Adding further intrigue to the case is that Bester operated a scam marketing agency while imprisoned.<\/p>\n
While Bester’s escape certainly has its fair share of drama, there are several other high-profile prison breaks that are hard to believe weren’t invented by some Hollywood writer.<\/p>\n
Below are some of the other most notorious prison escapes from around the world.<\/p>\n
\n
Escape from Alcatraz<\/h2>\n
Among the most famous prison escapes of all time occurred when bank robbers Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin managed to break out of Alcatraz prison in June 1962.<\/p>\n
Located on an island surrounded by the cold and rough waters of San Francisco Bay, the Alcatraz Penitentiary was widely regarded as an inescapable fortress.<\/p>\n
That was until the trio managed to loosen the air vents in their cells on 12 June 1962 and made their way to a secret workshop they had set up in another part of the prison.<\/p>\n
After climbing up pipes and out of a ventilator grill on the prison’s roof, they descended the building and made their way to the shore.<\/p>\n
They used dummy heads crafted with plaster and real hair to fool the guards into thinking they were still fast asleep.<\/p>\n
They had also stolen 50 raincoats which they used to make a raft and life jackets to get to the mainland.<\/p>\n
However, the trio’s fate beyond that point remains unknown, with many experts believing they likely died during the crossing and their bodies were swept out to sea.<\/p>\n
But others believe it’s possible they may have reached the mainland and escaped if they exited the prison at a time when sea currents were favourable.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Alcatraz-Prison-new.jpg\")
<\/a>Alcatraz was closed in March 1963 because of expensive running costs but continues to operate as a museum<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
Flight by flight<\/h2>\n
There are at least two known instances where “hijacked” helicopters were used to pull off prison escapes.<\/p>\n
The first was the escape of gangster Redoine Faid, once considered France’s most wanted criminal.<\/p>\n
Faid had previously pulled off a prison break in April 2013 by blasting through five doors using smuggled explosives and holding four prison wardens hostage. He was recaptured around a month and a half later.<\/p>\n
However, on 1 July 2018, he broke out of prison again, this time in R\u00e9au, south of Paris.<\/p>\n
In that instance, he had the assistance of three armed accomplices who had taken a helicopter pilot hostage after they posed as flight school students.<\/p>\n
They forced the pilot to land in the only area of the prison without helicopter netting and used smoke bombs to hide from cameras before extracting Faid.<\/p>\n
Despite a manhunt involving around 2,900 police officers and soldiers, he would only be caught around three months later.<\/p>\n
Faid’s escape was reminiscent of another prison break using a similar method.<\/p>\n
In 1999, Lucky Dudko held a helicopter pilot at gunpoint (with an inoperable Thompson submachine gun) and forced him to pick up her boyfriend \u2014 bank robber John Killick \u2014 from Sydney’s Silverwater Jail exercise yard.<\/p>\n
The couple was on the run for 45 days before police caught them.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The exterior of Sydney’s Silverwater prison, from which Lucky Dudko helped her boyfriend John Killick escape via helicopter<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
A tight squeeze<\/h2>\n
There are numerous instances in which prisoners escaped by squeezing through small openings in their cells \u2014 but two are particularly noteworthy.<\/p>\n
Infamous American serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy’s second escape from custody \u2014 in December 1977 \u2014 required that he lose 16kg to squeeze through a hole in the steel bars of his cell’s ceiling.<\/p>\n
Bundy created the hole with a hacksaw blade acquired from other prisoners, from whom he also got a detailed floor plan of the prison.<\/p>\n
He used books and files covered with blankets to fool prison guards into thinking he was still in his bed sleeping.<\/p>\n
After several “practice runs”, Bundy climbed through the gap and crawled to the apartment of the chief jailer, where he broke through the ceiling, stole plain clothes from a closet, and exited through the front door.<\/p>\n
Prison guards only discovered he had escaped 17 hours later, and Bundy was arrested on 12 February 1978 after a police officer stopped him in a stolen vehicle.<\/p>\n
Thief and yoga expert Choi Gap-bok, nicknamed “Korean Houdini”, performed a similar feat to escape captivity.<\/p>\n
In 2012, he escaped Daegu prison by rubbing himself in lotion and slipping through a small food slot just 45cm wide and 15cm high.<\/p>\n
Police who saw the CCTV footage of the escape described Gap-bok as moving flexibly like an octopus through the opening.<\/p>\n
He managed to sneak past sleeping guards and climb out a window before fleeing to a remote mountain in Cheongdo.<\/p>\n
After being spotted in various towns around the area over the next few days, police recaptured Gap-bok six days after his escape and put him in a bar-less cell.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Skyline of Daegu City in South Korea<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
A tunnel worthy of a drug lord<\/h2>\n
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is another infamous figure who escaped prison twice.<\/p>\n
While the first was a relatively “simple” affair of bribing guards and hiding in a laundry basket, the second was far more elaborate. It involved several co-conspirators outside the jail where he was being held.<\/p>\n
After serving 17 months in Altiplano maximum security prison in Mexico, he climbed down a hole underneath his cell’s shower.<\/p>\n
Ten metres down, he came to a 1.7m high and 75cm wide tunnel made with high-quality construction materials and fitted with lights and air ducts.<\/p>\n
The escape route was contrived by El Chapo’s wife, sons, and a former cartel associate.<\/p>\n
It required smuggling a watch with a GPS tracker to the drug lord to pinpoint his exact location and hiring a professional construction crew to dig the tunnel.<\/p>\n
El Chapo was rearrested around six months after his second escape.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Joaqu\u00edn Archivaldo Guzm\u00e1n Loera “El chapo”, a Mexican drug trafficker, is presented to the media in a hangar at the airport in Mexico City. Credit: Octavio Hoyos \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
Getting crafty<\/h2>\n
Several prisoners escaped jail using items they crafted during their time behind bars.<\/p>\n
American gangster John Dillinger broke out of the Lake County Jail in Crown Point in January 1934 after threatening prison guards with what the FBI would later report was a carved wooden pistol.<\/p>\n
Dillinger pulled out the “weapon” during morning exercises, taking the guards by surprise.<\/p>\n
Dillinger would eventually be killed by a special agent in an alley behind the Biograph Theater in Chicago after a 6-month manhunt, which included several dramatic shootouts and Dillinger undergoing plastic surgery to disguise himself.<\/p>\n
Andrew Rodger, Keith Rose, and Matthew Williamson also broke out of the Parkhurst Prison in the UK in 1995 thanks to their crafting capabilities.<\/p>\n
The trio had memorised the shape of the prison’s master keys and fashioned a copy in the sheet metal workshop.<\/p>\n
While the guards were distracted during the prisoners’ exercise session, they used the key to open a door leading them to the inner fence.<\/p>\n
After cutting a hole in the inner fence, they used the ladder to clear the outer fence.<\/p>\n
Their freedom was not long-lived, however, as they were found hiding in a shed by police four days later.<\/p>\n
Their escape was reminiscent of Tim Jenkin, a South African anti-apartheid activist who escaped Pretoria Local Prison with Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris by crafting keys from wood.<\/p>\n
A film of their daring escape titled “Escape from Pretoria<\/em>” starring Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe was released in 2020.<\/p>\n Following his escape, Jenkin fled to the United Kingdom, where he went on to help the ANC by developing computer-encrypted communications systems<\/a><\/strong> that operatives on the ground used to communicate with the movement’s leadership.<\/p>\n US police agents inspecting the body of notorious gangster John Dillinger<\/p><\/div>\n From crafting master keys and fake guns to elaborate schemes involving underground tunnels and hijacked helicopters, these notorious prison escapes captured headlines and imaginations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":489977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40380],"tags":[35,26700,85949,10048],"class_list":["post-489635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-jail","tag-prison-escapes","tag-thabo-bester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490197,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489635\/revisions\/490197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
\nNow read: “Facebook rapist” escape raises big questions about private prison corruption<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"