96 Fun Facts About Prison Escapes

What stolen material did the 1962 Alcatraz escapees turn into a raft and life preservers?

Raincoats, more than 50 of them, were stitched into a raft and life vests and the seams sealed against the prison's hot steam pipes; the design came from magazines found in the men's cells.

Which drug lord twice escaped Mexican prisons, reportedly in a laundry cart and later through a tunnel?

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is said to have left Puente Grande in a laundry cart in 2001; in 2015 he dropped through his cell's shower floor into a 1.5 km tunnel, where a motorcycle was later found.

Stalag Luft III, the Great Escape camp, stood at Sagan, a town now in which country?

Poland: wartime Sagan is today the Polish town of Żagań; the Germans picked the site for its sandy soil, which made tunnels prone to collapse and the bright spoil easy to spot.

In The Shawshank Redemption, what hides the escape tunnel Andy Dufresne dug over 19 years?

A poster of Raquel Welch, after earlier pin-ups including Rita Hayworth, covers the hole Andy dug with his rock hammer; an irate Norton throws a stone through it.

Which gangster left an Indiana jail in 1934 brandishing a gun reportedly carved from wood?

John Dillinger cowed his guards with what he later said was a whittled wooden pistol, then drove the sheriff's car across the state line, a federal offence that brought the FBI into the hunt.

Which inmate broke out of Alcatraz on 11 June 1962 with brothers John and Clarence Anglin?

Frank Morris, known for his intelligence, took the lead in a plan six months in the making; despite hundreds of leads, no conclusive trace of the three men has ever surfaced.

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary sat on an island in which body of water?

Alcatraz sits on a rocky island in San Francisco Bay, about 2 km from the city shore; the cold, fast-moving water was long held up as the reason nobody could swim away.

Which prison saw the UK's biggest peacetime jailbreak, when 38 republican prisoners escaped H-Block 7 in 1983?

The Maze, the Long Kesh complex outside Lisburn, lost 38 IRA prisoners on 25 September 1983 after they seized H-Block 7 with smuggled handguns; one prison officer died of a heart attack.

Colditz Castle's wartime camp, Oflag IV-C, was reserved for which kind of Allied officer?

Repeat escapers: officers who kept breaking out of other camps were gathered in a castle the Germans thought escape-proof, and some 30 of them still made it out for good.

What did the 1962 Alcatraz escapees tuck into their beds to fool the night count?

Papier-mâché heads, built from soap, toilet paper and plaster, painted flesh-coloured and topped with hair from the barbershop floor, lay on the pillows while the men slipped out through widened vents.

Which agency took over the hunt for the 1962 Alcatraz escapees when the FBI closed its case in 1979?

The US Marshals Service inherited the case on 31 December 1979, when the FBI concluded the three had most likely drowned, and kept its warrants active for decades in case any of them surfaced.

What became of most of the 36 men who tried to escape Alcatraz federal prison?

They were recaptured: of the 36 men, 23 were caught, six were shot dead and two drowned, while five, the 1962 trio among them, are listed as missing and presumed drowned.

What were the three tunnels of the 1944 Great Escape from Stalag Luft III called?

The tunnels Tom, Dick and Harry were started together; guards found Tom, Dick became a store for spoil, and Harry carried the breakout of March 1944.

Why did some 4,000 bed boards vanish from Stalag Luft III's bunks before the Great Escape?

To shore up the tunnels: the sandy walls were lined with bed boards, leaving some men only eight to sleep on, and 76 prisoners crawled out before a guard spotted the next man.

Which German organisation shot fifty recaptured Great Escape officers in 1944?

The Gestapo drove the fifty to remote spots in ones and twos and shot them on Hitler's orders; after the war RAF investigators hunted the killers down for war-crimes trials.

Which Stalag Luft III prisoner, later author of The Dam Busters, wrote the 1950 book The Great Escape?

Paul Brickhill, an Australian Spitfire pilot, worked for the escape organisation but was barred from the tunnel itself for fear he would panic underground and block the men behind him.

How did three prisoners hide a tunnel entrance in Stalag Luft III's open exercise yard in 1943?

Under a vaulting horse: diggers were carried out inside it each day and worked below while comrades vaulted overhead; all three got home to Britain, and the story became the 1950 film The Wooden Horse.

How did Richard Matt and David Sweat break out of Clinton Correctional Facility in 2015?

A cut steam pipe into the sewer was the way out: Matt and Sweat cut through their cell walls, followed the pipes to a manhole outside, and left a note reading 'Have a nice day'.

How did Ted Bundy make his first escape, from a courthouse in Aspen in June 1977?

Jumped from a second-storey window of the law library: representing himself in court, Bundy had been excused from shackles; he hurt his ankle in the fall and was caught six days later.

In Ted Bundy's second escape, in December 1977, he sawed through his cell ceiling and dropped into whose apartment?

He crawled through the ceiling space and dropped into the chief jailer's apartment, empty while the jailer was out for the evening; he changed into clothes from the closet and walked out the front door.

In Papillon, Henri Charrière claims he finally escaped the penal colony in 1941 on a raft made of what?

In Papillon he floats off Devil's Island on a bag of coconuts lashed into a raft and rides the swell to the mainland; French records suggest Charrière was never actually held on Devil's Island.

What did prisoners secretly build in the attic of Colditz Castle in the winter of 1944–45?

The two-seat glider, nicknamed the Colditz Cock, was built behind a false wall from bed slats and checked cotton bedding; American troops freed the camp in April 1945 before it could be launched.

The 1864 Libby Prison escape saw 109 Union officers tunnel out of a prison in which city?

Richmond, the Confederate capital, held captured Union officers in Libby, a converted warehouse; after 17 days of digging the tunnellers came up in a tobacco shed, and 59 of the 109 reached Union lines.

The Texas Seven, who broke out of the Connally Unit in 2000, were caught thanks to which TV show?

America's Most Wanted led straight to the arrests of January 2001: six of the men were caught in Colorado within days of the broadcast, and the seventh shot himself rather than be captured.

Ronnie Biggs escaped Wandsworth Prison in 1965 by scaling the wall and dropping onto what?

A removal van waited outside as Biggs came over the wall on a rope ladder, 15 months into a 30-year sentence; he stayed free for 36 years, shielded in Brazil as the father of a Brazilian child.

Serial escapee Yoshie Shiratori is said to have rusted his handcuffs at Abashiri Prison using what?

Miso soup, dripped onto his handcuffs and the cell door's food slot at every meal, is said to have corroded the metal with its salt until he could break free; accounts of his four escapes vary.

Jack Sheppard broke out of which London prison twice in 1724 before he was hanged at Tyburn?

Newgate lost him twice in 1724: the first time the slightly built Sheppard squeezed through a gap where a bar had been removed from a grille; he escaped four times in all that year.

Casanova escaped in 1756 from 'the Leads', a prison in the roof of which Venetian building?

The Leads were cells under the lead roof of the Doge's Palace; Casanova and the priest Balbi broke through the roof plates on the night of 31 October 1756 and talked their way out at dawn.

James Earl Ray escaped Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967 hiding in a truck carrying what?

Bread from the prison bakery was being trucked out on 23 April 1967, and Ray rode out hidden in the load; nearly a year later he shot Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.

Which comedy star played serial prison escapee Steven Jay Russell in I Love You Phillip Morris?

Jim Carrey played Russell opposite Ewan McGregor as Phillip Morris; the real Russell's four escapes earned him 99 of the 144 years he was sentenced to.

Which future British prime minister, captured as a war correspondent, escaped a Boer prison camp in Pretoria in 1899?

Winston Churchill was captured when Boers ambushed his armoured train; he got away within a month, hid down a mine on his way to Portuguese territory, and came home a hero who won a seat in Parliament in 1900.

What did the SS do with Sobibor after some 300 prisoners broke out in October 1943?

Razed it and planted trees: after prisoners killed 11 SS men and about 300 escaped, the Nazis dismantled the camp and planted over the site to hide what had been done there.

Jesuit priest John Gerard escaped from the Tower of London in 1597 by what means?

A rope across the moat, strung from the Cradle Tower, carried Gerard and fellow prisoner John Arden to waiting boatmen in October 1597, though his hands were still mangled from torture.

The Cowra breakout of August 1944 was a mass escape by prisoners of war of which nationality?

Japanese prisoners armed with knives and clubs stormed the wire at Cowra, Australia, on 5 August 1944; more than 230 of them died, and two Australian guards killed at their machine gun were awarded the George Cross.

Greek robber Vasilis Paleokostas twice escaped by helicopter from Korydallos prison, which is in which city?

Athens's Korydallos prison lost him twice: in 2006 guards took the hijacked helicopter for a visit by prison inspectors, and in 2009 he climbed a rope ladder dropped into the yard.

Which royal prisoner escaped Loch Leven Castle on 2 May 1568 with her gaoler's family's help?

Mary, Queen of Scots, forced to abdicate at Loch Leven in July 1567 after miscarrying twins, was rowed across the loch by young Willie Douglas, who had stolen the castle keys.

Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius escaped life imprisonment in Loevestein Castle in 1621 hidden inside what?

A chest of books was regularly carried in and out of his cell, and one day it carried Grotius out instead; more than one Dutch museum now shows a chest said to be the one.

Who played the escape's ringleader in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz?

Clint Eastwood shot on the island itself: its power plant no longer worked, so electricity was cabled in from the mainland and the decaying prison restored for the shoot, his last film with director Don Siegel.

Which Mexican Pacific town does Andy Dufresne dream of in The Shawshank Redemption?

Zihuatanejo is where Andy tells Red he dreams of living; he asks Red to dig up a package in a hayfield near Buxton once he is released, and the letter inside invites him to follow.

Pablo Escobar walked out of La Catedral in 1992, a prison that had been built to whose specifications?

His own: under his 1991 surrender deal Escobar had the prison above Medellín built to his specifications and even chose his guards; 'Hotel Escobar' had a telescope trained on his family's home.

Richard Lee McNair escaped a Louisiana federal prison in 2006 hidden in a pallet of what?

McNair, who repaired mailbags in the prison shop, shrink-wrapped himself into a pallet of mailbags bound for a warehouse in April 2006; hours later he talked his way past a police officer by posing as a jogger.

Welsh prince Gruffydd ap Llywelyn died in 1244 trying to escape the Tower of London when what happened?

His rope of sheets broke, it is said, because the prince was a heavy man; he fell to his death on 1 March 1244 while a prisoner of England's Henry III.

Dutch Anabaptist Dirk Willems broke out of prison in 1569, then turned back to do what?

Save his drowning pursuer: the guard chasing Willems fell through thin ice, and Willems pulled him out, only to be seized on the spot and burned at the stake at Asperen on 16 May 1569.

What did Colditz prisoners call an escape that reached friendly territory?

A home run was rare: at least 130 men got outside the castle walls during the war, but only about 30 of them got clean away.

The Great Papago Escape of December 1944 saw German POWs tunnel out of a camp near which US city?

Phoenix's Camp Papago Park lost 25 German prisoners through a tunnel begun inside a bathhouse on the night of 23 December 1944; all were recaptured, the last of them more than a month later.

Where did Assata Shakur find asylum after being freed from a New Jersey prison in 1979?

Cuba granted her asylum in 1984; five years earlier, Black Liberation Army members posing as visitors had taken two guards hostage and driven her out of the prison in a van.

The Taliban's 2008 attack on Sarposa Prison, which freed hundreds of inmates, took place in which Afghan city?

Kandahar's Sarposa Prison was breached when the Taliban blew open its gates in June 2008; in 2011 they struck again, freeing more than 470 inmates through a tunnel dug from outside.

Which outlaw raided the Eastham prison farm in Texas in 1934 to free members of his gang?

Clyde Barrow had done time at Eastham and long planned to raid it; in January 1934 he and Bonnie Parker helped five prisoners escape, and four months later the pair died in a police ambush in Louisiana.

What did Libby Prison's tunnellers nickname the cellar they dug from?

The diggers called the cellar Rat Hell; two feet of straw on its floor hid both the tunnel spoil and the men themselves during the day while rats swarmed over them.

Why did Bernard Coy deliberately lose weight before the 1946 'Battle of Alcatraz'?

To squeeze between gun-gallery bars: Coy spread them with a tool made from plumbing parts, climbed in and seized the guards' weapons, starting a two-day siege that left two officers and three inmates dead.

Why was fourth conspirator Allen West left behind in the June 1962 Alcatraz escape?

He couldn't free his vent grille in time, so the other three left without him; West then gave the FBI a full account of the plan, which is how its details are known.

The 1876 Catalpa rescue freed six Irish Fenians from Fremantle Prison in which colony?

Western Australia's authorities sent an armed steamer after the Catalpa, but the whaler's captain raised the American flag, warned that firing on his ship meant firing on the United States, and sailed on.

Soviet double agent George Blake broke out of which London prison in 1966?

Wormwood Scrubs lost Blake five years into a 42-year sentence, helped by ex-inmate Sean Bourke and two anti-nuclear campaigners he had met inside; he reached the Soviet Union and died in Moscow in 2020.

How did Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson leave Birmingham's Winson Green prison in 1964?

A gang broke in for him: three men got into the jail and freed Wilson four months into a 30-year sentence, and he stayed on the run for years before police caught up with him abroad.

Anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin's 1979 Pretoria breakout used keys made from what?

Wood from the prison workshop became keys that Jenkin shaped to fit one lock after another; he, Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris opened ten doors with them and walked out in December 1979.

Who plays Tim Jenkin in the 2020 film Escape from Pretoria?

Daniel Radcliffe plays Jenkin; the real Tim Jenkin coached him on his accent during the Adelaide shoot and appears as an extra, a prisoner sitting beside Radcliffe.

Luftwaffe pilot Franz von Werra escaped by jumping from a POW train in which country?

Canada was only a stage for von Werra: he jumped from a prison train in Ontario in January 1941, crossed the frozen St Lawrence into the neutral United States and got home to Germany by way of Mexico and Brazil.

Ten British officers from the 1918 Holzminden tunnel escape, WWI's largest, reached safety in which neutral country?

The Netherlands took in ten of the 29 officers who crawled out before the tunnel collapsed; one, fluent in German, went by rail and crossed the border in five days, while most walked for two weeks.

The largest German POW breakout in wartime Britain came at Island Farm camp, Bridgend, in which UK nation?

Wales: Island Farm lost some 70 prisoners by the official count on 10 March 1945 through a tunnel dug from Hut 9, and the manhunt caught men as far away as Birmingham and Southampton.

The Tower of London's first prisoner, Bishop Ranulf Flambard, escaped in 1101 on a rope smuggled in with what?

A flagon of wine hid the rope, the chronicler Orderic says: Flambard got his guards drunk on the wine, climbed down from the White Tower, and so became the Tower's first escapee as well.

Lord Nithsdale walked out of the Tower of London in 1716, the night before his execution, disguised as what?

A woman: Lady Nithsdale and her companions smuggled in spare clothes, and he walked past the guards dressed as one of the ladies; the couple got abroad and lived out their days in Rome.

Jean Henri Latude's 1756 escape from the Bastille used a rope ladder whose rungs were cut from what?

Firewood supplied the rungs and unravelled shirts and bedding the rope; his freedom was brief, for he was arrested in Amsterdam and was back in the Bastille by June.

How many inmates were freed when the Bastille was stormed on 14 July 1789?

Just 7 inmates were inside: four forgers, two men held as insane, and the Comte de Solages, locked up at his own family's request.

Louis-Napoléon, the future Napoleon III, walked out of Ham fortress in 1846 disguised as what?

A laborer carrying a plank was all the guards saw on 25 May 1846; he got away to England, then returned after the 1848 revolution to be elected president of France.

Which Mexican revolutionary slipped out of a Mexico City prison in 1912 and fled to the United States?

Pancho Villa had been spared a firing squad and jailed instead; he used the time to learn to read and write from a fellow prisoner, escaped across the border, and returned in 1913 to raise an army.

Which future MP was the first British officer to escape from Colditz Castle?

Airey Neave, later MP for Abingdon, failed in August 1941 dressed as a German corporal, then got out on 5 January 1942 with Dutchman Tony Luteyn and reached Switzerland, the first British home run from Colditz.

French robber Rédoine Faïd, flown out of Réau prison by hijacked helicopter in 2018, credited what as his inspiration?

Hollywood crime films such as Heat and Scarface shaped his style: Faïd once told Heat's director Michael Mann, 'You were my technical adviser'; he was recaptured three months after the 2018 escape.

Jacques Mesrine broke out of which Paris prison with fellow robber François Besse in May 1978?

La Santé had held Mesrine since 1973, and there he secretly wrote and smuggled out the memoir L'Instinct de mort; on 8 May 1978 he produced a gun, took the warders' keys and got out with Besse.

How did Nice sewer-heist mastermind Albert Spaggiari get away from a judge's office in 1977?

Leaping from a window of the judge's office, Spaggiari landed on a parked car and sped off on a waiting motorcycle; his gang's haul from the Nice bank vault had been put at 46 million francs.

US Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, shot down in 1966 during the Vietnam War, escaped a jungle prison camp in which country?

Laos was where Dengler's plane went down; held in a Pathet Lao camp, he and six other prisoners seized the guards' weapons and broke out into the jungle.

Which Old West outlaw killed two deputies to escape the Lincoln County jail in 1881, weeks before he was due to hang?

Billy the Kid, sentenced to hang for killing a sheriff, shot both of his guards on 28 April 1881 and rode off; he stayed free for more than two months until Pat Garrett tracked him down and killed him.

Joel David Kaplan's 1971 helicopter jailbreak in Mexico inspired Breakout (1975), starring whom?

Charles Bronson played the pilot hired for the rescue in Breakout: after his first attempts fail, he takes helicopter lessons and ends up flying into the prison yard himself.

In 1986 Michel Vaujour was plucked off a Paris prison roof by a helicopter flown by whom?

His wife Nadine Vaujour spent months learning to fly a helicopter, then flew low over Paris in May 1986 and lifted Michel from the prison roof.

In Escape from New York (1981), which island has become America's only maximum-security prison?

Manhattan's ruined streets were filmed around St. Louis and East St. Louis, where damage from a 1976 fire stood in for a walled-off New York.

In Prison Break, Michael Scofield smuggles the prison's blueprints inside as what?

A tattoo across Scofield's torso and arms hides the blueprints; the full design took about five hours to apply to Wentworth Miller, so for T-shirt scenes only the forearm pieces went on.

Who actually performed the motorcycle fence jump in The Great Escape (1963)?

Bud Ekins ran the motorcycle dealership where McQueen learned off-road racing, and when the script called for the fence jump it was Ekins, doubling for his friend, who made it.

William Holden won the Best Actor Oscar for playing a cynical POW in which 1953 film?

Stalag 17, Billy Wilder's POW-camp drama, won Holden the Oscar as Sefton, the barracks trader who deals with the guards and is suspected by his fellow prisoners of informing on them.

In The Rock (1996), Sean Connery plays which ex-SAS captain, the only man to have escaped Alcatraz?

Connery's John Mason, a British SAS captain held without trial for decades after stealing a microfilm of J. Edgar Hoover's secrets, is the only man who ever broke out of Alcatraz in the film's story.

Midnight Express (1978) follows Billy Hayes's escape from a prison in which country?

Turkey jailed Hayes for trying to smuggle hashish out through Istanbul airport; 'midnight express' was prison slang for an escape attempt, which gave his memoir and the film their title.

Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped is set in Montluc, where Klaus Barbie held Resistance prisoners, in which French city?

Lyon's Montluc prison held André Devigny, who got out in August 1943 only days before he was due to be executed; his memoir became Bresson's 1956 film.

Who played the forger Louis Dega opposite Steve McQueen in Papillon (1973)?

Dustin Hoffman's Louis Dega, a bespectacled counterfeiter, bankrolls the escapes in exchange for Papillon's protection and is the one who smuggles extra food to him in solitary.

In Cool Hand Luke, Luke wins a bet by eating how many hard-boiled eggs in an hour?

Luke bets he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour and manages it, an exploit that makes him a hero to the chain gang he goes on to escape repeatedly.

In The Fugitive (1993), Richard Kimble gets free after his prison bus is struck by what?

A freight train, a real one with its engine removed, hit the bus in a single take that cost about $1 million; the wreck was left beside the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad at Dillsboro, North Carolina.

In The Count of Monte Cristo, how does Edmond Dantès finally get out of the Château d'If?

When Faria dies, Dantès takes his place in a dead man's burial sack; the guards throw it into the sea expecting a corpse, and he cuts himself free and swims for it.

Prison worker Joyce Mitchell admitted supplying the 2015 Dannemora escapees with what?

Hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools reached Matt and Sweat through Mitchell, who had also agreed to be their getaway driver but backed out and went to hospital instead.

Why did the US government close Alcatraz federal prison in 1963?

It cost too much to run: about $10 a day per prisoner against $3 at other federal prisons, on top of millions in repairs to buildings eroded by salt water; it shut on 21 March 1963.

Why did Great Escape mastermind Roger Bushell have three tunnels dug at the same time?

So one discovery left backups: the guards did find one tunnel, and the work simply moved to another; Bushell, code-named Big X, was among the fifty officers shot after recapture.

Two Norwegian pilots who got clear in the Great Escape reached which neutral country by ship?

Sweden was a short voyage from the port of Stettin, where Per Bergsland and Jens Müller were smuggled aboard a freighter; of the 76 men who got out, only one other, a Dutch pilot, reached freedom.

Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escaped which camp in April 1944 and wrote a report exposing it?

Auschwitz's gas chambers were described in detail in the report Vrba and Wetzler wrote after escaping; parts of it were published in June 1944, and Hungary's regent ordered deportations there stopped in early July.

Willie Sutton was one of 12 convicts who tunnelled out of which Philadelphia prison in 1945?

Eastern State Penitentiary's wall was beaten by a 97-foot tunnel that took about a year to dig, but the 12 men surfaced in daylight in front of a police patrol, and Sutton was caught the same day.

Convict Alexander Pearce, who fled Macquarie Harbour in 1822, became infamous for what?

Cannibalism made Pearce notorious: he was said to have eaten fellow escapers on two separate breakouts from Macquarie Harbour, and he was hanged in Hobart in July 1824.

Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe vanished from Alcatraz in December 1937 under cover of what?

Fog hid Cole and Roe on 16 December 1937 after they filed through the bars of a workshop window; a storm had the bay's currents racing, and officials presumed both men were swept out to sea.

Where did Alcatraz inmate John Paul Scott come ashore in 1962 after swimming from the island?

At the Golden Gate Bridge, on the rocks of Fort Point beneath it, teenagers found Scott in shock and hypothermic; it was the only proven swim to shore by an Alcatraz inmate, and he was soon back in his cell.

The 1962 Alcatraz escapees improvised an electric drill from the motor of which appliance?

A vacuum cleaner motor powered the home-made drill after a hair-clipper motor proved too weak; the men drilled rings of closely spaced holes around their cell vents until each section of wall came free.

In the 1983 H-Block breakout, the IRA prisoners seized what vehicle to drive to the main gate?

They hijacked the food delivery lorry that brought meals to the block; 37 men rode in the back while Gerry Kelly lay on the cab floor holding a gun on the driver, whose foot was tied to the clutch.

Napoleon's escape from exile on Elba in 1815 opened the period known as what?

The Hundred Days ran from Napoleon's return to Paris on 20 March 1815 to Louis XVIII's second restoration on 8 July, actually 110 days, with Waterloo on 18 June in between.