Some might think that going to prison is the end of the road. Others will endure their time and press on with what they can. Studying, working or just plain laying around waiting for your time or life to end. Then, there are others, who cannot see their lives spent behind bars. Those specific people just can’t stand the life that was chosen for them. Only one solution remains, escape, breakout, take the midnight express. Here are a few of the most famous people that, in a way or an other, just had to flee.

Henry Charrière by some is a survivor. He is also by others a great fiction writer. While maybe the name may not ring a bell, Papillon on the other hand is a world renowned nickname. It is that nickname that Henry was given in prison due to his butterfly tattoo on his chest. In his book he explains the events that took place between 1932-1945. Wrongly convicted of murder in France, papillon spent 13 years in and out of prisons. Some attempts might not have been very successful, but never did he despair. One prison in particular gave him more trouble though. He tried to escape from the Barranquilla prison five times, every attempt he failed.Through prison transfers, escape attempts, solitary confinement, surviving horrible conditions, papillon was set free at last.Reading through Henry Charrière’s book, I can understand why critics where so inclined to call it a fiction tale. But papillon has always maintained throughout the years that all was true.

Jack Sheppard, an apprentice carpenter, decided that the art of wood would not be enough to suffice. With only one year left before his training would be done, he took to burglary. In 1724 he was arrested five times and escaped on four of them. His career as a burglar would be very short but would be very memorable. After his fifth arrest in less than two years, he was hanged, ending his brief criminal life.

After his first arrest, Sheppard was to be locked up over night on the top floor of the prison for further questioning in the morning. It took him less than three hours to break through the timber roof. He lowered himself to the ground with a rope he made out of the bed sheets. Still wearing his “irons” he joined a crowd that had gathered by the sound of the breakout. In a very Hollywood movie like manner, he distracted the crowd by pointing on the shadows on the roof and said he could see the escapee, while all we’re looking, he silently departed.

On May 19 1724 he was arrested yet again. This time he was caught pick-pocketing. Kept over night, he didn’t attempt an escape. The next day a woman came to visit him and was recognized as his wife. They locked in the same cell as her husband. On May 25th they escaped. They filed through their handcuffs, removed a bar from the window and again used the “use the bed sheet as a rope” trick, and they we’re gone…well almost. There was still a 22 foot high wall to climb over. This particular escape made headlines only because Sheppard was known to be a small man(5′4) and his wife a large buxom woman.

His third arrest was one of betrayal. His wife, drinking in a bar was offered many drinks by the inspector trying to find him. Once she had her fill of alcohol she didn’t think twice and told the inspector where Sheppard could be found. He was arrested and accused of three thefts. He was cleared of the first two, lack of evidence. On the third charge though, the evidence was there and he was sentenced to death. On September 4th, the day of his execution, he escaped. He loosened an iron bar in a window used when talking to visitors. He was visited by his wife and a friend. While they talked to the guards, he removed the bar. He slipped through the window and was smuggled out of the prison by wearing women’s clothes his visitors had brought him. He took a boat up the River Thames and escaped he did again.

At the time of his fourth arrest, Jack Sheppard was a working class hero. Being a cockney, non-violent, handsome and seemingly able to escape from anywhere he wanted.

On September 9th, while he was visiting in London, we was finally captured again after eluding the law a few times. He had planed to escape a few times in September but guards found files and others tools in his cell. So they transferred him to a strong-hold prison and put him in leg irons and clamped them to the floor making sure he could not escape. Laughing off the attempts they made to stop him, he got out of his leg cuffs using a small nail. They then tightened his leg cuffs and put handcuffs on him. Again he was able to escape. He unlocked his handcuffs and pulled on the chains that kept his feet in place. Still having the leg-irons on, he fled. Again his escaped astonished the authorities.His liberty was short lived. Two weeks later he came back. He was arrested on the morning of November 1st. There to make sure he wouldn’t escape, they put 300 pounds worth of steel on him to keep him in place. This time he did not escape. After hanging by his neck for fifteen minutes, they cut him down.

In the 70’s, in Canada, especially the province of Quebec, “The Cat” as he was known by all became famous for three reasons. Richard Blass evaded death by surviving three assassination attempts, a police shoot out and escaped custody twice.

Starting out his young life on the east side of Montreal, Blass started boxing in a way to get rid of his anger. That would last for a certain time. One night after losing a fight, he attacked his opponent with a knife. He pleaded guilty to assault and spent one night in jail.

Becoming more and more obsessed with the Mafia, Blass took interested with the New York and south Montreal Mafia. Funny enough, as much as he liked the Mafia concept, he was also known to have a hatred of Mafia organizations. In particular, he hated the Italian Mafia who were running the underworld of crime of Montreal in the 60’s. Going as far a having fights with its members and even becoming a hit man for a rival gang.

After a while he decided to start a gang of his own. Angered by the fact that thy could not kill the Italian Mafia boss, they grew more and more violent. They murdered many Italians. Some from the Mafia and some who had nothing to do with the Mafia.

On August 24 1968, while enjoying some drinks in a bar, Blass was shot at multiple times by two hired hit men. He escaped unscathed. Two weeks later he escaped a hotel fire that killed three people. The Mafia had tracked him down, but again he escaped un- hurt.

On October of 68, Blass was shot to the head and back after being ambushed in a garage. He was able to escape by driving through the garage door and fled to the hospital. Some say he gained respect by the Canadian Mafia when he would not identify his attackers.

In January of 69, he and his gang tried to commit a bank robbery. Things didn’t go as planned and Blass shot a police officer. He was arrested and sentenced to four consecutive terms of ten years in jail.

Blass became a fugitive for the first time on October 16th of that year. He and other prisoners overpowered a guard and took the van that was taking them to court. Blass was caught not long after when an anonymous call indicated that he was hiding in his wife’s apartment.

After being patient for five years, Blass had decided to escape again in 1974. An unidentified woman had brought him a number of firearms while visiting him. Now armed with various guns and rifles, he broke the visitors window and made his way out of the jail for a second time.

His plan was to go kill two men who had helped him in his failed bank robbery, but that had testified against him. On October 30th, he found them in a bar and shot them dead. Of course there were other people in the bar. Wanting to leave no witnesses, Blass and his accomplice returned to the bar on January 15th. They locked ten men and three women in a bar locker and set fire to the place. They were all found dead.

Tired of being ridiculed, the Canadian law enforcement went on with its largest manhunt in its history.

Blass was eventually found in a cabin in the woods. On January 24th at 4:30 AM police opened the door to the cabin and Blass fired one shot. Police retaliated and pretty much shot everywhere. Blass was hit twenty-three times, he died instantly.

Smuggling drugs out of Turkey in the 70’s was and still his a very bad idea. Billy Hayes learned that getting out of a Turkish jail, or for that matter merely surviving, is life changing.

In 1970 an American student known as William Hayes went to Turkey with his girlfriend. While there, he was able to purchase some i.e. alot, of hashish. Of course the plan was to bring some back to the USA. Again, 4 ½ pounds of hash is not an easy quantity to smuggle.

Before boarding the plane, Hayes was sniffed out by dogs and thus was taken aside to be searched. They did indeed find what they thought. Billy was taken to the police station and was stripped naked. Standing in the middle of the room with no clothes on, he began feeling very much afraid. He didn’t understand the language and having ten police officers yelling, pointing and sometimes laughing can be scary. Drug possession and smuggling was and still is a very severe offense. Hayes was sentenced to four years in the Turkish penal system. After surviving a year he was able to go to court to get an appeal on his sentence. Things didn’t go as expected. His sentence was not reduced as he thought it would be. The judge actually extended it to a life sentence to show others how serious smuggling drugs would be. This was the first sign of a breakdown. Billy went on a racist rage against all Turks. He didn’t understand why these “pigs” would do this to him. After his rant, he broke down in tears and was taken off to serve his newly announced life sentence.

While in jail he encountered many foes and a couple of friends. Living conditions were harsh and many sick that were living there were not treated. Being beat up, spit on, locked away alone in a small cell for talking, Hayes was on the brink of insanity. After some time, he made friends with two Americans and with time, they decided to try an escape this abuse. The only problem they saw with this plan is that one of the inmates was a stool. He often told on prisoners in exchange of guards giving him some money for his deeds. So for him not to notice them,they had to work at night. Starting with a rotten wall in the bathroom, they dug night after night. Actually, Hayes and another digged and the other watched on so that the stool wouldn’t wake up with the noise going on.

Finally, they had a hole big enough that they could crawl through. As they made their way down. Freedom was finally close, or so they thought. Once completely down they started to walk to try and find a way out. To their surprise, they found no way out. Since it was late, they decided to go back and return the next night when they would have more time. The next day while some prisoners were outside, including Hayes and his friends, the stool went to the bathroom and saw that the wall had something wrong with it. As he proceeded to investigate he realized that blocks were easy to remove. As usual he called the prison guards. After they saw this, the guards re-did the wall so no one would dig in it again. When the stool was asked who he thought did this, he pointed to one of Hayes friends. As the guards took him away, Billy went nuts and killed the stool. After 3 ½ years in this hell hole he finally broke and was sent to the mental department of the prison.

While there, Billy Hayes was no more. He stayed alone, didn’t talk, stared at the sky when he could and pretty much just breathed. That is until he got a visit from his girlfriend. While they were alone in the visitors room she tried to find the man she once loved. As small as there was left, she knew the Billy Hayes she once knew was still in front of her. Separated by a glass window, she showed him a book. In this book, she told him that there was money hid away in the back cover. The money, as she explained, was to give to the guard as a bribe to let him go. Once she left, she gave the book to the guards who checked it out without finding anything suspicious. Freedom was not far away now, but at what price.

Billy took the book back to the institution, sat in a small corner alone and ripped apart the book. As soon as he had the money in his hands, he went to see the head guard. Smiling back a Billy he brought him outside. Billy was sure that they were heading to the gates to be let out. Instead, the guard brought him to another department that was empty. His plan as Billy found out was to beat him, rape him and the kill him, but Billy fought back. As the guard went to pick Billy up, he pushed him away onto a wall that had hooks. The guards head landed right on a hook, he died immediately.

Having little time, Billy took the guards clothes and started towards the gates. Going by other guards un-noticed he finally got to the gate, opened it and fled. After a total of five years, he was free. He fled to Grease and then home back to America.

From 1970 to 1975 he lived in hell. Even now, he hasn’t gone back. His story was told in a book he wrote, Midnight express. It also spawned in 1978, a feature movie that won an Oscar for best screenplay written by Oliver Stone. The movie varies much from the book. The Turkish government actually didn’t send out a warrant for Billy’s escape until the movie came out. Even Billy was quoted as saying that the message of the movie should not be that Turks were racists, but smuggling drugs is an idiot thing to do. Both the book and film are worth the time.

Frank Lee Morris is probably the most known escapee in America if not the world. He is not known only because of his name. The number one reason he is known is because of where he escaped from, Alcatraz, The Rock. The most famous and supposedly un-escapable prison in the world. Situated on an isolated island close to the San Fransisco bay, Alcatraz was a monster of a building. While it was open, many tried to escape. None even came close to the water surrounding the island. One actually made it to the boat that transferred prison guards and necessities for the prison, but was caught. Morris on the other hand, never was.

Born in Washington D.C., Morris didn’t have the easiest of lives. He spent most of his early years in foster homes. At age 13, he was convicted of his first crime. Further in is teen years he was arrested for narcotics possession and armed robbery. As he got older and into his adult years he began to move into even bigger penitentiaries. With an I.Q. of over 133, he always found a way to escape inferior prison systems.

Nobody was ever sentenced to Alcatraz. Prisoners were always transferred there from elsewhere. On January 20th 1960, Morris would now be known as prisoner #AZ1441 as he was transferred to The Rock. Of course, any person living there only wanted to get out. Moris was no different. It is said that as soon as he put his foot there that he was already planning to do the impossible, escape. Morris made friends with three men. John Anglin, his brother Clarence Anglin and Allen West. West would help out on planning the escape but would later chicken out on the night of the escape and stayed in his cell.

This escape would be the most complicated and most remembered of Alcatraz. Escaping The Rock would take Morris and the Anglins two years of preparation. They crated a raft, life like dummies and stole a number of tools that they would dig with. By 1962, they had dug through the vents of their cells. Since Morris and the Anglins weren’t in the same cell, they took shifts. While some dug, the others were on the lookout for guards.

On the night of June 11, 1962 the attempt went ahead. The group escaped out of the vents in the back of their cells and into the utility corridor. They then proceeded onto the roof and down to the bay. There they boarded the raft they had been working on, and disappeared into the night.

The following morning the officers awoke to find the dummies lying in the beds and the prisoners missing. The FBI conducted one of the largest manhunts since the Lindbergh kidnapping to no avail. Bits of the raft and life preservers were later found in the bay. Also found was a waterproof bag containing personal effects of the Anglins. Although the authorities never found any bodies, they were certain the men had drowned. They pointed out that there were no robberies or car thefts that could have been attributed to them, as well as the fact that the men were habitual criminals and yet were never arrested again. Morris and the Anglins were presumed dead on January 11th 1962. The FBI were certain that they were dead. A while ago, A television show called Myth busters actually decided to try the same raft escape as Morris. Same raft, paddles and at night. They survived, raising questions on the deaths of Morris and the Anglins.