be the biggest prison escape in
history, but if not it’s certainly the biggest in terms of numbers that the UK has ever seen.
That’s because 35 prisoners got out.
It was 1983 and this group all belonged to the Irish Republican Army.
They made it out of a prison in Belfast, Northern Ireland, called Maze.
We won’t call it too ingenious as it took some amount of violence to escape, but 35
nonetheless is a big number when we consider the facility was maximum security.
With knives and smuggled guns the group of inmates demanded that the officers they had
hostage give them their clothes and car keys, and that they did under duress.
An alarm was raised and there was mayhem in the prison, but with hostages it was a tricky
situation.
Later the inmates got hold of a food truck and tried to drive it out of the gates, with
some of the inmates dressed in officers uniforms and so causing confusion.
The officers blocked the gates with their cars, and so the men got out and proceeded
on foot.
Officers were shot and stabbed during this ordeal and one man died.
Others were very seriously injured.
38 were in the escape gang, but three didn’t make it out.
It was called the biggest prison escape in Europe since World War II.
15 men were recaptured the same day, and another three soon after.
What happened to the rest is a long story, but some were killed, some were sent back
to prison, and some were extradited from the USA.
Out of the 38 that tried to get out that day, after many years only two men have evaded
arrest or being killed.
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