The problem with convicted criminals escaping prison is that they’re, uh, convicted criminals. Nevertheless, some of their escapes are pretty ingenious.
There are few things more terrifying than going to prison. For starters, most of your personal freedoms and the majority of your dignity are stripped from you the moment you step inside a prison. Then there’s the whole matter of living with serial killers, murderers, and rapists.
So who can blame inmates for wanting to escape prison? While successful prison breaks are rare — except, as you’ll find out, in Afghanistan — they do happen. And when they do, they’re totally awesome. They rely on luck, the help of crooked guards, other inmates, buddies nice enough to hijack a helicopter, and some pretty ingenious planning. At least, that’s the case with these eight amazing real-life prison breaks.
Alcatraz Federal Prison | San Francisco, California | June 11, 1962
During its 29-year existence as a federal prison, Alcatraz held big shots like mob boss Al Capone — but it couldn’t hold Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin.
The trio, led by Morris and with the help of Allen West (he didn’t make it out of his cell in time to actually take part in the escape), spent two years preparing. Behind their cells was an unguarded corridor that led to a vent on the roof. To get there they had to chisel away a concrete cell wall, and, of course, it had to be done slowly and on the QT. Once they were through, they put lifelike paper mache dummy heads adorned with flesh-tone paint and hair from the barbershop in their beds to fool the guards. Then they climbed out of the vent, onto the roof, and down 50 feet of piping to the ground where a makeshift raft made from raincoats took them across 1.5 miles of water to San Francisco.
Well, maybe. The official report claims the men drowned in the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay. But we prefer to believe the TV show MythBusters, which concluded in 2003 that the escape from Alcatraz was, in fact, possible.
Luynes Prison and Southern France & Grasse Prison | South-East France | 2001 and 2007
Few inmates have the ambition, skill, or balls to escape from prison once. Well, Pascal Payet did it twice. And he did it with stolen helicopters.
A convicted murderer sentenced to 30 years in France’s Luynes prison, Payet wasn’t fond of high-security living. So in 2001 he convinced some pals on the outside to swoop in and pick him up in a hijacked heli. The plan worked, and he was a free man. He even returned voluntarily two years later with another helicopter to bust out three of his buddies, and it worked again.
Eventually, however, he was caught and another seven years was added to his original sentence. This time, the prison system was one step ahead of Payet and periodically changed his location to avoid any more Hollywood-style prison breaks. But in 2007 a gang of four heavily armed guys hijacked yet another helicopter in Cannes and rerouted it to France’s Grasse prison to stage another chopper escape. Payet again tasted freedom … until he was picked up a few months later in Spain. For now, he remains in custody.
Sarposa Prison | Kandahar, Afghanistan | April 25, 2011
This past April more than 480 inmates, including several Taliban fighters, escaped from Sarposa Prison in Afghanistan through a 1,050-foot tunnel that — according to a statement from the Taliban — took five months to dig.
The escape took place at about 1am, which left a lot of questions. Namely, how the hell did the inmates get out of their cells, and why didn’t prison guards notice construction of a massive hole that was more than three football fields long? The answer, of course, is that the guards helped.
A handful of senior prison officials and the governor have all been arrested in connection with the security breach, and more than 70 inmates have been recaptured. While it was a big embarrassment for Afghan and NATO officials, it wasn’t as big as they one they suffered in 2008 when nearly 900 prisoners escaped from the same facility.
HM Maze Prison | County Antrim, Northern Ireland | September 25, 1983
With 15-foot fences, an 18-foot concrete wall laced with barbwire, and gates made of solid steel, the Maze was thought to be one of Europe’s most secure prisons … until a group of 38 convicted Irish Republican Army terrorists armed with smuggled guns and homemade knives took control of Prison H-Block-7. With officers as hostages, there was no one left to sound an alarm. The inmates waited until a food truck made its 4:30pm delivery, and then commandeered the vehicle by tying the driver’s foot to the clutch and telling him — at gunpoint — where to go. The next stop was the gatehouse, where prisoners, some now dressed in stolen guard uniforms, outnumbered the guards 4 to 1 and managed to circumvent Maze’s electronically controlled steel gates and flee the scene.
The whole thing took about two hours, during which one prison officer died of a heart attack and 20 more were injured. As for the bad guys, 19 were captured within a week. However, some law-enforcement officials believed they simply sacrificed themselves to ensure IRA higher-ups were able to elude capture. To this day, two of the escapees have never been found.
John B. Connally Unit | Texas | December 13, 2000
The Texas 7 — Joseph Garcia, Randy Halprin, Larry Harper, Patrick Murphy, Jr., Donald Newbury, George Rivas, and Michael Rodriguez — were a crew of inmates at a maximum-security state prison in Texas. During lunchtime, when surveillance tended to be less intense, the Texas 7 subdued nine supervisors, four officers, and three uninvolved inmates. Then the group split up. Three, wearing civilian clothes and pretending to be workers, raided the guard tower to steal weapons and a truck. The others assumed the supervisors’ identities and made phone calls to keep other guards away until the three returned from the guard tower. When the gang was all together, they used the maintenance pick-up truck to make their escape.
After escaping, the Texas 7 went on a crime spree, robbing numerous stores which led to the death of a police officer. The killing landed them on America’s Most Wanted, and their 15 minutes of fame led to their capture. Harper wasn’t interested in going back to prison, and so he killed himself with a bullet to the chest. The rest were caught over the course of five days in January 2001. Rodriguez was executed in 2008, and the remaining five still sit on death row.
Lake County Jail | Crown Point, Indiana | March 3, 1934
John Dillinger, one of America’s most well-known Depression-era gangsters and bank robbers, escaped from prison twice. The first escape was a four-man operation that left two guards dead, but Dillinger’s second break from the “escape-proof” Lake County Jail in Indiana in 1934 was far more impressive.
Dillinger and four of his gang members were arrested in Tucson, Arizona before being extradited to Lake County. While in the clink, Dillinger used a wooden “gun” to trick the guards and take hostages. Once he managed to lock up all 33 jailers and prison workers, he made sure to let them all know that the gun was a phony. Pretty low, right? Well, not as low as stealing the sheriff’s brand-new car and making his getaway.
Later that year, Dillinger was gunned down by FBI special agents outside of the Biograph Theater in downtown Chicago.
Bosporus Prison| Turkey | 1975
Twenty-three-year-old American student Billy Hayes was arrested in 1970 for attempting to smuggle hashish out of Turkey. He was sentenced to four years, but weeks before his sentence was set to end, prison authorities slapped another 30 years onto it.
Spending his days unloading cargo from ships, Hayes devised a plan to make a dash from captivity using a small rowboat. He rowed all night before reaching land, but hadn’t yet made it out of Turkey. He then dyed his hair black to alter his appearance and, days later, swam across a river and into Greece, where he was deported to the U.S. in 1977.
The book and film, Midnight Express, were based on his experience; in 2010, Hayes directed Locked Up Abroad: The Real Midnight Express for the National Geographic channel.
Nottingham Prison and Chelmsford Prison | England | 1955-1957
Alfred George Hinds, who became known as “Houdini” Hinds, started his escapist career early, fleeing from an institution for teenage delinquents. Hinds also escaped a career in the armed services during World War II, when he became an army deserter. But his most impressive vanishing acts would come in the 1950s when he escaped prison three separate times.
While serving a 12-year sentence for robbery, Houdini somehow slipped past the prison’s locked doors and, using a makeshift ladder, went over the 20-foot walls at Nottingham prison. He spent the next eight months making an honest buck as a builder in Ireland before Scotland Yard caught up with him.
While in prison, he filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of his arrest. At a court date, he requested to use the restroom. Two guards accompanied him and removed his handcuffs so he could answer nature’s call. When they did, Hinds locked them in the bathroom and disappeared into the crowd on Fleet Street. Five hours later, he was back in custody.
Less than a year later he would perform his grand finale — an escape from Chelmsford prison after which he headed back to Ireland. Hinds evaded arrest for two years, and it would have been longer had he not been driving an unregistered car.
After his prison breaks, Hinds used his intellect and knowledge of the British legal system to gain pardon. In subsequent years, he won a libel case against a Scotland Yard officer, became a high-profile speaker on matters involving England’s flawed legal system, and even became secretary of the Channel Islands’ Mensa Society.