Notorious Prison Escapes in History

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/world/europe/notorious-prison-escapes-in-history.html

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The escape of a notorious drug cartel chieftain from Mexico’s most secure penitentiary over the weekend instantly ranked as one of most audacious breakouts in the annals of penology. The escapee, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as El Chapo, who vanished through a secret hole in his cell’s shower that led to an elaborately constructed tunnel, joined the likes of John Dillinger, Casanova and the Allied P.O.W.’s of Nazi Germany immortalized in the 1963 film, “The Great Escape.”

Here are some of the most notable breakouts, in chronological order:

TOWER OF LONDON, OCT. 5, 1587

John Gerard, a Jesuit priest imprisoned in the Salt Tower for his religious missions during the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in the reign of Elizabeth I, sent seemingly innocuous letters with secret messages written in invisible orange juice to outside collaborators and another prisoner, John Arden, held in the adjacent Cradle Tower. They plotted to deceive a guard into letting them celebrate Mass together, swung across a moat and escaped in a waiting boat.

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LEADS PRISON, VENICE, OCT. 31, 1756

Giacomo Casanova, the Venetian writer, adventurer and libertine incarcerated for adultery and debauchery, used a metal bar to pry open wooden planks in his cell of Leads Prison, part of the Doge’s Palace, climb onto the roof, reach the palace’s golden staircase and deceive a guard into letting him out by pretending to be a politician. He published a book about his escape in 1787.

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LAKE COUNTY JAIL, CROWN POINT, IND., MARCH 3, 1934

The bank robber John Dillinger, by then known as Public Enemy No. 1, was exercising with other prisoners in a holding area when he poked a wooden gun into the ribs of a guard, seized his keys and locked all guards and the deputy sheriff into cells. He and a fellow inmate then took machine guns and escaped in the sheriff’s car.

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STALAG LUFT III, SAGAN, GERMANY (now Poland), March 24-25, 1944

Seventy-six Allied airmen held in a Luftwaffe prisoner-of-war camp escaped after more than a year of work by hundreds of inmates who dug tunnels named Tom, Dick and Harry. They cannibalized their wooden bunks for tunnel support beams and burrowed 30 feet deep to avoid detection by seismographs. All but three were recaptured. Outraged by the escape, Adolf Hitler ordered 50 of the men shot, one of the war crimes charged at Nuremberg.

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ALCATRAZ, SAN FRANCISCO, JUNE 11, 1962

Using a metal spoon and improvised drill made from a vacuum cleaner, three felons serving life sentences — Frank Morris, and John and Clarence Anglin — vanished through a hole made in the concrete wall of the federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, vaunted as America’s only escape-proof penitentiary. They fooled guards by leaving papier-mâché dummies in their cells, topped by hair from the prison barber shop. Although officials said the trio drowned in their getaway off the island, their bodies were never found.