Original subtitles

This is the National Geographic Channel.

I had no idea what we were getting into or what to expect.

It just seemed like the answer to all our problems.

They don't know what we're up to.

Now's the time to spring it on them.

It's just the worst of everything you can think of.

I'm going to die in here if I don't get out.

In the summer of 1972, I was 24 years old.

I was sailing down the west coast of Mexico with a couple of high school

friends, Paul and Mace.

We just took off and figured we'd just play it by ear and whatever we needed to

figure out, we'd figure out as we went.

Mace is pretty much all action all the time.

I always wanted to be around him because I knew that we were going to have

something exciting happen to us.

Paul was the third member of the crew, very much of a dreamer. He was always

just going along for the ride.

The purpose of the trip was pretty much to find the elusive surf spot that we

know is out there somewhere.

We were really just looking for adventure.

As it turned out, we got a lot more adventure than we bargained for.

By the time we get to Mazatlan on the Mexican mainland, the boat has basically

fallen apart.

It wasn't a real good boat when we started. We paid $3 ,500 for it.

We've got to make some money somehow so we can fix the boat up and continue on

our way.

So we came up with this idea.

We'd bought this pot from a local taxi driver.

It was a pretty good pot, and it was a lot more plentiful than it was in the U

.S., and a lot cheaper.

Hey, I said, maybe with the last of our money, we should buy some pot, take that

back to the States, and sell it. We could bring the money back, fix the boat

and continue on our way.

Well, it was better to turn around and go back home.

So he said, yeah.

Because we didn't have any other options.

We hunted the taxi driver down and told him that we'd like to buy some more of

that pot.

And he said, no problemo.

We trusted him as much as you could trust any taxi driver that you've met in

foreign country.

But of course, you never know.

We're driving through town, outside of town.

And up into the mountains.

By about noon, we're pretty well up into the foothills of the Sierra Madres.

We're starting to think, where are we going?

All of a sudden, he stops.

We're thinking, oh, what is going on? This was looking a little bit

He says, get out.

We don't know if we're going to get robbed or what.

So we're waiting there, wondering what's going to happen next.

He says, just calmate, be calm.

And then we see, looking up the trail, a Mexican guy, all dressed in white with

his sombrero on, leading this burrow down the trail with these big sacks on

back.

Obviously, this is the pot he's bringing us.

But then suddenly we realized he thought we were going to buy all of it.

We only want $300 worth, which isn't that much.

They tried to argue with us, but we had $300. That's all they were going to get

no matter what.

We thought,

deal.

We end up with six grocery bags.

filled with pot.

I mean, I don't know what we're going to do with it, but we got it.

He drops us off in Mazatlan, and we're walking back to the boat, and we come to

this one corner, and my heart stops.

Oh, God. Okay, uh, okay. Oh, God, he's looking at us. And there's a cop about

feet away staring at us.

Three gringos holding shopping bags filled with pot.

Oh, God.

We're conspicuous.

The tops of the bags are open, and you could see the pot if you actually looked

inside the bag.

He was looking at us, but if we walk away from him, he's going to know

something's up.

I just thought, we have no choice but to man up and walk right by that cop.

We're walking up and looking him right in the eye and just knowing he's going

stop us.

I'm holding these bags in my arms and I mean, how's he not going to notice these

things? Of course, our adrenaline is kicking in and he's looking right at me.

But he kind of just gave me a nod and we continued on right past him.

My heart started back up, and I knew that we'd made it.

We're back on the boat, finally, with our bags.

We open it all up to see what we've got.

We got rid of all the stems and seeds, and we figure we've got about 20 pounds

cleaned out.

Now we've got to decide how to get it back to the States.

We'd heard of people transporting...

pot before inside the surfboard.

We have the surfboard and everything necessary to put the surfboard back

together once the pot's inside, so that's the way we decided to do it.

I cut the top of the surfboard off very carefully around the outside edge.

We peeled back the glass, scooped out all the foam from inside,

and then put the pot inside the surfboard.

When it was done, it looked just like a regular surfboard.

That's pretty good.

We have two choices now. One of them is to sail the boat back with the pot, but

the boat's in really bad shape.

The other option is for one of us to get on an airplane and fly it back to the

States, but we don't have any visas.

You can't even get a bus ticket without a visa.

This is bad news for us.

We've got 20 pounds of pot and a surfboard and no good way to get it

And that's when we meet Frank.

I was there in Mazatlan visiting my brother Dan.

I had a 40 -foot sailboat, but I was stuck there for a while because we

have crew.

I saw three guys in the harbor, strong American dudes.

And I come up to them, and right away we're introduced, and we start chatting

little bit.

Frank said, listen, we're going to sail our boat up to the States.

Are you guys interested in becoming a crew?

And we went, bing.

Now we have a way to get the pot back to the States.

I mean, it just seemed like the answer to all our problems.

So we jumped to the chance.

As soon as they're gone, I'm thinking, wow.

These guys, they're in for a surprise.

Later that afternoon, we go out there and his brother Dan is with him.

Where you guys from, man?

My first impression was that they looked like adventurers.

We sit down, cold beers, relax.

And I pull out this good weed that we have.

We go, wow, that's good. These guys are pot smokers too.

This is really good pot.

Have you got more of this stuff?

Dan and I are laughing because these guys have no idea that we're major drug

dealers.

Our business is trafficking large amounts of marijuana to the United

We've got a full metric ton of weed, which is 2 ,200 pounds, sitting at a

outside of Mazatlan.

It costs us $30 ,000.

But up in the States...

By the time we finished selling it, I was going to walk out of this with a

$175 ,000 in cash.

We're just looking for crew, and these guys fit the bill.

I said, how would you guys like to help us smuggle a ton of this same good weed

up to the state?

That was a huge shock to hear that.

Mike's jaw dropped and he goes, you got a ton of weed?

I'm thinking, man, that's a lot of pot.

If you got caught with that much weed, you know there's going to be some pretty

serious consequences.

We'll pay you $10 ,000.

Each.

$10 ,000 each.

That's a lot of money.

We pretty much thought, In for a penny, in for a pound.

If they find us with one kilo or they find us with a hundred, it's going to be

the same.

Yeah?

Deal.

We head out from Mazatlan.

Good winds. Everything's going great.

It's about two or three in the morning.

I woke up.

Something just didn't seem right.

It's like as if we're headed in the wrong direction.

I just had to know what was happening.

So I got up through the hatch.

Paul was at the helm. He said everything was fine.

All of a sudden, boom!

There's this hellacious crash.

We're all thrown out of our berths onto the floor. It's like we hit a wall all

of a sudden.

Everyone's going, what the hell? And we look out.

And I look over at Mike, and his eyes are about the size of silver dollars.

And there's eight foot of soup just charging towards us.

I don't know what the hell's happening other than we're being shipwrecked.

The boat sank in maybe two seconds.

I mean, the water level suddenly was up over our chins, maybe about three inches

from the cabin top.

And now it's just every man for himself.

I'm going to die in here if I don't get out.

We're in the whitewater because it's just pitch black.

We could hear the waves crashing on the shore, which was coming up.

We don't know what the shore is like. We don't know if it's going to be a cliff

or it's going to be breaking on rocks or what.

Finally, we all wash in and there's rocks, but there's actually a sand beach

above them.

I just crawl up and fall exhausted on the beach at that point.

We are just in shock.

What the hell just happened?

The next morning was a morning I didn't want to wake up to.

As soon as the first light came, we started looking around.

The scene in front of me is just hard to believe.

Guys!

There were kilos of pot floating everywhere.

For a quarter mile down the beach, and we just thought, any moment some fishing

boat is going to come by or somebody's going to walk up the beach or find where

we're at.

Guys!

We've got to get rid of this pot somehow. Before we do anything else,

number one priority.

Guys, come on!

We drag them all up where we can bury it.

We're doing this as fast as we can, but before we knew it, some villagers came

walking up the beach.

Then we were in a whole different deal.

If they figure out what we're up to, we're going to end up in a Mexican jail.

While Dan and the rest of the crew were out burying the weed, Mike and I go over

to talk to the villagers.

We had to get out of there as soon as possible.

There wasn't time to think.

We put some sand on top and then got out of there.

But it was only buried four or five inches.

It would take nothing to find it.

We talked the villagers into giving us a ride into town. They said it was 30

miles to the north.

I'm thinking, great.

We're going to be long gone before they find the pot.

Finally, we're out of there, and there's a huge sense of relief, and I think

everybody else is feeling the same way.

We're getting away from the scene of the crime, and we haven't been discovered.

It looks like we're going to actually get away with it.

About five minutes after we're underway, the truck stops.

Right away, I'm going, oh, this isn't good.

Here comes a pickup truck with its lights flashing.

Six federales jump out.

Oh, my God.

There's a half dozen men with rifles ready to fire at us if we make a move.

Just felt like my heart sank.

They got us.

There was no running. There was just no escape.

I knew we were dead.

We don't know what they're going to do to us, but we know it's probably not

going to be good.

We didn't know for something this big if they actually just took you out and

shot you.

They took

me into this room

and said, sign this confession.

And I looked at it, and it was all in Spanish, and I don't know what it says.

I can't sign this. I can't even read it.

Then they started sticking rifles into my side, poking me, saying, sign it.

I knew I was going to get beat up seriously if I didn't sign it.

It was a ludicrous feeling.

I couldn't know what I was being asked to sign, yet I knew I would sign it.

You just realize that, well, it's not a choice.

It's not an end or.

In the end, you are going to sign that paper.

So I signed the confession, and then I knew, I'm really sunk now.

And I have no idea what we were getting into or what to expect.

They just literally put you in there and closed the door behind you.

It's just a mob scene. It's just people on top of people. It's so crowded with

prisoners.

Hundreds of people are staring at us, and they're all surrounded us.

They're heroin addicts.

A quarter of them got women's clothes.

They're desperate.

This is a horrible place.

Just the worst of everything you can think of.

Oh, that first night was a tough one.

All I could think about is how long were we going to spend in here?

We could tell it was going to be tough.

Looking at the squalid conditions and the other inmates that were locked up

it and everything, gosh, how could we survive there?

I don't know if I can do five years here. I don't even know if I can do five

weeks. We just didn't know how long we would be there.

It's just, there's been chills up our back.

I'm looking at the guys, and I can see that we're all thinking the same thing.

We can't stay here. We have to escape.

So the next morning, we start looking around for ways to get out of this

There's this 25 -foot wall with glass on top, and a wall beyond that, guards

manning it.

The only way I could see it, and so did the others, was we had to tunnel

underneath them.

Sounds crazy because it's all concrete, but we're Americans, so we've all seen

the Great Escape, so we thought, if we could break through the concrete

the digging part would be easy.

We'd have to go from our room, underneath the bathroom, underneath the

wall, to this no -man's land that's out there somewhere, underneath the outer

wall, and then we're free.

All in all, we reckon it was a distance between 30 and 50 feet.

I certainly didn't think it was a slam dunk that we'd succeed, but I thought we

had a shot at it.

The first thing we really need is some sort of a hammer and maybe a large

screwdriver so that we can crack through that cement.

They're doing some work in the prison on one little part of the wall.

I noticed there's a rock sitting there, so I grabbed that and took it back to

our room.

But we didn't have a screwdriver, so instead we managed to buy a butter knife

from one of the other prisoners.

That doesn't sound like much, but we figured that's maybe enough to get

Underneath my bed was the closest spot to dig from.

We set a little tent up in the corner out of a blanket to muffle a sound, and

we organized a lookout system.

We're ready to go.

With that rock and that butter knife, we start chipping at the floor.

We always had somebody in the room with the person chipping at the concrete to

tell him if he was making too much noise.

We knocked about a quarter inch in a morning.

Quarter inch down, quarter inch long.

Something. It wasn't much, but this is a long -term project, so it was a start.

So for the next six weeks, we sit in there underneath the tent, chipping away

the cement.

Our best bet is to dig around in a rectangle shape and take the section out

one piece.

The problem was that the guards could come in at any time and see what we were

doing, see the crack.

We start mixing cornstarch with water and mix in some powdered ash with it to

make it gray. And every night we'd fill the crack that we're making.

Put a little dust on top, you could hardly tell.

We're making very slow progress.

But we just kept chipping away at the concrete.

Until we finally break through.

We are so elated.

We really thought it was kind of impossible to tip through all this

but we did manage to get it done, and it was just a real moment of triumph.

Take the lid off.

We look down and see that the ground's wet.

And we go, well, I don't know.

And so we start digging down a little bit, but the water just keeps coming

up. So we thought, well, maybe we can bail it out. All right.

We start scooping it into the bucket, carry it out into the toilet,

and dump it.

We spent three days trying to bail it out, but there's no way. Every time we

bail it down, it just comes right back up to the same level.

Oh.

You go through all that and then seeing the water in there, I mean, We can't dig

underwater.

We were crestfallen, to say the least.

Damn it!

Damn it, man.

We have no choice.

We've got to seal the tunnel back up and forget about it.

The tunnel idea was dead, and that's really what's been keeping us going with

any hope to get out of here.

So from that point on, we just resign ourselves to being prisoners in there.

It's just kind of a mind -numbing time where you just don't really think much.

A lot of people are on drugs.

It's so easy to see why prisoners do heroin in there.

Americans go in there and become hooked because there's nothing else to do.

You're not called out for a work detail.

There's nothing to occupy your mind. And the drugs are easy to get if you've got

the money, and that's the easy way to go.

We go through the motions. We walk circles around the courtyard daily just

try to get into some kind of zone where you don't have to think too much about

the situation you're in.

Otherwise, you just go crazy in a very short time.

Five months go by.

First part of December.

We have no water to the prison.

What the hell, man?

Apparently, one of the main water pipes had gotten broken inside the prison

somewhere. What's going on, man?

Caused them to shut all the water off to repair this water pipe.

They bring in water crocks, but we can't take showers, and we have to be very

frugal with it.

So after about the third day of this, I thought, maybe it's dry in our tunnel

hole.

So we break the top back off.

And gosh, it's dry.

It looks like whatever it was they fixed, that's what cured the problem we

having.

Finally, we can dig.

We dug straight down just so you could get your body in.

We're making really fast time initially. I mean, the first three or four hours,

we made about three feet.

The tunnel's only as wide as your shoulders.

We just lay on our belly, and then we went straight out towards the first

We'd use the butter knife, and we'd scoop the rock out, loosen it up.

And then we put it in little wash tubs, and then it would slide underneath your

belly.

If it's only 40 or 50 feet, and we're digging three feet an hour, we'll be out

in a couple days.

But there's a problem.

What are we going to do with all the dirt?

Some of the dirt we could put in the toilets.

But we can't do that too often because you don't want other prisoners to see

what you're doing.

So we figure we need to take a chance and put the dirt under our beds and just

go for it.

If we have an inspection, they're going to beat us up and throw us in the

dungeon.

It's a big risk.

We've got to dig this tunnel and dig it fast.

The tunnel is hot, it's dark, and it's just, it wasn't fun

work.

The shift was anywhere from two hours to five or six hours.

One man would get out and the other guy would go right back in.

We get about 10 feet along.

Everything's going great.

Paul's digging in the tunnel.

I'm sitting in the room waiting to pull the dirt back.

And suddenly he comes out of the tunnel and he's sheet white.

I said, Paul, what's wrong?

He says, I think I just broke the sewer pipe out.

I said, what?

This is the main sewer line that the toilets feed into.

We've got 200 prisoners right outside.

And any time any man uses the toilet, it just goes straight into our tunnel.

The whole tunnel in about six hours filled up with raw sewage.

And we realized we can't even bail it out because if we pour it into the

it'll go into the sewer pipe and fill the tunnel right back up.

We have to do something. We've got the dirt underneath our beds.

If they come in now, we are toast.

Mike comes over and he tells me we got a huge problem.

I put my head down close to the hole and I was totally repulsed, so repulsed I

almost barfed.

Oh, that was disgusting.

I mean, you're just ugly, you know, brown scum on the sides and things

in it.

We're looking at each other thinking,

Someone's got to swim back in there and fix that sewer pipe.

And we all looked at each other. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it.

No one would do it. I wouldn't do it.

Mace wouldn't do it. I thought, who's going to do it?

How about Benny?

Benny was a junkie American guy from New York City who was the only possible

candidate for this job.

Benny.

So we went and got Benny and he said, listen, we'll break you out if you'll

down in the tunnel and fix the sewer pipe.

And he said, you guys are crazy. I'm not going to do that. There's no way.

He said, listen, if you do this, Benny, we'll break you out and give you enough

money to buy a fix.

And he said, OK, I'll do it.

We make a repair kit for Benny. It's a coffee can.

with a cement patch that we pre -mixed.

He gets down in the tunnel, into the raw sewage.

We weren't sure it was going to work.

But the plan was for him to swim back into the tunnel, fix the sewer pipe, and

then on the way back out, he had to skim the biggest floating objects on the

water.

He's gagging and cursing and spitting the whole way.

We're just praying to God that he managed to get it done.

Finally, he climbs out.

We said, is it done?

He said, yeah, it's done.

And we just busted up laughing so hard.

So we're back on.

But we really lost a lot of time.

The longer it's taking, the more chance we have of getting searched.

Now the pressure's really on.

We get underneath the inner wall and start going out onto no man's land.

I mean, we were down there 18 hours a day, just day after day, not doing

anything but this.

We estimated that No Man's Land was 15 feet to the outer wall, but no one knew

for sure.

God, we get to 12 feet, get to 14 feet, get to 16 feet, get to 18 feet, and we

don't hit it.

We were 19 1⁄2 feet from the inner wall, and we still hadn't hit the outer wall.

We started thinking maybe we'd been off course.

I had a little flute in there that I used to play, so I...

cut the ends off, and broke out some pieces of mirrors and made a little

periscope.

We've got to put a hole going up and try and look around to see where we're at.

I pushed the butter knife up through the top, and I realized that we're almost

right at the surface.

I know it's risky making this hole, but we have to find out where we are.

I push the periscope up through the hole, and it works great.

I can see the outer wall off to the side a little bit.

I'm thinking, great, now we only have to dig another three feet under the

outside wall, and we're there.

Mike tells me we're really close.

I'm thinking, wow, this is going to really work.

Dan had been living in Mexico for the past few years, so he had money and

contacts.

Dan and I organized the getaway cars to make the final escape from the prison.

They're going to wait outside from 2 to 4 in the morning every night until we

get out. We are so amped now to get out. We're just digging like madmen.

We just knew that we were close, and it just gave us that incentive.

We get to the outer wall. We just start going underneath it, and it starts to

rain.

I can hear it on the top of the tunnel.

And the next thing that happens is the water starts pouring into the periscope

hole.

And I said, oh, man, the rain is just getting harder and harder.

So our periscope hole is acting like a drain for no man's land.

It's just pouring in.

I'm down in the tunnel looking up, and I just know it can't support the weight

of all that water.

It's going to collapse. There's no way it's not going to collapse.

And I just said, that's it. I'm gone.

We knew that the tunnel was going to collapse.

And then they just point right back to us.

So we're just waiting for the guards to come in. We didn't know what they were

going to do to us. Were they going to torture us?

Kill us? We really had no idea.

And we just waited and waited.

Waited and waited. We just prayed any minute they were going to come in.

And it rained all that night, and it rained into the next morning, and

it stopped.

We thought, well, maybe it didn't collapse.

It mustn't have collapsed. They would have come in and got us by now.

And we thought, man, this is unbelievable.

So we bail out the tunnel best we can and just go balls to the wall.

We just kept thinking, one way or another, we're going to keep going until

stop us.

We got all the way through where we knew that we could come straight up and be

on the outside.

The plan was to stop digging just before we broke through the surface.

Mace was actually digging at the time.

He came out of the tunnel and said, that's it, we've got a foot to go.

Hey, hey.

I go and get all the other guys and say, it's on, let's go.

Dan's pickup men were waiting outside.

I'm thinking, this is it.

This is it. We're going to get out of this, baby.

We put our clothes on inside out.

That way, after we get out, we can put the dirty side in, and at least they'll

look clean.

Somewhere or another, we'd come up with a knit ski cap, and I'd pull that down

over my head and disappear down the hole.

Then one by one, we followed him down into the tunnel.

I'm next, then Paul.

Then Dan, myself, and Benny.

We all lined up head to foot, head to foot.

I'm starting to dig up, and all the dirt's falling to my face, and all the

are behind me in this hole just sweating.

He says, we're almost there. Calm down. We're almost there.

Ten minutes goes by and nothing.

I'm wondering what the hell's going on.

What's the holdup, man? Come on.

That last foot seemed to take forever.

Finally, he breaks through.

Just get this super rush of adrenaline, knowing this is it. This is finally the

moment we've been working all these months for.

And he pushes his head out of the hole.

And he comes back down. He says, God, the lights are right on us out here.

bright as daylight.

It's lit up like daylight.

Anyone that looks can see us.

We said, well, that's the way it is, but there's no going back.

So I see him get out the tunnel, and I go for it.

I get outside the wall and stand next to it, and we're just trying to stay calm

and not do anything stupid.

Next one out is Paul, and we start edging down the wall.

Finally, I see Dan pop out of the tunnel.

As I reach the exit, I jump up, and there it is.

I'm out.

I make my way along the wall, and then he follows.

And now comes the hardest part of the plan.

We've got to get across the road and full view of the guards.

And if we start running, We know they're going to see us and start shooting.

So we have to force ourselves to walk, hoping that if they saw us, they would

think that we were just some of the residents returning home.

So I take a deep breath and walk out across the street.

You feel like you just want to start running, but you know you can't.

But everything in your body is telling you to just take off.

And every second, I'm just expecting to hear a shot ring out.

We started going a little further, walking a little faster.

No guard shots, no guard firing guns.

We start walking a little faster, a little faster, and we get around the

and then we run.

And that feeling of freedom right then, First time I'd run in seven months was

just an all -time high.

We're getting away from this prison, and there's not a shot fired.

We were running off to get in a getaway car and get the heck out of the city.

And we get to the rendezvous point, and there's no one there.

This is not working out.

Pretty soon it's going to be roll call, and they're going to know we're gone.

Dan says, don't worry.

I have a second alternate spot.

Let's go. We had no choice. There was no other game in town.

By now, the sun's coming up. We have blown it as far as roll call goes.

They know we're gone now, so it's looking really bad.

So we're waiting in the bushes for the cars to show up.

There's going to be people getting up soon.

And we're thinking, here we are, six gringos.

We're going to stand out like a sore thumb.

Finally, we see two cars coming up the road.

I look at Dan and say, please tell me that's them.

I see him look.

He says, that's them.

It just felt, I mean, good isn't enough of a word to describe it.

We said goodbye to

each other and hugged and said, best of luck.

It was really hard saying goodbye to these guys after everything we'd been

through. But we got out of there as fast as we could.

And I'm like, thank God, finally going to get out of this town.

Finally, we get to the moment of truth.

The guard kind of just waves us through.

Didn't ask for IDs or anything. He said, go on.

I was just... Did it.

It just suddenly hit us that we really had gotten away, and they weren't going

to put us back.

I don't know, it was just probably the most wonderful moment of my life,

because we were facing so many years.

Freedom was never so sweet as it was then, because you don't know what you've

lost until it's lost, as that line goes.

And you know you never want to be in that situation again, no matter what.