Escaping Thailands Death row - David McMillan p3

Prisoners' games have been taking place for as long as prisons have been around.

“In fact, one of the earliest prisoners' games on record was back in the 13th century,”

when a Welshman was imprisoned in the famed Tower of London. He would craft a makeshift rope from bed sheets and cloths, lowered from a window, he'd climbed down. One of the world's most famous prison escapes was that of Brothers John and Clarence England and Frank Morris. Three men who would escape from the world's most secure prison in 1962.

The famous Alcatraz. [MUSIC]

The escape had many elements that would capture the world's interest.

The sheer planning alone was quite ingenious. The three men would make dummy heads of themselves, made from plaster and real hair,

“they'd place them in their bunk, so as to fool the guards who would make regular rounds during the evening.”

They'd escape through vents in the cells, scaling up pipes and out of a ventilator grill on the top of the prison. Then they'd make their way down the building, climbing the prison fence and to the water's edge. The water being the frigidly cold San Francisco Bay. It was then a 1.25 mile or two kilometer swim to shore. They'd stolen 50 raincoats in which to construct a raft in order to assist them with the swim.

But it's what happened next that is likely the reason this escape has become so famous around the world.

Because to this day, no one knows if those men ever made it or not. The three men were the only ones to ever successfully escape from Alcatraz. And David McMillan is still the only westerner to successfully escape his prison. The infamous Klong-Prem Prison. Also known as the Bangkok Hilton.

Two clocks come and I'm still working away on one bar. That'd be fine during the day when you could make a bit of noise. My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wanted. So in our previous episode, David had just been told by his lawyer that things weren't good.

It was all over. He was to be executed in two weeks. At this point, David had been an unwitting guest of the Bangkok Hilton for a couple of years. And it spent that time scavenging for things that would be useful to him for his big departure. The one thing he didn't have was hacksaw blades.

He could of course go to the machine shop within the prison and pay another inmate for the blades. But he says that he would be instantly ratted on. And it would be straight to the punishment week. So instead, he has them delivered. The woodlit foreigners have care packages. The locals had a few things essentially in that cut there.

So bars and have poor their shampoo and what audience were in newspapers to take it with them. Dunk their clothes and buckets of water and face and dried out drugs or toxicants in them or something. I don't know what. But anyway, just to make the point, you can't have anything. But for us, well, they're not going to be bringing drugs in from foreign countries. Foreign countries are just rich people and it's free to go a bit up and up and up and up.

But I was a bit worried about hexal blades coming and so I gave Michael a little task to do. In the care packages, there'd be clothing, there'd be food, there'd tins of staff, the whole works. Artists, materials, all sorts of stuff. But one thing that did kind of mean something to them was religious responsibility.

“So Michael, a scroll, like a neuron attachment, what was written on it?”

Go placidly amid the noise and haste. Do you probably remember the opening line? It was from supposedly from some monastery and changed the things you can. And fuck up with it. They often can't do anything about that kind of thing. From some monk. Anyway, that would do it. And it did arrive in Michael's fine hand in this huge parcel with every...

...a mess of truckered over to the Melbourne Post Office to do it.

About $150,000 in postages on it.

“And back there in there meant something.”

And he'd gone to the trouble of a further recipe for this thing perfectly. The scroll had dull, top and bottom. And which he had to use a radial arm saw to cut deep and not too deep into it. To place the saw blades in aluminium foil, which blocks the x-rays, not that that really would have made a hell of a difference.

You could barely see the teeth. Go and put gold painted and legged knobs on the end of this thing. But here it is. This is a very important thing. I might cast out a couple of cartons of cigarettes to keep the guard on side as he's poking through my stuff. But I need a guarantee that this parcel wouldn't be looked at too closely.

What could I do? Any ideas then? You've got a parcel coming in. They've had somebody useless, but none of them is thorough in their own ways, because they've got their own booths and trustees for the poking and shoving and sniff it.

You want to make sure all stops suddenly.

And no interest is taken in your asshole. What? Do you put in there? You've got to put something in there. There's going to stop them in their tracks. There. Okay. You heard him. What would you do?

How would you ensure that guard looks no further?

“What would you place in that box that he will see as soon as he opens it that will make him stop his search?”

Time's up. Okay. I'd make it terrible. Oh, I'm sure if you're in there with me then. You didn't prove it. A remarkable time.

Especially when death penalty was rumoured. Yeah. Of course. I said to Michael, listen. Go out.

Find. For expensive glossy, high-quality colour printed. Don't be pornography, the most extreme kind you could possibly. Things that you wouldn't want to give your sick half cousin and Detroit put it in there. And on the top, by the way.

This guy was, I mean, he was trying to be like, "Do me a favor." He just wasn't not going to know. And the next one underneath the be worse. Yeah. And the, and the, and the, these brushes.

I'll get rid of it, boss. No, fuck off you. Well, I'd put it very carefully under his chair. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Take yourself and get out of here. Get, get, get, get, get. Yeah, right. Sorry about that. I don't know if he's my cousin.

He's nearly, he sent me off so soon. As mentioned previously, David had to get himself into a quieter cell. Most of these cells would usually hold around 14 men, which was just far too many people. One or more would certainly sound the alarm. Luckily though, David had essentially managed to buy himself a much quieter room with just a few cellmates.

Who is in the cell? My man's haven't jet. So name because jet being seven, he was the seventh child. Tiny little guy trying to rub a bath. The passengers carried him out.

Last week, he had to spend embarrassment. Because guns have been straight away. Yeah. Well, after the size of the big gun, little boy. Anyway, his story was shameful enough.

But he found his calling as my headbattle. And heading my section, which was the art studio. They sold cell paintings. It was open prices outside. And the chief guard of the art section was a notorious drunk.

I mean, I came up in his chair every day.

“And the only thing he'd sober up enough was send out my mail.”

But he very diligently did. Because it had to time out, sort of, on his lunch break. So it was between hangover and inspiring again. So it was quite a nice little place. And jet, I think we had a carpenter.

We had a French regime, no, who was the chef. We didn't burn charcoal. Oh, that was for commoners. We had our own electric ring. The boys are collected the ice.

The ones who fetched my water for my little splash upstairs. That wasn't going to show the commoners.

Yeah, I had to, you know, a life that they would never think

that I'd want to walk away from. They let me run around inside the building. I even tried to copy the keys in one stage. And make one at a resin and chips of metal. It doesn't work, you know.

You'd be surprised how much torsion strength you need

even in a new one.

But a heavy lock in the left.

Well, we could speak ages on that. I'm quite profitable too. Back now, the keys were up.

“So, and there was quite a little family there.”

But it wasn't the so Kevin from Hawaii. And of course, Stan from Sweden and myself. The only odd ball in there. And it was kind of a head-to-take in me. I mean, at least he wasn't a kitty fiddle or anything.

It was mirage from a respectable profession of people's muggler. Oh, I know they've got a bad name these days. But he bought his men nothing to mirage. Passports meant an awful lot, because I said to him, "What's out?" I mean, I used to film my time.

How often could you use these things? And what equipment did you have? A reading lamp. Hold it over, and the plastic comes away. You changed the picture.

Well, that wouldn't be a really great job. Great job. Whether they're being paid money at the airport, they need a great job. They'll go ahead of passport. I was doing them a favor by giving them some documentation.

And mostly a Chinese who wanted to start a new life somewhere. But, uh, for all his virtues, mirage was absolute. Miser and a complete coward. I had to move on straight within that Wednesday for trying to mistreat my cat.

So he has his room of somewhat trusty cellmates. But he would only have the help of one of them. A sweet name, Stan, who was initially supposed to go with him on the escape. But would back out after seeing what had happened to another group who had been caught escaping a separate prison.

That night began about 2015 to the right of.

“Um, and told anybody that's why I was still there to cut away at midnight.”

But Stan was didn't put a company more. I was going to get him a passport all of that stuff. But he was one of those guys in prison as they are. That's absolutely fine in controlled environment where they've got to fight the very obese. Opposition as it were.

Completely lost in the real world. People said to me, "What's up there, guy?" He stayed with somebody around town. I rubbed them of everything in the house. I'm not asking.

I'm not worried about my silverware. My dinnerware collection or my Royal Dalton. He was going to come on the night. But these guys turned up from Chiang Mai who'd been in a little escape from a tin pot jail and got caught.

He's released their word. And they had no plan B.

And you know what the most important part of it in the escape is?

Yes? Oh, I can look.

“I can hear it down the line of the podcast listeners.”

They're saying, "What you do when you get out of the wall?" Exactly. That's what they looked at. True audience. You're very right.

And it's really friends. They've been in any Israeli army prepared. But they were not prepared for a guest house in Chiang Mai. Where they'd done the ill-begotten dealings. But when they went back to them, all it did was reach the money

and hand them over to the authorities when they finished. The gods didn't like the idea of them escaping. It took such a dim view of it. They even had their picture on took to drive us all around town. With a reward of it, police are not involved with this.

They don't really, never.

But, and then treat them to a well when they got brought back in. I saw them down at their buildings coffee shop as they like to call it. Around the Banyan tree, telling people what it happened to them. And their legs were in heavy elephant chains. They were all mangled and scarred.

Imagine some angry kid and McDonald scrunching up a bunch of drinking straws and throwing them on the ground. That's what the legs look like. So I had their tasks of trying to explain to my Swedish friend how this wasn't such a bad thing. So around their little at-shop, my office had lunchtime there.

And I said, "Send it! Hey, you've got to meet a couple of guys who just come in. There's really a bad splatzer. They look a bit rough. I mean, that's, guys didn't like them getting out. You know, you can imagine iron bars on their legs,

on the left through rocks on them. Well, it was lucky one could get some water and feed the other. Or they wouldn't be with us today. But, plus and over that, no, we have a people at St. Louis. We have a place to go.

We have plants. It just, that was it. He bailed out of that. Yeah. He just wanted to come up.

Before Plan B, it was time to put into action Plan A.

An instantly realises this is going to be harder than he thought.

“And it was all different than I expected.”

Two clocks come and I'm still working away on one bar. It might be fine during the day when you could make a bit of noise. But it was like, I don't know what, the single stroke of that tungsten teeth across the ancient bar

and after midnight when we first started,

it was like some nightmare giant violin that's scraping catcat across a recipe surface. It was really resonated in a wrong way. Went to slow down a bit. I left him to it because I knew I'd need my energy later.

One of the buzz was cut through. At the first cut, it sprang away from the rest of itself. It was hundreds, so much stress for 50 years being as the building collapsed. This was going to be some job. About halfway through the other end of that bar.

And it's coming up at the very clock in the morning. Let's go back to the next day. No, no, no, no.

“I knew. I looked at my eyes and I thought,”

"He was healed."

Because he knows what happens to people in this game.

He would break a leg down there. And for my head, but the well, of course, he was perfectly well, but he just couldn't. He'd be busting with pride, wouldn't he? And I'll tell you why I know he would have been like that

because just as I was a little later on, when I'm getting ready to climb out, this tiny opening that's been left there, I turned around on this. My master Butler of the court is standing there,

and he's suddenly going to meet in best clothes. Once he used for the occasional visit, he got twice a year or something. He's got his little bits of letters and photographs wrapped up and plastic and a rubber band.

“And he's even got a little tissue poking out of his good t-shirt.”

It's got a pocket at it. And he's good sandals on it. I go with you. Good. Very inconspicuous.

Yeah, but he was touching to see him there. You know, in a kind of way. It was one of the troops ahead of his section, and he wasn't going to see the chief go out without him being at his side, nor are the kind of thing.

No, no. I was like, I gave him money, I gave him a good watch. I said, look, it was like that speech out of Casa Blaca,

where I'm going kid, you don't want to go. [laughter] And Stan managed to climb up on the window. And grab this bar and wrench it up with his hands, grasping this bar and pulling it up like it was strangling,

everybody had ever touched some slight on his perfectly. And I managed to squeeze through, virtually naked with just the things I'd need. Finally, David was out. His face, looking up into the night sky.

An instant feeling comes across him that he is no longer one of them. He is no longer an inmate. In fact, he looks back into the cell he's just escaped from, looking at those men's faces as if they're strangers. But of course, he's still an inmate.

And there is still a long way to go. And time was running out before daylight. He uses the cell's bookshelf, which was just an old building plank and pokes it out into the night sky. He would need to slide across this to get far enough out

so as to avoid an extremely delicate and crumbling awning below. I couldn't even put a toe on that. It would have crumbled away and alerted the loads and trustees who slipped

in the second best self in the building under there.

He slides down the army webbing to the ground below, flicks it clear of the plank. As Stan, the sweet pulls it back into the room. He calls down to David. Send me a postcard.

None of the men in that room ever thought he would get very far. But off into the night he goes. He has a rough idea of where the guards were. And had a few dummy runs as best he could. However, the trouble was, these had to be done previously during the day.

The world is a much different place at night.

and got out at that time because everything was slower.

“I timed it during the day, but the footsteps you take are not as quick.”

As during the day, as you're walking through it, the sound everything makes as I've said is where there was some place that was meant to actually, I needed to visit. It had been repaired and I need to take one nail out. And that made a real protest at coming out of the plywood as I tore it out

with some ten supplies and a dollar from somewhere. So what he goes. And as mentioned, clung-print prison is a vast facility. And there's more than just one wall on the outside to contain with.

And all good prisoners. Kaps need a letter, and especially this one. Because this was internal, both. I knew not how many. It was made out of long bamboo poles and picture frames.

Then it tended to take an interest in oil painting the last six months. It made very solid picture frames, which when I got into the factory that had a reason to long for go into to have a long bamboo pole. I laid two of those down, put the picture frames in between them. Use gaffer tape to tie it all up.

“That gave me two very long letters, probably about what?”

Four, four and a half meters each. And kind of heavy with all those picture frames in it. I told him not to make them so heavy, yeah. I don't know way much. Anyway, there they were.

I mean, I've been running and doing all of that as much as I could to blew up some stamina there. And it was stuck in the factory where the poles came from. I wanted to climb out into the water shop and then stop there from water because it's too hydrating.

Then go up, then wait for a guard who's passing. He's walking past the kitchen area and suddenly freezes. A guard is up and moving around. He stays low and in the dark. So still, he can hear his own breath.

“Luckily, the guards just grabbing some water and soon leaves the kitchen.”

After those few stops to pick up his previously hidden items, construct his ladder, it's time to move. And move he does quietly through the dark and muddy prison.

I only got to the first wall at about four o'clock in the morning

and wasted time trying to hook the rolls of barbed wire down from that anchor them to the ground. In the end, I found a short way to get over this by taping up the two ladders into one very long one, carrying it in the middle sliding it up at the first wall, the first side of the wall I wanted across. Climb up the top, use, wait, I had, but leverage really to walk along that ladder again

and it would tip the other way. So go into it on an angle, climb to the middle of the apex, walk down the ladder and it tilts back up onto the ground the other side. You drag it off. And carried it across in the loping stride that Michael at the pole vodka had told me to use when carrying something long and floppy like that.

Banged into a couple of things I didn't see in the night, including a big wire mesh thing got lost because it wasn't facing the right direction I thought I was. And I'm seeing all new buildings that places and wearing out guards and things. By this point, he's exhausted. He felt like he had nothing left, but of course he knew what would happen if he was caught. And it wasn't the death penalty that he feared.

At this point, it was what the guards would do to him if they got hold of him, so he continues on. When all of a sudden, he's spotted. But the smell of triggered me as I walked past the AIDS ward where they were all dying, horribly, that rotting flesh stays in the mind and stayed with me that night. And when I saw a little moony face up at the bars there, having a look,

this bed must have been pushed over on the edge, I guess. Anybody else would have screened the place down, far and far on the loose, far on. His pasted pain so much, no interest in it. No doubt his family had come wiped out and blackmailed heroin in there just to keep him. And his last weeks from screaming the place down.

Yes again, he presses on. And finally, at around 4.30 in the morning, he finds himself at the outer wall with a new problem.

It was three times as high as someone's had been encountering. No way of teaching over that one. And I'm covered in mud because I have to climb onto one of the bow-wire bits and running out of water. And I forgot about Mars by a creek.

In a moat that ran around inside the prison full of turds, of course,

“that's where the name comes from, that's by a creek.”

And Bob Boire, so I can't put my long letter over it, because it hits the wall. I can't ignore the creek because the bow-wire will tangle up the letter. The letter weighs more than 90 by this stage. How do I get it over there? Out of this narrow strip that runs around on the inside.

Now, if I had been with anybody else, we would have had a long stupid pointless fruitless discussion about that. And probably many other things about being lost and we're best to go. And all the time, clouding, the only instincts that mean anything to surviving human beings, which is a sense of smell really, and a sense of pattern and movement and the sounds of the night, and the things that are dangerous there in us, of course.

Yeah, all of those things were pushed me and who I was with beyond into the start of a new day. And then disaster. So, this is well, the sweet did not join me, or anybody for that matter. So, David, is standing at the edge of this creek, just across the creek, is about a foot and a half of land before you hit this massive outer wall.

He can't just wade through the creek, because it's full of barbed wire. So, how does he get himself across? How does he get his ladder across? Well, like every good storyteller, David says, you'll just have to read his book for that one,

but he manages it, and finally makes his way up the outer wall.

Once, with the ladder above there at the top of it, I could see Dorn was coming. There was a glow in the sky. Somehow, hardening, but terrifying at the same time, because I knew the shifts were coming. There was electricity, of course, on the top. Only 240 volts, and it hadn't been knocked up.

According to my friend who was a bit of an engineer in there, we'd looked at it long and hard, and decided they weren't any transformers. You know, if you've got a fence to keep cattle, you have this sort of high, and pretty low voltage thing. Here, they had household voltage, by the look of it.

But it was just 240, so it was kind of manageable. Providing you don't sweat on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“So, that's what you don't do at the top of it.”

I'd never heard of anybody being up there at the time, though, previously.

So, there's nothing to go on, but I knew where the insulators were, so if I needed a foothold, let's see, only possible place. And I'd changed into my car key non-trousers. The prison inmates not allowed non-trousers as a big thing in there. It's how you tell a prisoner from a non-prisoner.

But I was sweating and everything was damp, so I could feel a little tingle coming through from the current that was passing by. But I also knew enough not to over it. Anyway, it's not a choice. No choice of anything, nothing.

Get it right or that's it, finish. So David gets himself over the wall and down the other side. He's so close to freedom, he can taste it. The biggest issue with the part of the wall that he found himself at was that in fact it was spitting distance from a little village,

full of workers from the prison. And at the wrong time of the day as they're getting the shit together, get out and start taking bribes. It's hard work, where the mouth get ready. So I slid to their little footpath that goes around the outside of the prison.

And I had one little last ace at the sleeve. I went over the nominal jobs prison as my work.

“I can't remember whom did my work in which factory,”

and I knew it was the umbrella factory because I had taken the trouble to take a pop out black umbrella. So David has his secret weapon. An umbrella that can give him some cover from the guards and the towers above, as well as anyone walking past him. The only issue being that you might actually draw more attention to yourself

by walking around with an umbrella up at five o'clock in the morning when it's not raining. But as if by some sort of divine miracle, the rain starts to fall. So under the umbrella like Ripley,

getting off the alien spacecraft, I'm saying lucky lucky lucky to myself as I edge towards the front gate.

this put bridge or really would.

Cars can drive over, bringing vans of prisoners and so on and goods in and out. But that's too much I can't go there, but there's a little one I noticed at the side where the shop traders go.

“And I think there was a guard looking down on me because I poked out”

just a little bit of a look at the towers to see who's looking down. And they would have thought because the cocky trousers, that I was one of the guards sneaking in around the back way from late for work is usual. Besides prisoners,

what they may do when they're escaping, one thing they don't worry about is, implement weather and putting up, putting it umbrella up. And in fact, I think I saw one of the guards coming to work

that had one of my ATM cards, as I crossed out of the front section. In front of the prison is a big eight lane highway with a large steel bridge going over the top of it, which David climbs.

Once at the top he takes one last look back at the prison behind him. A place he had spent over two years in witness countless atrocities and realized he'd made it. But of course, by this time, Thailand is starting to come alive.

“People are waking up and getting ready for a new day,”

including the prisoners and guards of the Bangkok Hill. All I had to do now at that morning was somehow to get a passport and get to the airport and get out of town before they all woke up. What was going to say?

Because obviously, how long have you got before they realized that you're not there? Yes, I had not logged. And oddly enough, I did find out from somebody who stayed in was there,

Scottish guy. They didn't know where I was.

And never went back there held out.

He said, "I don't know." He said, "I haven't seen in this morning. I worked up and he was gone." Because we know from my door and locked it, they don't look inside because it's the type hands.

So, they were trying to get worried by about 11 o'clock. Somebody even pointed to the people's mogul and dragged me out and said, "Look, he's cut the bars out there. I tried to stop him.

Oh, but he beat me now." Or rather. But they didn't believe it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I didn't look very open.

I can't see. I could have got through there. And they sent around people calling my name. It was Daniel Westlake at the time. I had a Australian passport.

And somebody said it was like looking for a lost sheep. I knew where I was. You can come out. We were here too, don't worry. I had an address and a place where supposedly,

a passport was waiting for me. My Chinese friends. Well, actually, one of them met in prison. I'd given him a photograph. I didn't have a really good one.

It took up, it came off my radio operator's license. So it had to be enlarged and changed. And it had to go into a passport that was freshly stolen. Because he should belong to a tourist to just come in. And hadn't overstayed his visa or all his stuff.

He stamped and the stickers that they looked for stuck into it. So it was supposed to be in some guy's apartment. In the toilet, they're behind a mirror of the toilet cubicle.

“I'm getting there, and I've got the key to it,”

which was been sandwiched in a wooden handle. So that if I was caught, and there was no key, because if they found the key, they'd want to know who it is. Maybe they tortured me. I don't know what.

I've got the pattern that got in there. I'm in the toilet. Feeling around. I'm thinking, what are the odds? You know, it's some kind of jail for crying out loud.

And then giving this photograph, and he's going to get to a passport. And so I was really relieved to find the thing in there. I wasn't too thrilled a bit when I took a look at it. It wasn't the best work of art I've ever seen. So with this pretty rough fake passport in hand,

he jumped in a cab and headed for the airport. He arrives at the long-term luggage store where a friend had left a bag for him, containing some clothes, and more importantly, a couple of ATM cards. One of the cards, however, wasn't working. So this would leave David with just $500 in which to be able to travel.

For this the way he can get is Singapore. Although not in his plan, that is where he's headed. He lands in Singapore, checks himself into a hotel and has straight for the rooftop pool, where he dives straight in.

He might be free, but not for the first time in his life.

And he knew that he was going to be a good friend.

He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend.

He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend.

He was going to be a good friend.

He was going to be a good friend.

He was going to be a good friend. He was going to be a good friend. He's wanted. And he knew it wouldn't take much for the authorities to begin tracking him down. I found myself in a hotel room in Singapore.

“Working out how it would be that the authorities could trace me to Singapore, which is I think they could.”

If the authorities had simply figured that I'd left the country, gone down and took all the passenger list, figured that if I was in a false documentary, it would be what? American Canadian radiation, quite a few to choose from New Zealand, maybe even South African. And compare that passenger manifest with any reported lost to a stolen passport. We were speaking about being wanted.

And what's that like? Well, people often overthink the idea of going through any report of computer, because the document they might have has been reported lost to stolen. But really, they don't hold that information. That's in the background.

The front room is the Interpol watch list. By this method, they could really identify me. And probably several others who were travelling on assumed names that day. So I knew I had to get out of Singapore fairly quickly. And I sent for another passport.

This new fake passport took a little while as his friends had been at this point, scammed so many times from people either saying they were him or that they were breaking him out. And just needing 10,000 here or 5,000 there. And so to begin with, they weren't convinced it was actually him. However, once that hurdle was overcome, they sprang into action at a new passport and new ATM cards arrived.

And again, it's time to leave. And you'd travel, if you went to a dinky enough travel agency, you'd end up with a handwritten ticket. The agency could write them at my hand and then take all the slips to consolidate it. It was a very old-fashioned system. It was glorious, really, because there's so many mixups riding out of the city.

And I had to get backwards and forwards. But in due course, I found myself in Bluetooth town in the Eastern Western provinces of Pakistan. Where my old friend, a tribal Lord, Chief Nodron Mexie, who made me back in the days of first crossing into Afghanistan. It was the right place to be, because nobody could find me there.

And if they did, no good would come of that for them. If they had the desert holds a lot of secrets.

“So were you still playing around in the world of the, shall we say, not legal?”

Yeah, it's muddling not at first. But I found, I had limited resources. I went back into it really because I just, every scrap of everything to stay alive and get out of toilet. I owe a few people some favors.

They weren't being demanding, no, nothing. They'd been probably happy if I never did anything of it again.

But just want to safety in a little place to hide out of a few hundred thousand maybe half a million something. Modest humble. In fact, he would again be arrested in another country. And again, face a death penalty. But that's a story for another time.

David would do a few more stints behind bars in various countries around the world before retiring from the life in 2016. He decided it was far easier to write about crime instead of committing it. He, in fact, wrote a couple of books, won about his escape from clung-prem prison. Titled Escape, the true story of the only westerner ever to escape Thailand's Bangkok Hilton. The link to which is in the show notes of this episode.

David spent his life on the run, running from authorities and always trying to stay one step ahead of them. Trying to study their tactics and just how they operated. But what if you knew how they worked?

“What if you knew every inch of how they tracked people?”

Because at one point in time, you were one of them.

But I like to say, this is your organisation that I'm talking to, like I can't say anything more.

“Annie McCron worked as an intelligent officer for one of the world's most famous government spy agencies on the planet, MI5.”

That was, until the day she went on the run.

My family, my mother and my father certainly knew something was up, because I wouldn't talk about those things on the phone.

“Because I was worried about the communications.”

And there were certain indications as well that they might be on to us.

Next time, I'm wanted.

“I'm a wanderer of the soul before the end.”

I'm glad to be home. But I know how long is myself along the way. What's gone is gone. What's past is past. I feel the loss of my family.