Original subtitles

A brilliant mind...

He's detail-oriented.

He's a very smart guy.

Trapped in a supermax prison...

Stabbings occurred almost every night.

The worst of the worst.

He just can't take it anymore.

He discovers its one weakness...

The only way out is gonna be this window.

But can he outsmart everything

the prison throws at him...

The tower guard has the authority to shoot to kill.

Survive the sweltering Mississippi Delta...

The mosquitoes would eat you up in a day.

And outrun a dangerous cross-country manhunt

that could turn deadly at any moment?

I said, "If you move again, I will shoot you.

Do you understand me?"

Some of the greatest stories ever told

start behind bars.

Locked up in the most notorious prisons

in the world,

spied on by guards and fellow prisoners,

it takes a devious mind to find a way out.

It could lead you to freedom,

or it could cost you your life.

But wouldn't you try

when you have nothing left to lose?

The Mississippi Delta, north to south,

runs 200 miles

and is 87 miles at its widest.

Some call the Delta

the most Southern place on Earth.

It's also the site

of the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary,

Parchman.

MSP is the oldest prison in the state.

In 1901, the state bought the former plantation

known as Parchman Farm,

the informal name for the prison today.

Prisoners helped build the prison,

nearly all of them Black men

in an exploitative work program.

Parchman quickly became a horrifying place,

housing one of the first gas chambers in the country.

Today it's notorious for prisoner murders,

suicides, and wretched living conditions...

rusted pipes, sewage leaks, rodents, and insects.

There's more than one reason to want to escape,

but the prison's unique layout makes that a fool's errand.

Parchman is spread out over a jaw-dropping 18,000 acres

of former farmland.

It's known as the prison without walls

because there's no fencing around the widest perimeter,

only around the secure prisoner units.

You would think that this would make it easier

for some of the 2,500 inmates to escape,

but the Delta is its own deterrent.

The prison sits on a marshy floodplain

with unbearable heat,

mud so thick it'll stop you in your tracks,

and mosquitoes so big

they could practically carry you away.

It's a very difficult thing to escape from there

because the land is very flat.

It's very easy to get caught.

Most never get the chance to run.

The prisoner units are secured

by layers by razor-wire fencing

and armed guard towers

wielding deadly automatic firepower

24 hours a day.

The most infamous is Supermax Unit 32.

If you're one of the unfortunate souls

sent to 32, your life is nothing less

than a relentless assault on decency...

an unhygienic, violent,

and diseased hellhole that Dante couldn't make up.

Unit 32 is the worst of the worst.

Rapes occur. Stabbings occur.

Almost every night, someone would get stabbed

or shanked.

There are people who have psychological problems.

That creates an almost intolerable situation.

Unit 32 houses murderers,

psychopaths, and high-threat escape risks,

all side by side.

They're the reason supermax exists.

Unit 32 is surrounded by a double-fenced area

known as the kill zone.

Guard towers surround it with shoot-to-kill orders,

and an armed patrol circles the fence day and night.

The walls of the cell blocks are made of precast concrete

and half a million pounds of reinforced steel.

This means Unit 32 is a place you don't dare try to escape,

but Roy Harper likes a dare.

If any prisoner at Parchman has what it takes

to break out, it's Harper.

His story reads like a Southern Gothic novel,

which is fitting, since he manages to write

and publish two books while behind bars.

Good writing requires a detailed, keen mind,

a person who can communicate and persuade.

Roy Harper possesses all these traits.

But above all, Roy Harper is a thinker.

He's a genius.

He's detail-oriented, and he's a very smart guy.

In 1981, Roy Harper breaks out of an Arizona prison.

When he's arrested for armed robbery in 1982,

Harper gets the equivalent of a death sentence,

88 years without parole.

He spends eight years in regular maximum security,

but when supermax opens in 1990,

he's one of the first thrown in

because of his high level of escape risk.

In a telephone interview,

Harper describes his impressions of Unit 32.

Escape is at the top of Roy Harper's mind

from the moment he enters Unit 32.

In 1993, he tries cutting his way out

with a hacksaw blade, but he's caught.

He can't get through the window covering.

To prevent Harper from escaping,

the system moves him around the unit often.

Frustrated, he petitions the court to stop it.

Knowing he would not be moved,

Harper can begin planning a more effective escape.

To have a real chance at freedom,

Roy knows he has to not only break out of prison,

but also get out of the Delta and out of Mississippi.

First things first.

If this supermax window stops him again,

nothing else matters.

Now, a thinker like Roy learns from his mistakes,

so he comes up with a clever way

to get through the window and not get caught.

He just can't take it anymore,

and so he decides to escape.

The only way out is gonna be this window.

This is no ordinary window.

The walls around it are run through with steel bars.

A bolted-on, cut-proof grate covers the entire window.

Behind that, a steel frame secures six panels

of tempered glass, each reinforced

by galvanized metal wire.

Harper's got his work cut out for him.

With constant observation by the guards,

Harper knows he's going to need money

to get things moving.

In a place like Parchman,

it doesn't take much to smuggle in cash

through the mail or the guards.

In fact, the corrupt guards

are something Parchman is famous for.

Corruption was a constant problem at Parchman.

You could just about get anything inside Parchman

you wanted to get.

Guards aren't really paid much,

so they're really more susceptible

to the offer of money.

He pays a guard 40 bucks apiece for these hacksaw blades.

Harper's got hacksaw blades and thinks he should be able

to cut through the window frame.

But before he can start,

he needs to get the window cover off

that stopped him before.

To remove the screw-headed bolts,

he smuggles in a screw bit from the guards.

The bit fits, but it needs a handle

or some way to get leverage and torque

to turn the bolt head,

while at the same time making sure the guard,

who's 20 feet away watching his every move,

doesn't see him.

Even Harper can't smuggle enough money in

to make the guards turn away from a full-blown escape,

so he has to improvise.

With cover from the guards,

he can really get to work.

He looks at the light fixture above.

A light bulb goes off in his head.

He breaks two pieces of angled iron

from the light fixture, which is made of soft steel.

He bends them into the shape of an elongated handle.

He's able to use pencil sharpener blades

that he found to cut this soft metal

so he could create a handle,

whereby he can unscrew, essentially,

the window covering.

Harper's in business.

He's makeshift bolt remover works.

He's finally figured out how to get the window cover off

and can now proceed to the next step:

cutting through the frame.

But suddenly, a wrench is thrown into the works.

Roy has a new neighbor,

a convicted murderer and escape artist,

John "JW" Woolard.

This newcomer to Unit 32

is the kind of problem that can't easily be solved

by MacGyvering a screwdriver

or hiding behind a sheet.

With Woolard taking up residence next door,

all of Harper's plans

and his contraband tools might be thrown...

well, out the window.

The disciplined, exacting man with a plan

is just dealt a wild card.

Will he fold,

or will the thinker figure out a way

to keep his escape plan on track?

Roy Harper is all set to break out of Unit 32.

He's got his hacksaw blades

and a way to get the window cover off.

He's developed a cunning system to shield himself

from the guard so he can work on the window infrastructure.

But there's an unexpected wrinkle in his plans.

Convicted murder John Woolard, who's serving a life sentence,

is his new neighbor.

John Woolard arrived in Unit 32,

literally in the cell next to Roy Harper.

Woolard had his own reputation

as a person who had escaped custody in the past.

He was serving a life sentence without parole

for murder and kidnapping.

Harper knows Woolard's reputation.

He's dangerous and unpredictable

and has an even worse escape habit than Harper.

In a twist of fate, Woolard recently tried

to break out of Parchman, but they caught him.

If Woolard tries to escape again before Harper

and the guards get wise to it,

they'll shake down the whole tier,

including Harper's cell.

Roy Harper was already plotting an escape,

but now, all of a sudden,

this is gonna interfere with all that.

The last thing he wanted was a shakedown,

because he already had these items

that were contraband.

Harper,

the persuasive thinker that he is,

decides to do something shrewd:

recruit Woolard.

He can talk more freely with Woolard

when the prisoners are allowed one hour of yard time a day.

In the case of inmates in 32,

they were outside of their cells only one hour a day,

and that was for an exercise yard

or for a shower.

It is possible to converse during yard time.

Even though a two-man team

increases the chance of getting caught,

it's better than a unit shakedown.

And if they do make it outside,

an accomplice might come in handy.

The thinker has a collaborator.

They meet in the yard every day

and lay out their plan.

Stage 1 is getting through the window.

Stage 2 is getting across the prison yard

and through the outer fence.

Stage 3 will be to make it off the Delta

and out of Mississippi.

Each of these stages

will require preparation and luck,

especially making it across the yard.

Once they get through their windows,

which, by luck, are on the first floor,

the plan is to crawl along a narrow strip

of shadow that runs along C-block.

Next they face 50 feet of wide-open yard

monitored by guard towers and floodlights.

If they're lucky enough to not be spotted,

they are running to the kill zone,

a double razor-wire fence they'll have to cut through

with hacksaws.

If they make it through the fences,

they have to just pray

one of the perimeter patrol vehicles doesn't drive by.

Roy Harper, who had masterminded

and broken out of prisons before,

took a lot of time to find a weakness

where he could breach and get out of his facility.

It took some planning, and it took some time.

Harper knows what he and Woolard are attempting

is incredibly risky, but he's not stupid.

He knows to have any chance,

they're going to need supplies.

They smuggle in two red death-row jumpsuits,

much darker than the white-striped

Unit 32 uniform.

There's a color-coding system

used by Mississippi to identify the custody level.

Solid red death-row inmate pants

cut down on the white reflection

that their red and white uniforms may have made.

To cover their faces, Harper makes a dark cream

by burning paper and mixing the ash with Vaseline.

Both will increase the chance

of slipping through the yard undetected.

Harper's also smart enough

to realize once they get past the fences,

they face the inhospitable Delta,

where pesticides leach into the water,

making it undrinkable.

They throw bottles of clean water

into makeshift backpacks made out of prison jackets.

With their supplies gathered,

Harper and Woolard turn their attention

back to the window.

Woolard has his own hacksaw blades,

but Harper lets him borrow his makeshift wrench.

Harper is trying to cut his window

when suddenly he hears a disturbance

outside his cell followed by a booming voice

that echoes through Unit 32,

a voice he isn't quite keen on.

It's the warden making his rounds.

With the window cover sitting against the wall

and Harper holding a hacksaw,

he's about to be caught red-handed.

Roy Harper and John Woolard are several weeks

into planning their escape from Parchman's notorious Unit 32.

Their only way out is through a window in their cells.

While Harper is trying to saw through the window frame,

the voice of the warden stops him in his tracks.

He's working on the window,

and he already has the window covering down

when the warden comes by.

This is one of those times

when good fortune really comes in handy.

He gets up in the warden's face.

He smiles brightly.

And he's hoping and praying

that the warden will keep his focus on him

rather than spot the window covering is missing already.

Sometimes fortune favors the bold,

because the warden becomes distracted

by other raucous inmates...

And simply moves on.

The next day, Harper and Woolard are back at it,

but they run into an unexpected problem.

Harper realizes not only the window frame,

but the mechanism holding the window louvers in place,

are made of reinforced cut-proof steel.

The hacksaws aren't making a dent.

After overcoming numerous challenges,

this new obstacle knocks the wind out of him.

How could the great thinker have overlooked this?

But Harper and men like him have a ruthless determination.

It's built into their psyches.

Harper looks for another detail he can exploit,

another way through.

He notices that the seam of the window box

in the wall looks different.

This window has reinforced steel,

and so they begin to experiment.

He hacksawed into this metal box

below the window.

Harper tries the hacksaw

and is able to saw the seam of the window box

made of softer metal.

Lifting the top of the box,

he's able to access a control box

that releases the window louvers,

then puts the top back down.

With the mechanism released,

Roy can remove the louvers from the window

without having to get through the cut-proof frame.

They're back in business.

Stage 1 is complete.

They've conquered the supermax window,

but they can't just crawl out in the middle of the day.

To hide the cut marks until they can make their break,

the thinker comes up with his own brand of spackle.

It's a hot summer night in May.

Harper and Woolard are ready,

but they need to be out of their cells

at exactly the same time for their plan to work.

They plotted out for the appropriate time

when they're gonna escape,

which was in the middle of the night, obviously.

They wait until the last cell checks at midnight.

To synchronize their progress,

they signal to each other once it's time to move

to the next step.

Step one, they hang sheets over their cells,

then uncover the window.

Step two, they change into their death-row jumpsuits

and prepare a dummy in their beds.

They figure they'll have till sunup,

but stuffing old clothes with newspaper and magazines

would buy them more time

and keep the guards from noticing.

Finally, step three, they throw their supplies

and strings attached to their sheets

out the window.

With all steps complete and the pair in sync,

it's go time.

On the outside, the first thing they do

is try to cover up their tracks.

They darken their faces

with the concoction that Harper cooked up.

Things are going according to plan,

but the greatest test is on the prison grounds,

where cameras, patrols, and a gun tower

could, in one quick moment, seal their fate.

They begin crawling along the narrow bit of shadow

that hugs cell block C and into the yard,

hoping the tower guards don't notice.

Between the interior fence and the outer fence

is a "kill zone," as it's called.

If they're discovered in that area,

that tower guard has the authority

to shoot to kill.

If you get beyond the first fence,

they're gonna shoot first and ask questions later.

Harper and Woolard start to saw the chain-link.

The guard tower does not spot them.

Harper and Woolard move through fence one

into the kill zone.

They start cutting the second fence

when suddenly a bright light shines

through the circular razor wire,

blinding them.

They're literally caught in the headlights.

Unit 32's perimeter patrol

could spell "doom" for Harper and Woolard.

Is the perimeter patrol about to end

the carefully detailed escape plans

of Roy Harper and John "JW" Woolard?

They cross the kill zone unscathed,

cut through the second fence,

only to be met by an armed patrol vehicle.

They start hacksawing through the second fence,

and a patrol happened to come by

at that exact same moment.

Amazingly, they get another stroke of luck,

and the vehicle passes them by.

This is it, but somehow the patrol goes by.

Harper and Woolard have cleared Unit 32,

but their escape is not yet complete.

They enter stage 3 of their plan:

get out of the Delta and get as far away from Mississippi

as they can.

They know they'll have until a few hours after sunup

to disappear, so they run off into the night.

At daybreak, Harper and Woolard have been on foot

traversing the hot, humid Mississippi Delta for hours.

They're an easy target,

since much of the Delta is flat land.

Sure that a search party will be soon on their tail,

they've got to get to cover.

If they can make it to nightfall,

they stand a better chance of not getting caught

in the Delta.

The sun comes out, and you're gonna be seen

if you're moving around, so they hide in a thicket.

It turns out, they had more time

than they thought.

The dummies do their job,

and the guards don't notice they're gone

until hours after sunrise,

giving Harper and Woolard a 12-hour head start.

So hours later, they noticed that Harper didn't eat his meal

and thought, "Well, that's odd."

There was a inmate delivering food

that actually informed the staff

that something was wrong.

The sergeant called for a takedown team.

A group of riot guards burst into Harper's cell,

where they meet the dummy Harper

and his breakout window.

Once that discovery is made,

the prison itself goes on lockdown.

Harper and Woolard have gotten a head start,

making it much harder for law enforcement

to apprehend them.

The first 24 hours in a prison escape

is absolutely critical

because it is when the vast majority

of people who've escaped from prison get caught.

You are trying to contain an inmate

within certain boundaries,

so learning as much as you can as quickly as you can

helps facilitate their capture.

At the FBI office, we were notified

two individuals had escaped from Parchman.

We sent out what's called an "EC,"

or an electronic communication,

to all FBI offices all throughout the United States.

Even with a head start,

Harper and Woolard are not in the clear.

Sleep-deprived, they're bogged down

in a humid, muddy Delta, waiting for night.

It was 100 degrees, mosquitoes everywhere.

They're huge, and they will smother you.

They tried to stay as still as possible.

Over the din of the mosquitoes,

they hear voices.

A search party is in the vicinity.

Come on!

Eventually, the sounds fade.

They've avoided capture.

For a week, they hide

and make their way across the Delta,

surviving on the meager amount of clean water and food

they've carried in the backpacks.

They'd gone to a little town called Webb, Mississippi,

found a house, hunkered down outside,

watching this house.

Again, very methodical.

Sunday, church time,

and this old couple apparently walked outside

to get into their car.

Harper and Woolard decide they need that car

if they're gonna make it out of Mississippi

and complete the final stage of their escape.

While they wait for the couple to return from church,

they help themselves to the house.

Dying from hunger,

they storm the fridge, cupboards,

and stuff themselves to their hearts' content.

They change into stolen clothes.

Then they notice something incredible.

An arsenal of firepower

in the pantry.

Pistols, shotguns, ammo.

For Harper and Woolard,

it's Christmas morning in June.

When they hear the car of the elderly couple

pull into the driveway,

they stake out positions in the house.

The elderly couple walks towards the kitchen door.

Let's hope they said their morning prayers.

Woolard and Harper have eluded the authorities

for nearly a week.

Now they've broken into the home

of an elderly couple,

where they've found food and weapons.

The elderly couple is just returning home from church.

Woolard and Harper, shotguns at the ready,

await their arrival.

They're in for the surprise of their lives.

Harper conveys instructions.

He won't hurt them. He just wants their car.

They comply and hand over the keys.

They tie the couple up and part ways.

Harper and Woolard now have their getaway vehicle.

They have a car.

They have clothing.

They're hitting the road, and they're free.

They've done what the vast majority

of people who escape from prison

aren't able to do, which is essentially

made it beyond that first day.

They hightail it out of Mississippi.

Harper and Woolard have done it.

They made it out of Unit 32, out of the Delta,

and Mississippi is in their rearview mirror.

They just have to disappear.

Unfortunately for them,

an interstate manhunt is just heating up,

a hunt that's just changed from on foot to in vehicle.

What could possibly go wrong?

For starters,

when police rescue the elderly couple

a few hours later,

they learn exactly what car they should be looking for.

The question becomes "Okay, what direction?

Where did they go with this car?"

Again, we put out another

BOLO, or "Be On the Lookout,"

for this vehicle and this tag.

The fugitives make their way north through Arkansas

and head towards West Virginia.

With law enforcement in multiple states

now tracking a Chevy Caprice,

Harper soon realizes they've got to change vehicles.

In a motel parking lot, they attack and steal a van

from an unsuspecting patron.

Thinking one step ahead,

Harper and Woolard paint the brown van blue

and put different plates on it

to make it look like a whole other vehicle.

They head west into Indiana,

but this is where Woolard's brashness

starts to become a liability.

They get caught speeding.

You know, we just wait for people

to make stupid mistakes once they're out,

and that certainly occurred here with John Woolard

speeding down the road, and he gets stopped.

Officer Raymond Coleman approaches the van cautiously.

Woolard fires at the officer,

but the shot misses,

and the discharge blows him backward.

A high-speed chase begins.

Harper begins to fire from the van.

It's the worst of the worst.

They're convicted violent felons

and have engaged law enforcement

in a gun battle.

Officer Jim Poling joins the pursuit

as the outlaws head into Crown Point, Indiana,

recording the chase on his dash cam.

So I immediately jumped in my squad car.

It's the major leagues,

and you gotta step up to the plate.

The stress... it... it's a mess.

I probably had my squad car well over 100,

just trying to catch up to 'em.

With the help of a spike-filled

tire-deflation device,

officers pop the van's tires...

Causing sparks,

forcing the van off the interstate

into a truck stop.

Harper and Woolard are cornered.

I'm figuring that this is gonna end

somewhere in the truck stop,

but we're not gonna let 'em escape.

Rapid fire exchanges

between Harper and Woolard and the officers,

but their shots aren't having much effect.

The thinker once again thinks ahead.

We managed to discover they had put

some clothing and luggage

on the side of that van inside of it,

and it was like a fortress.

Our pistol rounds were basically doing nothing.

Harper and Woolard make a break for it.

Amidst the chaos of sirens and gunfire,

they miraculously get away.

They're on the run again and back on foot

into the Indiana night.

With nearby towns on high alert,

Harper and Woolard hide

and sneak around rural Indiana for two days.

Badly in need of water and food,

they head out of the woods.

But that's exactly when they run into the law again.

I drove around

and saw the two individuals come out of the woods,

and then they were walking right toward me.

That's when I confirmed

that this was the two individuals

that we were looking for.

Officer Turturillo had never fired a weapon

in all of his years on the St. John police force,

and now he's face to face

with two of the most dangerous,

cunning criminals he will ever meet.

I stayed in the cover of my car.

I was standing with the door open,

and when they got about five feet

from the front of my car,

that's when I took my gun out

and I drew down on them.

Woolard put his hands on the front of the car.

Harper put his hands

on the left front fender of the car.

And I'm getting ready to get them on the ground

so we can wait for backup

so we can get them handcuffed,

and Woolard looked right in Harper's eyes,

and he said...

As soon as he started running,

Harper's right hand came off

the left front fender of the car.

And as soon as I saw him move his hand,

I kept my sights on him, and I said,

"If you move again, I will take it

"as an act of aggression, and I will shoot you.

Do you understand me?"

And he said, "Yes, sir."

Two hours later,

Woolard crashes a van on the interstate...

another van he stole at gunpoint

from a nearby car wash.

He's cuffed and arrested moments later.

Harper's story doesn't end

after he's sent back to Parchman.

Appalled by the conditions,

he becomes part of a prison reform movement

that finally succeeds in closing Unit 32

due to the violations of basic human rights.

That was in 2010.

Six years later,

his first novel is published.

In it, he writes,

"A man should have a personal code of conduct,

"a code of laws to live by

"which you feel in your heart are right.

"Then never deviate from them,

even when it hurts."

"Live life by your own rules"

is a philosophy Harper still believes in.

But today, and for many years to come,

he's in Colorado,

serving a life sentence in a supermax

and living by someone else's rules.