I just watched the first season of the popular series "prison break" and my imagination has began to run wide, so i decided to make findings to confirm if there have been any real life jail break. Well, i was able to make a good compilation and i hope you will like it.

Leggo...

Lalasticlala, Mynd44

The Texas 7

The Texas 7 was a group of prisoners who escaped from the John Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas on December 13, 2000. They were apprehended January 21-23, 2001 as a direct result of the television show America’s Most Wanted. On December 13, 2000, the seven carried out an elaborate scheme and escaped from the John B. Connally Unit, a maximum-security state prison near the South Texas town of Kenedy. Using several well-planned ploys, the seven convicts overpowered and restrained nine civilian maintenance supervisors, four correctional officers and three uninvolved inmates at approximately 11:20 a.m.The escape occurred during the slowest period of the day when there would be less surveillance of certain locations like the maintenance area — during lunch and at count time. Most of these plans involved one of the offenders calling someone over, while another hit the unsuspecting person on the head from behind. Once the victim was subdued, the offenders would remove some of his clothing, tie him up, gag him and place him in an electrical room behind a locked door. Eleven prison workers and three uninvolved inmates were bound and gagged. The attackers stole clothing, credit cards, and identification from their victims.The group also impersonated prison officers on the phone and created false stories to ward off suspicion from authorities. They eventually made their way to the prison maintenance pickup-truck which they used to escape from the prison grounds. The remaining 5 living members of the group are all on death row awaiting death by lethal injection. Of the other two, one committed suicide and one has already been executed. [Wikipedia]

Alfred Hinds

“Alfie” Hinds was a British criminal and escape artist who, while serving a 12 year prison sentence for robbery, successfully broke out of three high security prisons. Despite the dismissal of thirteen of his appeals to higher courts, he was eventually able to gain a pardon using his knowledge of the British legal system. After being sentenced to 12 years in prison for a jewelry robbery, Hinds escaped from Nottingham prison by sneaking through the locked doors and over a 20-foot prison wall for which he became known in the press as “Houdini” Hinds.After 6 months he was found and arrested. After his arrest, Hinds brought a lawsuit against authorities charging the prison commissioners with illegal arrest and successfully used the incident as a means to plan his next escape by having a padlock smuggled in to him while at the Law Courts. Two guards escorted him to the toilet, but when they removed his handcuffs Alfie bundled the men into the cubicle and snapped the padlock onto screw eyes that his accomplices had earlier fixed to the door. He escaped into the crowd on Fleet Street but was captured at an airport five hours later. Hinds would make his third escape from Chelmsford Prison less than a year later.

Escape from ALKATRAZ

In its 29 years of operation, there were 14 attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison involving 34 inmates. Officially, every escape attempt failed, and most participants were either killed or quickly re-captured. However, the participants in the 1937 and 1962 attempts, though presumed dead, disappeared without a trace, giving rise to popular theories that they were successful. The most famous and intricate attempt to escape from Alcatraz (June 11, 1962) saw Frank Morris, and the Anglin brothers burrow out of their cells, climb to the top of the cell block, cut through bars to make it to the roof via an air vent. From there they climbed down a drain pipe, over a chain link fence and then to the shore where they assembled a pontoon-type raft and then vanished.The trio are believed to have drowned in the San Francisco Bay and are officially listed as missing and presumed drowned. However, they may have made it and gone to a place where people did not know them. [Wikipedia]

Michel Vaujour Broke Out With A Nectarine

For months, Nadine Vaujour had been taking private helicopter flying lessons. Her husband Michel was incarcerated in Paris’s La Sante Prison, a penitentiary reserved for hardened criminals, and Nadine was planning a daring, high-profile escape that would release Michel well before his 27-year sentence was up. On May 26, 1986, the escape plan unfolded in front of hundreds of stunned inmates. Minutes before the helicopter arrived, Michel Vaujour forced his way past guards and onto the prison roof using a fake gun and a nectarine painted to look like a grenade. Nadine showed up in the helicopter as planned, flying low over the roof while a gunman leaped out and opened fire on the approaching guards. Michel hoisted himself onto one of the helicopter’s skids, followed by the gunman, and the trio took to the skies as the prison guards fired helplessly at the receding helicopter. Minutes later, they touched down in a nearby soccer field and clambered into a waiting car.A few months later, Michel Vaujour surfaced again during a botched bank robbery. He was shot in the head and taken to the hospital. Afterward, he went on to serve the remainder of his sentence. He was released in 2003 after serving a total of 27 years in prison, 17 of which were spent in solitary confinement.

El Chapo

The U.S. federal government considers Joaquin Guzmán "The most ruthless, dangerous, and feared man on the planet" and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates he has matched the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar, and now considers him "the godfather of the drug world". Guzmán was indicted in San Diego on U.S. charges of money laundering and importing tons of cocaine into California, along with his Sinaloa attorney Humberto Loya-Castro, or Licenciado Perez ("Lawyer Perez", who was charged with bribing Mexican officials on Sinaloa's behalf and making sure that any cartel members arrested were released from custody.
After a ruling by the Supreme Court of Mexico made extradition between Mexico and the United States easier, Guzmán bribed guards to aid his escape. On 19 January 2001, Francisco "El Chito" Camberos Rivera, a prison guard, opened Guzmán's electronically operated cell door, and Guzmán got into a laundry cart that maintenance worker Javier Camberos rolled through several doors and eventually out the front door. He was then transported in the trunk of a car driven by Camberos out of the town. At a gas station, Camberos went inside, but when he came back, Guzmán was gone on foot into the night. According to officials, 78 people have been implicated in his escape plan.[86] Camberos is in prison for his assistance in the escape. He was later arrested on 22 February 2014 and taken to Federal Social Readaptation Center, a maximum-security prison.

On 11 July 2015, Guzmán escaped again. After receiving medication, he was last seen by security cameras at 20:52 hours near the shower area in his cell. The shower area was the only part of his cell that was not visible through the security camera.[188] After the guards did not see him for twenty-five minutes on surveillance video, personnel went looking for him. When they reached his cell, Guzmán was gone. It was discovered he had escaped through a tunnel leading from the shower area to a house construction site 1.5 km (0.93 mi) away in a Santa Juanita neighborhood. The tunnel lay 10 m (33 ft) deep underground, and Guzmán used a ladder to climb to the bottom. The tunnel was 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) tall and 75 cm (30 in) in width. It was equipped with artificial light, air ducts, and high-quality construction materials. In addition, a motorcycle was found in the tunnel, which authorities think was used to transport materials and possibly Guzmán himself.

Pascal Payet

There can be no doubt that this man deserves a place on this list – he has escaped not once, but twice from high security prisons in France – each time via hijacked helicopter! He also helped organize the escape of three other prisoners – again with a helicopter.Payet was initially sentenced to a 30 year jail term for a murder committed during the robbery of a security van. After his first escape (in 2001) he was captured and given seven more years for his role in the 2003 escape. He then escaped from Grasse prison using a helicopter that was hijacked by four masked men from Cannes-Mandelieu airport. The helicopter landed some time later at Brignoles, 38 kilometres north-east of Toulon, France on the Mediterranean coast. Payet and his accomplices then fled the scene and the pilot was released unharmed. Payet was re-captured on September 21, 2007, in Mataró, Spain, about 18 miles northeast of Barcelona. He had undergone cosmetic surgery, but was still identified by Spanish police. [Wikipedia]

Seamus Twomey’s IRA Rescue Squad

As the chief of staff for the Provisional IRA, Seamus Twomey was not a very nice guy. He joined the paramilitary group in the ’30s, and by the early ’70s, he was the commanding officer of their Belfast Brigade. On July 21, 1972, the Brigade detonated 19 bombs throughout the city, injuring 130 people and killing 11—all designs set in motion by Twomey. His violent machinations caught up with him, and he was arrested in 1973. After he was convicted, Twomey was trucked off to Mountjoy Prison, Ireland’s largest penitentiary. But the IRA isn’t known for letting their officers rot in a cell—the same month he was incarcerated, the prison descended into turmoil when a hijacked helicopter roared into the exercise yard. Seconds later, it was airborne again with Twomey safely aboard. A month later, Twomey returned to prison, captured during a high-speed chase in Dublin.

475 Taliban Escaped From An Afghan Prison

Sarposa Prison is reserved almost entirely for high-risk criminals, such as Taliban militants. In April 2011, the massive prison held over 500 Taliban prisoners within its walls. It’s supposed to be one of the most secure prisons in the country, but that claim proved less that solid when around 475 prisoners escaped through a massive tunnel under the prison walls.The entire underground structure was over 100 meters (328 ft) long and was equipped with concrete shoring, electricity, and ventilation shafts. Like many of these stories, the real work came from outside the prison. Work on the tunnel began months before the breakout in a small rented house nearby. Early in the morning on April 25, the tunnel broke through the prison floor, and hundreds of Taliban dropped through one-by-one, a process that took hours. Only about 40 of the prisoners have since been found.

Escape in drag

Most illegal drugs are rather cheaply produced. Cocaine is no exception. Purchased near its sources in South America, it is relatively inexpensive. The cost comes from the risk involved in transporting the substance over borders. Those willing to assume that risk can become millionaires—or spend the rest of their lives in prison. In December 1973, a young man named Dwight Worker decided to smuggle cocaine from Peru into the United States. He had an ingenious plan—he would stuff the drugs inside a huge cast that covered his entire left arm and part of his body. However, police busted him in the airport in Mexico City, sending him to el Palacio Negro de Lecumberri (“The Black Palace of Lecumberri”), a notoriously dangerous and overcrowded prison.Over the next two years, he was beaten and stabbed and spent 41 days in solitary confinement. But he also met Barbara White, who came to Lecumberri to visit another prisoner. The two fell in love and hatched a plot to get him out. White smuggled in what amounted to a transvestite starter kit, and Worker dressed up as a woman. Armed with fake documents, he walked out of Lecumberri in the guise of a visitor. He reported being a bit unsteady on his high heels, but he managed to fool his captors. As in many other countries, escaping from prison is not illegal in Mexico, provided no one is hurt and no property is damaged, a policy called ley de fuga (“law of flight”). However, the flip side of this rule is that guards are allowed to shoot fleeing inmates if they are caught. Dwight was in good company. The only other man that had ever escaped from Lecumberri was Mexican general Pancho Villa.

Martin Luther King Jr. murderer

James Earl Ray shouldn’t have been able to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. He should have been behind bars at the Missouri State Penitentiary. By his early twenties, James had become a career criminal with a string of armed robberies and burglaries to his name. In the late 1950s, he did a three-year stint in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for mail fraud. In 1959, he robbed a Kroger grocery store in St. Louis, Missouri, netting the princely sum of $120. During the trial, he tried unsuccessfully to escape the St. Louis courthouse. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years. Apparently, prison life didn’t suit Ray, because he attempted escape twice more, in 1961 and 1966. On April 23, 1967, he tried something new. Taking advantage of his position working in the prison bakery, he had some fellow inmates pack him in one of the boxes that was used for shipping bread. The box was picked up by a delivery truck, and Ray rode off to freedom. His story of escapes doesn’t end there. After being sentenced to 99 years for killing King, James Earl Ray was sent to Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee, an institution that (at the time) boasted that no man had ever escaped. On June 10, 1977, a consortium of inmates staged a fight to distract the guards. Then Ray and six other men escaped over the fence on a homemade ladder. This time, his freedom didn’t last long. He was found just over two days later, less than 8 kilometers (5 mi) from the prison and hiding in a pile of leaves. This was James Earl Ray’s last escape attempt. He died of hepatitis C in 1998.

Interesting.