In an ideal world, prisoners would be held in prisons which would be impossible to escape from and an innocent person would never end up there. Fortunately, our world is much more awesome and people escape from even the most labyrinthine prisons on Earth with relative frequency and often stunning brilliance. Throughout history the only sure thing when it came to prisons was that as soon as you said it was “inescapable” some inmate (who was usually a total badass) would stroll comfortably out the front door.
Alfred Wetzler
Often when you hear the story of a Jew in Europe during the 40s, it either ends in a concentration camp or with them narrowly surviving until the end of the war. Alfred Wetzler decided that sort of noise was for surrender-monkey French Jews and got together with his fellow Auschwitz inmates and hatched a plot to escape. The already weak, tired and starving Wetzler hid in a wood pile with friend Rudolf Vrba for 4 days, after which they made a mad dash for freedom… by donning smuggled suits and calmly walking out of the camp and to the Polish border.
Now after escaping from one of the most hellacious locations to ever curse the surface of the planet, most people would call it a day and thank God they’re alive. But Wetzler and Vrba were obviously not content to simply escape the Nazis. They pulled an Inglorious Basterds and drafted a detailed report of Auschwitz and the surrounding terrain that ended up being instrumental to subsequent Allied bombing runs.
Billy Hayes
Careless world travelers often forget that while in America marijuana is practically legal and socially acceptable, in many countries it is considered the leaf of Satan and will land you in jail for a couple of decades. That is if they don’t outright kill you.
In 1970, Billy Hayes was caught trying to smuggle some Mary Jane out of Turkey. While the amount Hayes was trying to smuggle is probably less than most people reading this are hiding in their desk drawer, in a country where even alcohol and cigarettes are of dubious legality, Turkish officials didn’t exactly take a shine to such behavior. They expressed this mild disappointment by sentencing him to a life imprisonment performing hard labor.
Hayes, demonstrating an “Eff The Po-Leece” attitude far ahead of his time, orchestrated a daring escape. He stole a small dinghy, navigated it through the treacherous Aegean Sea, then stayed incognito for several days because he wasn’t quite sure he had made it out of Turkey. He was eventually recaptured, but this time by Greek Police — who, fortunately for Hayes, were possibly the only people on the planet who hated Turks more than he did. He eventually made it back to America where he turned his drug use into fame and fortune by authoring the book Midnight Express, which was eventually made into an Oliver Stone movie.
John Dillinger
John Dillinger was well known in the late 20s and 30s as one of the most famous criminals in America. His gang was infamous throughout Chicago and northern Indiana for its apparent invincibility and knack for escape from every prison ever built.
Indiana was then, as now, somewhat well known for housing some of the most dangerous criminals in the country, and they had gotten quite good at it. But then John Dillinger came along and, through a combination of cleverness, bravado and a little thing called dynamite, proceed to waltz right out of the Hoosier state and right into the nearest bank. Which he promptly robbed.
Deciding it was time to get serious, federal officials locked Dillinger in the Crown Point maximum-security prison, known at the time as completely inescapable. This time, Dillinger managed to break out not through violence or charm, but by crafting a wooden “gun” and coloring it black with shoe polish. He took some guards “hostage” then laughed all the way to the bank. Which he promptly robbed.
Pascal Payet
Pascal Payet is a French criminal with a rap sheet that includes murder and a definite flair for the cinematic. He was captured and tried for the murder of a security guard while attempting to hijack a security fan. He was sentenced to life in prison and locked up at the Luynes prison. Like a typical Frenchman, Payet decided that tunnels, steel files, and holding guards hostage were sooooo passe. He subsequently hijacked a helicopter and staged a daring escape from the roof of the prison.
Payet was quickly recaptured and thrown back in prison, with French officials reasonably concluding that lightning wouldn’t strike twice. Except it did, and Payet escape by hijacked helicopter once again. Payet was recaptured, but proved that he was a special type of God-touched bastard by escaping via a hijacked helicopter for an unbelievable third time. He was finally recaptured in 2007 and imprisoned once again. Experts predict an impending escape by hovercraft.
The Texas 7
Despite the Titanic-like hubris that surrounds many of the modern “inescapable” maximum security prisons that dot the country, they actually have a
pretty impressive track record when it comes to holding the nations most dangerous criminals. Which makes the escape of the so called Texas 7 that much more impressive.
What’s even more impressive is how this rag-tag group of hardened criminals managed to escape. They covertly kidnapped several guards and maintenance workers and then, instead of holding them hostage as one would expect, stole their uniforms and strolled out the front door. But while most of the people on this list are easily cheered as either charismatic, innocent, and not bloodthirsty, the Texas 7 are a good example of why we build prisons in the first place. During the crime spree that followed their escape, an unlucky cop named Aubrey Hawkins crossed paths with the gang. The seven shot Hawkins no fewer than eleven times, and then just to be sure, ran over his corpse as they fled the scene. Fortunately, having bungled the whole “laying low” thing, the seven were recaptured within a month and are now safely stowed away in separate prisons.
The Escape from Alcatraz
In American lore, there is no other prison more famous for its inescapability than Alcatraz Island. Located on an island in the middle of the San Francisco bay, if you somehow manage to get out of your cell and aren’t spotted while traversing several yards of bare rock, there’s still a miles-long swim through the waters of the bay. Waters which, at last report, were classified by experts as “testically-shriveling cold”.
Officially, no one has ever escaped from Alcatraz alive. But because this is America — the land of impossible dreams and disrespect for authority — there is Frank Morris. In 1962 Morris got together with some fellow inmates and decided to Shawshank his way out of there. Not only did he burrow through the wall of his cell, but Morris also constructed an elaborate dummy so that, unless they looked closely, guards would think he was still in his cell. He then crawled through an air duct, across the island, and used a makeshift pontoon boat to head out in to the bay. His body was never recovered so for the sake of the dreams of all the little criminals out there, let’s just say he made it and has been living in secrecy ever since.
Mary, Queen of Scots
Queen Mary could never seem to catch a break. After being exiled to France for several years, she returned to her home country right as the Scottish nobles were rebelling. She was subsequently imprisoned at various times as that bickering of inbred rich people the
British call “history” took place. Being one of 6 people in the British Isles with anything approaching an education at the time, Mary conceived of several plots to escape her imprisonment.
The first consisted of that age old trick of dressing like something other than a prisoner and walking out the front door. Unfortunately, someone realized that the disguised queen–being the only person without heavily calloused hands and not covered in filth–was trying to escape. Her second attempt was almost too adorable to not be apocryphal. Having befriended a local orphan, the queen convinced the little scamp to let her out of the castle where she managed to steal a horse and escape.
Bill Cody
America was quite a different place in the 1800s. Sure you can point to things like the fact that we actually considered war with France, war with ourselves and war with Indians to be dire threats. But more importantly, back in the good old days America had celebrities that were actually worth a damn.
Buffalo Bill Cody was a traveling performer so famous, you probably recognize his name even today. He was the guy who made Annie Oakley famous. He was also a total badass that could probably kill a modern-day traveling performer like Barry Manilow with a glance.
Cody’s most famous act of total awesomeness came in the form of a courageous escape after being captured by Indians. Cody knew his captors needed
fresh food so he convinced them to allow him to guide them to a nearby buffalo herd. The Indians slapped Cody on a slow-moving donkey and had
him lead the way. He proceeded to outrun the horse-mounted Indians. On a donkey. And it wasn’t like he shouted “Look! Brightly-Colored Beads!” then ran before they could react. No, the chase was close, lasted for miles, and ended with Cody seriously wounded and barely surviving. Let’s see Spidey do that.
Papillon
Papillon was the nickname of convicted criminal Henri Charriere and his multiple, daring escapes from several French prisons. He became famous after he published his autobiography in 1969 and it was made into a movie starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
Papillon’s escapades included escaping an island penal colony by floating away on a bag of coconuts, hiding out with a colony of lepers, and befriending a
group of South-American natives deep in the jungle. His exploits became legendary, and Charriere for a while was known as one of the most accomplished escape artists in history. That was until people realized it was all fake. According to recent reports, the “real” Papillon, the man on which Charriere based his book, was a real person named Charles Brunier. Cherriere, on the other hand, never once attempted escape and was, in fact, considered a model prisoner.
”The Great Escape”
While we’re on the topic of movies starring Steve McQueen, there’s what’s considered “The Great Escape” or the escape of 76 POWs from the German
prison camp Stalag Luft III (which, by the way, included precisely no Americans). Stalag Luft III was constructed as the prisoner camp for prisoners who kept escaping. There were two rows of barbed wire, seismic sensors to prevent tunnel-dwelling, and the barracks were raised on stilts so any tunnel would be visible.
The airmen in the camp dug tunnels thirty feet deep, reinforced with scavenged wood, and they even put in a ventilation and mini tram system for ferrying dirt just because they were classy like that. And they did this three times over, constructing the tunnels simultaneously.
All told, 76 prisoners made it out, but only 3 actually made it safely to neutral territory. Hitler, showing his usual amount of restraint, said he was tired of these guys escaping all the time and violated the Geneva convention by having the majority of them shot. But Steve Mcqueen made it out alright, mostly due to the fact that the person his character was based on, once again, never existed.
Giacomo Casanova
Yes, this is the same Casanova everyone uses nowadays as a descriptor of philanderers. Apparently, Italian officials didn’t quite like the fact that he was sleeping with all of their wives so they through him in a prison with lead-lined walls. No seriously he was imprisoned for sleeping with too many peoples’ wives.
Fortunately for players everywhere, Casanova managed to procure an iron tool, and began the slow, arduous process of digging his way out of prison. That was all well and good, until he was transferred and put under constant watch. Hereupon he displayed the charisma he was legendary for, and
convinced another prisoner to first dig to his cell, then they would both escape together. Desperation makes strange bedfellows, and in this case it put a monk named Balbi in the same boat with perhaps one of the most promiscuous men in history.
The Berlin Wall Balloon
While East Berlin during the Soviet occupation wasn’t technically a prison, the Soviets sure did their damnedest to make it look and feel like one. Barbed wire, dogs, guard towers, and execution if you were caught escaping were all facts of life for East Berliners. So it’s no surprise that some went to ridiculous lengths to escape.
Some built tunnels or crammed themselves into tiny secret compartments of cars. The Wetzel and Strlzyck families went with a slightly crazier option. Buying nylon cloth in small batches and constructing a makeshift flamethrower, they actually managed to build a working hot air balloon over the course of several months. And not only that, but they successfully flew it over the wall and landed in West Berlin. The flight was something of a PR coup at the time, and the Soviets responded by making it virtually impossible to purchase lightweight cloth in East Berlin.
Alfie Hinds
Alfie Hinds was a British criminal with a serial escape record. Arrested in 1953 for robbing a jewelry store, he was sentenced to a 12 year term — the majority of which he spent breaking out of prison. He managed escapes from three separate maximum security facilities, most of which were accomplished by picking the right time to walk out the front door.
Hinds adamantly insisted on his innocence, and tirelessly pursued any means to get the charges against him dropped. Needless to say, he spent a lot of time out of prison and arguing in court. During one such occasion, he came upon the opportunity to smuggle some things into his jail cell. What did this criminal mastermind choose? A hammer? A gun? A steel file? No, Hinds successfully smuggled in a padlock…which he used to lock three guards in a room and walk out the front door of his prison. And so Alfie Hinds goes down in history as possibly the only criminal to every escape from prison using exactly the same tools that were used to imprison him.
Sławomir Rawicz
A lot people forget that while Germany was invading Poland in 1939, so was Soviet Russia. Slawomir Rawicz was a Polish officer who found himself sandwiched between a rock and the hardest place in history, and was captured by the Russians. Shipped off to remote Yakutsk, Siberia — also known as the most bumfuck nowhere place on the planet.
In the Siberian Gulags, even if you escaped the harsh climate miles from civilization was expected to kill you off anyway. Rawicz set off with a small contingent to prove that Poles are capable of much, much more than simply putting screen doors on submarines. His ragtag band traversed Sibera, the Gobi desert and finally crossed the Himalayas in the dead of winter to find freedom in British-controlled India. In case you missed it, that means that Rawicz traversed–on foot and running from the law–what are well-known as the most hostile climates on the planet.
Doug Bader
Doug Bader was an RAF pilot shot down over German-occupied France in 1941. He was captured and treated quite congenially by the Nazis for many years. No, seriously. This was probably due to the fact that he didn’t have any legs. The Germans most likely thought “Where’s a POW with no legs going to run to?”. The answer, it turns out, is anywhere he goddamn wants to.
Bader orchestrated multiple escapes, aided by the fact that nearly everyone is willing to help out a charming, no-legged guy with a British accent. He escaped with the prisoners at Stalag Luft III, among many, many other attempts. He was so frequently an attempted escapee, the Germans threatened to take away his legs. He was eventually shipped of the the “inescapable” Colditz castle, where he presumably conspired to help construct the famous “Colditz Cock”: a plane designed to fly out of the prison, a plan foiled only by the humorless Americans when they liberated the castle in 1945.
