Prison inmate Mark DeFriest could finally be allowed parole after decades in jail

MARK DeFriest was supposed to have been freed 22 years ago but is still behind bars because of his extraordinary antics.

“IF I was a rapist or murderer they would let me out. But I’m the idiot who made them look like idiots.”

That was Mark DeFriest, the prison inmate known as Houdini, or jailhouse MacGyver, in a 2014 television documentary about his extraordinary life.

He was nicknamed after the illusionist and secret agent because of the way he humiliated guards for decades with brazen escapes. Straitjackets, cells, leg irons — DeFriest has managed to get free of them all in 13 escape attempts. Seven were successful.

But DeFriest was always caught again and brought back to the jail, which has been his home since he was 19.

Here’s the twist. Each time he tried to escape he had time added to his sentence, so he is still in jail aged 55 for a relatively minor theft charge. He should have been freed when he was 23.

In total, he has now served 36 years — longer than some double murder sentences — for the theft of some tools that were left to him in his father’s will.

His four-year sentence has accumulated to 105 years. While supporters say there needs to be punishment for the escape attempts, they argue the jail time has transformed him from a low level offender to a notorious jail-breaker.

Even the circumstances of his initial arrest are controversial. After his father died in 1979, the then 19-year-old went into his shed and took the tools. His stepmother called police and a family argument has led directly to the situation he is now in.

DeFriest has spent decades longer than he needed to in jail.

DeFriest believes he has been punished severely because he has made fools of those who have been tasked with keeping people like him locked up.

He is under no illusions as to the incredibly harsh treatment he has received. “If I was a rapist or a murderer, they’d let me out. But I’m the idiot who made them look like idiots,” he said in the documentary The Mind of Mark DeFriest.

Filmmaker Gabriel London told The Huffington Post the case illustrated how troubled the US system was. “It is one of the cases you look at and you can see the whole prison world through that lens. You can understand how the prison-industrial complex in the US is built up. And it’s around people like Mark.”

His escapes are the stuff of legend. In once case, while in a mental institution, he laced the guards’ drinks with LCD he took from the pharmacy.

In another, he ripped out one of his teeth to justify a trip to the dentist. Another time he built fake guns in the jail’s wood shop to escape. The ‘guns’ were used in several of his escape attempts.

One occasion, he catapulted himself over a wall and long rows of razor sharp barb wire.

Perhaps the most extraordinary was when he memorised a key hanging on a guards belt and was able to replicate it in his cell.

The escapes were not tolerated by authorities, who sent him Florida State Prison, considered one of the worst prisons in the US, where he spent time in solitary confinement. His lawyer has claimed he spent 20 years without seeing natural light.

During his time there, he reported seeing an inmate killed, and being the victim of vicious beatings and even raped.

Jail time in other Florida institutions followed, as did spells in New Mexico. But after the documentary aired, 70 years was removed from his sentence, allowing him hope that one day he would be released.

The sentence reduction was granted by the Florida Parole Commission who heard testimony that he was never mentally competent to stand trial.

It has only been in recent days, though, that the real prospect of him being allowed free has risen.

At a parole hearing last Wednesday, the commission gave him six months in a transitional program that teaches life skills, with a view to releasing him in August.

His lawyer John Middleton told The New York Times it was a positive move. “It went well enough today that I would consider it a victory,” he said.

The release date isn’t a done thing however. If charges are dropped in California and Alabama, where he has served time and misbehaved in jail, then he will be allowed out.

Mr Middleton shed some light on what it was like dealing with DeFriest, and the efforts he had made to try to convince him to behave.

Mark DeFriest pictured here as a child with his father. Picture: The Life and Times of Mark DeFriest

The Life and Mind Of Mark DeFriest was released in 2014.

“[It was] kind of like telling a kid ‘Don’t put your hand in the cookie jar,’” Mr. Middleton told the New York Times.

He could see why DeFriest was in the mess he was in. “I understand their frustration with Mark,” he told The Daily Beast. “He can’t conform, and he’s too damn smart. His way of getting even with them [detention officers] is making them look stupid with escape attempts.

“All of this is done not while he’s being a vicious person and hurting people, but because he’s reacting to the system. Mark reacts. He doesn’t understand the consequences of reacting the way he did. It became a mental game with him.”

Basically even those representing him have conceded he is his own worst enemy.

His state of mind is said to be quite negative, and he is fearful of being sent back to Florida from the Oregon jail he is currently in.

With just six months to go, all eyes will be on the “Prison Houdini” to see if he has finally learned to behave, and can fight the urge to again escape.

Otherwise it will be a case of history repeating itself — and it’s unlikely he will get another chance for a very long time.

Originally published as Prison inmate Mark DeFriest could finally be allowed parole after decades in jail