Prison Break - True Stories of the World's Greatest Escapes

by Paul Buck

  Whilst waiting to be called into court, he asked for the toilet again and was led, still handcuffed, to the outside public conveniences. After it was checked he entered the first cubicle and complained that there was no toilet paper. They tried the second, which was “filthy”, and he demanded to be taken back inside. The guard suggested they try the lawyers’ toilet upstairs. This time, as Mesrine expected, the guard did not check first, and, though still handcuffed to his escort, he managed to withdraw a 9mm Luger from behind the cistern and stick it in his belt. His forward thinking some months earlier had paid off.

  Back outside the courtroom, Mesrine waited on the bench. When he was called, he asked if his handcuffs could be unlocked. They refused and he remained attached to one of his guards as he entered the court. No sooner had Monsieur Guérin, the presiding judge, started to read the charge than Mesrine leapt forward, dragging the guard with him, and grabbed the judge, threatening to kill him as he waved his Luger with the other hand. Mesrine ordered his cuffs to be unlocked, then, with everyone in the court forced to lie on the floor, he dragged the judge as his shield towards the door, firing a couple of shots into the courtroom to show that he meant business. Out of the court, he kept moving towards the gates, whilst policemen moved towards him with raised guns, too scared to shoot for fear of hitting the judge.

  As Mesrine made the street, he pushed the judge aside and sprinted the hundred yards to the getaway car. Bullets sped past him, one hitting his right arm. As he reached the Alfa Romeo, the door opened and he leapt in. They pulled out as a police van drove straight into their path. Mesrine’s driver reversed and swung round before the police driver could react. As they swerved past Mesrine fired through the van’s windscreen, hitting its driver.

  Mesrine had made a thorough reconnaissance earlier and planned the best way out, using minor roads because, as expected, roadblocks had been erected on the main roads. Twenty miles away, at Meaux, they switched cars to reach a farm hideout. They had covered all eventualities, including a shootout, and first aid was available to remove his bullet. What particularly pleased Mesrine that night, as he celebrated, was that when he was arrested he had boasted to the Commissaire that he would escape within three months. He had done just that, by two days.

  This is an appropriate place to give Alfred Hinds his first outing in this book. Hinds was in full battle with the justice system, to the extent of conducting his own defence. He made escapes to publicise his claim that he was fitted-up over a jewel robbery at the Maples department store in London. He was frustrated by the way the system continually misread the way he interpreted the law books that he now buried himself in. These legal points might have been of little consequence to many in the judicial system, for they received their wages and went home at the end of each day, their battles seemingly little more than intellectual games. For Hinds, it was his freedom that was at stake. It was not a game.

  Hinds had determined that, during his next trip to the Law Courts in the Strand, he was going to make another escape bid. (As we will see later, he had previously made a famous escape from Nottingham Prison in November 1955, with Patsy Fleming.) Upon arrival at the Law Courts from Pentonville Prison, on 25 June 1957, his handcuffs were removed and he led the officers to the staff canteen for tea and coffee. Hinds found a padlock and key taped, as arranged, under a canteen table. He had expected only a key, but would find out why soon enough.

  Moving up to the courtroom, Hinds reminded his two guards it was advisable to go to the toilet prior to stepping into court. The key his friend had provided would fit the toilet door. As he approached, he saw two “of the biggest and brightest” nickel-plated screw eyes, one on the jamb, the other on the door. “They were like searchlights.” Now he knew why he had been passed the padlock. He opened the toilet door for the officers and ushered them in before him, as he had done at every door since they had arrived at the court. They went through. Hinds grabbed the door and pulled it shut after them, whipped the padlock out and fastened it through the eyes. His guards were imprisoned in the toilet.

  Hinds became lost among the crowds and activity of the courts. As he made his way out into Bell Yard, he saw his wife, Peg, and made himself known as he hurried past. He slipped across the Strand and down a turning for Temple tube station. His brother Bert, who had seen his escape, caught up and arranged to meet him at Waterloo station in thirty minutes.

  Bert arrived with a car, driven by a friend, and took Hinds to London Airport. The Dublin flight had just left, so they raced for Bristol to catch a flight there. By an unlucky chance, Bert made himself suspicious to the girl at the desk as he bought his brother’s ticket. She called the police, believing he might be connected with a local murder enquiry. All three were arrested. The clerk said later that if she’d known it was Alfie Hinds she wouldn’t have called the police, such was the feeling among many people in England about the press coverage of his case.

  Most guards (like most people) have an unwarranted sense of trust and decency in allowing a person some privacy in places like the toilet. The infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy, even managed to exploit that trust in being allowed to use the law library on his own.

  Bundy had initially been arrested in August 1975, in Salt Lake City, on suspicion of burglary. A search of his apartment led to evidence that was to convict him of the kidnap of Carol DaRonch, for which he was given fifteen years in Utah State Prison. As the Colorado authorities were pursuing a murder charge against him in relation to the death of Caryn Campbell, they asked for him to be transferred there in January 1977.

  On 7 June Bundy was taken to the Pitkin County courthouse in Aspern, in preparation for another hearing for his murder trial. During a recess he asked to visit the court’s law library, as he was running his own defence. Over the months, whilst he behaved as a model prisoner, “always very polite and personable”, his guards had become slack. Though he was supposed to have four watching over him, often it was two, and sometimes just one. He had even been left alone in the courtroom. Bundy realised that, at certain points in the day, there were few people around and he could virtually walk out of the building.

  A few days prior to his planned escape he had his hair cut, to look as different from his photos as possible. On the 7th he dressed with added clothes, including white shorts. His handcuffs were removed inside the courthouse, before he was taken to the courtroom. Though it was a stuffy day, nobody commented on his bulky sweater and appearance. At mid-morning recess, as the courtroom emptied, Bundy crossed to the law library at the back. The deputy watched him for a while, eventually going out for a cigarette in the hallway.

  The first time Bundy approached the library window he saw a female reporter beneath. He walked around the room again, knowing that the next time he came to the open window it would be time to go. He climbed onto the ledge, positioned himself and jumped, escaping through a second-floor window that was routinely left open in warm weather.

  He fled to safety down by the river, stripped to his shorts, pulled on a red bandana and bundled all his clothes into a makeshift pack that he threw over his shoulder. Then he walked casually through the small resort town and headed for the Aspern mountains. It took him an hour and, though there was a search in operation, he could not hear or see anything below, much to his amazement. Tracker dogs did set to work, but in the opposite direction – for they had picked up the scent of the female deputy who had brought Bundy a sweater, making straight for her home.

  Bundy stayed free for six days, hiding out in a cabin for part of the time. But he had a poor sense of direction. He was looking for signs to Crested Butte, as he had plotted a course to the East Coast that used it as a starting point, but he continually missed his turns as he wandered around. Eventually, he stole a 1966 Cadillac and drove back into Aspern, down Main Street, and through to the pass. He wasn’t to know that he could have driven straight out of town, as no roadblocks were there by that time. But he was nervous, and it was his erratic driving that attracted police
attention. He was stopped and arrested by an officer who had regularly escorted Bundy back and forth from his cell to the court. They estimated he had covered fifty miles, going round and round, and lost thirty pounds in those six days.

  They still did not know they had a serial killer on their hands. He was charming, witty, handsome and well-educated, and was studying law when he was first arrested. He certainly did not fit what most people assume to be the profile of a multiple murderer.

  Bundy was again locked in the smaller Glenwood Springs jail. It seems he was able to acquire a hacksaw blade, probably from another inmate, as well as $500. In his cell, he sawed through the welds holding a metal plate in the ceiling over an old light fixture. It was a small hole, and the slim prisoner made huge efforts to shed even more weight until he was able to squeeze through into the crawlspace. Though the noise he made was noticed, it was never checked out.

  In December, two days before Christmas, Bundy heard that his trial would start in early January in Colorado Springs. Time was running out for his escape bid. On 30 December, leaving books and files under his blanket to give the appearance he was asleep in his bed, Bundy dressed in thick, warm clothes and climbed into the crawlspace, before moving across to the jailer’s apartment. It seems the jailer and his wife had gone out for the evening to see a film. Bundy climbed down into their linen cupboard and left via their front door.

  To escape into the Colorado night in December was not a pleasant experience. It was cold, a snowstorm had started up. Bundy stole an old MG but it broke down. He had been looking for four hours for a car to steal, as he didn’t know how to hotwire an ignition. In the end he hitched a lift into the town of Vail, and by chance saw a bus about to leave for Denver, where he took an early flight to Chicago. Seventeen hours after his escape, with Bundy neatly ensconced in Chicago, the guards in the little Glenwood Springs jail noticed that their sleeping charge was a pile of books, files and clothes. Discovery didn’t occur until after noon, for Bundy had been declining breakfast, choosing to sleep late instead.

  His final murderous spree was set to begin, leading to his ultimate arrest and eventual execution in Florida. During that short time-span, Bundy committed numerous petty crimes to finance his freedom, making his way across country until he stopped in Tallahassee, Florida, where he acquired documents to pose as a student, Kenneth Misner. In the early hours of 15 January 1978, he entered the state university’s Chi Omega sorority house to bludgeon four sleeping young women, leaving two dead and the others seriously injured. One of the murdered girls had double bite-marks on her buttocks that matched Bundy’s. All this was accomplished within thirty minutes. His next step was another house, not far away, where another female student was bludgeoned and left injured.

  After lying low for a few weeks, Bundy moved on in early February to Lake City, where he abducted, raped and murdered a twelve-year-old girl. She was his last victim. He was stopped by a Pensacola policeman on 15 February, on suspicion of driving a stolen car.

  It is similarly displeasing to hear how easily Belgian serial child rapist and murderer Marc Dutroux slipped away from his guards, in 1998 – even if, in the event, it was only for a few hours. The people of Belgium had been outraged that this infamous criminal, with his shameful slur on their national character, was allowed to travel twenty miles daily from his cell in Arlon to the courthouse in Neufchâteau to examine the prosecution files in preparation for his trial, protected by only three accompanying policemen – or, as was the case on the day he escaped in April 1998, just two. But it was his right to see the files, as there were so many that they could not make copies.

  His escape was made whilst one of the officers was out of the room, collecting further files, and the other was dozing in a chair, enabling the unhindered Dutroux to grab the gun from his belt and flee the courthouse. Perhaps it was a small blessing that the gun was unloaded. Dutroux stole a car to escape. Whilst the alarm was raised immediately, resulting in five thousand police, helicopters and planes joining the search – including many from the neighbouring countries of France, Germany, Luxembourg and Holland – it was a forest warden who spotted the stolen car stuck in the mud. Tracker dogs caught up with Dutroux. After this incident, his files were brought to him in prison.

  An earlier and altogether different European social threat, the Red Army Faction – or, as they were initially known in the media, the ‘Baader-Meinhof gang’ or ‘group’, to deny them military status – came into being in May 1970, when Andreas Baader, imprisoned in Tegel Prison, Berlin, for arson convictions, escaped from custody. At 8am on 14 May, Ulrike Meinhof, a well-known German journalist, had gone to the library at the Dahlem Institute for Social Research and asked to work there, as she had often done before. She was told that the main reading room was closed that day, because Baader was being brought from Tegel to conduct research on “the organisation of young people on the fringes of society”. She said she knew of this, because she was collaborating on the research with him. No one checked that this was approved. Though Meinhof was sympathetic, she was not yet a member of Baader’s militant leftwing group at this point.

  Meinhof changed the furniture around, placing a chair for him next to hers, with their backs to the windows. At 9:30am Baader arrived in a car with his escort of two policemen. With some reluctance, they decided to release his handcuffs so that he could work. They checked the fastenings on the windows and sat either side of the main door. No one checked Meinhof ’s bag, which contained a gun.

  A little later, there was a ring at the front door and two women, Irene Goergens and Ingrid Schubert, entered disguised in wigs. They were told they could work in the hallway until the reading room became vacant. They settled at a table. When the doorbell went again, they answered it and let in a masked man with a loaded Beretta, who shot one of the library personnel as he turned to run. The three of them burst into the library and scuffled with the police. In the commotion a teargas pistol was fired, whilst Baader and Meinhof jumped out of the window. The others followed, all making their way to a stolen silver Alfa Romeo, with fellow nascent terrorist Astrid Proll at the wheel.

  Gerard Chapman was the criminal for whom the term ‘Public Enemy Number One’ was coined by a lawman in the 1920’s, and then picked up by the newspapers way before the FBI began providing its ‘Most Wanted’ list. He escaped a number of times from custody, raising cheers in the picture-houses when newsreels reported his escapades. He was a conman but became a robber alongside his criminal mentor, Dutch Anderson, whom he met during one of his spells in prison.

  Chapman lived the high life in Manhattan with fine clothes and expensive women. Educating himself with music and literature, he was known as ‘the Count of Gramercy Park’. His first escape was probably the most spectacular, in that it had the touch of a showman. Caught for a robbery with his accomplice Anderson, after stealing five sacks of registered mail that totalled just over $1.4 million (the biggest haul in history at that time), they were taken to the main Post Office building for questioning. In the middle of the interrogation, Chapman yawned and stepped from his chair, dashed to the window with a “sorry gentlemen”, went out onto the sill and was gone. Everyone rushed to the window and looked seventy-five feet down to the street, wondering how he could have survived the fall. Then a detective noticed a cleaner at the building opposite pointing frantically to the side of the window. Chapman had sidestepped and moved along the ledge to come back into the building via another window. He was recaptured four offices along.

  It seems he had a talent for escaping through windows. When he was imprisoned another time, he feigned illness by drinking disinfectant in order to be moved to the prison hospital. There he escaped by going out of the window, using bed-sheets to lower himself. He was cornered two days later and shot a number of times in the process. His subsequent admission to the prison hospital was for valid reasons, a bullet having penetrated his kidney. It was feared he might die, but, six days later, he escaped in exactly the same way. He was
now free to commit further crimes with his companion, for Anderson had tunnelled out of Atlanta State Penitentiary around the same time.

  However, he was later captured with another man whom he unwisely chose as his new accomplice. When the accomplice was caught after they killed a policeman during a failed robbery, he boldly boasted that Chapman was his partner. That was to be Chapman’s final crime. Such was the adulation for the man that bouquets arrived daily, right up until his execution in 1926.

  The escape of Brian Nichols from Fulton County courthouse in Atlanta owed little to cunning and finesse, and more to sheer violence and brutality. On 11 March 2005, Cynthia Hall, aged fifty-one, a five-foot two sheriff ’s deputy, had just removed Nichols’ handcuffs, to enable him to change from prison uniform into civilian clothes for a court appearance, when he attacked her and grabbed her gun. He used enough violence to put her in hospital with head injuries, placing her in a critical condition. It seems surprising that she was the only guard for a six-foot one black male, weighing two hundred and ten pounds, who was facing life imprisonment on a retrial for charges of rape, false imprisonment, sodomy, possession of a machinegun and handgun, and large quantities of marijuana. Added to that, he had been caught in court, two days earlier, with two handmade knives in his shoes.

  Having overpowered the guard, his escape attempt took the lives of the judge, a court reporter, a police officer and a US Customs agent. Nichols started his bid for freedom by making his way across to the old courthouse via a skybridge and entering the private chambers of Judge Rowland Barnes, where he overpowered another officer, removed his weapon and entered the courtroom behind the judge’s bench, shooting Barnes in the head, doing likewise to the court reporter as he made his exit. Nichols managed to go down eight floors of a stairwell whilst being chased by another deputy, whom he shot and killed once they were outside.