Where Were You?

Regular and fully committed readers will remember that I decided to go check out a local prison several years ago.  Some kind of horrible fascination drove me to do it, I guess.  That trip... actually, writing about that trip, served to completely satisfy my curiosity.  It was at the end where I wrote, "All right. Prison is real. (What next?)" where I had a well-what-the-hell-were-you-expecting kind of moment and I haven't thought nary a whit about it since.

But then a couple of guys broke out.  And they didn't just break out; they masterminded the only escape in the 170-year history of the maximum security prison.  Pretty incredible feat.  Getting access to power tools, manipulating guards and other employees, the planning, the execution, the decoys left in their cells, the five-hour head start they got before anyone knew they were missing...  Just amazing.

Deplorable as these criminals may be, you have to have some respect for their ability to manipulate people to the point where they were able to get everything they needed to bust out of a maximum security facility.  Again - AMAZING.

Now, to think that after all this, they didn't have a solid getaway driver lined up?  Ah... I don't think so.  Three weeks later these guys are still schlepping around the Adirondacks because their ride flaked?  They had every detail worked out, even to the point that they knew the manhole out on the street would be padlocked and they came prepared to cut it, but then they didn't have a solid connection on the outside who could drive them to Mexico?  I really can't believe that's true.  It's a prrrrrrretty important detail and would be quite an oversight... and it frankly ruins the whole thing for me.

These guys outsmarted a LOT of people.  They used a literally unprecedented level of cunning to derail an entire prison security mechanism and get over (okay, under) that wall.  If you're going to succeed that far, you owe it to the GP to a) make it the rest of the way, and b) disappear forever.

TELL me you didn't just get outside and go, "Well... where is she?"