Jacques Mesrine was a notorious French criminal in the 60s and 70s who was seen as somewhat of a Robin Hood figure. He remained at large for many years through clever disguises. After escaping from a Canadian prison using nothing but wire cutters, he returned to free more prisoners with a friend. However, his own escape meant there was an increased security presence, and a resulting shootout injured him. Later on in life he was imprisoned in the “inescapable” La Santé, and was part of a small group that forced guards to bring a ladder with them to a wall. They then used grappling hooks to scale a second wall, and become the first men to ever escape the prison. Mesrine was eventually killed years later in a confrontation with police.

On June 11, 1962,Frank Lee Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin escaped from the infamous Alcatraz. Located on an island off of San Francisco, it was deemed inescapable. However, the men used a spoon to dig a hole through tunnel walls, using paper mache puppets to fool guards while they were doing it. They then used a makeshift raft constructed of dozens of rain coats to traverse the choppy water. The men were never seen again, and it was presumed they had drowned in the water. However, their bodies were never found, and other evidence suggests they might have escaped and moved to Brazil.

The movie “Catch Me If You Can” is based off of the high profile criminal Frank Abagnale who escaped prison twice. While his first prison was undergoing inspections for civil rights violations, he was able to convince the guards that he was an FBI officer undercover on the inside. Not only did this get him special treatment, but with some help from someone on the outside to corroborate his story, one day he just walked out.

Criminal Michel Vaujour got some help from his wife, and some nectarines in 1986. Painting the fruit like grenades, he was able to use them to force his way onto the prison’s roof. There, his wife, who had been taking flying lessons, picked him up in a helicopter. She was later arrested, and he was wounded in a shootout.

Gangster John Dillinger was the original “Public enemy number one,” and onced used a fake wooden gun painted with shoe polish to help him escape from “inescapable” Lake County Jail in Crown Point. He would go on to commit a few more robberies before being killed in a shootout with law enforcement.

In 1995, Andrew Rodger, Keith Rose, and Matthew Williams had jobs in a British prison as metal workers. After getting repeated close looks at one guard’s master key, they were able to manufacture a copy from memory. They then used it to escape… before getting arrested a few days later trying to steal a plane.

Mark DeFriest is very familiar with this trick, and has tried it for 13 different escape artists. Nicknamed the “autistic Prison Houdini,” Florida man DeFriest is incredibly adept at memorizing and constructing keys.

It’s safe to say that French career criminal Pascal Payet is obsessed with helicopters. In 2001, he had his friends fly a stolen helicopter to the roof of his prison, where he met them and escaped. Two years later he returned to the prison with another helicopter and helped other inmates escape. Two years after that he was arrested again, but in 2007 his friends once again hijacked a third helicopter and forced the pilot to fly and pick him up. Eventually however, he was captured once and for all in Spain.