On proud reflection, my choice of topic fluctuates between sex and crime, with the occasional bit of racism thrown in. I’ve always been fascinated by the world of crime, ever since my policeman Dad hand cuffed my brother and I to the sewage drain in our street when I was seven. He also used to put on his training balaclava and stand in our window in the dead of night holding a sawed-off shotgun, singing ‘if you go down to the woods today you better not go alone…’ Ah, childhood memories. To be honest, if I had been blessed with more discipline and natural coordination, I’d probably be a copper myself. And if I could quit selling stolen car parts to fund my meth lab, innit.

We all presume how we would cope in jail when watching gangster films, slouching on the sofa with a fistful of popcorn going ‘I’d fuckin’ do him, mate!’ But if you think about it, you wouldn’t, cause you’d turn to absolute piss the minute you got thrown in the clink. I know for a fact I’d simply die of fear before the rectal exam. Probably best bet. Could you tough it out without becoming somebody’s bitch? Would you do your time with your head down and your Bible open? Would you turn to yoga and dealing hash like Howard Marks? Or would you bust outta that hell hole like it was giving birth to you?! Here’s the story of our top prison breaks, carried out by the baddest muthafuckaz (words that have no effect when uttered by a white Australian girl) out there.

Redoine Faid

Incase you hadn’t heard cause you’re Googling funny cats instead of watching the news (which I was until the head Chirpsers kindly alerted me to this one), some dramatic prison break shiyat went down in Lille, France last week.  On Saturday, French conman Redoine Faid literally busted out of prison using a shit load of explosives, taking four guards hostage in his stride and subsequently triggering a Europe-wide investigation.

40-year-old Faid, in prison for the 2010 death of a police woman and notorious for his attacks on cash-in-transit vehicles, somehow obtained explosives in the clink (suspected accomplices are currently being questioned) and blew a hole in one of the prison walls. He then escaped in a waiting vehicle and it is now supposed that he switched to another when the initial getaway car was found, burned out on the highway. There are fears that he has fled across the border to Belgium, just a few kilometres from the prison. Police have warned that he is armed and ‘especially dangerous’.

Faid has previously said that his life of crime is attributable to the American films ‘Scarface’ and ‘Heat’, and that movies such as these were his ‘users guide’. I’m hoping that he has been inspired by Starsky and Hutch and tries to land a car on a yacht at some point. The search continues.

The Postcard Bandit

Now I have to include this naughty nelly, cause my old man actually arrested him back in the day. I’m struggling with things to bond with my Dad over, so I gotta make him a bit famous.The Postcard Bandit (real name Brenden Abbott) was a notorious Aussie bank robber during the mid eighties, who yielded as much as six million bucks by the end of his run, though the majority of the amount was never recoverable. He was a man that police both admired and utterly detested. Abbott spent most of the eighties and early nineties as Australia’s Most Wanted Man, fleeing from state to state holding up banks, taking hostages and causing general mayhem. The Aussie media gave him the nickname of the Postcard Bandit as he’d send a postcard to the Western Australian Police from wherever he was in hiding. What a shit-stirrer.

Abbott managed to escape from jail twice, and also fled from a police questioning in 1986. In 1989, along with another inmate, Abbott escaped over the limestone walls of Fremantle Prison (originally built in the 1850′s as an immigration holding centre and hence has a long history of escapes) in uniforms similar to the guards’ that Abbott had tailored in the prison sweatshop. He was then on the run for five and a half years, but was recaptured in 1995 and detained in a Brisbane Correctional Centre from which he again escaped in 1997. Six months later he was recaptured in the Northern Territory and is now serving a 23 year sentence for his many robberies and escapes in a high security prison facility in Queensland.

When asked if he was indeed a modern-day Ned Kelly as he had been described, former detective Snook replied ‘No. He was just a slippery bloody bastard’.

Antonio Ferrera

Now this is some Oceans Eleven shit. Explosives expert Antonio Ferrera was a part of one of the most dangerous gangs in Europe, nicknamed the ‘Dream Team’. He was notorious in this gang for his ability to blow up a loaded safe without harming the cash and other goodies inside. That’s the real life equivalent of achieving the impossible Crash Bandicoot task of jumping on the box on top of the TNT and getting the apples and a new life before it explodes, no? One robbery too many landed this punk in jail for eight years in 1998; he was convicted of two armed robberies and suspected of at least fifteen more. Five years into his sentence he plotted the least-subtle escape ever. Six of his mates posed as policemen and rocked up to the Parisian Fresnes Prison and half four in the morning, firing AK-47s and blowing off the front gates with rocked-propelled grenades. Ferrera blew open his own cell door with a stick of dynamite he presumably swapped for a bumming and fled with his chums. After earning the title ‘France’s Most Wanted Man’ for four months, he was recaptured in a bar in Paris (you’d go further than that if you were doing the bolt you fool). As he came face to face with his arresting officer, he was quoted as coolly saying ‘You again?’ Ah, the French.

The Texas Seven

You’ve probably heard of this one. The Texas Seven were a bunch of dudes who staged an escape from a maximum security state prison in Kenedy, Southern Texas back in December 2000. Leader of the pack George Rivas was serving 18 consecutive 15-to-life sentences, Michael Anthony Rodriguez was serving a 99-to-life term, while Larry James Harper, Joseph Garcia and Patrick Henry Murphy were all serving 50 year sentences. Donald Keith Newbury was serving a 99-year sentence, and Randy Halprin was serving a 30-year sentence. If you knew you were going to spend your eternity locked up, you’d have to plot an escape to keep from topping yourself. This was rather an elaborate plan. Mid-morning saw less surveillance of the maintenance room at the prison, where the seven managed to overpower and restrain nine maintenance supervisors, four correctional officers and three fellow inmates. This was executed carefully by one convict calling a person over, and another would appear behind them, smacking them in the back of the head. The seven then stole identification, clothing and money from their victims. Disguised in their new threads, half of them made their way to the back of the prison, pretending to be installing monitors to those they encountered along the way. They then raided the guard tower and stole numerous guard weapons. The remaining four then nicked a prison truck, drove to the back of the prison and picked up the trio, before casually driving on out. A crime spree followed, whereby several armed robberies took place and a police officer was murdered. Upon being caught, Harper shot himself in the chest and the others surrendered and were subsequently sentenced to the death penalty. Rivas and Rodriguez have already been sent to the big house in the sky and the remaining four are on the lethal injection list.

The Great Escape

You couldn’t have a list of break outs without included the greatest of all. The Great Escape was the infamous escape of two prisoners of war, kept in the Stalag Luft III, the Luftwaffe-run POW camp during World War Two. Yes, they made ‘that film’ about it.

Roger Bushel RAF orchestrated the plan with the words, ‘Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug- called Tom, Dick and Harry. One will succeed!’

Previous escape attempts by groups of twenty or so POWs from the camp had failed, but Bushel was intent on getting around 200 of them out. The opening of tunnel “Tom” was obscured in a darkened corner of one of the buildings, “Dick”‘s entrance was carefully hidden in a drain sump in one of the washrooms and the entrance to “Harry” was hidden under a stove. Each tunnel was around 9 metres deep and 0.6 metres square and the escapees used the wooden slats from their beds to secure the sandy tunnel walls. Over 600 prisoners were involved in the plan. That’s a lot of dudes to keep quiet.

On March 24th, 1944, as it became dark, the men began their escape. There were literal shortcomings; the tunnel via which they were planning to free one man per minute didn’t end in the forest scrub as thought, but short of the tree line and close to a guard tower. Due to the setbacks and the need to be extremely careful, this number was reduced to ten men per hour. 76 of the planned 200 men were able to escape via the tunnels and hid within the trees of the surrounding forest. At 4.55am the following morning, the 77th man was seen emerging from the tunnel entrance by one of the guards. SHIT. As he surrendered, the other 76 fled but 73 were recaptured and 50 of which were executed, including Roger Bushel. The remainder was relocated to other German camps. The three men that went free were two Norwegian pilots and a Dutch pilot. The Norwegians made it to Sweden by boat, while the Dutch pilot travelled through France before finding a British Consulate in Spain. Luckiest guys in the world? I think so.

Pascal Payet

Catch him if you can. Pascal Payet is a Frenchman notorious for his Hollywood-blockbuster-style escapes.

In October 2001, he escaped from a French prison aboard a hijacked helicopter. Not something you’d do twice, you think. In 2003, he organized yet another helicopter escape for three other prisoners. After being recaptured and sentenced 30 years for murder in 2005, Payet staged one of the most dramatic break outs in history. A THIRD chopper was hijacked and flown to a state penitentiary in Grasse, where he was being held, and landed on the prison roof. Three of his comrades emerged and broke into the prison with sawed-off shotguns, piled the crafty Frenchman in the ‘copter and flew off into the sunset. Stunned police underwent a massive search and he was pinged three months later in Spain. Now back in the clink and relocated to a new facility every six months, Payet is probably plotting his next badass escape.

Jay Junior Sigler

You know you’re a pretty crap criminal when yo mama has to try and break you outta jail. Jay Junior Sigler was eight years into his 20-year sentence for armed robbery at Everglades Correctional Institute in Florida when his Mum decided she needed her boy back. 58-year old Sandra and two accomplices staged a not overly subtle break-in with a big-rig tractor, smashing through security fences and a prison wall. The accomplices were driving the tractor, while Sandra followed behind the path of destruction in her car. Jay ran out from inside the jail, jumped in Mummy’s car along with the tractor maniacs and the four of them hauled ass out of town only to be caught two days later. Sigler’s Mum has got it going on!

Billy Hayes

Heard of Midnight Express? It’s about this dude.

In 1970, Hayes was caught smuggling four pounds of hashish out of Turkey and was subsequently sentenced to over four years in a Turkish jail. Just weeks from being released, he learned that it was being campaigned that his sentence become life, making him one of hundreds of Americans stuck in foreign jails for life on drug charges. Thinking, ‘fuck that for a laugh’, he decided to bail. Upon being transferred to an island prison, he continuously carved a hole in his wall and waited for a stormy night, knowing that row boats and life boats were brought to the island prison when the weather got rough. He stole a row boat and escape off the island in the middle of a storm and rowed to Turkey. He then ‘spent three days running through Turkey and dying my hair’ before crossing a minefield (which he didn’t realise at the time) at the Greek/Turkish border and then swam the Marista river to Greece. He was picked up by the American Embassy from Greek military custody and he was as good as home and hosed. And after all that, they didn’t even include his escape scene in the film. 

Frank Morris and Clarence and John Anglin

It was these three that were infamous in the June 1962 Alcatraz escape, which still baffles many.

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was known to be inescapable, as demonstrated by the 36 prisoners that had previously tried to flee and all of whom were shot or recaptured. All three men were serving lengthy sentences for some form of robbery and started to plot their escape in 1961. They made fake dummy heads fabricated from soap, toilet paper and real hair and left them in their beds in order to fool the guards going around the cells for a night time check. They’d spent a year chipping away at their cell walls with spoons and escaped through these holes, landing them in a vacant corridor. They proceeded to climb out of a vent and scale the almighty prison fence, finally assembling an untrustworthy raft from stolen prison raincoats and cement. Yes, cement. According to reports, they began paddling off at around 10pm on June 11th. A thorough search of Alcatraz and nearby island Angel Island was carried out the following day, to no avail. And after a seventeen year search with little conclusion, the FBI closed the case in 1979.

It is predicted that the men drowned on their way to Angel Island, however remains of the raft, paddles and some clothing were found on the island- but was it just the tide? The case is still being investigated by the US Marshal Service and as late as 2011, it was revealed that footprints were found leading away from the raft on Angel Island. Like any badass escape, a film was made about it, and like any badass film, it has Clint Eastwood in it.

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