Alabama Prison Inmates Used Peanut Butter To Escape, Other Bizarre Jail Breaks

A dozen inmates at the Walker County Jail, Alabama, escaped by using peanut butter Sunday. Though they were caught Tuesday, the jail break is bound to go down in the history as a ridiculous escape attempt.

Taking advantage of a novice guard minding the prison doors, the inmates changed the number over their cell door with peanut butter to resemble the door outside. They then asked the guard to open the door. The confused guard mistakenly released the lock on the cell door of the inmates and freed them in the process.

"It may sound crazy, but these people are crazy like a fox," Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood said at a news conference in Jasper on Monday, CNN reported. "And they scheme all the time to con us and our employees here at the jail. You have to stay on your toes. This is one time we slipped up. I'm not going to make any excuses. It was a human error that caused this to happen.”

Read: Murderer Attacks Prison Guards Violently To Escape

However, this is not the first instance of prison inmates using unusual methods to gain their freedom. Following are examples of prisoners who resorted to out-of-the-box ideas to escape from prisons:

John Dillinger

John Dillinger was a notorious bank robber and murderer of the early 20^th century. He was listed among America’s most wanted criminals after he and his gang robbed more than a dozen banks and a number of police stations, killing 10 people in the process. Dillinger was finally arrested and January 1934 and brought to Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana. However, Dillinger ended up escaping from the “escape-proof” prison a couple of months later by fashioning a fake gun out of wood and shoe polish, using sheriff's V-8 Ford to flee.

"If I ever see John Dillinger, I'll shoot him dead with my own pistol," Crown Point Sheriff Lillian Holley said, according to Time Magazine. "This is too ridiculous to talk about."

Andrew Rodger, Keith Rose, and Matthew Williams

Three inmates —Andrew Rodger, Keith Rose, and Matthew Williams — inside Parkhurst prison in Gauteng, South Africa, devised a plan to escape in January 1995. Their plan included a list of handmade items. They made a 25-feet-long ladder, a gun and a “master key” that could be used to open any door inside the prison, Independent reported.

All they had to do was to insert the key into the prison door that they had manufactured relying on their memory of the set of keys hanging on the warden’s hip and walk out of the gates when there was minimal security around. They scaled the fence using their ladder and walked into freedom, which unfortunately lasted only for four days before they were captured.

Read: Man Gets 16 Years In Prison: Gunfire, Passing Off Broccoli As Marijuana

Choi Gap-bok

Yoga has its benefit but it also has its disadvantages, proved Korean criminal Choi Gap-bok in September 2012. Choi, who had been practicing yoga for 23 years, escaped from the detention cell at the police station in the city of Daegu, South Korea, seven days after being arrested on the suspicion of robbery.

He requested the prison guards to give him ointment on the morning of his escape, applied it on the upper half of his body and squeezed himself out of the small slot at the bottom of the cell door that is used to provide food to the inmates, the Huffington Post reported.