Plan Your Noir Summer Getaway – 10 Great Prison Breaks

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noir factorySummer is a great time to consider hitting the beaches and escaping from everyday life. From the office to the boardroom, sometimes you just have to get away from it all, and some of us are better at it than others.

Below are ten of the most spectacular prison breaks in modern history, teaching us that only occasionally do four walls a prison make and where there’s a will there’s a way!

Alcatraz (1962)

Known as the Rock, Alcatraz withstood fourteen escape attempts in its 29 years as a prison and officially the prison went undefeated.

Officially.

Unofficially Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers conspired to make their way out of the world’s most notorious prison. On June 11, 1962 they put a brazen plan into action.

The three men chipped away at the walls of their cells with spoons over the months, eventually making their way onto the top of their cell block, and managed to cut their way through the bars and into an air vent that led them to the roof of the prison.

From there they made their way down a drainpipe, over a chain link fence, and to the shore where they fashioned a raft stitched together from rain ponchos. The three boarded the raft and set out to navigate the treacherous San Francisco Bay towards freedom.

The group was never heard from again, and no bodies were ever discovered, leaving Alcatraz with a perfect record. But in our eyes, the Rock is 13-1.

Auschwitz (1944)

Few people made it out of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz during the Holocaust. With the help of the prison underground, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler managed to dig their way into a hollowed out woodpile just outside of the inner ring of the notorious prison.

To disguise the pair’s odor from the guard dogs, the prisoners dumped tobacco soaked in gasoline on the wood pile to cover their scent, and the two hid there for four nights.

The duo then donned stolen Dutch suits, overcoats, and boots before heading to the Polish border. On making their way to freedom, Vrba and Wetzler gave the first detailed report as to what was taking place inside the walls of Auschwitz, even going as far as to smuggle out a Zyklon gas canister label.

The Great Escape (1944)

In one of the most elaborate escapes of all time, the men of German POW camp Stalag Luft III, led by Roger Bushell of the Royal Airforce, began construction of three escape tunnels under the camp in January 1943.

The three tunnels, codenamed “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry,” were tight, cramped tunnels reinforced with stray pieces of lumber scavenged throughout the camp.

Hidden from the guards, the tunnels were outfitted with an air pump to feed the prisoners oxygen as they worked and to keep the lamps going.

Electrical lighting was even added to the tunnels, covertly connected to the camp’s own electric grid. The prisoners even went so far as to install a small railroad car system to help move over one hundred tons of rock and dirt over a five month period.

When the tunnels were finally completed, seventy-six men crawled their way out of Stalag Luft III, only to be caught on the seventy-seventh. Just three men avoided capture.

Libby Prison (1864)

If the escape of Stalag Luft III was the most well-planned, then the escape from Libby Prison was the most successful.  During the American Civil War, more than 100 Union prisoners made their way from the POW barracks to the underground storage basement of Libby Prison known as “Rat Hell.”

For 17 days the prisoners dug a tunnel, eventually coming out into a tobacco shed in the outer ring of the prison compound. From there 109 men walked out of the front door, unchallenged, with 59 of them making their way back to Union lines.

Lake County Jail (1934)

In 1934 John Dillinger was the most famous guest ever to be housed in the Lake County Jail. He was placed there for killing a police officer. As the press published story after story, Dillinger’s face grew, prompting local authorities to boast to the media about their ability to handle the notorious bandit. The boasting was premature.

On March 14, 1934, Dillinger carved a wooden pistol and painted it with some spare shoe polish. He then bluffed the guards into surrendering and locked them in his cell before driving off.

In the sheriff’s car.

“If I ever see John Dillinger,” said Sheriff Lillian Holley to Time Magazine, “I’ll shoot him dead with his own pistol.” Dillinger did not come to a good end, but he had little to fear from the Lake County Sheriff’s department.

Grasse Prison (2001-2007)

There is much to be said for persistence and sticking to a good plan. In 1999 Pascal Payet was sentenced to thirty years for committing a murder in the process of robbing an armored car. After arranging an escape from his cell he rendezvoused with his compatriots in a hijacked helicopter and made his way to freedom.

Six months later Payet arranged for another helicopter to free four men who were arrested with him in 1999. He was arrested three weeks later.

After his return to prison Payet was classified as a “prisoner to be highly supervised” and was placed in the highest security prisons in France, where he was randomly moved. Despite the extra security, Payet was able to make use of a Bastille Day celebration to arrange for yet another hijacked helicopter to whisk him to freedom.

A freedom which, unfortunately for Payet, lasted only two months before he was arrested in Spain.

Law Courts (1956)

Growing up an orphan and a petty thief, Alfred George “Alfie” Hinds became a deserter in the military and later was arrested for a jewelry theft in 1953. Sentenced to twelve years, Hinds committed his first of three escapes from Nottingham Prison.

After navigating a locked cell door and a 20-foot wall, he became known in the press as “Houdini” Hines and eluded the authorities for almost a full year.

On his second and most impressive escape, from Law Courts, he smuggled a padlock into his cell. After pleading with his guards to let him use the bathroom, he maneuvered the two guards into the stall which had been previously outfitted by his friends to have two I-Hook screws installed.

Using the padlock, he trapped the guards in the restroom stall while he strolled to freedom.

After another round of apprehension, escape, and subsequent apprehension, Hinds used the legal knowledge he acquired to address the House of Lords. He eventually received a pardon for his crimes.

Hinds became a celebrity in Europe and sold his story for over $40,000 to News of the World. He went on to successfully sue a Scotland Yard officer for libel, write a book of his exploits, and became the secretary of the Channel Islands’ Mensa Society.

While taking part in a debate at the University of Westminster, he was kidnapped and held in a basement by members of the student body before turning the tables and imprisoning them.

Colditz Castle (1945)

Colditz Castle, originally built as a German lookout post for Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, served many purposes over its lifetime. Used as a labor camp, indigent house and mental institution, Colditz Castle became a POW camp in WWII for prisoners who had attempted escape from other camps.

Considering Colditz Castle to be the perfect high security prison, the German officers were vigilant for any tunneling activity, but in at least one case, they overlooked the attics.

A group of men, called the Apostles, headed by Flight Lieutenant Bill Goldfinch of the Royal Air Force, set out to stage the most spectacular escape of World War II.

Using a book on aircraft design stolen from the prison library, the men built a full-sized glider in the lower attic of the castle using scraps of sleeping bags, bed slats, and scraps of wood.

Dubbed the “Colditz Cock,” the glider had a 32-foot wingspan and measure almost twenty feet from nose to tail. Electric wiring served as control wires and the skin was sealed using prison rations.

Before the glider was finished, however, Castle Colditz was liberated by the American Army. The “Cock” was never launched and only one picture of the glider exists. A replica was built and eventually it took flight in 1993.

İmralı Prison (1975)

After being sentenced to four years and two months in a Turkish prison, American student Billy Hayes saw that sentence changed to life in prison as part of a crackdown on drug smuggling in Turkey.

As diplomatic efforts on Hays behalf resulted in only a five year reduction in his sentence as well as worsening condition, Hays decided to take his fate in his own hands.

Hays escaped İmralı Prison in the middle of the night in a stolen rowboat to Bandırma in Northern Turkey. For a time he there, blending in with the locals. From there, Hays made his way west, across the border to Greece.

He was then deported to Frankfort, Germany where he was held by American forces and interrogated on the possible military intelligence Hays possessed regarding Turkish forces.

Hays wrote a book on his exploits, Midnight Express, which was later turned into a major motion picture. Years later he returned to Turkey to apologize to the Turks for painting them in an unflattering light.

Harris County (1992)

It’s hard to know where to start where Steven Jay Russell is concerned except to say that if there is a patron saint of prison breaks, it is he. Russell’s first brush with the law was his arrest for fraud in a “slip-and-fall” scheme.

After serving four weeks in a six month sentence, Russell walked out of the Harris County Jail wearing a smuggled set of civilian clothes and talking into a spare walkie-talkie disguised as a prison guard.

Russell then inexplicably landed the position of chief financial officer at North American Medical Management Company. More explicably he was jailed after embezzling $800,000. He was once again sent to the Harris County Prison.

Rightly considered to be a flight risk, Russell’s bail was set at $950,000, but a phone call to the Harris County Records office, by Russell pretending to be a judge, lowered the bail to $45000.

He posted bail himself.  A week later he was picked up asking friends for money.

Sentenced to forty years for the embezzlement, Russell planned his most “colorful” escape yet. Amassing a collection of green highlighter pens, Russell broke them open and poured them into his toilet, dying his uniform green to resemble a doctor’s scrubs.

From there it was a short hike to a nearby house to convince the homeowner to give the good “doctor” a lift to town. He fled to nearby Biloxi where he was recognized and apprehended.

After again being remanded to Harris County, Russell executed his most elaborate escape of all. Using laxatives and his innate acting ability, as well as the prison typewriter to forge his own medical records, Russell convinced the prison to grant him a transfer to a special needs facility.

From there he posed as a physician and AIDs specialist and arranged to have himself admitted to a non-existent experimental treatment program. Once he made his escape, he further covered his tracks by mailing the prison a fake death certificate.

After staying under the radar for a while, Russell attempted to procure a loan posing as a millionaire in Dallas. He was apprehended by the FBI and in the process complained of chest pains.

He was admitted to a nearby hospital and placed under FBI guard where he impersonated an FBI agent on his cell phone and managed to convince the real agents that he was no longer a wanted man.

To date that was Russell’s final escape. He was apprehended by the US Marshalls and sentenced to 140 years in prison, becoming the only person in US history sentenced to life for prison escapes.

He is currently housed in Polunsky Unit in Texas, where he is on a 23-hour a day lockdown.

Currently.

 

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