The Legendary Prison Escapes Of El Chapo
Wikimedia CommonsJoaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in U.S. custody in January 2017.
Born in La Tuna, Mexico, on April 4, 1957, Joaquín Guzmán became world famous as “El Chapo.” While the nickname was rooted in his short stature of 5’6″, he would grow into one of the most terrifying drug lords the world had known after founding the notorious Sinaloa Cartel in the mid-1980s — and dominating the trade.
Ultimately, Guzmán would become just as famous for evading authorities and curating a prolific career as a prison escapist. He was first captured in June 1993, but continued managing outside operations from the Puente Grande maximum-security prison with ease. On Jan. 19, 2001, however, he suddenly disappeared.
With corruption and the threat of cartel retribution at an all-time high, Guzmán had his cartel bribed the guards. One of the guards, later identified as Francisco Camberos Rivera, simply led Guzmán out of his cell and helped him into a laundry cart. Then, Rivera wheeled Guzmán to the parking lot and into the trunk of a car.
Manuel Velasquez/Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesThe tunnel and motorcycle used by Guzmánn to escape from Altiplano Prison in 2015.
The news shocked authorities worldwide, but it would pale in comparison to Guzmán’s escape in 2015. With 14 years of further murders and assassinations to his name, El Chapo had been deemed the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world.” His second escape thus yielded utter disbelief, and was far more complex than the first.
Arrested in Mazatlan on Feb. 22, 2014, and incarcerated in Altiplano Federal Prison, Guzmán vanished the following July. Climbing through a two-foot-square hole beneath one of the showers, he navigated a secret tunnel that the cartel had been digging for months — which led to a cinder block house outside the prison walls.
The tunnel spanned nearly a mile but was constructed to Guzmán’s specifications. It was fitted with lights and ventilation and held a motorcycle for Guzmán to ride out. While his escape from yet another maximum-security prison proved the most embarrassing incident for those in charge, Guzmán’s freedom didn’t last.
Arrested in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, six months later, he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison in July 2019.
The Prison Escape At Dannemora
Clinton Correctional FacilityRichard Matt and David Sweat.
On June 5, 2015, Clinton Correctional Facility inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped through tunnels they had dug and through a steam pipe that led them outside the prison walls.
Despite their failure to remain at large, the prison escape proved such an intoxicating combination of sheer will and corruption that it was adapted into a 2018 series called Escape at Dannemora. Ultimately, Matt and Sweat’s jailbreak wouldn’t have been possible without the inside help of correctional officers Joyce Mitchell and Gene Palmer.
The inmates had not only bribed Palmer to deliver them tools wrapped up in lunch meat, but they flirted with Mitchell so successfully that she became enamored enough to do the same. Matt and Sweat cut holes into their cells for months until the openings broke into tunnels between the walls. Soon, they reached a pipe that led to a utility hole in the village of Dannemora.
New York State PoliceThe manhole outside the prison walls that Sweat and Matt climbed out of.
Sweat began serving a life sentence in 2002 for killing a police officer, while Matt received 25 years to life in 2008 for murdering his employer. They first met in 2010 and shared workstations when they began to plot the escape. They requested adjacent cells in a particular block to do so, which they were granted in January 2015.
Mitchell, whom colleagues described as “inmate lover,” defended her relationships to investigators as trying to build a “rapport” with the inmates. She wound up heading the tailor shop where the two men worked and provided them hacksaws, chisels, and lights — which the men used to carve their tunnels.
Ultimately, Sweat had already climbed out of his cell to inspect their work a total of 85 times before the men made their escape. After losing about 30 pounds, Sweat was finally able to fit into the steam pipe the two would have to squeeze into to flee. After leaving makeshift dummies in their cell beds, they vanished.
But their escape was short-lived. Matt would be shot and killed by a customs agent on June 26. Sweat was shot and re-incarcerated on Sept. 28.
