98 Fun Facts About Prison Escapes

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

The escapees stitched and glued stolen raincoats into a raft and life vests, following a life-preserver design one of them found in the March 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Which drug lord twice escaped Mexican prisons, once in a laundry cart and once by tunnel?

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán was wheeled out of Puente Grande in a laundry cart in 2001 and fled Altiplano in 2015 through a 1.5 km tunnel that opened under the shower in his cell.

The 1944 "Great Escape" saw Allied prisoners of war tunnel out of which German camp?

Stalag Luft III, near Sagan in German Silesia, was the Luftwaffe-run camp from which Allied airmen broke out on the night of 24 March 1944 through a tunnel dug beneath the huts.

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 walked out of the Lake County jail at Crown Point, Indiana, on 3 March 1934 with a fake pistol, taking inmate Herbert Youngblood, who was shot dead by police in Michigan two weeks later.

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

A fourth man, Allen West, could not get out of his cell in time and was left behind. No conclusive evidence about the fate of the three who got away 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.

Which German castle housed Oflag IV-C, the WWII camp for Allied officers who had already escaped other camps?

Colditz Castle in Saxony held Oflag IV-C; its first British inmates, the Laufen Six, arrived in November 1940 after an escape attempt from Oflag VII-C at Laufen.

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.

In what year did the FBI conclude the 1962 Alcatraz escapees had most likely drowned?

The FBI closed its case on 31 December 1979, concluding Morris and the Anglin brothers had most likely drowned in the bay, while the US Marshals Service kept its own warrants active.

How many escape attempts were made from Alcatraz during its 29 years as a federal penitentiary?

Alcatraz recorded 14 escape attempts involving 36 prisoners, two of them trying twice, between its opening as a federal prison in 1934 and its closure in March 1963.

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

The tunnels Tom, Dick and Harry started under huts 123, 122 and 104; guards found Tom, Dick became a store for spoil, and Harry carried the March 1944 breakout.

How many prisoners got out through the tunnel before the Great Escape was discovered?

The plan had been for 220; only three reached safety, and Hitler had fifty of the recaptured men executed.

How many of the recaptured Great Escape officers were shot on Hitler's orders in 1944?

Fifty were executed singly or in pairs; Göring and Keitel talked Hitler out of shooting all of them, fearing reprisals against German pilots held by the Allies.

Which Stalag Luft III veteran wrote the 1950 book behind the 1963 film The Great Escape?

Paul Brickhill, an Australian Spitfire pilot held at Stalag Luft III, published The Great Escape in 1950; the 1963 film added inventions such as Steve McQueen's motorcycle jump.

A 1943 Stalag Luft III escape that hid a tunnel under gymnastics equipment inspired which 1950 film?

The Wooden Horse (1950) dramatised the October 1943 break by Codner, Williams and Philpot, who dug about 30 metres in three months beneath a vaulting horse, scooping sand with bowls.

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

Matt and Sweat cut through their cell walls, then cut into a steam pipe and crawled along it to a sewer manhole outside the walls; Joyce Mitchell, meant to drive them away, never showed.

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

Bundy asked to visit the courthouse law library during a recess, then jumped from its second-storey window; he hurt an ankle landing and was caught six days later in Aspen.

For his second escape, Bundy sawed through the ceiling of his cell 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 from bed slats and cotton sheets behind a false wall in the attic; the camp was liberated 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?

They dug from a rat-infested cellar the guards refused to enter, and over half reached Union lines.

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

Six were arrested in Colorado within days of the January 2001 broadcast; the seventh shot himself rather than be captured.

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

Biggs went over the wall on a rope ladder and dropped onto the roof of a removal van parked outside, 15 months into a 30-year sentence; he stayed free for 36 years, mostly in Brazil.

Serial escapee Yoshie Shiratori rusted his handcuffs at Abashiri Prison using what?

Shiratori spat miso soup onto his handcuffs and the cell door's inspection hatch night after night until the metal corroded; in August 1944 he slipped the cuffs and squeezed out through the hatch.

How many times did London thief Jack Sheppard escape from prison in 1724 before being hanged at Tyburn?

Sheppard escaped four times in 1724, from St Giles's Roundhouse, the New Prison at Clerkenwell and twice from Newgate, before being hanged at Tyburn that November aged 22.

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?

Ray hid in a crate beneath loaves in a bread truck leaving the prison bakery on 23 April 1967; a year later he shot Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.

Serial escapee Steven Jay Russell of I Love You Phillip Morris was sentenced to how many years in total?

Russell's sentences add up to 144 years, 99 of them for his escapes alone; Jim Carrey played him opposite Ewan McGregor in I Love You Phillip Morris (2009).

Which future British PM, captured as a war correspondent, escaped a Pretoria POW camp in 1899 by stowing away on freight trains?

Winston Churchill had been captured when Boer shelling derailed his armoured train near Chieveley; he escaped in December by stowing aboard freight trains and hiding in a mine.

Roughly how many prisoners got out of the Sobibor extermination camp in the revolt of 14 October 1943?

Around 300 of the roughly 600 prisoners broke out of Sobibor after the revolt killed 11 SS men; only about 58 survived the war, and the Nazis razed the camp to hide it.

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

Gerard and fellow prisoner John Arden slid down a rope strung from the Cradle Tower across the moat to waiting boatmen in October 1597, his hands still crippled from being hung in manacles.

The Cowra breakout of August 1944, World War II's largest prison escape, involved 1,104 prisoners of which nationality?

Some 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war charged the wire at the Cowra camp in New South Wales on 5 August 1944; 231 died, many by suicide, and the survivors were rounded up within ten days.

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

Guards assumed the 2006 helicopter was a visit from prison inspectors; he is nicknamed 'Robin of the Poor' for giving away loot.

Which queen 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?

Grotius's wife had books sent in and out in a large chest, and on 22 March 1621 he was carried out inside it; the Rijksmuseum and Delft's Prinsenhof each claim the original chest of books.

Who played escape ringleader Frank Morris in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz?

Clint Eastwood's Morris was his fifth and final collaboration with director Don Siegel, and the film marked Danny Glover's debut.

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

Andy tells Red about Zihuatanejo, 'a little place on the Pacific Ocean', and asks him to dig up a package in a hayfield near Buxton once released; the film took only $16 million on its first run.

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

Escobar negotiated his 1991 surrender on condition the prison was built to his own specifications on land he owned above Medellín; 'Hotel Escobar' even 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.

In 1244, which Welsh prince died when his bedsheet rope broke while escaping the Tower of London?

Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr, eldest son of Llywelyn the Great, was being held by Henry III as a hostage; on 1 March 1244 his knotted sheets gave way and he fell to his death.

Which Dutch Anabaptist escaped prison in 1569 only to turn back and rescue his pursuer from thin ice?

Dirk Willems, fleeing across a frozen pond at Asperen, turned back when the guard chasing him broke through the ice; he was recaptured, tortured and burned at the stake on 16 May 1569.

Confederate general John Hunt Morgan tunnelled out of a state prison in which state in 1863?

Morgan and six officers, including Thomas Hines, dug from the air chamber beneath the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus and scaled its wall on 27 November 1863 with a rope of bunk coverlets and a bent poker for a hook.

Across some 300 attempts, roughly how many prisoners got outside Colditz Castle's walls?

Around 130 prisoners got clear of Colditz's walls, using disguises as guards, workmen or women, and sewer drains; only about 30 of them made a 'home run' to friendly territory.

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

Camp Papago Park lay on the eastern edge of Phoenix; 25 German prisoners crawled out through a 178-foot tunnel on 23 December 1944; the desert rivers they hoped to float down were dry and all were recaptured by late January.

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

Three armed Black Liberation Army members took guards hostage during a visit and drove off with her in a prison van on 2 November 1979; she surfaced in Cuba in 1984, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum.

The 2008 Sarposa Prison attack, which freed 400-1,000 inmates, took place in which Afghan city?

Taliban fighters blew open the gates of Sarposa Prison on the edge of Kandahar city with a truck bomb on 13 June 2008 and stormed in, freeing hundreds of inmates including some 400 Taliban prisoners.

Which Union officer led the 1864 tunnel escape from Libby Prison?

Rose, a Pennsylvania infantry colonel, was recaptured within sight of Union lines but later exchanged and returned to duty.

What did Libby Prison's tunnellers nickname the vermin-infested 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.

The 1946 "Battle of Alcatraz" grew out of an escape attempt planned by which convict?

Coy, a bank robber, lost twenty pounds so he could squeeze through the spread bars of the gun gallery and seize its weapons.

Which fourth conspirator was left behind when Morris and the Anglins fled Alcatraz in 1962?

Allen West had patched his vent with cement that set hard and could not clear it in time; left behind in his cell, he talked freely to the FBI about the plan.

The 1876 Catalpa rescue freed six Fenian prisoners from a penal colony in which territory?

The whaler Catalpa, bought with Clan na Gael funds raised by John Devoy, carried the six men from Fremantle, Western Australia, in April 1876; John Boyle O'Reilly, who had escaped the same colony in 1869, helped plan it.

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

Blake went over the Wormwood Scrubs wall on a rope ladder with rungs of knitting needles, helped by ex-inmate Sean Bourke and peace campaigners Michael Randle and Pat Pottle; he died in Moscow in 2020.

Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson was sprung from which prison in August 1964?

A three-man gang broke into the Birmingham jail to get him out, just four months into a 30-year sentence.

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

Jenkin carved the keys from wood in the prison workshop, copying the locks by eye; he, Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris passed through ten locked doors on 11 December 1979 and fled the country.

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

Daniel Radcliffe plays Jenkin in Escape from Pretoria, with Daniel Webber as fellow escapee Stephen Lee; the film was shot in Adelaide, Australia, with the real Jenkin advising.

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

He crossed the frozen St. Lawrence into the then-neutral United States and reached Germany via Mexico, South America and Spain.

WWI's biggest POW escape, the 1918 Holzminden tunnel, got how many officers out?

29 officers crawled out of the Holzminden tunnel on the night of 23–24 July 1918 before it collapsed on the thirtieth man; ten of them reached the neutral Netherlands and got home to Britain.

The largest German POW breakout in wartime Britain, from Island Farm in 1945, happened where?

Island Farm, Camp 198 at Bridgend in south Wales, lost about 70 men through a tunnel from Hut 9 on the night of 10–11 March 1945; all were recaptured within days, some caught with hand-drawn railway maps.

Who was the first prisoner ever to escape the Tower of London, in 1101?

Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, was also the Tower's very first inmate; he got his guards drunk on wine sent in a cask that hid a rope, climbed down it in February 1101 and fled to Normandy.

How did Lord Nithsdale escape the Tower of London in 1716, the day before his execution?

The Jacobite earl walked past his guards in women's clothing and lived out his days in Rome.

Latude's 1756 escape from the Bastille used a ladder whose rungs were made of what?

Latude and his cellmate d'Alègre unravelled shirts and sheets into rope and cut the rungs from their firewood; the finished rope ladder appears beside him in Antoine Vestier's 1789 portrait.

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?

Louis-Napoléon shaved his moustache, dressed as a laborer in workmen's clothes and carried a plank on his shoulder past the guards on 25 May 1846; in December 1848 he was elected president of France.

Pancho Villa fled prison in December 1912 and crossed into the US near which Arizona town?

Villa walked out of Mexico City's Santiago Tlatelolco prison in disguise and made his way north to Nogales, Arizona, then El Paso; in jail the Zapatista Gildardo Magaña had been tutoring him in reading.

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.

Which French robber was lifted out of Réau prison by a hijacked helicopter in July 2018?

Rédoine Faïd, an armed robber who had blasted his way out of Lille-Sequedin prison in 2013, was flown out of Réau on 1 July 2018 after his accomplices forced a flight instructor to land in the courtyard.

Jacques Mesrine and François Besse became the first men to escape which Paris prison?

Mesrine and Besse went over the wall of La Santé on 8 May 1978, the first escape in the prison's history; inside, Mesrine had written L'Instinct de mort, an autobiography boasting of dozens of killings.

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

He landed on a parked car and sped off on a waiting motorcycle; the 46 million francs from the 1976 robbery were never found.

US Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, shot down in 1966, escaped a POW camp in which country?

Dengler was shot down over Laos on 1 February 1966 and held by the Pathet Lao; seven prisoners broke out in June, and only Dengler and Thai prisoner Phisit Intharathat survived the jungle.

Which aviator is the only German in either world war to escape a British POW camp and reach home?

He slipped away from Donington Hall in Leicestershire in 1915 and later became the first man to explore Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia from the air.

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

Charles Bronson played the bush pilot hired for the rescue in Breakout (1975); Kaplan's ten-second lift-off from Santa Martha Acatitla in August 1971 is generally counted as the first helicopter jailbreak.

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

His wife Nadine Vaujour spent months secretly taking flying lessons, then hovered over La Santé on 26 May 1986 while Michel climbed aboard from the roof.

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

Manhattan Island has been converted into the country's sole maximum-security prison, and Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken gets 24 hours to pull the President out of it.

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

Scofield's map is a tattoo covering his whole body, which took about five hours to apply to Wentworth Miller for each shoot.

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

Bud Ekins, McQueen's friend and desert-racing partner, made the jump because insurers would not let the star do it; when Johnny Carson congratulated McQueen on air, he replied, 'It wasn't me.'

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

Holden won for Stalag 17, Billy Wilder's POW-camp drama in which his Sefton trades with the guards; his acceptance speech was a bare 'thank you' because the broadcast was about to go off air.

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?

Hayes was jailed in Turkey for trying to smuggle hashish out of the country; he later criticised the film for making his captors far more villainous than his memoir had.

Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956) is set in Montluc prison in which French city?

Montluc was the Gestapo's prison in Lyon, where Klaus Barbie held Resistance suspects; Bresson's film retells André Devigny's real escape from it in August 1943.

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?

The $1 million crash was filmed in a single take with a real locomotive; the wreckage still sits beside the tracks in 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?

Mitchell smuggled hacksaw blades to Matt and Sweat inside frozen hamburger meat; she was meant to be the getaway driver too, but panicked, backed out and ended up in hospital with chest pains.

Who was the ringleader of the Texas Seven breakout in December 2000?

George Rivas, serving multiple life sentences for aggravated robbery and kidnapping, planned the Connally Unit break; he was executed in Texas in 2012 for the murder of police officer Aubrey Hawkins.

Which RAF squadron leader, code-named "Big X", conceived the 1944 Great Escape?

Bushell wanted to get over 200 men out in civilian clothes with forged papers; three tunnels at once meant losing one would not end the plan.

How many of the Great Escape's tunnel escapers actually made it to safety?

Only three made it: Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Müller reached Sweden by boat, and Dutch pilot Bram van der Stok crossed occupied Europe to the British consulate in Spain.

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

Their report is credited with helping halt the deportation of Hungary's Jews that July, saving an estimated 200,000 lives.

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

Sutton was serving 25 to 50 years at Eastern State Penitentiary for a machine-gun robbery of the Corn Exchange Bank; the 97-foot tunnel, dug by Clarence Klinedinst, surfaced on 3 April 1945 and Sutton was recaptured within minutes.

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

Pearce turned to cannibalism, eating companions on two separate escapes; a magistrate disbelieved his first confession and sent him back, and after the second he was hanged in Hobart in 1824.

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

On 16 December 1937 Cole and Roe filed through the bars of the mat shop window and slipped into a dense fog; with a storm driving the tide out through the Golden Gate, neither was ever seen again.

Which inmate is the only one proven to have swum from Alcatraz to shore, in 1962?

John Paul Scott greased himself, swam from the island on 16 December 1962 and was found hypothermic by teenagers on the rocks at Fort Point beneath the Golden Gate Bridge; he was back on Alcatraz the same day.

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

The drill was built from the motor of a broken vacuum cleaner; together with spoons and discarded saw blades it took six months to widen the vents beneath their sinks.

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.

Jürgen Wattenberg, who led the Great Papago Escape, had commanded what kind of vessel?

Wattenberg had commanded the U-boat U-162, sunk in the Caribbean in 1942; at Papago Park he talked the Americans into handing out shovels for a volleyball court, then used them on the tunnel.