Eight of the most audacious prison escapes ever

It looks just like the movies: boiler-suit clad inmates peeling back a ventilation grill, crawling through shafts and cutting through steel bars, before making it to sweet freedom. Only this time, it's real.

This week, lawyers in California have released video footage taken by prisoners involved in a brazen, Shawshank-style jailbreak. Quite how the inmates got everything they needed for the daring 2016 escape – tools, for instance, or the mobile phone they filmed everything on – from the maximum security site in Orange County isn't clear, but they've quite obviously taken their inspiration from the movies.  

The video shows inmates Adam Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong finding a way through the wall of their cell, hacking through bars and using bed sheets to make it outside and into a white van. It worked, too. The trio reportedly then spent time on the run in northern California, living off water, bananas and marijuana in the vehicle, before one turned himself in and the other two were re-captured.

Their bid to flee justice is the latest in a long line of audacious break out attempts (not all of which were successful)...

1. El Cheeky Chapo

His ability to elude capture is the stuff of Mexican legend.

And in 2015, after spending a little over a year in prison following 13 years on the run, Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman once again gave the slip to the long arm of the law.

In scenes reminiscent of The Shawshank Redeption, Guzman, the billionaire head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, fled via a mile long tunnel that ran from his cell to a building under construction outside the prison's perimeter.

A massive manhunt has been launched for the man known as Mexico’s Osama bin Laden, with flights grounded and roadblocks established. Eighteen prison staff were also being questioned in connection with his disappearance.

El Chapo was later caught again, after some time spent with Sean Penn, and is now back behind bars.

2. The Shawshank Unredeemed

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is not the first prisoner to channel hit jail break film The Shawshank Redemption.

Just last month, two American prisoners pulled off an elaborate prison escape after using power tools to cut through the steel walls of their cells.

Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34 apparently crawled along tunnels to flee the all-male Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. The two men, who were both serving time for murder, left guards a note that read “Have a nice day”.

However, unlike Tim Robbin's character Andy Dufresne in the Hollywood film, Matt and Sweat's freedom proved to be short lived.

Matt was shot dead after 20 days on the run, while Sweat was returned to custody two days later.

3. Escape from Alcatraz

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison that sits on a tiny island off the coast of San Francisco, was supposed to be the jail that no man could escape. But three men tested that theory in June 1962 – and gave birth to one of the great Hollywood films in the process.

Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris were serving time for a litany of crimes including bank robbery and car theft when they resolved to flee Alcatraz and its claustrophobic confines. The trio cut holes in their cell walls, leaving behind dummy bodies in their beds to fool guards into thinking they were still incarcerated.

After exiting the building via a ventilation staff, the men scaled a prison fence and then fashioned a raft from raincoats and contact cement. They cast off into the cold waters of San Francisco Bay at around 10pm.

Morris and the two Anglin brothers were never found. An official FBI investigation concluded that while it was feasible that they could have reached the mainland and fled on foot, the strong currents made that unlikely.

The investigation concluded that the three men drowned at sea. However, the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz appears to call that into question, strongly implying that the men reached the mainland.

4. Catch me if you can

While we're on the subject of Hollywood, no list of audacious prison breaks would be complete without a mention of Frank Abagnale – the international fraudster whose early life was retold in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can.

Abagnale committed a series of jaw-droppingly bold crimes, which included (although by no means were limited to) flying over 1,000,000 miles between the ages of 16 and 18 by impersonating a Pan Am cockpit. The con man would ride in the spare seat of the cockpit – although he admits that on countless occasions he was left in charge of the plane while the pilot attended to a call of nature.

In his autobiography, Abagnale details a prison escape of equally intrepid nature.

After being sentenced to 12 years in prison in the US, Abagnale says he had the fortune of being transported to a detention facility by a Marshall who had forgotten his prisoner's papers. Abagnale seized upon the opportunity, persuading guards that he was actually an undercover prison inspector. Authorities at the time often used the ploy to test their jails, and the guards duly swallowed the bait.

Abagnale writes that he was treated much better in prison than other inmates thanks to his 'undercover' status – but the ploy really paid off once he'd enlisted the help of a friend, whom he calls in the book 'Jean Sebring'. Sebring apparently doctored two business cards – one an FBI agent's, the other a prison inspector's – and then smuggled them into the prison for Abagnale, who wasted little time in telling his guards that he needed to speak to the FBI agent.

The guards called the number on the agent's card, Sebring picked up, told them that she needed to meet Abagnale outside the prison, and the con man walked straight out of the prison's front door, presumably laughing all the way.

5. The key to freedom

In the 20th century, Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight was considered to be Britain's answer to Alcatraz – but that didn't deter three men from attempting a meticulously planned escape.

Keith Rose, Andrew Rodger and Matthew Williams were serving time for crimes that included murder and planting a bomb when, on January evening at the very start of 1995, they made use of a key they had cut themselves to flee the correctional facility.

Rose, Rodger and Williams used the key to open a series of doors, then cut through a mesh fence and scaled the perimeter wall. They took a taxi to the town of Sandown, where they spent four days trying to steal planes and boats while sleeping rough in a field. The three men were eventually discovered by an off-duty prison officer.

Parkhurst's security level was downgraded in the aftermath of the escape attempt.

6. The Korean Houdini

Yoga practitioner Choi Gap-bok provided the history books with a new take on prison escape methods. Rather than bend his cell bars out of shape, he bent himself out of shape, slipping through the tiny slot at the bottom of the cell that's used to give prisoners food. The manoeuvre apparently took only 34 seconds.

Gap-bok was rearrested six days later and placed in a cell with a much smaller food slot.

7. The life-saving escapee

Alfréd Wetzler's escape from Nazi death camp Auschwitz is possibly the most important prison escape in history.

Wetzler, a Slovakian jew, escaped from Auschwitz with fellow inmate Rudolf Vrba in April 1944 by hiding in a wood pile that other inmates soaked with tobacco and gasoline to fool guard dogs.

After four nights hiding among the wood, the two men donned stolen suits and overcoats and began a 80 mile journey to the Polish border with Slovakia.

In his pockets, Wetzler carried a report on the inner workings of the death camp, including a ground plan, details of the gas chambers, and a label from a canister of Zyklon B – the gas that the Nazi's used to kill millions of inmates. It was the first detailed report about Auschwitz that the Allies regarded as credible, and led to the bombing of buildings that housed Nazi officials who dealt with the railway deportations.

120,000 Hungarian Jews are said to have been saved as a result.

8. The flying criminal

French murderer Pascal Payet has gained international notoriety for his role in a series of daring prison breaks that used helicopters as their modus operandi.

Payet's first escape came in 2001, when he arranged for friends to collect him from the roof of a village prison in a helicopter. Two years later, he orchestrated a rerun of the events to help three more prisoners escape the confines of the jail.

Payet was later caught and sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder in 2005. Despite being one of France's most closely watched prisoners, he managed to again break free of the law in 2007 by taking advantage of Bastille Day celebrations to jump into a hijacked helicopter flown by four masked men.

He was months later, near Barcelona, and transferred to a secret location, where he now remains.