The year was 1953, and British criminal Alfred George Hinds was serving twelve years in prison.
But the Nottingham prison where he was held wouldn’t be able to contain him, as he eventually
got through locked doors and climbed a twenty-foot wall to freedom.
He spent almost a year across Europe before being recaptured - and then quickly escaped
while awaiting trial and headed straight for the airport.
He was caught again, but escaped from Chelmsford prison and fled to Ireland where his freedom
lasted two years.
He became notorious in the British media, dubbed “Houdini Hinds”, and was inducted
into MENSA after his eventual release from prison.
Many people consider him the greatest prison escape artist of all time.
This video...is not about people like him.
There are around 2000 prison escapes each year in the United States, but that number
is dwarfed by the number of escape attempts.
Most of these are foiled very quickly, and most never even get off the grounds of the
prison.
Common tactics for escaping prison include trying to scale the prison walls, running
into nearby woods, or attempting to get smuggled out of the prison.
Guards know to look out for these tactics by now, and uncreative inmates usually find
themselves right back where they started - maybe with a longer sentence or less comfortable
quarters.
Other inmates take a more aggressive approach, starting riots and taking guards hostage.
Those usually end in a standoff and hostage negotiation that is highly unlikely to end
with release.
But some inmates take more creative approaches to escape.
We said “creative”, not effective.
Kenneth Burnum was doing a few years in prison for burglary when he started to get stir-crazy.
He watched other inmates at his Hamilton County, Tennessee prison get prepped for release and
thought - why not me?
Then he took that a bit too literally.
As another inmate was about to be released on bond awaiting trial, Burnum took advantage
of the light security and decided he would simply take that man’s identity.
He presented himself when the officers came to collect the lucky inmate, and signed all
the paperwork.
He was just minutes away from freedom!
There was just one problem.
The inmate set for release, Glenn Taylor, was black.
And Burnum was definitely not black.
Prison officials looked on the sheet and saw the issue, and Burnum’s not-so-great escape
was stopped in its tracks.
Burnum briefly claimed to not have been aware Taylor was black, but admitted he just wanted
to escape.
He wound up being charged with criminal impersonation and attempted escape, ensuring he’d have
a bit longer to cook up half-baked escape attempts.
At least he stayed clean, unlike our next inept inmate.
Everyone remembers the famous prison escape from The Shawshank Redemption, as innocent
lifer Andy Dufresne tirelessly tunneled his way out of his cell and escaped through the
prison’s sewer system.
But fact isn’t as glamorous as fiction, as one Brazilian inmate found out.
He tunneled out of his cell into the sewer system too, but he wasn’t all that well
prepared.
He decided to make his escape wearing only a pair of shorts - not ideal wear for digging
around through human waste to make your escape.
At least the sewer is a clear shot to freedom, right?
Wrong!
From the moment the unfortunate prisoner decided to make his escape, it was nothing but one
humiliation after another.
He got stuck in the sewer only a few feet from the cell, lost his shorts in the sewer,
and had to be pulled to safety covered in filth and completely naked by two other men.
The man’s ill-advised escape was caught on a video that went viral around the world,
but his name was never released to the public and no one knows what became of him.
He’s probably happy about that.
It’s hard to keep cool in prison, but one inmate took impatience to another level.
Andrew Wilson seemed to be a model prisoner.
Doing time for burglary, theft, and possession of controlled substances, he had kept his
nose clean in prison and was approaching his parole board hearing.
All he had to do was stay calm and do his work detail.
Wilson wasn’t considered a high-risk inmate, so he was given a little more freedom - which
one day, he decided to take full advantage of.
He stole a truck at the work camp he was serving at, drove off, and ditched the truck to run
to freedom in the next town.
He tried to stay ahead of the authorities, but it wasn’t long before he was caught
- with drugs on his person.
He was facing new charges of possession and escape from custody, and would be extending
his stay in Tennessee’s corrections department.
But he did get one piece of good news when he was back in custody - the parole department
had approved his release only twenty-four hours after he had escaped!
Patience is a virtue, but not for Andrew Wilson.
Making an escape from prison is hard enough - staying free is even harder.
One inmate found that out the hard way.
The Olympic Correction Center in Washington was a relatively easy prison to escape from,
and James Russell was no rookie.
He was serving his fourth prison term and had just been transferred to the minimum-security
work camp.
It didn’t take long for the serial thief to take full advantage, as he made a break
for it and escaped into the nearby woods.
But he was in a rural area, still wearing his prison gear, and needed some help to make
his escape complete.
He came across a cabin at a nearby river resort, and decided to sneak in.
Sounds like a smart plan?
It’s not like anyone would recognize him.
There was just one problem - the current resident of the cabin was a guard at the exact prison
Russell had escaped from.
Seeing an escaped inmate, the guard immediately tackled Russell.
Russell escaped, but the guard notified all the other guards in the area to be on the
lookout.
Russell was quickly tracked down by other guards, facing new charges for escape.
The serial offender’s brief stay in minimum security was over.
Most prison escapees are hardened criminals, right?
Not quite.
Christopher Boscacci had only arrived at Elmwood Correctional Facility a few days earlier,
but he was quickly getting tired of prison life.
It was time to get out of there, and he made a break for it.
Boscacci was actually much better at escape than most inmates, and the guards were taken
by surprise at just how fast he made it over the fences.
But he wasn’t prepared for just how many fences there were, and after leaving his shoe
atop the barbed wire, he was eventually snagged before scaling the last fence.
What terrible fate was Boscacci fleeing?
This hardened criminal doing hard time was actually facing misdemeanor petty theft charges,
and he was staying in a minimum-security facility while awaiting arraignment.
By making a break for it, he traded in his relatively comfortable digs for a stay in
maximum security - and felony charges that would likely see him staying in the prison
system for several years instead of a short stay in county jail or probation.
Most prisoners who fail at their escapes just head right back where they left, but some
aren’t so lucky.
Prison escapes have been going on far longer than the modern prison system, and old-time
prisons could be very tricky to escape.
What they lacked in modern security, they made up for in treacherous designs that threatened
any escapee with certain death.
That didn’t stop Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, a Welsh king in 1244.
He had been held in prison for much of his life due to conflicts over his father’s
land, and he was eventually held in the notorious tower of London by his brother Dafydd, in
a particularly nasty family feud.
He had enough - and he hatched a dangerous plot.
He designed himself an improvised rope made from his bedsheets and threw them out the
window, planning to scale the Tower of London and rappel down.
There was only one problem - all those years in captivity weren’t great for exercise,
and Gruffudd’s weight was too much for the thin cloth to handle.
He did make it down from the Tower of London, but at a much faster speed than he was hoping.
Gruffudd wasn’t the only famous prisoner to try and fail to escape - and the next one
shows that higher education is no guarantee of strategic smarts.
Dr. Samuel Mudd may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, treating the
injured John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
But his participation and lying to authorities got him a life sentence in prison.
He was imprisoned on the isolated Fort Jefferson, and prisoners had a bit more freedom there
since they couldn’t get off the grounds easily.
Mudd befriended Henry Kelly, a teenager working on a transport steamer, and convinced the
boy to smuggle him off the island.
Mudd changed into professional-looking clothes, snuck onto Kelly’s ship, and tried to blend
in.
There was just one problem - he was probably the most famous convict in the country at
the moment.
He was soon identified by the Fort’s storekeeper, arrested, and sentenced to hard labor.
Kelly also found himself in trouble for participating in the escape plot.
But Mudd’s story had a happier ending than most failed prison escapees - he was pardoned
by President Andrew Johnson and headed home after only a few years.
Getting help is a good way to get out of prison - but the partner in crime doesn’t always
work out.
Michael Coleman and Lester Burns were tired of their stay in prison, and when opportunity
presented itself, they made their escape.
They were on a long trip in a prison van along with other inmates when they had to make an
emergency stop due to a prisoner’s medical issue.
While the guards were in the hospital with the sick inmate, the inmates were left in
the van - and five of them watched in shock as Coleman and Burns jumped back into the
van and drove it off!
There was just one problem.
Oklahoma inmate Joshua Silverman wanted no part of this, and when Coleman and Burns stopped
the van briefly, he called 911 and let the authorities know exactly where they were.
He knew the penalty for an escape attempt and wanted to play it safe, and soon the authorities
were all over the area, tracking down the inmates one by one.
Coleman and Burns were foiled because not everyone they drafted into their escape was
on board.
Some inmates go further than most to escape - and this next one even got his family involved.
Clauvino da Silva was a notorious drug trafficker in Brazil, and he was serving a sentence of
more than seventy years when he hatched his escape plan.
One of the few people who still visited him on the inside was his 19-year-old daughter,
and when she arrived he convinced her to help him.
When the daughter left prison after her visit, everyone noticed she looked a little different,
and it didn’t take long for the ruse to unravel.
It was Clauvino da Silva dressed up as his own daughter.
And he was less than convincing.
A tight pink T-shirt and a rubber mask that made him look like a cartoon character weren’t
fooling anyone.
Making it worse - he had left his daughter behind to serve his sentence.
He wound up back in prison, and his daughter found herself facing criminal charges for
abetting an escape.
One of Brazil’s greatest criminal masterminds found his skills deserting him when it came
to getting out of prison.
Sometimes all it takes is one error to make a great prison escape fall apart - as our
last inmate found out.
There was no escaping from the most notorious prison in American history - Alcatraz Island.
It had one unique security feature - the raging waters off the coast, which made swimming
to shore all but impossible.
But that didn’t stop inmates from trying, and all fourteen escape attempts were foiled
- except for five men who were never found.
Only one man ever got to shore from Alcatraz Island.
His name was John Paul Scott, and he would have been a legend - if it wasn’t for one
major misstep.
A bank robber doing thirty years, he was sent to Alcatraz in 1949 and served thirteen years
before making his move.
He snuck out using a rope while on culinary duty, and left his injured partner in crime
behind.
He swam all the way to Little Alcatraz, a nearby rock formation, making him the only
person to survive the waters without being captured.
There was only one problem - he was completely exhausted, and collapsed on the rock where
he was picked up soon after.
Was it possible to escape from Alcatraz?
Not for long.
For some crazy escapes that were actually successful, check out “Insane Ways Prisoners
Used Peanut Butter, Cross-Dressing, and Fruit to Escape Prison”.
And for the ultimate high-stakes escape, check out “Death Row Inmates Escape Before Execution”.