Prison Break - True Stories of the World's Greatest Escapes. Paul Buck
Those at fault fight hard to cover up their inadequacies in not having prevented them.
It’s not that many years ago since the Chief Constable of Durham was offering scare headlines in relation to the Great Train Robbers housed in Durham Prison, suggesting these men and their associates would stop at nothing, “even to the extent of using tanks, bombs and what the Army describes as limited atomic weapons. Once armoured vehicles had breached the main gates there would be nothing to stop them. A couple of tanks could easily have come through the streets of Durham unchallenged.” How flattering to the convicted men. One has the impression that the police chief was starring in his own movie: “If that happened there would be a pitched battle and a lot of people would be killed.” He could have appeared alongside Robert Duvall on the beach in Apocalypse Now. Soldiers were posted with fixed bayonets. Extra police patrolled with dogs. But nothing materialised. No helicopters came swooping in. And he said he was trying to strip the criminals of their glamour!
In the first chapter, with Charlie Wilson, I’ve given greater detail to create some sense of the atmosphere and the conditions. But it has not been my intention to give all the details all the time. I have created rules, and I have transgressed those rules at every turn. I make no apologies. Books have been written by escapees like Hinds and Probyn not only to relate their habitual escapes, but also to explore the reasons behind them. This book has to make their cases brief in order to encompass many others. Some names have become famous by virtue of one escape, whilst others, like Patsy Fleming and Georgie Madson, are regularly mentioned but rarely given coverage. (Perhaps they were pleased to be out of the public eye, as it could have been an obvious hindrance at the time.)
Sometimes one has to suspend belief at some of the details, for fact has often been more extraordinary than fiction. Reading about some of those who appear within, notwithstanding some of their crimes, the spirit of these people in escaping from incarceration has been far more inspirational than any of the splurge of biographies that our celebrity culture pours out daily.
But our age of celebrity affects villains as much as anyone else. They are no different. The criminal is as much a part of society as a film star, a politician or a lawyer. (Or even a debt collector.)
The master escapologist Harry Houdini is the perennial reference point for everybody who escapes more than a couple of times from prison, and who, like Houdini, is working at the limits and does what seems to be the impossible. But, just as most of us couldn’t imagine ourselves as a Houdini, we also cannot begin to imagine being placed in prison for twenty years. You know that all of your life will change in that time; if you have family, and they stick by you, they too will have changed in ways you may not even recognise; the children will have grown up and left the nest … You will want to escape, even if the chance to do so is negligible. But where to go? Even with money stashed away, who is prepared for this? Are you?
But it is no good us sentimentally thinking we can feel for the prisoner. Or even feeling sorry for them. Most criminals know the risks they take, know the punishments, know that, if they get recaptured, they’re going to be beaten up and mistreated by the guards. Because they’ve been beaten for less in the past, particularly if they have a reputation as a hardman.
Today we read about the imprisonment and rape of Elisabeth Fritzl by her father in Austria, and think of the horror of twenty-four years underground, or of Natascha Kampusch, the Viennese schoolgirl who was kidnapped, aged ten, and held for eight years in her captor’s garage before her escape. We think of the terror that they were submitted to, both physical and mental, but we barely equate any of that with being in one of society’s prisons. For prisoners are there through some fault of their own, and, of course, some prisons are more lenient than others.
But any prison is a prison, though some are worse for all types of reasons – whether it is the physical conditions of the place, the level of restrictions, the management and officials who guard the inmates, or the brutality. For we cannot identify with the brutality as a whole, on every level, unless we have actually been there.
It should be pointed out that there is still some confusion over data with some cases, and, despite endless checking of conflicting reports, it is not always feasible to sort fact from fiction, truth from lies or fantasies. Indeed, some accounts have probably gone beyond the bounds of ever being resolved, as myths have become reality. In some places I’ve made the variations plain, and in at least one case I’ve made what left me incredulous read as incredible. But, generally, the other points don’t affect the modus operandi of the escapes, which is the point of this book, after all.
No one side is ever correct when collecting information. The official versions from within the system are as capable (if not more so) of fudging, erasing or misleading as the criminals themselves. Each side has different things to hide at some time or another, or different individuals to protect.
But because testimony comes from the criminal side, that does not make it ‘black’ to the police’s ‘white’. How could it? (I was brought up in a house, where I am now sitting, not a stone’s throw from the former home of a Flying Squad officer who was jailed for corruption in the 1970s.)
In prison there is often little to do but talk. So they tell each other stories, invent a little bit, or change the bits that weren’t as good. And later, perhaps, they forget what is real and what is fabricated. It happens to everyone else, so why not to criminals? Why should all that you read here be the truth? Whose truth? The media’s? Authors like me, who pen it? Or the villains who lived it, who may still wish to write down the truth but find that they can’t? Somewhere amidst this sea of anecdotes there is a mass of exciting life stories … and many sad ones. But all these stories have been lived, and paid for, the hard way.
I concur with the French director Barbet Schroeder, who recently said of his film Terror’s Advocate, “When I am doing a documentary I want the freedom of fiction. I cultivate everything that is fiction … People often think documentary is truth. Obviously, it is not. The minute you choose one shot instead of another you are entering fiction.”
Despite the idea that to escape from prison is to leap into freedom, it is rarely forever. The more one reads of the cases, the more one knows that, even if the escape is meticulously planned and successfully carried out, the freedom gained may well be short … often only hours, if that. And one senses that the escapees know it too, even as they bid for their freedom. To escape brings with it all manner of problems; problems that may make many question the worth of such a tremendous effort. As is so often the case, one may well be replacing one prison with another, sometimes in the shape of one room, always watching one’s back, fearing betrayal or worse. And yet to bid for that freedom, even with all its doubts, highlights how our very spirit and essence as human beings is otherwise at stake.
So what does one say to Walter Probyn, with his very singular attitude? “You don’t need a lot of patience to plan an escape because you’ve got nothing else. Something like that is something to cherish while you’ve got it, it’s a labour of love, something you really enjoy doing so you take your time doing it. It’s like a hobby.”
One final thought.
Throughout my research, I continually read of enormous leaps from one building’s roof to another, or from one roof to another on a lower level. Having the opportunity to wander around a block of flats, I ventured onto building tops, estimating similar gaps, similar leaps … and wondered not only how brave, or how stupid, one would have to be to accomplish it, but how anyone could land without breaking bones, let alone twisting joints, even if that person was fit and knew how to roll on impact, assuming he cleared the distance in the first place.
Ankles broken, wrists sprained, backbones jarred, not only from leaps, but from drops over the walls – all these feature here, along with those who make it unscathed. Don’t underestimate what is required to make those death-defying leaps across gaping spaces, or those heart-stopping drops down the sides of high walls.