by Paul Buck
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.
I
Time to Go
As if the Great Train Robbery had not already gained its place in the annals of criminal history, usually with ‘crime of the century’ attached as an exhibit tag, the events that occurred after judicial proceedings finished lifted the offence onto a new level of notoriety.
One of these events is fitting to open these accounts, because it’s not the norm for an inmate to escape prison via outsiders breaking in to swing open the cell door and indicate it’s time to go. But that is what happened on 12 August 1964, when Charlie Wilson, one of the leaders of the Great Train Robbery, was freed from Winson Green Prison, a high-security jail near Birmingham. Wilson was barely four months into his thirty-year sentence.
Let us recapitulate and give context to this, the first of two audacious, high-profile escapes that would strike at the jugular of the penal system and reveal its laxity. Escapes which would elevate two of the robbers, Wilson and Ronnie Biggs, despite their opposing status within the robbery team, to a level that would reinforce the everlasting notoriety of the crime.
The Great Train Robbery occurred on the night of 8 August 1963. It netted £2,631,684 (equivalent to something in the region of £50 million or more, in today’s terms) in used bank notes. The great British public, always on the lookout for entertaining newspaper stories through the summer holiday period, took to the escapade like a duck to water. Comedy films, in the manner of the Carry On series or The Lavender Hill Mob, were conjured up. These rascals had won the lottery, in today’s terms, or the football pools in the vernacular of the day. Lucky blighters! But, as we all know, because the authorities made it abundantly clear, the train dr
iver, Jack Mills, was coshed (though the robbers say punched) on the head. No one had suggested that violence should be treated lightly, but, as it seemed that the balance of public sympathy was tipping towards clemency for the villains, everyone had to pay. The public needed its wrists slapped, the criminals needed theirs cuffed. And to remain cuffed for a long time.
Whilst the accused were on remand awaiting trial, they knew that escape had to be urgently contemplated. For, though they were unaware of the hefty thirty-year sentences they would be receiving, they realised it would be easier to escape from the custody of their current residence than from any top-security prison they were to be carted off to after sentencing. The trial was not held in London, but in the area where the robbery occurred: Aylesbury, a market town in the county of Buckinghamshire. Thus the defendants were housed together in the hospital wing at Aylesbury Prison, which had been prepared especially for the occasion.
The initial plan of escape was to drug the two night guards, with Wilson doing the honours as it was his job each evening to prepare snacks and hot drinks in the small kitchen of the hospital wing. Once the guards were drugged, friends of the robbers would come over the wall and lead them out. Note that the inverse approach to escape was already under discussion. That possibility, however, was laid quickly to rest, once they discovered that drugging an officer was punishable by fourteen years’ imprisonment.
Gordon Goody, another part of the robbery team’s main force, had the job of cleaning the officers’ quarters. He discovered that it was possible to enter the loft of the prison via a cupboard in one of their rooms, and from there to walk under the roof, right along to the end of the building, where one could remove some tiles and find a way down to the street below.
Their cells were locked at night from the outside, with one officer on guard in the corridor whilst another slept on the floor below. Goody set about making a key. He studied those hanging on the warder’s chain, even asking if he could draw the guard – and his keys – whilst he was seated, playing chess with Biggs.
Overnight, he filed the necessary key from the appropriate blank with the needle files that had been brought in. The fit was successful. But, as the cell doors could only be opened from the outside, they needed help. Billy Boal had less secure confinement in a dormitory on the first floor, with a lock that could be easily removed with a chisel (also smuggled in). Boal was responsible for releasing Wilson and Goody. Then the pair of them would go down to the basement and take Biggs out of his cell. Only those three were determined to go at that point; the others had decided to remain, as they thought there was a reasonable chance that the charges wouldn’t stick.
Wilson had arranged for his boys to have transport readied outside, behind the hospital. They had chosen a Saturday night as the traffic on the roads would be busier, making it easier to disappear.
However, on the scheduled evening Boal never showed. He appeared to have taken fright, worried that any appeal he might make sooner or later would have less chance of success, and his sentence might be increased when it was discovered he’d aided their breakout. This was relevant in his particular case, because Boal was not a train robber, or even a career criminal, but simply a friend of one of the robbers, Roger Cordrey, who’d unfortunately found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The escape never happened, though the next morning the guards went straight to the crevices beneath the sinks in the washroom to find the key and the other equipment. They would likewise find further items in a ransacking of the cells. As always, this underlines how professionals throw a dice when they involve amateurs, no matter which métier we are talking about.
Charlie Wilson’s next move back into the public eye occurred not long after, once he had received his thirty years. He had refused to attend his appeal against sentence, as he expected it would entail moving from Winson Green to a prison closer to the Appeals Court in London, where he would perhaps remain or be transferred to another prison altogether. He didn’t want to move, for his escape plans were already underway. (Not that he told his lawyers; as far as they were concerned, his reason was that he didn’t think he stood a chance on appeal.)
Nobody twigged that something was afoot. Even after it happened, there was a double-take on the fact that he had paid upfront for his daily newspaper to be delivered to his cell, right up to the end of that week. As if the cost of a few days’ papers was important, when freedom was imminent.
Though many others shared three to a cell, Wilson merited a cell to himself. On maximum-security, he had to endure his light being kept on day and night, which meant he had to lessen its glare with black grease brought from the workshop. His prison employment entailed sewing mailbags which, given that he was incarcerated for robbing the Royal Mail, was a subject of some hilarity.
Wilson had been planning his escape right from the off. He’d sprinkled sugar on the floor outside his cell so that he could hear the warders patrolling at night, working out that it was at fifteen-minute intervals that they checked him through the spyhole in the door. He also noted that younger, tougher guards tended to be on duty at weekends. Given his high-risk status, he always had a warder with him, or close at hand, at all times of the day. As with so many of the people in this book, his chances of escape were limited, given the number of eyes watching over him – at least in theory.
Various accounts have been given as to how the escape was made. In essence, they all have the same modus operandi; only the perpetrators and what occurred beyond the prison walls seem to change.
It was just after 3am on Wednesday 12 August 1964 when Wilson’s cell door in C-block was unlocked and three men in black stocking masks entered. Wilson was in his vest, his clothes being removed from the cell each night to hinder any escape attempt. He was tossed a bundle of clothes and hurriedly dressed in a black roll-neck sweater, dark trousers, plimsolls and a balaclava. They all walked down the corridor, passing the elderly guard who lay unconscious, having been coshed, bound and gagged, towards the centre of the prison and then through A-wing, passing the bathhouse before going down some stairs.
The intruder who had opened the locks of the various doors on the inward journey with duplicated keys systematically closed everything behind them. Indications of their entry and flight were thrown into disarray. Once outside, they kept to the shadows as the moon was bright, making for the twenty-foot walls. The three men who had entered to liberate Wilson were taking him back the same way as they came. They went up a rope ladder, dropping it, and then themselves, into a builder’s yard next door, crossed another wall to a towpath beside a canal, and left in two cars that were waiting for them. It took little more than three minutes from leaving his cell for Wilson to land on terra firma outside the walls.
There are separate versions of events from here on. The first is that he was taken to a flat not far away, where they stayed for two days while arrangements were made by phone to move on the third day to a London safe house. Another account has it that they drove directly to London down the M1 and Wilson went to ground in a flat in Knightsbridge, where he remained for some months. His carer was not one of Wilson’s known associates, which could be asking for trouble given the police pressure on his obvious contacts, but was connected to Charlie and Eddie Richardson. Many of the London villains didn’t want to know where he was hiding, as it gave them “a kind of responsibility”, as gang boss Joey Pyle later noted.
One of the more romantic escape stories that was spread around suggested that, once outside Winson Green, Wilson climbed into an adapted petrol tanker with two of his rescuers and reclined on mattresses whilst they were driven to a deserted airfield, from where he was flown to Northern France in a small plane.
Though the guard came round and was freed by 3:20am, reporting the escape to the orderly officer, they didn’t report it for a further thirty minutes as they believed the intruders were still in the building and might attack them. The other guard on C-block had actually gone down to the kitchens to sta
rt cooking the breakfast porridge, leaving the five night staff who patrolled all the wings effectively locked in without a pass key.
The police were roused, not through any emergency system but via a direct call at 3:50am. They arrived at 4am and had to wait at the main gate until someone with keys could let them in. By then Wilson was well away. It was a few hours before a full alert was in operation and the traffic scrutinised.
Wilson’s copy of the Daily Sketch, with the photos and story of his breakout splashed across the front page, was delivered to his empty cell the following day.
On the other side of the world, Bruce Reynolds, the leader of the Great Train Robbers, still not arrested at that point, said that when he saw the headlines, “His success filled me with pride. We’d finessed the Establishment yet again.”
Charlie Wilson had taken leave of prison life not by breaking out, but by others breaking in to open his cell door. This seemed to be a first, at least in modern times. Once again, the whole world was laughing. No one knew precisely how they had obtained duplicates of the keys, other than through a corrupt officer at the prison. Only half a dozen master keys existed and they were closely guarded. It was said that traces of soap were found on one, signifying that a copy had been made from an impression in a bar of soap, though other reports claim this wasn’t so.
The escape had hit a sore point, and the police search for Wilson was not going to die down quickly. He grew a beard and, by the end of the year, realised his only way to regain anything akin to a normal life was to go abroad. In March 1965 he left from Dover, catching a channel ferry to Calais, masquerading as a schoolteacher on a hitchhiking holiday. He was collected by car in the French port and driven to the South of France where, a couple of months later, his wife and one of his daughters joined him in a villa at Ramatuelle, near St Tropez. That was to be the start of his foreign adventures, until his capture in Rigaud, a suburb of Montréal, just under three and a half years later by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.