1. Still, Donovan believes El Chapo will live out the rest of his days alone, in prison. 'No one has ever escaped Supermax. He has no chance at all of ever getting out of there.' CNN's Sonia Moghe.
2. For the second time in 15 years Mexico’s most infamous drug lord escaped from a maximum-security prison. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, or the king of drains and tunnels, and his Sinaloa Cartel have been credited with building nearly 100 other tunnels on the US-Mexico border, including one he referred to as an “f’n cool tunnel.”.

With just over 7 years in prison, on January 19, 2001, El Chapo escaped in a vehicle that provided laundry services, in a task that involved 71 people including 15 prison guards. El Chapo Guzman Consolidates as the Most Wanted Drug Lord in the World.

Here's a controversial opinion: Prison sucks. The food is garbage, the sleeping accommodations leave a lot to be desired, and the entertainment options are nonexistent. With few ways to fill the hours of the day, some prisoners utilized their moral flexibility, complete and total disregard for natural selection, and excess of free time to plan the most impressive and certifiably insane prison escapes in human history.

Love breaks Steven Jay Russell out of jail

Conman Steven Jay Russell had an impressive criminal career. Using nothing more than a bogus resume and a smile, Russell talked his way into the position of Chief Financial Officer for a large health insurance company, where he redirected funds into his wallet. After a clerical error revealed his creative accounting, Russell found himself in the Harris County Jail, where he met the love of his life, Philip Morris, who was due to be released soon.

Russell was not the type of person to let prison separate him from the man of his dreams and would go on to escape from prison on four different occasions to be with Morris. To walk out of jail, Russell made a guard's uniform for one successful escape, a doctor's uniform for another successful attempt, and once got a hold of a cell phone to convince a court clerk to lower his bail. Russell's last successful escape from a maximum security prison was as insane as it was brilliant.

Russell used a crash diet and a supply of laxatives to simulate the rapid weight loss associated with a full-blown case of AIDS. Russell then arranged transfer to a minimum security prison hospital, followed by a transfer to hospice care, where once again he walked out the front door. Not once did it occur to anyone to actually run tests on Russell to determine if he really had AIDS. While free, Russell sent a fake death certificate to a Texas court house, making him legally dead. Suspicious of the chain of events, police familiar with Russell thought everything was a little too convenient and began tracking Morris. When Morris and Russell reunited in Florida — by law a story this crazy needs to have some connection to Florida — Russell was arrested, and his original sentence was extended to 144 years. Russell's story is so crazy that it had to be adapted into a film, and only an actor as graceful and dignified as Jim Carrey could do his story justice.

Pascal Payet's buddies really came through for him

When most people think about living out their golden years in the south of France, the maximum security prison in Grasse is probably not the destination that first comes to mind. Convicted murdered Pascal Payet, who was no stranger to prison escapes, was serving a life sentence when he decided that prison no longer held any appeal for him. Payet may have made some poor life choices that resulted in him serving a life term, but it turns out he did make some excellent decisions when it came to choosing friends.

One Saturday night back in 2007, the prison guards at Grasse were genuinely bewildered to see a helicopter landing on the roof of the maximum security wing of their prison. Suspiciously, the helicopter landed on the one part of the roof without a clear line of sight from the guard towers. Four masked men got out of the helicopter and used heavy equipment to cut their way through the two heavy metal doors between them and Payet. Within five minutes of the helicopter landing — less time than it takes for an Uber to arrive — Payet and his crew escaped into the night.

This was the second time that Payet escaped from prison using a helicopter. What is surprising was the Seinfeld-esque breakdown in communications prior to the escape. Not a single person thought it was important the let the prison guards, who were holding a convict who had a penchant for helicopter escapes, know that a helicopter in the area was stolen. Payet's story is just a few explosions short from being the opening scene of a Michael Bay movie.

Scenic Alcatraz is where the impossible happens

A 1962 escape from the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary created the gold standard that all other insane prison escapes are now judged by. The architecture of Alcatraz was worthy of a supervillain's lair: the prison was built on a island, surrounded by freezing cold waters, and had one guard for every three prisoners. No one thought escape was possible until three inmates did just that. When the certified genius and bank robber Frank Morris became a guest at Alcatraz in 1960, he looked at the walls, ocean, and guards and thought that this would be a nice project to occupy some time. Enlisting the help of fellow inmates Allen West and the Anglin brothers, the group would spend the next two years working on the most metal arts and crafts project in history.

Fake heads were made out of papier-mâché and hair from the barbershop to fool the guards during bed checks. Tools barley suitable for assembling an IKEA living room set helped the prisoners to access to an unguarded ventilation shaft through the air vents in their cells. Opting to avoid the mistakes made in other escape attempts, like drowning, the group constructed a raft out of stolen and donated raincoats. With the small exception of West not being able to escape from his cell, all of the elements of Morris's plan came together perfectly, and the prisoners disappeared into history. The prison was turned into a National Park shortly after the escape, forever ensuring that Park Rangers could get a sweet gig in San Francisco

El Chapo In Us Prison

El Chapo outsourced his escape

Where Morris relied on his wits and his own two hands to escape from Alcatraz, Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán left the planning and execution of his escape to capable professionals. For thirteen years, El Chapo was on the run from Mexican authorities. In that time, El Chapo oversaw one of the largest drug smuggling operations in human history until his arrest in 2014. Compared to thirteen years on the run, prison was practically a vacation for El Chapo. Regular bribes ensured that El Chapo spent his days enjoying the company of prostitutes in the most luxurious prison cell money could buy. When extradition to the United States became a reality in 2015, El Chapo prudently decided to relocate.

Rather than getting his hands dirty with digging a tunnel or shooting his way out of prison, El Chapo had a tunnel built for him. As a man who enjoyed the finer things in life, El Chapo wanted the best escape tunnel in the world. The result was thirty-three feet underground, nearly a mile long, thirty inches wide, and five-and-a-half feet tall. If that wasn't impressive enough, the tunnel also had electrical lights running the entire length, plus a drainage and air filtration system. (What, no Starbucks at the midpoint of the tunnel?) When the time came for the escape, a motorcycle mounted on a rail provided quick transportation to freedom. The man actually escaped prison without breaking a sweat. It is amazing when unlimited funding is combined with a complete lack of moral scruples.

Brian Bo Larsen's escape addiction

Brian Bo Larsen has the honor of simultaneously being one of the worst criminals and best escape artists that Denmark has ever produced. Larsen, now in his forties, has spent the majority of his life in and out of prison for crimes ranging from theft to armed robbery. It is worth noting that prisons in Denmark are a little different from their American counterparts. The prisoners have comfortable cells, wear their own clothes, eat with their families once a week, and there is a noticeable lack of high walls, barbed wire, and shower stabbings.

Despite the comfort of Danish prison life, Larsen has chosen to escape, as of this writing, an astounding 22 times. In one instance, he borrowed a bulldozer and crashed it through the prison walls, freeing himself and 13 others. Larsen's most recent escape attempt reads more like a TMZ article than a crime report. After escaping from prison again and consuming roughly all of the drugs in Denmark, Larsen started partying with a local sex worker. After discovering that walking was difficult, the couple stole a car that was promptly crashed into a tree, and the escapee was quickly recaptured. Keep at it Larsen — one day you'll figure it out.

This is why convicts can't have nice things

Neil Moore is perhaps one of the most dangerous people on the planet ... when he has a smartphone. Using nothing more than a cell phone, charm, basic knowledge of web design, and a natural talent for impersonations a Saturday Night Live cast member would sell their soul to possess, Moore talked dozens of gullible bank employees into handing him ungodly sums of cash. Moore's talents eventually landed him in a prison cell in the exceedingly British-sounding Wandsworth Prison. While most prisoners hustle to get their hands on cigarettes, pruno, or porn to make their stay more comfortable, Moore hustled for a smartphone.

With that small piece of technology that most take for granted, Moore planned a quick and clean escape. Using a technique known as typosquatting — registering a fake site with a similar spelling to that of a real website — Moore built a pretty decent copy of the website for the Southwalk County Court with his newly acquired smartphone. Moore then sent a pretty scary looking email from the website's domain to the administrators of Wandsworth Prison, ordering his immediate release. Three days after walking out of prison, he turned himself into the police and had seven years added to his prison term. While most people would view this as a major life setback, Moore confidently returned to prison knowing that he could leave whenever he needed to. It's almost as if he turned himself in as part of some diabolical and intricate criminal plot concocted by a Bond villain ... oh dear.

If it fits, it ships

In 1987, Richard Lee McNair was sentenced to a life term in prison after murdering a guard during an attempted robbery of, of all places, a grain elevator. Between 1988 and 2006, McNair would escape from prison three times. While his first two escapes were pretty conventional, McNair's last escape was simple, brilliant, and a little insane. After being transferred to a Louisiana prison, he got a job assignment repairing broken canvas mail bags. In short order, he hid in pile of mailbags, which was later shrink-wrapped, placed on a pallet, and shipped to an unguarded warehouse.

Has Anyone Ever Escaped Jail

While running away down a highway, carrying no identification and wearing prison clothes, McNair was stopped and questioned by Officer Carl Bordelon. What should have been a career highlight for Bordelon turned into YouTube gold as his dashboard camera recorded McNair spending ten minutes talking his way out of what should have been the easiest recapture in prison escape history. At one point in the video, Officer Bordelon even mentioned the he was looking for an escaped convict before letting him go. McNair's luck did not hold out. He was recaptured, and has probably been workshopping his next escape ever since.

Harnessing the bureaucracy

Movies like The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, and the tragically underrated Will Arnett masterpiece Let's Go To Prison create the impression that prisons are staffed by sadistic bullies with massive inferiority complexes. In actuality, prisons are staffed by civil servants who have a mind-numbingly tedious job. Prisoners Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins noticed how the staff at the Florida State Franklin Correctional Institute would blindly obey whatever an official looking form stated and got the an idea to use the soul-crushing weight of the prison bureaucracy in their favor. The pair created some rather impressive documents ordering their immediate release, and those orders were promptly obeyed.

Considering their rather limited computer access and the few materials they were allowed to have, their arts and craft project is all the more impressive. The release documents had signatures that matched those of a Orlando-based state attorney, as well as a judge. For good measure, the pair used the official seal of the Orlando County Clerk's office. Less than a month after their escape, the pair was undramatically recaptured in a Panama City motel room. Upon their return to prison, the state of Florida reevaluated the computer usage policy for inmates, no doubt earning them the everlasting thanks of every violent convict who could no longer go online to argue about movies and look at cat memes.

Toy guns can be useful

How Many Times Has El Chapo Escaped Prison Escape

In jails and prisons around the world, the routine is everything. When something like a power outage, late delivery, or one of the most famous gangsters of the day pointing a gun at a guard happens, the routine collapses and everyone involved collectively panics. While in custody at the Crown Point county jail in Indiana, John Dillinger used a wooden gun to pull off one of the most insane prison escapes in American history.

How Many Times Has El Chapo Escaped Prison Inmate

Reports vary, but what can be agreed upon is that Dillinger used a wooden gun that even a LARPer would probably dismiss as unrealistic to get released from his cell, take at least three guards hostage, and then liberate two machine guns from the jailers. After his comedic change of circumstance, Dillinger locked the guards in his old cell and stole a car from the parking lot that happened to belong to the local sheriff.

How Many Times Has El Chapo Escaped Prison Facility

This escape would prove to be Dillinger's undoing. By stealing a car and driving it across state lines, he committed a federal offense, so the FBI came after him with every resource available. So when Dillinger was murdering his way through the Midwest stealing everything that wasn't bolted down, he came out incarcerated, but unscathed. But violating the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act? That'll get you killed.