List of helicopter prison escapes

Columns: Date | Prison name | Country | Succeeded | Escapee ( s ) | Details
August 19 , 1971 | Santa Martha Acatitla | Mexico | Yes | Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro | Joel David Kaplan was a New York businessman and nephew of molasses tycoon Jacob Merrill Kaplan . The elder Kaplan earned his fortune primarily through operations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic . The J.M . Kaplan Fund ( named after the elder of the two ) was found in a 1964 Congressional investigation to be a conduit for funneling CIA money to Latin America , including through the Institute of International Research headed by Norman Thomas , six-time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America . In May 1961 , the ruler of the Dominican Republic , Rafael Trujillo was murdered with weapons supplied by the CIA . The CIA described its role in changing the government of the Dominican Republic as a 'success ' in that it assisted in moving the Dominican Republic from a totalitarian dictatorship to a Western-style democracy . In November 1961 , Mexican police found a corpse they identified as Luis Melchior Vidal , Jr. , godson of Trujillo . Vidal was the unofficial business agent of the Dominican Republic while Trujillo was in power . Under cover of the American Sucrose Company and the Paint Company of America , Vidal had teamed up with the American , Joel David Kaplan , to operate as arms merchants for the CIA . In 1962 , the younger Kaplan was convicted of killing Vidal , in Mexico City . Kaplan was held at the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the Iztapalapa borough of the Mexico City D.F . region . Joel 's sister , Judy Kaplan , attempted to secure his release in numerous ways , finally developing an audacious plot . On August 19 , 1971 , a helicopter landed in the prison yard . The guards mistakenly thought this was an official visit . In two minutes , Kaplan and Kaplan 's cellmate Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro , a Venezuelan counterfeiter , boarded the craft and were piloted away . No shots were fired . Both men were flown to Texas and then different planes flew Kaplan to California and Castro to Guatemala . The Mexican government never initiated extradition proceedings against Kaplan . The escape is told in a book , The 10-Second Jailbreak : The Helicopter Escape of Joel David Kaplan . It also inspired the 1975 action movie Breakout , which starred Charles Bronson and Robert Duvall | October 31 , 1973 | Mountjoy Jail | Ireland | Yes | JB O'Hagan Seamus Twomey Kevin Mallon | On October 31 , 1973 an IRA member hijacked a helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the exercise yard of Dublin 's Mountjoy Jail 's D Wing at 3:40 p.m. , October 31 , 1973 . Three members of the IRA were able to escape : JB O'Hagan , Seamus Twomey and Kevin Mallon . Another prisoner who also was in the prison was quoted as saying , One shamefaced screw apologised to the governor and said he thought it was the new Minister for Defence ( Paddy Donegan ) arriving . I told him it was our Minister of Defence leaving . The Mountjoy helicopter escape became Republican lore and was immortalized by The Helicopter Song , which contains the lines It 's up like a bird and over the city . There 's three men a'missing I heard the warder say | May 24 , 1978 | United States Penitentiary , Marion | United States | No | Garrett Brock Trapnell Martin Joseph McNally James Kenneth Johnson | 43-year-old Barbara Ann Oswald hijacked a Saint Louis -based charter helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the yard at USP Marion . While landing the aircraft , the pilot , Allen Barklage , who was a Vietnam War veteran , struggled with Oswald and managed to wrestle the gun away from her . Barklage then shot and killed Oswald , thwarting the escape . A few months later Oswald 's daughter hijacked TWA Flight 541 in an effort to free Trapnell | February 27 , 1981 | Fleury-Mérogis , Essonne , Ile de France | France | Yes | Gérard Dupré Daniel Beaumont | With the help of Serge Coutel , Gérard Dupré and Daniel Beaumont , succeed in the first and double helicopter escape of a French prison , in Fleury-Mérogis ( Essonne ) , the best kept prison of France . The men hijacked a helicopter and its pilot that they rented to fly from Paris to Orléans . The pilot , Claude Fourcade , was taken hostage and was told that they were holding his wife and daughter hostage ( which was not true ) ... The flight turned into Paris - Fleury -Merogis - Porte d'Orléans | May 7 , 1981 | Orsainville Prison , Quebec City | Canada | No | Marina Paquet ( hijacker ) Giles Arseneault ( prisoner ) | Marina Paquet held a sawed off shotgun against the back of the head of a helicopter pilot . She demanded that he land in the Orsainville prison courtyard , where her boyfriend ( awaiting extradition to California on a murder charge ) was set to escape . The pilot , Brian Jenner , feigned a panic attack , put the helicopter through some rough maneuvers and was then able to convince Paquet , in the back seat of the Jet Ranger , to turn over her shotgun and her knife . Jenner then gave her the choice of any landing spot , except the prison . She chose to go back to the airport . The pilot then explained , in great detail , exactly where they were and where they would be landing on arrival at the Quebec City airport . He added that the police would surely be aware by then , that she had hijacked the helicopter but would not yet be aware that she had given up her arms to the pilot . All the time Jenner was squeezing the transmit button on his cyclic stick and the tower was picking up all the details . The moment they touched down at the airport , the woman bailed from the helicopter but the police , who had been advised of the situation by the control tower , were hiding out all over the place and captured Paquet within seconds | January , 1983 | Pentridge ( HM Prison ) | Australia | No | David McMillan | Arrests were made for the 1983 attempted helicopter escape from Melbournes Pentridge Prison in Australia . The three , all held on drug-importation charges , had hired a former SAS soldier , then living in the Philippines , to lift the prisoners from the jails tennis court to a nearby van fitted with panels to hide them for the 600 kilometre road trip to Sydney , where a yacht was to take them to Manila . The plan was thwarted when Lord Tony Moynihan , himself an exile in the Philippines , informed the Australian Federal Police , who then ran it as a sting operation . Tony Moynihan would later become an informer against Howard Marks in a Florida trial . Of the accused , only David McMillan and his accountant friend who had visited the prison stood trial . During the hearings , few prosecution witnesses used their real names as they were mostly from Moynihans former West African MI6 unit . Those on trial were convicted and sentenced | December 19 , 1985 | Perry Correctional Institution , Pelzer , South Carolina | United States | Yes | James Rodney Leonard William Douglas Ballew Jesse Glenn Smith | One murderer , James Rodney Leonard , and two armed robbers , William Douglas Ballew and Jesse Glenn Smith , fled in a helicopter with a pilot and a woman hijacker with a pistol to a getaway car 4 to 5 miles away . The 3-passenger helicopter was so overloaded with 5 occupants that it barely cleared the fence , while flying away in a hail of gunfire that injured one guard . Two other men attempted to escape as well , but either jumped or were pushed off when the pilot told the escapees that the helicopter could not take off . The three escapees were captured on December 23 in Camden County , Georgia

Example questions:
Which prisoner attempted to escape from the Federal Holding Facility in Miami in a helicopter ? | What was the name of the prisoner who escaped from Rio Piedras State Penitentiary in Puerto Rico in a helicopter ? | Which prison did Seamus Twomey escape from in a helicopter ? | What was the name of the prisoner who escaped from prison in a helicopter on June 17 , 1993 ?

Answers:
Ben Kramer | William Lane | Mountjoy Jail | Michel Vaujour