Prison is a place that none of us want to be. In an ideal world, everyone would get along and play by the rules. But life is not always like this, and if caught, as many have been before, your new home could be a wooden bed behind steel bars. But of course as many criminals are rule breakers in the first place, few are likely to take their punishment without rebelling. Attempting to break free of a prisons confinement is probably not an uncommon occurrence. What is uncommon however, is when these efforts are successful. This brings me to our latest blogs topic, Greatest Escapes: 10 of the craziest prison break outs. Read on and enjoy, we hope it doesn’t give you any inspiration for if you’re ever on the wrong side of the law!
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Greatest Escapes: Alcatraz
Alcatraz was a maximum-security federal prison located on an island off the coast of San Francisco. Surrounded by water, it was deemed to be inescapable. That all changed on June 11, 1962 when Frank Lee Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin escaped by digging a tunnel through a concrete wall using a spoon. To buy time, they created paper mâché dummies outfitted with hair from the prison’s barber shop and lay the decoys in their beds. The prisoners then went into the water via a boat they had made from over 50 stolen raincoats.
Their escape was not noticed by prison guards until the next morning. At that time a search began but ultimately the men were never heard from again. The FBI and Alcatraz jail officials assume, to this date, that the three men drowned in the water. If this theory is true, their bodies have never been discovered. Maybe they escaped and took on new identities, but it is highly likely that nobody will ever know their fate.
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Greatest Escapes: Catch Me If You Can
The escape of Frank Abagnale has been heavily popularized. Frank was a notorious fraudster and imposter, on who the movie ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is based on. Frank started committing crimes as young as 15, and escaped prison twice. The first time while he was being deported to the US; Frank escaped off a British airplane at JFK. He was eventually recaptured in April 1971, at which point he made his more grandiose escape.
In April 1971, Frank used his wits to trick the guards into aiding in his escape. When checking into the prison, the US Marshal forgot Frank’s detention commitment papers. At this time in the US, many prisons were being inspected by federal workers for civil right issues. Frank seized the opportunity to manipulate the prison guards into believing he was an undercover inspector posing as a prisoner for a review. He spent weeks building up the story. He used an accomplice on the outside to further convince the guards by forging a fake FBI business card that identified him as an officer.
The guards gave him special treatment thinking that they were helping the prison pass the inspection with flying colours. Eventually, he walked right out the prison and the guards allowed it, crazy.
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Greatest Escapes: The Magic Key
In an escape that sounds unbelievable, three inmates escaped in the UK by memorizing the outline of a key. Inmates Andrew Rodger, Keith Rose, and Matthew Williams worked in the prison’s sheet metal shop and made all the necessary tools for their escape in the shop. They memorized a guard’s master key outline and made a replica that essentially allowed them to open any door during their escape. They also made a 25-foot steel ladder and a “homemade” gun
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Greatest Escapes: El Chapo
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as ‘El Chapo’, is a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. He has managed to escape from prison twice. His first escape occurred in January 2001. After being arrested on drug charges by the Mexican police, El Chapo bribed guards in his prison to assist him in his escape. He escaped the prison by climbing into a laundry cart and was able to avoid capture for the next 13 years.
In 2014 he was rearrested and a short 17 months later, El Chapo escaped again. This time, gaining a lot of media attention, Chapo escaped through a mile-long tunnel built underneath the showers of the maximum-security prison. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill tunnel, it had lighting, ventilation and a modified motorcycle on tracks that was probably used to aid in the construction of the tunnel. He was recaptured again January 2016 and presently remains in jail.
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Greatest Escapes: Girl Power
In 2012, Ronald Silva, a drug trafficker, escaped from a Brazilian prison. When his wife came for her weekly visit, she gave her husband the clothes she was wearing and changed into a spare outfit she had in her purse.
Silva then went to great lengths to shave his arms and legs, apply fake nails, put on a wig, lipstick, heels, and the outfit that his wife had left him. He was able to walk right past the guards and out onto the street without attracting any attention. However, as he walked towards his friends waiting at a bus stop, a clever cop noticed him struggling to walk in the heels and spotted that something was not quite right.
Silva’s wife claimed that while she brought him the clothes, she had no idea what he intended to do with them.
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Greatest Escapes: The Texas 7
This was the biggest prison break in Texas history. In 2001, seven prisoners forced their way out of maximum security prison John B. Connally Unit in the isolated town of Kenedy. Their leader was George Rivas, who was serving 18 consecutive life sentences for burglary and kidnapping. Seven men (including two convicted murderers) overpowered two guards and eight maintenance men and stole their clothes and keys, locking them in a utility closet and then fooling several other guards in order to take weapons and flee in a truck. The Texas 7 then went on a crime spree from San Antonio to Dallas and into Colorado. They were eventually captured, but not before killing 29-year-old police officer Aubrey Hawkins in Texas. One of the seven inmates killed himself before being captured, but the other six were taken back to John B. Connally Unit. Of these, three have been executed, including Rivas.
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Greatest Escapes: The Slovakian Hero
Alfred Wetzler was a Slovakian Jew who was sent to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz during World War II. Wetzler and fellow prisoner Rudolf Vrba escaped the death camp in April 1944 by hiding in a wood pile that other inmates had soaked with tobacco and gasoline to fool guards and dogs. They hid for four nights, then donned stolen suits and overcoats and began an 80 mile journey to the Polish border with Slovakia.
Wetzler carried a report of the inner workings of the concentration camp, including a ground plan, details of the gas chamber and a label from a canister of Zyklon B, the gas the Nazis were using to kill prisoners. It was the first detailed report that the Allies regarded as credible, and helped lead to the bombing of buildings that housed Nazi officials who dealt with the railway deportations. It is saved that because of this, 12,000 Hungarian Jews were saved.
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Greatest Escapes: Ted Bundy
Serial killer Ted Bundy was able to escape jail not once, but twice. The first instance came during his trial in 1977. Bundy was representing himself, and so he was not shackled or restrained. During a trip to the courthouse’s law library, Bundy was able to break free by leaping from the library’s second floor window. Six days later, he was picked up by police.
Later that same year, Bundy had suspiciously lost 20 or 25 pounds — not due to a loss of appetite, but because of an appetite for freedom. He managed to cut an opening in the ceiling of his cell and crawled his smaller frame through the prison’s duct system. Bundy was arrested again in Florida, after he had already managed to murder three more victims.
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Greatest Escapes: The Plain Sight Plot
Sometimes prisoners escape through tunnels, other times they walk right out of the front door. In the case of Nini Johana Úsuga David, who was the sister of one of the biggest drug lords in Colombia, her 2014 escape was so well-planned that she did it in plain sight. David, known as “La Negra,” was arrested for her work alongside the deadly Los Urabeños gang. She was later released from prison and able to walk right out the front doors after showing released papers. Unfortunately for police, her release papers were falsified and forged. Her escape led Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to call for the resignation of the prison director responsible.
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Greatest Escapes: First Class Delivery
Richard Lee McNair was no prison escape rookie. His first attempt to escape involved the use of lip balm to free himself from handcuffs. In his second attempt, he crawled through a ventilation duct, but was caught in a matter of hours. But his third attempt was truly legendary. While working in the prison, McNair actually put himself into a mailbag. This was complete with his own breathing tube, and literally shipped himself out of prison. At one point, after he slipped out of the package into the free world. He was then stopped by a police officer and managed to convince the officer he was a jogger. He was not found until a year later.
In prison you are given a lot of time to think, and some of these escape stories are testament to this. With knowledge of how secure most prisons are nowadays, it is clear that a certain level of IQ is needed to break free of one of these establishments. This does make you wonder, could these men and women have been successful in other areas of life, if they didn’t dedicate theirs to a life of crime? The answer to that of course we will never know. If you want to read more crazy jail break stories then please click here. If you want to buy the t-shirt that inspired this blog then please click here (available in three colours). Thankyou for taking the time out of your day to read todays blog. Join us next time for more crazy stories!
