Prison Break Conmen who run scams are everywhere.
But if there's something that makes Steven Jay Russell stand out, it's the sneaky tricks
he used to get out of jail!
He became the famous scammer known for escaping prison four times.
He took scamming to another level, having impersonated over 14 individuals, including
FBI agents, judges, and doctors.
Russell Background In 1957, a few months after being born, Stephen
Jay Russell was put up for adoption by his birth mother.
Baby Stephen, born in North Carolina, spawned from a complicated relationship that resulted
in a failed marriage.
His mother had just divorced his biological father and had decided she wasn't ready to
raise a child on her own.
A few years down the line, Russell would eventually track down both birth parents, only to find
out they had remarried each other and had three more children– all of whom were his
biological siblings.
He didn't take this well and claims this is where his rejection issues first started.
He was raised in a very conservative household by his adoptive parents, David and Georgia.
After he discovered he was adopted –and rejected in a way by his biological family–
that changes in his behavior started.
First, he started getting into a lot of trouble at school and, after a while, he became obsessed
with fires.
Having noticed this reckless behavior, he was sent to a boys' home for therapy, where
he finally came to important conclusions about his life: he had a very high IQ of 163, and
he was gay.
On Friday, May 13th, 1971, Russell finally left the boys' home– a date that would become
something of a hallmark for his crimes and prison escapes.
Multiple Characters After his high school graduation, Russell
was ready to live a pretty regular life and became a cop.
His time as a police officer taught him several valuable lessons about committing a crime.
Watching people get caught time and time again is a solid lesson in how NOT to do it.
These lessons came in handy for his future stunts.
Like many homosexual men at the time, he felt the need to hide who he really was, which
is why he decided to marry Debbie Davis, the Police Chief's daughter.
Together, they had a daughter named Stephanie, who was born two years into their marriage.
But, as expected, the pressure of living a life that wasn't honest to his desires came
knocking.
After nine years together, Russell confessed his sexual orientation to his wife, and they
decided to separate.
Russell claims that his past traumatic experiences set the tone for his future crimes and reckless
behavior.
The death of his adoptive father shook his life, and he decided to move to Houston and
then Los Angeles.
One way or another, his sexuality played a role in his decisions: after an executive
at a food services company where he worked found out he was gay, he was fired.
Russell turned to scams, feeling rejected from society and thinking he'd never hold
a "stable job."
He faked a back injury to acquire $45,000 from the insurance.
He resorted to selling fake Rolexes and ultimately wanted to create a fake identity to help him
commit more frauds.
He went as far as to apply for a passport after stealing the identity of another man
named Stephan Russell.
However, he was caught in the process and eventually indicted by a grand jury.
Russell came up with bail money and was a free man until he'd eventually have to serve
his jail time.
First Escape While out on bail, Russell met Jimmy Kemple,
reportedly his first male lover.
The pair moved into an apartment together in Palm Beach and decided to spend their lives
together.
Unfortunately, Kemple had AIDS and, in the nineties –still the height of the AIDS epidemic–
it was untreatable.
Kemple was given only a few years to live.
Russell was eventually sentenced to 6 months in jail for passport fraud.
However, his yearning to be with Kemple burned, and he knew he had to escape.
We watched closely and took mental notes on how the guards at the Harris County Prison
operated.
They took smoke breaks every three hours– enough time for him to sneak off and explore.
While exploring the prison, he found the room where female inmates would leave their possessions
before going through processing.
In it, he spotted a pair of red pants and a tie-dye t-shirt.
On May 13th, 1993—a Friday—Russell put the escape plan in motion.
He waited for the guards to take their break and put on the women's clothes.
He'd also managed to steal a radio from the same room, believing it'd give him a sense
of authority.
He took the elevator down to the 10th floor, an area where no inmates were allowed.
He then went down to the first floor –surrounded by guards– and walked out of the front door
of the building.
Blinded by Love He had performed one of the most difficult
stunts in the world: escaping from one of the toughest prisons in Texas.
According to Russell, he did it all for love.
He finally reunited with Kemple, only to be arrested once again when the pair were caught
in Miami trying to fly to Mexico.
Once again –for some inexplicable lucky reason– he was released on bail once again.
This time, bail was set at $20,000, a sum he was able to pay easily.
The pair left for Mexico City, where, after a while, Russell noted it wasn't the best
place to treat Kemple's condition.
They came back to the US, where he decided to use Kemple's complicated health to help
them financially.
Russell had gotten a job at a company in Chicago and used Kemple's birthdate and Social Security
number for two years to collect $200,000 on his life insurance policy.
Both of them were arrested.
As per usual, Russell used his acting skills and charm to convince prosecutors that he
was also dying of AIDS.
During his trial, prosecutors received a letter from Dr. Richard Kone from the Medical Diagnostic
Center of Philadelphia stating Russell was indeed in the late stages of AIDS and would
die in a few months.
The compelling letter persuaded attorneys not to pursue the case further.
Both the doctor and the letter were fake, written by Mr. Russell himself.
Philip Morris While he'd escaped the law once again, he
didn't have the same luck in Texas, where his first insurance fraud and escape charges
were still open.
He was sentenced to three years in prison and found himself back in Harris County Jail.
It's during this prison stint that Russell meets the love of his life, Philip Morris.
Morris had been arrested for failing to deliver a rental car on time– in some states, a
delay in giving back a rental car is considered theft.
He was struggling to pay for the restitution, so he was sent to a halfway home, where he
escaped and was later arrested for breaking his bail.
He was sent to the same Texas facility as Russell.
The pair met in the prison's library when Morris, who was only 5'2, was trying to reach
for a book.
Russell noticed him and reached for the book to hand it to him– they started chatting
and became inseparable.
Morris was paroled in October 1995 after serving nine months.
Russell followed him two months later.
Love Life The two lovebirds moved into an apartment
30 minutes away from the Texas prison, and both decided to live a grand lifestyle.
Russell used a friend's influence to cash out another life insurance he had taken out
on Kemple.
The pair bought each other a couple of Mercedes-Benzes, Rolex Watches, and jet skis.
They bought and refurbished a house in Clear Lake but continued hunting for real estate
in River Oaks and South Hampton.
Even though they knew it was all too much, they were finally together and free.
They bought fancy suits, and Russell even got plastic surgery.
Of course, once a con man, always a con man: Russell managed to fake his CV and landed
a job as a chief financial officer for North American Medical Management, a company that
worked in patient care.
He was even described as an easy-to-work guy who was also very likable.
The Score It didn't take long for Russell to add many
illegal zeroes to his already lavish $90,000-a-year salary.
He was investing millions from the company in short-term accounts, taking 50% of the
revenue for himself, stealing $800,000 overall.
As expected, after five months into his new job, Russell was caught.
He was charged with embezzling the $800,000, and his bail, this time, was set at $900,000.
Morris was a little luckier; his bail was only $50,000.
As usual, Russell knew he could find a way out of this one too.
He called a friend in Florida and told him to type a bond order and mail it to him.
Bail Bond orders are usually written by lawyers and signed by judges.
Russell, a seasoned con, knew how to type one and instructed his Florida friend to do
so over the phone.
Now, all he had to do was get the letter into the court clerk's hands, a task that seemed
impossible as he'd shackled to the other inmates.
With the letter hidden under his jumpsuit, Russell saw a woman approaching with a stack
of files and papers in her hands.
He dropped the letter near her as she passed, and a good samaritan picked it up and handed
it to her, thinking she'd dropped it.
Later that night, he made a three-way call with his friend, impersonated the judge, and
spoke to Harris County District Clerk to order that his bond be lowered to only $45,000.
He said there should be a hard copy of the order somewhere in the clerk's office, and,
low and behold, the person on the other end found Russell's forged letter.
After that, Russell wrote the check and was a free man.
He reunited with Morris and fled the city– they wanted to go to Florida.
Escaped (Again) Russell was quickly arrested in Florida and
flown back to Texas, where he pleaded guilty to fleeing.
He was then sentenced to 45 years at the Estelle Unit.
It's during this prison stay that he plots his most elaborate escape yet.
He devised a plan that required him to stockpile green sharpies from the prison's art classes.
Once he had saved enough, he extracted the ink from them and filled his cell sink with
water.
He then dyed a spare white prison uniform in the water to look like surgical scrubs.
He even made sure he didn't get any streaks in the fabric.
He proceeded to wrap himself in plastic bags so police dogs wouldn't be able to track him
down by scent.
Over the plastic bags, he put on his green-dyed prison clothes and waited for the woman at
the front desk to make a phone call.
Once she was distracted, Russell walked out of the facility dressed as a doctor.
He walked to the nearest house, knocked on the door, and said he was a doctor who had
been involved in an accident and needed to be taken into town.
According to Russell, he was sipping Margaritas at a bar in Houston by the time they knew
he was gone.
He got back home to Morris through the back door– both of them now wanted men for skipping
bail, escape, and fraud.
They traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi, and had a big falling out on a hotel balcony.
Morris even tried to push Russell over the edge.
During a tapped phone call, both of them were tracked down by authorities and were separated.
Morris was convicted of helping Russell embezzle $800,000 and was sentenced to 20 years in
prison.
I Love You, Philip Morris While in prison for ten months, Russell faked
obvious symptoms of AIDS.
He lost a lot of weight and made sure he wrote fraudulent medical records in the prison's
library that confirmed his condition.
The authorities never ran any tests, and he was transferred to a nursing home.
He even made some calls from the home impersonating a doctor and saying he had died.
He almost got away with it were it not for a detective who spotted him a year later.
Arrested for the final time, Russell received a life sentence for his embezzlement and multiple
escapes from prison– 144 years total.
'I Love You, Philip Morris', starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, premiered in 2009,
a film detailing the elaborate life of love and luxury lived by one of America's most
notorious con men.
Behind Bars Stephen Russell has become one of the most
guarded and looked-after inmates of all time.
He spends 23 hours in solitary confinement and is given an hour to shower and exercise
each day.
His daughter Stephanie visits him from time to time in prison.
He hasn't had any escape attempts since the sharpie stunt.
Since I Love You Phillip Morris premiered, Russell's also become very popular in prison–
some inmates even ask him for autographs.
In 2018, Russell wrote an article for the Huffington Post about his life behind bars
and everything the movie missed about his experiences.
It leaves us wondering if Russell’s got any elaborate escape plans when Friday the
13th rolls around each year.
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