“Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open,” Bernard Kerik said, and he was right because life stops for most people the moment they find themselves in prison. Every person in jail survives on the hope of freedom, and if it won’t be physical, it has to be mental. It is hard to live your whole life hoping, though, and so many choose to act on their dreams and attempt to beat prisons at the very thing they were built for keeping prisoners behind bars. Now, breaking out of prison is a tough and dangerous task, and many don’t survive the ordeal. For a task that takes up so much time and effort to plan and execute, you would expect prisoners to have thought out simple mistakes like these ten that got people caught.
Too Hungry To Continue
Breaking out of prison is the easy part when you consider what it takes to stay on the run and get to freedom. Willie Leroy Jones was one of six death row inmates who escaped from the Mecklenburg maximum-security prison in Virginia. He was on the run for over one week and just five miles south of the US/Canada border when he called the police to turn himself in. He was exhausted and hungry, especially after his partner, who had the truck, got caught by police. He realized that he had no one to go to in Canada and decided to go back to death row, where he was executed in 1992.
They Just Couldn’t Sit Still
Brazil always manages to bring some of the most hilarious jailbreak attempts ever. This one came back in 2012 when Sydney Da Cruz and his friend Carlos Pereira tried to be taken out of Delegacia De Furtos prison in trash bags. They managed to get themselves into trash bags next to the rest of the trash, but then the garbage collectors noticed that two of the trash bags seemed to be moving. They immediately alerted security and had the two rearrested.
The Prisoner Fell Asleep
This happened at the Oregon State Prison back in 2010 when Robert L. Emery decided to try his luck against the many defences put up by the prison. He did all the hard work starting by breaking out of his cell, breaking windows and drilling a door lock to get out of his cell block and then breaking into a tool room and stealing a toolbox. He also managed to dig a hole through the prison laundry room wall dug under one prison fence and jumped over another. Bleeding and exhausted, Emery had just one more fence to jump to go to freedom, but he was too tired to proceed. He then tucked himself under a blanket in the yard and waited for the guards to catch him in the morning.
Forgot The Skin Colour Of The Person He Was Impersonating
Kenneth Burnham was serving five years at the Hamilton County Jail in Tennessee for burglary when he decided that he had had enough and decided to get out. He waited for officers to come to prep another inmate for his release and pretended to be the prisoner. After signing the release papers, the officers noticed that everything about Burnham was right except for his skin colour. The man he was impersonating was black. Prison does change people, but skin colour is one of the things that change behind bars.
The Help Went To The Wrong Prison
If you are going to risk your life to break your friend out of prison, the least you can do is check and get the prison right. It happened in 2010 when two men, one dressed in the costume of the Peanuts Cartoon Snoopy, tried to break a staff door at a Wight Island prison in England to break out their family member. The two were actually at the wrong prison because their family member was being held at a different facility.
He Couldn’t Walk In Heels
Impersonation is a great way to get out of prison, but you have to try impersonating a person in whose shoes you can actually fit. Clauvino Da Silva was serving 73 years in Gericino prison in Western Rio De Janeiro for drug trafficking when he decided that he couldn’t live out his sentence. He sought the help of his 19-year-old daughter to get him a wig, a silicone mask and other disguises when she came to visit over the weekend. Clauvino then dressed up as his daughter and attempted to walk out of the prison right through the front door. The judges noticed that he was nervous on his heels and stopped and even recorded him as he took off the disguise and said his real name.
He Asked The Police For A Lift
Like we said earlier, breaking out of jail can be easy, but you have to be very smart if you are going to stay free. Allen Lewis was on the run from authorities after he escaped from a prison transport van that was transferring him from the Greenup County Detention Center in Kentucky. He had asked the officers to loosen his handcuffs but assaulted them and fled the moment one of his wrists was freed. While attempting to hide the handcuffs still attached to one of his wrists, Lewis tried to flag down a vehicle for a lift to freedom. Unfortunately for him, the vehicle that stopped to give him a lift was that of a prison warden at the facility he was being transferred from, and that is how he was lifted back to jail.
The Sewer Pipe Was Too Narrow
This happened back in 2015 in Brazil, and the videos are still available online. The prisoner’s name wasn’t given, but videos were taken of the naked man covered in human excrement trying to wriggle his way through a clogged sewer pipe. Images of him recaptured and covered in faeces while back in his prison cell also accompanied the viral videos. He overestimated the size of the sewer pipes for prisons, which are actually made so that no one can fit inside.
The Suitcase Case
Who allows girlfriends to visit boyfriends in prisons with large suitcases? In Chetumal, Mexico, prison staff were forced to stop Maria del Mar Arjona in 2011 when they noticed that her big suitcase seemed heavier than normal. In there, they found her half-naked boyfriend, Juan Ramirez, who was supposed to be in his cell serving 20 years for illegal weapons possession.
He Asked For Help At A Prison Guard’s Cabin
James Edward Russell made news in Oregon in 2011 when an off-duty prison guard called the police to report that he had just knocked on his door. The poor escapee was still in his prison garb a day after he escaped from the Olympic Corrections Center, hiding in the woods. He then saw a cabin and went to it, asking the person he met there for a phone. He didn’t know that the cabin belonged to one of the correctional officers from whom he had just escaped. His escape didn’t last long after that encounter.
Do you know of any other jailbreak fails? If so, why not share them in the comments below?