The Man Who Escaped Prison By Simply Walking Out The Door

Steven and Phillip tried to make a life for themselves in Mississippi, but the chagrined Texas authorities were relentless in their search, and in 1998 Russell was back in prison. The stage was now set for his magnum opus. Figuring the only way to get the state off his back was to make it think he was dead, Russell started eating very little and used laxatives to make himself lose weight. Using a typewriter in the prison library, he forged medical records reading that he had been diagnosed with AIDS and used the internal mail system to send them to the pertinent office. They were convincing enough to be included in his medical file without question.

As prison doctors watched him waste away, they attributed it to the AIDS diagnosis and had him sent to hospice care. While there, he posed as his own doctor on the phone, first telling authorities that his patient was going into a treatment program that never really existed. He called again a few weeks later to notify them of his death. Russell walked right out of the hospice unit, and later even sent his own fake death certificate to the court.

But the embarrassed Texas penal system wasn't fully convinced, and he was eventually tracked down in Florida. Despite his love for Phillip Morris, Russell told The Guardian that were he able to do it all over again, he would have made better decisions. "I would never put myself or anyone else through that," he said.

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