Mark DeFriest was 19 years old in 1980 when his stepmother called the police on him. His father had recently died and left him a set of mechanic’s tools in his will. DeFriest, not wanting to wait for the will to be formally probated, went to his father’s shed and collected them himself using a key.
He was convicted of burglary and sentenced to four years. The problem was that DeFriest couldn’t stay put.
He was born with savant syndrome, a rare neurological condition that gave him extraordinary mechanical and spatial abilities. By age six he could disassemble and reassemble complex mechanical watches. As an adult, he could look at a key hanging from a guard’s belt, memorize its precise pattern in seconds, and later recreate a working copy from whatever scrap material he could find. Toothpaste tubes became zip guns. Paper and foil became intricate artwork. Scrap metal became keys that opened doors that were supposed to stay locked.
He escaped seven times out of thirteen attempts. The methods varied. He sawed through iron bars. He scaled razor wire. He hot-wired cars. He broke out of wrist and leg restraints and straitjackets. On one occasion, guards’ coffee was reportedly spiked with LSD.
Each escape added years to his sentence. Then more years. Then decades.
Five out of six court-appointed psychiatrists found DeFriest mentally unfit to stand trial. The sixth disagreed. The state prosecuted him anyway. He spent 27 of his roughly 34 years inside in solitary confinement, much of it in total darkness, sometimes without clothes or human contact for days at a time.
His release date eventually reached 2085.
He Escaped Prison Seven Times—So They Gave Him a Release Date in 2085
