A ‘gun’ made of soap, contortionist style squeezing and just WALKING out: The most jaw-dropping inmate prison escapes revealed
Yesterday the news broke of two convicts breaking out of Pentonville prison using diamond cutters to gain their freedom - here are some of the other most spectacularly inventive jail escapes revealed…
WITH solid metal bars, armed prison guards, huge brick walls and sometimes even moats standing between prisoners and freedom, it’s a pretty understandable assumption that no one’s going anywhere.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way and against all odds some inventive inmates manage to bust out.
Yesterday the news broke of two convicts breaking out of Pentonville prison using diamond cutters to gain their freedom.
Here are some of the other most spectacularly inventive jail escapes revealed…
Choi Gap-bok and his circus style squeezing
Luckily for Choi Gap-bok he was practiced in the art of yoga so was no stranger to bending into tricky positions.
The Korean man was arrested on suspicion of robbery and was detained in a police station cell in the city of Daegu, South Korea where he stayed for five days.
But Choi decided he wasn’t happy with this accommodation on the fifth day and took action, squeezing out of the tiny slot in the bars used to serve his food.
It reportedly took just 34 seconds for him to manoeuvre through the 5.9 by 17.7 inch space which he managed to squeeze through as the guards slept.
Choi has since been nicknamed the “Korean Houdini.”
John Dillinger and his gun made of soap
American gangster John Dillinger was arrested in 1934 and sent along to “escape proof” Lake County Jail.
The security conscious combination of guards, policemen and National Guard troops made escape unlikely for those incarcerated in the facility.
Rather than accepting his fate and settling in for the long haul, John saw this as a challenge and plotted his jail break.
He managed to get to freedom after fashioning a fake gun from a bar of soap and using it to steal a Sherriff’s brand new Ford.
He fled to Illinois but unfortunately for the daring convict the stolen car was spotted as he tried to cross state lines.
Frank Abagnale just walked out
If you haven’t heard of Frank Abagnale then you probably haven’t seen the film Catch Me If You Can.
But before the conman was immortalised by Leonardo di Caprio in the movie, he was out tricking police officers and members of the public left right and centre.
Frank was well known for his elaborate schemes and in 1971 the expert in persuasion managed to convince prison guards to just let him walk free.
While being transported to the detention centre the guards realised they didn’t have his papers, seeing this admin error as an opportunity, Frank led them to believe that this was because he was an undercover inspector.
He had a friend smuggle in fake business cards and showed them to the guards who called his friend “at the FBI” using one of the fake numbers on the cards.
Having his story backed up by his fake inspector friend, the guards let him go, smugly believing they had caught on to the plan to spy on them.
He simply walked out, where his friend was waiting to drive him away, probably laughing the whole way home.
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John Anglin, Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris broke out of Alcatraz with papier-mâché
You may have seen the film starring Clint Eastwood of the daring prison break from Alcatraz in 1962.
Using makeshift tools like a drill fashioned from a vacuum cleaner, John Anglin, Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris chipped away at the walls in their cell and escaped into a ventilation shaft which ran onto the beach.
They filled the ever increasing gap in the wall with papier-mâché and put homemade papier-mâché heads on their pillows to hold off the guards long enough for them to make an escape.
They used a crudely pulled together raft to sail to the San Francisco bay and were never heard of again.
Plenty of people assumed that they had died but with no bodies ever found, it has remained one of lives great mysteries.
Parkhurst Escapees Build Their Own Ladder, Gun, and Master Key
The most recent of our epic breaks, in 1995, Keith Rose, Andrew Rodger and Matthew Williams pulled together to design their own tools, which included a massive 25 foot steel ladder, which they used to scale the prison fence.
Their efforts in the prison workshop also allowed them to produce a homemade gun and a key that opened the doors and gates in the prison.
During their designated exercise time the trio waited till the guards were distracted and opened the back door of the yard and walked out.
They then cut a hole in the inner fence and used their ladder to get over the outer fence and they were finally free… for all of four days before they were caught, hiding in a shed.
