March 25, 2025 • 42 mins
Writer, director, producer extraordinaire Jay Martel soars into action with Arturo as they cover the high-flying trajectory of french gangster Michel Vaujour.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is great as Escapes, a show bringing you the
wildest true escape stories of all time. Now, in this episode,
we're headed to Paris, you guys, for a bonker's jail
break by a French gangster who declared on society. I'm
Marto Castro and I'm here with a wizard of the
comedy world, my dear friend, and a man absolutely obsessed
(00:21):
with short short pants, Jay Martel. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(00:53):
Today I'm joined by Jane Martel. Yes. I gotta tell
the audience that Jay catfished me in the sense that
when we we we sat for an interview for the
head writer position of Alternatino, and Jay showed up into
like a button down and like these nice pants, and
then yes, and then I never saw him wear pants ever. Again,
(01:15):
Jay always showed up.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Okay, this is a this is a cultural language thing. Okay,
I wore pants to the office. They were just short pants,
but in your mind they were so short and Guatemala,
I guess they don't call short pants pants.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Listen, listen, we do not show another man or thoughts.
And as we'm in business and you really and I
was just throwing them out there in your face every
day for free. I always say that Jay, like always
looks like he just smits his flight, you know what
I mean. Like he's in the Atlanta airport. He fucking
had to go get that neck pillow and his fucking
(01:54):
left him. He's just looking around, looking.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Like always a little like rumbled a little just enough?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
All right, you ready for a little escaping, Yes, definitely.
So today instead of a cell block, we're gonna start
on a launch pad. Ooh, and the year is nineteen
eighty five, which is the year I was born. Great
year for babies, Am I right?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Jay?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It was so fantastic? Okay? And we're in Ansei in
the Alps of southern France. Now, a woman, Lena Ruigon
has started taking helicopter lessons from a guy named Ghi,
a flight instructor at a local airport. Now, he didn't
think anything of it, except that he noticed that she
showed great commitment to learning. So in fact, she booked
a hotel by the airport for a whole month, and
(02:42):
she spent two or three hours every day practicing in
the air with her instructor. As her teacher, monsieur GhIE
felt like he was getting to know her pretty well.
For him. That apparently means remembering that she was blonde.
I love giving it, like, yes, I know everything about her.
She is a blonde, so is it. Yeah. So that
September she took her flying exam and she passed with
(03:04):
flying colors. Wow. Nice, And she got a fifty eight
out of sixty required points, which I guess is enough.
I don't. This is such a French way of scoring,
isn't it. The rest of the world is like, hey,
it's one hundred, and friends is like, I feel sixty
is fine, sixty is maxim.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You would be ahead of yeah, if you had any
moles in sixty.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
This man is apparently close to death. This frenchman him
dying and right flying. It's a French pirate in this situation.
Remember Jay that there was a sketch that we never
quite made work about a Frenchman who was unimpressed by
everything and called everything shit. Oh oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
(03:49):
it was good. This is shit. And then a Robert
comes into the restaurant where he's at and he's like
this gun sees his ship and you know, he saves
the day. I wonder whe didn't let us do that,
Maybe because we didn't know how to fucking end the sketch,
or we sounded like pirates when we did, because they
were like, you are all dying pirates in this Well,
(04:11):
what's going on? All right? So then Lena moved to Paris,
where she joined a flight club at an airport and
started flying some light utility helicopters. Okay, So Lena begins
renting a helicopter every two weeks, and she gets to
know the owner of the helicopter rental company, Claude. He
described her as a pretty little woman, the sportsman type,
which is probably French for not Kirby. I don't know
(04:33):
what the fuck that meant, Claude sportsman. So Claude said
that Lena took a liking to one helicopter, in particular,
she would come to his business twice a month and
rented for like three hundred dollars an hour. Claude didn't
know it at the time, but Lina was practicing one
very special skill, you guys, okay, hovering with the helicopter
just above the ground. On May twenty seven, nineteen eighty six,
(04:56):
Lena arrived with a friend, a man carrying a heavy
duffel bag. Somehow, this didn't raise any red flags for Claude.
You know, was he oblivious, a little bit of an
idiot perhaps, or maybe just very friendly? I don't know,
I don't care what you do. Anyhow, he rented her
the helicopter as per usual. Now, obviously Claude didn't know
(05:16):
what was in the bag, but today we do know
it was carrying Don Tonton a submachine gun. What And
it turns out Lena had been hiding her real identity.
Her real name was actually Nadine, and the day she'd
been training for was finally here. And when she took off,
she flew low. Soon the air traffic control lost contact
(05:39):
with her. The French air police try to get radio
response from a helicopter as it buzzed the rooftops, but
Nadine wasn't answering no, no. She was flying nineteen miles
from the airport to Lesson prison in Paris because she
was gonna bust her husband out of jail.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh my god, Now I see how it all tied
together with the theme of this podcast.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
There you go, Yeah, okay, a sportsman, woman, dead pirates, Yeah,
big bags, machine gun, flying low you know classic. Can
we take a moment and talk about the commitment it
took to do this, Like.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
She must have really loved her husband. I mean, that's
that's what I'm getting from this.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay, who the hell is her husband? Let's figure this out.
So his name was Michelle Vajoule. Right. He was a
gangster who had declared as a teenager that he was
going to wage war against society. You know, the revolution
remains strong in this one.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
You know, it's very common thing and teenagers, I mean,
especially in France. I imagine it's like, yeah, Bennett.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Down, they are incredibly good at striking in France. That
is not even a joke. Yeah, oh my god, there's good.
We could take a page out of their book for this.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
If this was in France, I'd be striking right now
for better wages for podcast co hosts.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah that's right. No, it was at getting paid. I'm
gonna copymeal and credit tops. Oh my god, should strike too,
let's both strike all right? So who was Michelle? Was your?
To start with? He was an altar boy, no, like literally,
(07:17):
when he was a kid, his parents send him to
live in a boarding school run by a local priest. Now,
along with all the other church stuff, right, like guilt
guilt inducing chores or whatever. The priest taught Michelle how
to climb and shoot and run cross country. Bro, Like,
is this like a super alpha priest.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Like like this couple is like it's going to take
over the world.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I think.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I mean, she's a sportsman type with who flies helicopters,
and he's like an all around athlete who shoots game.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah. But also my priest like always sounded like that
French dying dude that you just did, you know, Like Okay,
they couldn't even like, you know, walk properly. I didn't
know they were like priests that like did like rock climbing.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
You know, if Jesus is at the top of that hill,
they're going to climb that rock.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, that's right on this mountain. I shaw build my church.
One person in the audience is gonna be oh he
studied Gothic.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yes, yeah, you're going to get that one hardcore Catholic
podcast listener.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Congratulations, thanks very much. But for Michelle, alter boy didn't
translate to being like a rule follower. Right when he
was nineteen, he started stealing cars whenever he wanted to
take his girlfriend dancing. This fucking guy, Okay, all right,
making us all look bad. Good for you, good for you.
So usually they would leave the car in the same
place that they found it, but after a while they
(08:36):
started getting sloppy and just parked it right in front
of his apartment. So the next morning, Mihaw and his
girlfriend were walking up by the sound of the police
banging on the front door.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Poor planning. Everyone knows you don't park a stolen car
in the air house.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So what do you like? You've been stealing cars? Jay,
there's a knock at your door, somebody says, police, What
do you think? What do you do? What's the first
thing that you do? Say? Like, I'm an idiot.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, and I deserved to be taken off to prison
right now, because.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
That would be your way. That would be get and by.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The way, and by the way, on pants, Let me
put on my pants right now before you take me
to prison.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Jay's way would be like, and by the way, I
would like to confess to other crimes of myself and
other people. Yeah, cracking, cracking immediately. So I'll tell you
what Michelle did. Right. He dove out of the bedroom
window to make his escape and left his girlfriend to
face the police alone. Fucked up, like leaving your girlfriend
holding the battle totally French. Yeah right, I don't even
(09:34):
know that's friends. This guy's just like an early adopter
of the fuck boy nature. He's like, not my problem.
So how do you even justify it to her later?
You know, like hey, like I'm sorry. Like the thing is,
there is a loud sound outside. I want to I
was testing rock climbing.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Was actually going to go out it's a window and
get the stolen car and drive it to another location.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So he's a German Frenchman. Now, oh god, damn it.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I knew I should practice my accents. You didn't tell
me this was a French story.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I think we need to do Yeah, I think we
need to use our own accents from now on. Day
that the European nations are up in arms.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
I don't think we're going to offend anyone by doing
bad accents.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
No, no, it's just so listen. So she confessed, right,
Michelle was caught, convicted, and he was put away for
two and a half years. Now, Michelle thought his punishment
was too harsh, and this is when he decided to
start his war against society. When he got out, Michelle
was arrested again for the crime of driving without a license,
and he ends up being convicted of ten robberies over
(10:37):
the years. To be honest, I do think it's kind
of I mean, I'm not advocating grand theft auto here,
but it seemed like he was just a dumb kid, right,
like most of the time he put the car away. Yeah,
I mean he's still really young now, right, he was
nineteen the first time you got oh, oh god, okay,
so yeah, there's just no yeah you could.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You're just crazy when you're nineteen, right, I don't know
about you, but oh.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, it was a nut job at nineteen, and it
hasn't gotten any better, no, no. But also like it
doesn't feel like people that go in the system, it
like rehabilitates them in any country, you know. So I
guess that's when he got a really revolutionary with his crimes. Yeah,
but prison, you know, they couldn't hold him. They just
(11:21):
could not hold Michelle. Right. He made his first escape
when he joined the work crew of prisoners unloading trucks
of supplies. Right when he saw the chance, he bolted
through the cap between the truck and the gate, and
he made his way into the woods, where he dodged
the officers surging for him. Twice, he escaped by scaling
prison walls in nineteen seventy three in nineteen seventy four.
(11:42):
In nineteen seventy three, Michelle and another prisoner pushed to
a weak area of the fence and climbed the wall,
where they realized there was a blind spot for the guards.
They went on a robbery spree until they got caught again.
What it was it with these people that can't just
enjoy their prison break, you know, They're.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Like, you know, it just shows you that I'm coming
from a different place. But I I always think, like,
you get out of prison, just be cool for a
little bit, right, move to La put on in La
put on some shorts, fops maybe you know, yeah, like
just relax I But it's just like, no, no, I
(12:19):
feel like he's Michelle is really trying to prove a point, right.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
He's waging a war against society, man.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, I mean he was just like, I'm just going
to get out of this cage that you put me
in and just do some more damage to this thing
that I hate, you.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Know, right right right. So in nineteen seventy four, Michelle
shared a cell with a safebreaker name Jill gill zil.
Can the overlords of pronunciation please come in and tell
me how to pronounce his name. It is pronounced she
is pronounced gez g g so. In nineteen seventy four,
(12:53):
Michelle shared a cell with a safe breaker named Jill,
who became his best friend.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
The pair used one of Jill's lock picking tricks to escape.
They collected the red wax from baby bell cheeses to
make an imprint of the key. Okay, Jay, your turn again.
You got some wax? How are you going to get
that print? I also, I'm sorry again French people, but
that is the most French way of making I.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Mean the fact that they have baby bell cheeses like
in prisons, mean, you know what our prisoners would do
in this country do for one baby bell cheese.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
And that was not the canon beer week, you know,
that was that way was. It's not. It's not as
easy to get an improve. It reminds me of like
I was listening.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I was reading about World War One recently, and one
of the reasons the French troops were doing so badly
is that they all drank. A leader of wine every
day like that was there. It was part of their ration.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
A lot as opposed to the Germans and World War Two,
which were all hyped up on.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Ye. Well yeah, it was actually like both of those
world wars were like a study of olcohol versus speed.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Versus drug use. Yeah yeah, like speed, speed will always
win in a war. By the way, Yeah, we does
not do well in the war. It's everybody, what if
what the fuck are we doing? Guys, let's just show Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Man just fell out and you know, you just get
sloppy drunk on a bunch of red wine, and it's
like if they put us in prison, we'll just be
eating cute little cheeses.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Great. So Michelle took the direct approach, so he and
Jill memorized which one was the right key by watching
their cell get unlocked every day, and once when they
were being put back into the cell, Michelle bumped the
guard and pressed his wax against the key. Yeah. So,
using a fiel and part of a hacksaw, Michelle and
(14:45):
Ghee were able to take a piece of iron, a
small piece of it, and duplicate the shape of the
key following the imprint of the wax and.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Unlock his fure. I'm beginning to thank this guy's a genius.
I mean, could you bump into someone and make make
a whack impression of their key?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I don't. I can't confirm it legally. I can't tell
you if I have done that before or not. No,
but it is impressive. You know. It's one of those
you know, classic tales of like wow, if you had
just applied that genius to something else, like yeah, exactly,
but he was. He was put on earth basically to
break out of prison. That's right, some people their job.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
He evolved, like one hundred thousand years of human evolution
led to this guy.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Just I can break out it anything, any single thing.
So in prison, after being arrested for another robbery, Michelle
held what one French newspaper called an intimate ritual of rebirth.
So he striped, naked, shaved, and used yoga to enter
a trance that would kill the mad dog in him.
(15:47):
And after that he gave up tobacco, radio, and even
his mattress. Right, so this guy was preparing for burning man.
He did not even know it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'm waiting for what comes next because I know it's
it's not going to be about yoga.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Well. The fourth escape came in nineteen seventy nine during
a hearing for his crimes. Michelle had been in prison
for four years, and he had worked out a plan
right at the courthouse. During his hearing, Michelle took the
judge hostage at gunpoint. Jay, if we were going to
smuggle a gun into a hearing, where would you hide it? Actually,
I don't want to know, fuck it? No, nope, nope,
Well you ask so I know what. I just know.
(16:23):
I like this question was here and I'm like, no,
I know where he would hide it. In the in
the pocket of my shorts. Yeah, in his beautiful thigh
pocket that he always carries with him when it gets chilli.
You have one of those, like, you know those pants
that become shorts. What do they call them?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Sports?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
No, uh no, that's something else. Convertible shorts, convertible shorts shirt.
We'll go with that and the convertible short people.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
If you want to promote your shit on the show,
you know, me and Jay and the Catholic guy will
definitely buy yourself, will definitely zip those up. Michelle had
actually sewn a pocket inside his underwear and took the
gun out when he went to the bathroom before the
hearing started. Now, the thing is, the gun wasn't real.
It was a dummy carved out of soap and turned
black with shoe polish.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Oh my god, this is like take the money and
run a Woody all In movie where you know, it's
just like this is such a cliche, And I love
that he can work in different mediums too. Yeah, he
can branch out from wax into soap.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I mean, you know, from cheese, from cheese to show
to wax. This man does it all. It's all just
a means of escape. It's exactly now. Once he was out,
Michelle reconnected with his old prison friend Ghee, the safe Breaker,
and he also met Gee's sister, Nadine. Huh I see
where this is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nadine had also
(17:44):
been locked up on three separate times for things like
hiding stolen goods, so Michelle and Nadine were basically a
match for each other. They fell in love, and Michelle
started life with Nadine and her daughter. But that didn't
keep him out of trouble. No, no, yeah, nothing keeps
him down. You see. In this time behind bars, Michelle
had met a bunch of guys involved in organized crime.
(18:06):
They reached him now that he was out again, and
he got hired to help with a bunch of armed robberies.
So in March nineteen eighty one, Michelle gets arrested again,
and this time Nadine was even grabbed as an accomplice. Okay,
this part is nuts. Her second daughter, Okay, the one
with Michelle, was even born that year while Nadine was
in jail. They had kids. They had kids, and the
(18:31):
daughter escaped at prison at six months old. Very impressive.
So with you, oh okay, can you imagine, well if
you considered a womb of prison. Yes, well, she escaped
at zero years old in nineteen eighty two, with both
of them behind bars. Somehow, Michelle Nadine arranged for a
(18:51):
prison wedding. They met at a prison registry to sign
the papers, and in the intimacy of the moment, Michelle
told her about his next plans for escape. Oh my god,
they didn't was released the same day, but Michelle's sentence
was for eighteen years. If they were going to be together,
they would need to work together to break Michelle out
of the most notorious prison in Paris. Lessons. Oh yeah,
(19:15):
that's right. Well it's actually a prison. It's well known
for housing celebrities and VIPs. At least, I mean at
least if you're a fan of like well, if you're
a fan of French criminals, that is, if you were
like oj, you'd be put in Leyson. Yeah, exactly, you
would be in the song. Now do any of these
names sound familiar to Jean Ganay, Carlos the Jackal, Bernard Tappi,
(19:36):
Jerome Cavier and Jacques Missline. I'm fucking up all these names.
But how about a first couple I recognize? How about
Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama. Oh yeah, he
ended up there in twenty ten. Oh man. Apparently his
excuse is he wanted the cheese.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
About one thing you can say about Manuel Noriega. He
loved his cheese.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
He loved his cheese. Say what you will about him
and narco trafficking. That's right, yeah, say what you will
about the man. The man had a taste for the
fine things. Laissan has actually been used to film numerous
French gangster movies and there wash there are French pop
songs about the prison. I'm not sure you know I'm
not sure if this was filmed there, but Umprofet was
(20:22):
an amazing French film about the rise of an inmate.
Laissan is still open today and it's one of just
three prisons in Paris. Now. It has a high security wing,
but the security is known for being like fairly lax.
You know, gentlemen, I need to I need to break
in here and say the name of the prison is
son of It, Son of a gun. So we've been
(20:46):
told by our overlords in the sky, our producers there,
it's actually La Sente.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So confused, I was confused that you were talking about.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, that's right, of course, that's exactly what the jackal was. Yes,
I got it all wrong, Yes, thank you, over lord
in my sky. So in two thousand, La Sante's chief
medical officer published a book revealing what life was like inside.
She described inmates piled on top of one another, suicidal,
(21:19):
prisoners were left in chains, and prisoners with their chic
skin infections that have been eliminated in general society but
kept alive inside the prison. Are chaic skin infections I'm
thinking like leprosy and okay, yeah, probably that is archaic, biblical. Yeah,
it's like Yeah, so they have the bubonic plague. It's
(21:39):
kind of weird. Yeah, they have that like weird, like
weird skinning condition where an angel of death comes to
your house if you didn't put the lamps blood in
front of it. Yeah. Those again we got We got
our Catholic people back. Oh, we got them back. Yeah,
are not or not. She also said that it was
infested with rats and cockroaches, which I guess is to
(21:59):
be expected. Now, while Michelle was serving time, he was
not taking it easy. You know. He was coordinated with
Nadine and other friends on the outside, and over time
they came up with a plan. Michelle said that after
studying the layouts to various prisons, he declared that the
easiest way out of La Sante was to escape by air. Now,
the layout made it safe to bring in a helicopter
(22:21):
and hover in place where smokestacks blocked the view from
the watchtowers, meaning that a helicopter couldn't be shot down
by the guards. Now on the outside, Nadine wasn't just
sitting around waiting for his eighteen year sentence to end, No, sir,
She was in on the plan. Michelle had already escaped
four times from prison, so they had to say why
not five and five times five times as the prison tribe.
(22:46):
And this is where we will take a little break
to apologize to everybody that heard the pronunciation of laissant.
Now we're getting to the big moment. May sixth, nineteen
eighty six, the day of the escape, Escape, Escape, Escape.
(23:11):
I hope that Ben adds like echo after I say
the escape, or something godly like that.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, if whoever's listening has heard the echo, then I
have done.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
My job, thanks buddy. So that morning, Michelle said he
woke up early at six am. He had four hours
before the scheduled ren dezvous with Nadine. That's rendezvous for
all you non French speaking people. After breakfast, the prisoners
will let out for a morning walk in the prison yard.
As he got outside, Michelle looked up at the window
of the prison building above him, and he saw the
(23:43):
signal signal signals wow again some echo, which was actually
pretty corny if you ask me. The signal was simply
a white piece of cardboards stuck in the stairwell window.
I mean, really, all this elaborate escape and they're like,
I don't know, just put some cud with U. We've
run out of budget for couliffex. But it meant that
the helicopter was on its way. So in the yard,
(24:03):
Michelle spread out a towel on the ground and started
his yoga routine. Eventually, huh, he heard the helicopter approaching.
You guys, It's like the guy you like is like
looking at you at the party and you're like, my god,
does he approachingesy coming this way? That's what he felt like,
just in a much more heightened version. At first, it
was a low rumble, and as it fucking burst into
(24:25):
the sky over the prison yard, it became a roar
that froze all the other prisoners in place. Yeah, they're like,
now the door did? The helicopter opened and a duffle
back flew out, crashing down into the prison yard. And
that's when Michelle sprang into action. He rushed into the bag,
ripped it open, dug out a pistol and pointed to
(24:45):
the prisoners and the guards in the yard, yelling nobody moved,
or whatever the French version of that is. And the
prisoners that were already not moving, they're like, what do
you mean I'm doing yoga? Steal there's one fusual like,
does this mean the thing is over? Okay? So Michelle
(25:06):
also pulled out a fishing rod and two meters of rope. Okay, So, Jay,
you're in a prison yard with a pistol, a fishing
pole and some rope. How are you gonna escape? Jay,
I'll start fishing in the moat. Yeah, I'll catch a fish.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I'll tie a rope around the fish's neck and
use it to like water ski across the moat.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Beautiful, Yes, jumping the shark. He jumped the shark. Now
Michelle ran to the side of the prison building and
forcing everybody to clear path. He used a fishing rod
to loop the rope through the window bars two meters up.
Then he used a rope to climb up. He scrambled
from window ledge to window ledge, using the fishing pole
(25:44):
to lift the rope and loop it through the next
set of iron bars. Can you fucking believe? Oh my god?
Now a prison guard was stationed on the roof, but
Michelle knew that the man in the helicopter was holding
him a gunpoint. It was when he reached the roof
that Michelle says that all the noise up with him
he heard the alarms blaring, the helicopter roaring, and the
prisoners below cheering him on, like obviously, it must be
(26:07):
such an emotive moment. Huh. So he jumped onto the
landing skits of the helicopter and flew away while the
prisoners clapped and celebrated his escape. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah, he just grabbed onto the skids his kids. Yeah. Yeah,
oh well, that's where all the yoga came in. I mean,
he had like muscle tone.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah. He was also really and people say that his
chi was really connected as well.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know that he could just merge completely with the helicopter,
the energy of the helicopter.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
There was a sense of oneness repeated by the person. Well,
at least that's Michelle's version of the story. You know,
he published that in a book in twenty eighteen, laying
it all out, but Michelle leaves out some key details
that were reported in the news at the time. Now,
first of all, Michelle didn't make the climb alone. Okay,
he had an accomplice, another prisoner named Pierre, who followed
(26:55):
him up to the roof and held off the prison
guards with a bundle of grenades.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Now, yeah, here, here, this out using a bundle of grenades.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
I'm about to tell you. I'm about to tell you. So,
as the news report tells it, a man with a
machine gun jumped out of the helicopter and slid down
a cable to the building's roof. He tied the core
around Michelle, who was lifted into the helicopter. Now the cord, Yeah,
the cord was dropped again to the gunman, who grabbed it,
and he was also raised into the air. Then the
(27:25):
helicopter turned and flew off, leaving Pierre behind. Pierre. No,
no good for Pierre. Can you imagine you did all this?
I guess we have it. We are free. And they're like, wait,
wait are we? Did you all get together? Your bastard. So,
Pierre was a waiting trial for armed robbery, and he
(27:48):
told the police that he decided not to join the
escape at the last minute. Shut the fuck up, Prierre,
you got left, Okay, it's one of these I didn't
he didn't, dumb me. I dumped him. Poor Pierre, Poor Pierre.
But the thing that Pierre could reveal to the prison
guards was that the grenades he was using were not real.
They were neck turenes yeah, yeah, so they were nectarenes.
(28:10):
Bro Pierre had hidden them and covered them in paint
to look like explosives. I love to think that one
of the guards knew they were in grenades, but it's
absolutely grossed out by fruit. Like you know, if the
dude took one look and he's like, absolutely fucking up.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Okay, hey those are green nectarinestrhea, Like I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
My mouth is just salivating thinking about the sellarness. And now,
as for the rest of the guards, I can't blame
him if I'm not wanting to get up close and
personal with some fucking grenades to see if they were
going to explode, you know, prison or yells grenade to me, Well,
there's a helicopter in the sky. I wanna believe him.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I'm surprised he didn't use cheese because I think, I
like those round cheeses would look a little more grenades, because.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
No prison guard will ever mistake cheese for grenades. Bro Okay,
that's true, that's right. Nectarines is yeah, you're right. It's
easier to confuse. So Nadine flew Michelle to a soft
field at a nearby university. When they landed, there was
a car waiting to whisk them away. No names of
their accomplices in the helicopter or get away car ever
(29:08):
came to light. So at least they were, you know,
honor among thieves in there.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Well yeah, I mean I'm still thinking about poor Pierre,
like standing on that rooftop.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Anybody, you guys are you guys are coming back though? Right? Yeah,
you guys are. You're just going to get more few. Yeah,
you guys come coming back though? Like should I just yeah?
Should I just wait wait here? Okay, I'll wait here.
I'll mean I got the nectarines? Ye, anybody hungry in
the meantime. So, Michelle was a contract burglar and the
(29:44):
escape was arranged by his friends in organized crime. He
never admitted who helped them, but it was obviously a
network with accomplices both inside and outside the prison. When
the police chased down the helicopter at the soccer field,
they surrounded it for more than an hour before moving
in to check it out. I mean, they were terrified
that it was movie trapped and waited to see if
it would explode, like holy shit, No wonder the nectarine
(30:06):
plan worked.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, I mean, these French police are pretty cautious, I'll.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Give him back to them. Yeah. So eventually they send
bomb sniffing dogs into inspected before they searched it but
found nothing. Now, some accounts say the Michelle and Nadan
escape to South America for a few months, but eventually
returned after running out of money.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I love that they staged this incredibly elaborate and expensive
escape with all the details in place and then all that,
you know, like wires dangling from helicopters.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
But they go to South America and run out of
money and I don't know how to spend. Yeah, we
talked economics. They didn't know.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, we can escape, but we cannot budget South America.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
They didn't come on, dude, seventeen months of I or
whatever it was, helicopter lessons, you didn't. You didn't do
one like accounting lesson. So if it's true that they left,
they were all also able to slip back across the
border into France and hide out in a small French town.
By that same fall, in nineteen eighty six, their two
(31:07):
daughters were twelve and five. They try to set up
a life as a family in this little small town.
French newspapers say that they were really happy together. Michelle
says that he was mad in Nadine. She wanted to
give up a life of crime and love a peaceful
situation as a family. But who do you think you
are with your sportsman woman like figure.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It's all about rebellion, man, come on man, the war
against society.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, she even considered turning herself in, and she told
them so. Now, what everyone agrees on is that Michelle
and Nadine were out of money. So just a few
months after the jail break, Michelle decided to try another robbery,
like fucking idiot, But he was pretty desperate and didn't
exactly have a plan or anything. So on the day
he got to the bank and saw that there were
(31:51):
three armed guards stationed at the front door, but instead
of backing out, Michelle tried to jump them and win
a fight three to one. Oh no, Michelle, man, and
all this yog is getting to your brain, dude, You
can't just like flow it in there. He says he
was able to disarm two of them before the third
one started shooting and the other cops arrived in the firefight.
One newspaper says that Michelle shot three officers before they
(32:13):
shot Michelle in the head with a magnum. WHOA, check
this out. The bullet launched in Michelle's brain. Somehow it
didn't kill him, Okay. One of the most extremely gross
parts here. Right. Michelle says that before he blacked out,
he saw bits of his brain floating away from his
head in a stream of his own blood. Pretty intense.
(32:34):
But why are you charging at arm guards, Michelle? Fucking hell? Oh? Man,
the guy has a death wish. Yeah. I want to
think it's karma for Pierre. Justice for Pierre. Justice. This
is what it's all about. Man, That's right, poor Pierre. Meanwhile,
it's still standing on that rooftop. Guys, anytime any anybody,
they're coming back. So Michelle fell into a comb The
(33:00):
police grabbed them and took him to the hospital. Now
they were able to identify him as the helicopter prison
escapee just by his tattoos. I mean, it didn't help
that one of the tattoos said folk the Belize escaped
in the helicopter. Get me. Eventually, eventually Michelle came back
to consciousness, but his left side was paralyzed. He was
charged with numerous crimes, and this time, when he was
(33:22):
moved to prison. He was locked in solitary confinement. You
can't blame him. Yeah, yeah, they're like, fucking the guy.
We're done now.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
The day he gets one round cheese, but that's it.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Okay, give him the camembert Okay, he get him stewing
there with it. The day after Michelle was arrested, the
police swept in and arrested Nadine too. They have been
conspirators before, so naturally she was suspected as part of
the plan for their most recent robbery. Apparently, Michelle tried
to escape again by helicopter in nineteen ninety three, but
(33:56):
the prison. Yes, but the prison had been alerted and
his plan was thwarted. People need to stop renting his
friends some helicopters, man.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Like they're there's one thing I hate helicopter escapes. I mean,
come on, there's a lot of other motorized vehicles. Yeah,
they just make a cooler right, like yeah, Trey harder,
Michelle something something.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
How about a team of pole vaulters, Yeah, get over
those yeah, or those Alaskan pulling dogs. What do you
call it?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, you mean like in the Iditarod, the like yeah, husky.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, just a bunch of Huskies.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well, you'd have to get some snowmaking equipment in the
prison somehow for the Huskies to have something.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Well, that's that's that's Pierre's job. This time.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
He convinced them that this time for sure, all the
snows and dig a tunnel for the Huskies to get out,
and then they would leave him, leave.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
His ass again. Here's the aftermath. Okay, Michelle was finally
released from prison in September two thousand and three. He
still had sixteen years left on his sentence, but changes
in French law allowed a judge to overrule the earlier decision.
(35:05):
This this surprised me about a lot of European law
bro that they were like, this man murders seventeen people,
we gave him ten years, ten years to think about,
you know what I mean. It just feels like like
sentences in Europe sometimes are so communtied.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I just get the feeling they're a lot more lenient
about a lot of things, you know, Like, I.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Don't know, they probably had it coming. I don't know
his life. You know, Pierre deserved it. Nobody liked Pierre, Yeah, nobody.
Fucking Pierre is still working at the fucking prison now.
He's like, fuck you guys. Now, when he was free,
Michelle had spent twenty seven years total in jail, seventeen
of those years in solitary confinement. WHOA, yeah, that'll do
(35:43):
some Maybe maybe that's where all this yoga and sense
stuff came in handy. Yeah, he had lived only forty
months of his adult life as a free man. Oh
my god. Now on the French legal system, Michelle said,
justice and all that stuff didn't exists for me. That
justice business was a complete con. Some people command the
(36:04):
poor folks below them, and I was one of the
poor folks, those who had no power, nothing. I was
the son of nothing. What an impassioned speech. He strikes
on some interesting points, but like, you know, I love
the idea of Michelle hairbillowing in the wind, coming out
of solitary confinement and being like I have.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
A declaration to make you know, Oh, I mean he
sounds very philosophical about it, you know, like for a
guy who would just bum brush armed guards, Yeah you really,
and just like Rob mercilessly and plan these elaborate escapes.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
So Michelle's escaped inspire many copycats between nineteen eighty six
and twenty fifteen eight, additional helicopter scapes occurred in French prisons. Okay,
you know what, they should just outlaw helicopters at some point.
It's the French prison's fault to this guard's helicopter escapes.
French prisons have started to put mesh nets and closely
spaced cables over our outdoor spaces. What about large glass
(37:02):
treenes or domes? You know, what about the Catholic priests
shaming you as you're flying in.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Just post Catholic priests on the roofs of all things,
shaming people.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
That would fuck is? Do you know that would stop me?
I'd be like, oh my god, I'm out. That would
stop you in a second. Yeah, I mean I'm out.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I'm out a Catholic priest or you're kryptonide.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
They really are now on the Nadine side. She published
a book about her life and especially about the prison escape.
In fact, she beat Michelle by a few decades. Her memoir,
called air Girl, was published in nineteen eighty nine. She
actually got a film deal out of it. A movie
of the same title in French is La fille le
laires and so much nicer in French and It was
(37:44):
released in nineteen ninety two. Now, Michelle Villere's biography was
published in twenty eighteen with the title Love Saved Me
from Sinking. He claims that today he is a change man.
He's still alive and his war against society is over.
He even says here that his yoga technique restored his
brain function and healed his left hand, his arm, and
(38:05):
leg with a reversal of consciousness. I believe it. Listen, man, okay,
I subscribe to Goop. You know I'm with it. I
live in la I believe in these things happening now. Actually,
the love that Saint Michelle was apparently not Nadine's ooh
son of God yep. A law student named Jamilla started
(38:26):
visiting him in prison, and one French newspaper says that
they held a secret wedding in nineteen ninety nine. He
even tried to have her He tried to have her
repeat the helicopter escape, but Jamila was arrested. Hearing me out,
she fucking said yes, but she was arrested before they
could pull it off and was sentenced to seven years
in prison.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Talk about repeating the same mistakes with every relationship.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
That's right, Well, so, like, how good is this man
in bed?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
I mean, he's obviously got a sort of an animal magnetism. Yeah,
because like now Nadine's on the rooftop with pir right.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, he just he just left them both. And now
Nadine and Pierre actually yeah, have a full trade cheese company.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
That they Hollywood version of this arturo like you know, yeah,
Pierre and Nadine definitely end up together.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
They end up together.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
They have an Etsy shop making keys out of wax.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So when Michelle and Jamila were finally released, Michelle went
to live with his new wife Jamila. No imagine, Nadine, bro, like,
what else did you have to do for this motherfucker?
And then he publishes a book name like Love Save Me,
but it wasn't yours. I know, that's so wrong. I mean,
she took helicopter lesson. She took helicopter lessons. I mean
a lot of helicopter lessons. She learned how to hover
(39:42):
like four feet off the ground, sucking really hard. I
don't know, personally, anybody loved him, that's right. Somebody throw
a tangerinea this fucking guy. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
I'm kind of angry at this, dude. I mean, we're
on society, okay, but to Pierre.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
And and to brag about it, I know, I know,
so listen. That's our story. But to recap, we learned
that Michelle was excellent at escaping, but really bad at
keeping personal relationships.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Which definitely definitely but it's very French too.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Hey a, I cannot speak to that, Jay. Can you
stop fucking with our French audience? No, I love our
French audience, my friend. What a fucking pleasure to talk
to you as always.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Oh my god, I love these escapes. Thanks man, I
would talk to you about anything in the heart.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Are you kidding? Yeah? Brother. We recently worked on a
film together called The Gift Right, The Gift right the Present? Okay,
the gift is a better, The gift is a better.
This is also a pitch session for titles for your movies, Jay.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
No, you see, the gift only works one way. The
present is also the present. It's like a gift as
well as the present moment.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
A little play on words there. Do you have anything
else do you like to plug? Brother? Anything?
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I might want my new line of pants that have
like the little zippered flaps. On the bottom, so perfect
fake when you're in shorts, yes, hiding for fake guns
and cheese.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Are you ever in shorts? But fuel you have to
run to a meeting. Try Jay's new catfish pants. Yeah,
I'll get you hired and then you never have to
wear pants ever again.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I have like a novel out on Audible now called
The Present as well.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
It's it's not a coincidence, a different story.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
But you use you want to get a thematic and
actually it should be called a Gift. And then I
have another novel coming out on Audible called Mayfly Man.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Oh wonderful brother. Much love to you, Thank you so much,
my pleasure, Turo. We'll see you next time. Greatest Escapes
is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation Entertainment in
association with Gilded Audio or Executive producers for Me are
to or Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka for Film
(42:00):
Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chugg and Witning Donaldson from Gilded Audio,
and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show is produced and
edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
our Research Overlord and Music Overlord, our associate producer is
Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
(42:20):
Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein,
Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
(42:41):
a rating or review. My mom will call you each
personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next
week
This is great as Escapes, a show bringing you the
wildest true escape stories of all time. Now, in this episode,
we're headed to Paris, you guys, for a bonker's jail
break by a French gangster who declared on society. I'm
Marto Castro and I'm here with a wizard of the
comedy world, my dear friend, and a man absolutely obsessed
(00:21):
with short short pants, Jay Martel. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
(00:53):
Today I'm joined by Jane Martel. Yes. I gotta tell
the audience that Jay catfished me in the sense that
when we we we sat for an interview for the
head writer position of Alternatino, and Jay showed up into
like a button down and like these nice pants, and
then yes, and then I never saw him wear pants ever. Again,
(01:15):
Jay always showed up.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Okay, this is a this is a cultural language thing. Okay,
I wore pants to the office. They were just short pants,
but in your mind they were so short and Guatemala,
I guess they don't call short pants pants.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Listen, listen, we do not show another man or thoughts.
And as we'm in business and you really and I
was just throwing them out there in your face every
day for free. I always say that Jay, like always
looks like he just smits his flight, you know what
I mean. Like he's in the Atlanta airport. He fucking
had to go get that neck pillow and his fucking
(01:54):
left him. He's just looking around, looking.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Like always a little like rumbled a little just enough?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
All right, you ready for a little escaping, Yes, definitely.
So today instead of a cell block, we're gonna start
on a launch pad. Ooh, and the year is nineteen
eighty five, which is the year I was born. Great
year for babies, Am I right?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Jay?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It was so fantastic? Okay? And we're in Ansei in
the Alps of southern France. Now, a woman, Lena Ruigon
has started taking helicopter lessons from a guy named Ghi,
a flight instructor at a local airport. Now, he didn't
think anything of it, except that he noticed that she
showed great commitment to learning. So in fact, she booked
a hotel by the airport for a whole month, and
(02:42):
she spent two or three hours every day practicing in
the air with her instructor. As her teacher, monsieur GhIE
felt like he was getting to know her pretty well.
For him. That apparently means remembering that she was blonde.
I love giving it, like, yes, I know everything about her.
She is a blonde, so is it. Yeah. So that
September she took her flying exam and she passed with
(03:04):
flying colors. Wow. Nice, And she got a fifty eight
out of sixty required points, which I guess is enough.
I don't. This is such a French way of scoring,
isn't it. The rest of the world is like, hey,
it's one hundred, and friends is like, I feel sixty
is fine, sixty is maxim.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You would be ahead of yeah, if you had any
moles in sixty.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
This man is apparently close to death. This frenchman him
dying and right flying. It's a French pirate in this situation.
Remember Jay that there was a sketch that we never
quite made work about a Frenchman who was unimpressed by
everything and called everything shit. Oh oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
(03:49):
it was good. This is shit. And then a Robert
comes into the restaurant where he's at and he's like
this gun sees his ship and you know, he saves
the day. I wonder whe didn't let us do that,
Maybe because we didn't know how to fucking end the sketch,
or we sounded like pirates when we did, because they
were like, you are all dying pirates in this Well,
(04:11):
what's going on? All right? So then Lena moved to Paris,
where she joined a flight club at an airport and
started flying some light utility helicopters. Okay, So Lena begins
renting a helicopter every two weeks, and she gets to
know the owner of the helicopter rental company, Claude. He
described her as a pretty little woman, the sportsman type,
which is probably French for not Kirby. I don't know
(04:33):
what the fuck that meant, Claude sportsman. So Claude said
that Lena took a liking to one helicopter, in particular,
she would come to his business twice a month and
rented for like three hundred dollars an hour. Claude didn't
know it at the time, but Lina was practicing one
very special skill, you guys, okay, hovering with the helicopter
just above the ground. On May twenty seven, nineteen eighty six,
(04:56):
Lena arrived with a friend, a man carrying a heavy
duffel bag. Somehow, this didn't raise any red flags for Claude.
You know, was he oblivious, a little bit of an
idiot perhaps, or maybe just very friendly? I don't know,
I don't care what you do. Anyhow, he rented her
the helicopter as per usual. Now, obviously Claude didn't know
(05:16):
what was in the bag, but today we do know
it was carrying Don Tonton a submachine gun. What And
it turns out Lena had been hiding her real identity.
Her real name was actually Nadine, and the day she'd
been training for was finally here. And when she took off,
she flew low. Soon the air traffic control lost contact
(05:39):
with her. The French air police try to get radio
response from a helicopter as it buzzed the rooftops, but
Nadine wasn't answering no, no. She was flying nineteen miles
from the airport to Lesson prison in Paris because she
was gonna bust her husband out of jail.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh my god, Now I see how it all tied
together with the theme of this podcast.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
There you go, Yeah, okay, a sportsman, woman, dead pirates, Yeah,
big bags, machine gun, flying low you know classic. Can
we take a moment and talk about the commitment it
took to do this, Like.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
She must have really loved her husband. I mean, that's
that's what I'm getting from this.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay, who the hell is her husband? Let's figure this out.
So his name was Michelle Vajoule. Right. He was a
gangster who had declared as a teenager that he was
going to wage war against society. You know, the revolution
remains strong in this one.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
You know, it's very common thing and teenagers, I mean,
especially in France. I imagine it's like, yeah, Bennett.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Down, they are incredibly good at striking in France. That
is not even a joke. Yeah, oh my god, there's good.
We could take a page out of their book for this.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
If this was in France, I'd be striking right now
for better wages for podcast co hosts.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah that's right. No, it was at getting paid. I'm
gonna copymeal and credit tops. Oh my god, should strike too,
let's both strike all right? So who was Michelle? Was your?
To start with? He was an altar boy, no, like literally,
(07:17):
when he was a kid, his parents send him to
live in a boarding school run by a local priest. Now,
along with all the other church stuff, right, like guilt
guilt inducing chores or whatever. The priest taught Michelle how
to climb and shoot and run cross country. Bro, Like,
is this like a super alpha priest.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Like like this couple is like it's going to take
over the world.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I think.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I mean, she's a sportsman type with who flies helicopters,
and he's like an all around athlete who shoots game.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah. But also my priest like always sounded like that
French dying dude that you just did, you know, Like Okay,
they couldn't even like, you know, walk properly. I didn't
know they were like priests that like did like rock climbing.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
You know, if Jesus is at the top of that hill,
they're going to climb that rock.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, that's right on this mountain. I shaw build my church.
One person in the audience is gonna be oh he
studied Gothic.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yes, yeah, you're going to get that one hardcore Catholic
podcast listener.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Congratulations, thanks very much. But for Michelle, alter boy didn't
translate to being like a rule follower. Right when he
was nineteen, he started stealing cars whenever he wanted to
take his girlfriend dancing. This fucking guy, Okay, all right,
making us all look bad. Good for you, good for you.
So usually they would leave the car in the same
place that they found it, but after a while they
(08:36):
started getting sloppy and just parked it right in front
of his apartment. So the next morning, Mihaw and his
girlfriend were walking up by the sound of the police
banging on the front door.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Poor planning. Everyone knows you don't park a stolen car
in the air house.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So what do you like? You've been stealing cars? Jay,
there's a knock at your door, somebody says, police, What
do you think? What do you do? What's the first
thing that you do? Say? Like, I'm an idiot.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, and I deserved to be taken off to prison
right now, because.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
That would be your way. That would be get and by.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The way, and by the way, on pants, Let me
put on my pants right now before you take me
to prison.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Jay's way would be like, and by the way, I
would like to confess to other crimes of myself and
other people. Yeah, cracking, cracking immediately. So I'll tell you
what Michelle did. Right. He dove out of the bedroom
window to make his escape and left his girlfriend to
face the police alone. Fucked up, like leaving your girlfriend
holding the battle totally French. Yeah right, I don't even
(09:34):
know that's friends. This guy's just like an early adopter
of the fuck boy nature. He's like, not my problem.
So how do you even justify it to her later?
You know, like hey, like I'm sorry. Like the thing is,
there is a loud sound outside. I want to I
was testing rock climbing.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Was actually going to go out it's a window and
get the stolen car and drive it to another location.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So he's a German Frenchman. Now, oh god, damn it.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I knew I should practice my accents. You didn't tell
me this was a French story.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I think we need to do Yeah, I think we
need to use our own accents from now on. Day
that the European nations are up in arms.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
I don't think we're going to offend anyone by doing
bad accents.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
No, no, it's just so listen. So she confessed, right,
Michelle was caught, convicted, and he was put away for
two and a half years. Now, Michelle thought his punishment
was too harsh, and this is when he decided to
start his war against society. When he got out, Michelle
was arrested again for the crime of driving without a license,
and he ends up being convicted of ten robberies over
(10:37):
the years. To be honest, I do think it's kind
of I mean, I'm not advocating grand theft auto here,
but it seemed like he was just a dumb kid, right,
like most of the time he put the car away. Yeah,
I mean he's still really young now, right, he was
nineteen the first time you got oh, oh god, okay,
so yeah, there's just no yeah you could.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You're just crazy when you're nineteen, right, I don't know
about you, but oh.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, it was a nut job at nineteen, and it
hasn't gotten any better, no, no. But also like it
doesn't feel like people that go in the system, it
like rehabilitates them in any country, you know. So I
guess that's when he got a really revolutionary with his crimes. Yeah,
but prison, you know, they couldn't hold him. They just
(11:21):
could not hold Michelle. Right. He made his first escape
when he joined the work crew of prisoners unloading trucks
of supplies. Right when he saw the chance, he bolted
through the cap between the truck and the gate, and
he made his way into the woods, where he dodged
the officers surging for him. Twice, he escaped by scaling
prison walls in nineteen seventy three in nineteen seventy four.
(11:42):
In nineteen seventy three, Michelle and another prisoner pushed to
a weak area of the fence and climbed the wall,
where they realized there was a blind spot for the guards.
They went on a robbery spree until they got caught again.
What it was it with these people that can't just
enjoy their prison break, you know, They're.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Like, you know, it just shows you that I'm coming
from a different place. But I I always think, like,
you get out of prison, just be cool for a
little bit, right, move to La put on in La
put on some shorts, fops maybe you know, yeah, like
just relax I But it's just like, no, no, I
(12:19):
feel like he's Michelle is really trying to prove a point, right.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
He's waging a war against society, man.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, I mean he was just like, I'm just going
to get out of this cage that you put me
in and just do some more damage to this thing
that I hate, you.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Know, right right right. So in nineteen seventy four, Michelle
shared a cell with a safebreaker name Jill gill zil.
Can the overlords of pronunciation please come in and tell
me how to pronounce his name. It is pronounced she
is pronounced gez g g so. In nineteen seventy four,
(12:53):
Michelle shared a cell with a safe breaker named Jill,
who became his best friend.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
The pair used one of Jill's lock picking tricks to escape.
They collected the red wax from baby bell cheeses to
make an imprint of the key. Okay, Jay, your turn again.
You got some wax? How are you going to get
that print? I also, I'm sorry again French people, but
that is the most French way of making I.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Mean the fact that they have baby bell cheeses like
in prisons, mean, you know what our prisoners would do
in this country do for one baby bell cheese.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
And that was not the canon beer week, you know,
that was that way was. It's not. It's not as
easy to get an improve. It reminds me of like
I was listening.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I was reading about World War One recently, and one
of the reasons the French troops were doing so badly
is that they all drank. A leader of wine every
day like that was there. It was part of their ration.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
A lot as opposed to the Germans and World War Two,
which were all hyped up on.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Ye. Well yeah, it was actually like both of those
world wars were like a study of olcohol versus speed.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Versus drug use. Yeah yeah, like speed, speed will always
win in a war. By the way, Yeah, we does
not do well in the war. It's everybody, what if
what the fuck are we doing? Guys, let's just show Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Man just fell out and you know, you just get
sloppy drunk on a bunch of red wine, and it's
like if they put us in prison, we'll just be
eating cute little cheeses.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Great. So Michelle took the direct approach, so he and
Jill memorized which one was the right key by watching
their cell get unlocked every day, and once when they
were being put back into the cell, Michelle bumped the
guard and pressed his wax against the key. Yeah. So,
using a fiel and part of a hacksaw, Michelle and
(14:45):
Ghee were able to take a piece of iron, a
small piece of it, and duplicate the shape of the
key following the imprint of the wax and.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Unlock his fure. I'm beginning to thank this guy's a genius.
I mean, could you bump into someone and make make
a whack impression of their key?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I don't. I can't confirm it legally. I can't tell
you if I have done that before or not. No,
but it is impressive. You know. It's one of those
you know, classic tales of like wow, if you had
just applied that genius to something else, like yeah, exactly,
but he was. He was put on earth basically to
break out of prison. That's right, some people their job.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
He evolved, like one hundred thousand years of human evolution
led to this guy.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Just I can break out it anything, any single thing.
So in prison, after being arrested for another robbery, Michelle
held what one French newspaper called an intimate ritual of rebirth.
So he striped, naked, shaved, and used yoga to enter
a trance that would kill the mad dog in him.
(15:47):
And after that he gave up tobacco, radio, and even
his mattress. Right, so this guy was preparing for burning man.
He did not even know it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'm waiting for what comes next because I know it's
it's not going to be about yoga.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Well. The fourth escape came in nineteen seventy nine during
a hearing for his crimes. Michelle had been in prison
for four years, and he had worked out a plan
right at the courthouse. During his hearing, Michelle took the
judge hostage at gunpoint. Jay, if we were going to
smuggle a gun into a hearing, where would you hide it? Actually,
I don't want to know, fuck it? No, nope, nope,
Well you ask so I know what. I just know.
(16:23):
I like this question was here and I'm like, no,
I know where he would hide it. In the in
the pocket of my shorts. Yeah, in his beautiful thigh
pocket that he always carries with him when it gets chilli.
You have one of those, like, you know those pants
that become shorts. What do they call them?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Sports?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
No, uh no, that's something else. Convertible shorts, convertible shorts shirt.
We'll go with that and the convertible short people.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
If you want to promote your shit on the show,
you know, me and Jay and the Catholic guy will
definitely buy yourself, will definitely zip those up. Michelle had
actually sewn a pocket inside his underwear and took the
gun out when he went to the bathroom before the
hearing started. Now, the thing is, the gun wasn't real.
It was a dummy carved out of soap and turned
black with shoe polish.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Oh my god, this is like take the money and
run a Woody all In movie where you know, it's
just like this is such a cliche, And I love
that he can work in different mediums too. Yeah, he
can branch out from wax into soap.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I mean, you know, from cheese, from cheese to show
to wax. This man does it all. It's all just
a means of escape. It's exactly now. Once he was out,
Michelle reconnected with his old prison friend Ghee, the safe Breaker,
and he also met Gee's sister, Nadine. Huh I see
where this is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nadine had also
(17:44):
been locked up on three separate times for things like
hiding stolen goods, so Michelle and Nadine were basically a
match for each other. They fell in love, and Michelle
started life with Nadine and her daughter. But that didn't
keep him out of trouble. No, no, yeah, nothing keeps
him down. You see. In this time behind bars, Michelle
had met a bunch of guys involved in organized crime.
(18:06):
They reached him now that he was out again, and
he got hired to help with a bunch of armed robberies.
So in March nineteen eighty one, Michelle gets arrested again,
and this time Nadine was even grabbed as an accomplice. Okay,
this part is nuts. Her second daughter, Okay, the one
with Michelle, was even born that year while Nadine was
in jail. They had kids. They had kids, and the
(18:31):
daughter escaped at prison at six months old. Very impressive.
So with you, oh okay, can you imagine, well if
you considered a womb of prison. Yes, well, she escaped
at zero years old in nineteen eighty two, with both
of them behind bars. Somehow, Michelle Nadine arranged for a
(18:51):
prison wedding. They met at a prison registry to sign
the papers, and in the intimacy of the moment, Michelle
told her about his next plans for escape. Oh my god,
they didn't was released the same day, but Michelle's sentence
was for eighteen years. If they were going to be together,
they would need to work together to break Michelle out
of the most notorious prison in Paris. Lessons. Oh yeah,
(19:15):
that's right. Well it's actually a prison. It's well known
for housing celebrities and VIPs. At least, I mean at
least if you're a fan of like well, if you're
a fan of French criminals, that is, if you were
like oj, you'd be put in Leyson. Yeah, exactly, you
would be in the song. Now do any of these
names sound familiar to Jean Ganay, Carlos the Jackal, Bernard Tappi,
(19:36):
Jerome Cavier and Jacques Missline. I'm fucking up all these names.
But how about a first couple I recognize? How about
Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama. Oh yeah, he
ended up there in twenty ten. Oh man. Apparently his
excuse is he wanted the cheese.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
About one thing you can say about Manuel Noriega. He
loved his cheese.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
He loved his cheese. Say what you will about him
and narco trafficking. That's right, yeah, say what you will
about the man. The man had a taste for the
fine things. Laissan has actually been used to film numerous
French gangster movies and there wash there are French pop
songs about the prison. I'm not sure you know I'm
not sure if this was filmed there, but Umprofet was
(20:22):
an amazing French film about the rise of an inmate.
Laissan is still open today and it's one of just
three prisons in Paris. Now. It has a high security wing,
but the security is known for being like fairly lax.
You know, gentlemen, I need to I need to break
in here and say the name of the prison is
son of It, Son of a gun. So we've been
(20:46):
told by our overlords in the sky, our producers there,
it's actually La Sente.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So confused, I was confused that you were talking about.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, that's right, of course, that's exactly what the jackal was. Yes,
I got it all wrong, Yes, thank you, over lord
in my sky. So in two thousand, La Sante's chief
medical officer published a book revealing what life was like inside.
She described inmates piled on top of one another, suicidal,
(21:19):
prisoners were left in chains, and prisoners with their chic
skin infections that have been eliminated in general society but
kept alive inside the prison. Are chaic skin infections I'm
thinking like leprosy and okay, yeah, probably that is archaic, biblical. Yeah,
it's like Yeah, so they have the bubonic plague. It's
(21:39):
kind of weird. Yeah, they have that like weird, like
weird skinning condition where an angel of death comes to
your house if you didn't put the lamps blood in
front of it. Yeah. Those again we got We got
our Catholic people back. Oh, we got them back. Yeah,
are not or not. She also said that it was
infested with rats and cockroaches, which I guess is to
(21:59):
be expected. Now, while Michelle was serving time, he was
not taking it easy. You know. He was coordinated with
Nadine and other friends on the outside, and over time
they came up with a plan. Michelle said that after
studying the layouts to various prisons, he declared that the
easiest way out of La Sante was to escape by air. Now,
the layout made it safe to bring in a helicopter
(22:21):
and hover in place where smokestacks blocked the view from
the watchtowers, meaning that a helicopter couldn't be shot down
by the guards. Now on the outside, Nadine wasn't just
sitting around waiting for his eighteen year sentence to end, No, sir,
She was in on the plan. Michelle had already escaped
four times from prison, so they had to say why
not five and five times five times as the prison tribe.
(22:46):
And this is where we will take a little break
to apologize to everybody that heard the pronunciation of laissant.
Now we're getting to the big moment. May sixth, nineteen
eighty six, the day of the escape, Escape, Escape, Escape.
(23:11):
I hope that Ben adds like echo after I say
the escape, or something godly like that.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, if whoever's listening has heard the echo, then I
have done.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
My job, thanks buddy. So that morning, Michelle said he
woke up early at six am. He had four hours
before the scheduled ren dezvous with Nadine. That's rendezvous for
all you non French speaking people. After breakfast, the prisoners
will let out for a morning walk in the prison yard.
As he got outside, Michelle looked up at the window
of the prison building above him, and he saw the
(23:43):
signal signal signals wow again some echo, which was actually
pretty corny if you ask me. The signal was simply
a white piece of cardboards stuck in the stairwell window.
I mean, really, all this elaborate escape and they're like,
I don't know, just put some cud with U. We've
run out of budget for couliffex. But it meant that
the helicopter was on its way. So in the yard,
(24:03):
Michelle spread out a towel on the ground and started
his yoga routine. Eventually, huh, he heard the helicopter approaching.
You guys, It's like the guy you like is like
looking at you at the party and you're like, my god,
does he approachingesy coming this way? That's what he felt like,
just in a much more heightened version. At first, it
was a low rumble, and as it fucking burst into
(24:25):
the sky over the prison yard, it became a roar
that froze all the other prisoners in place. Yeah, they're like,
now the door did? The helicopter opened and a duffle
back flew out, crashing down into the prison yard. And
that's when Michelle sprang into action. He rushed into the bag,
ripped it open, dug out a pistol and pointed to
(24:45):
the prisoners and the guards in the yard, yelling nobody moved,
or whatever the French version of that is. And the
prisoners that were already not moving, they're like, what do
you mean I'm doing yoga? Steal there's one fusual like,
does this mean the thing is over? Okay? So Michelle
(25:06):
also pulled out a fishing rod and two meters of rope. Okay, So, Jay,
you're in a prison yard with a pistol, a fishing
pole and some rope. How are you gonna escape? Jay,
I'll start fishing in the moat. Yeah, I'll catch a fish.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I'll tie a rope around the fish's neck and
use it to like water ski across the moat.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Beautiful, Yes, jumping the shark. He jumped the shark. Now
Michelle ran to the side of the prison building and
forcing everybody to clear path. He used a fishing rod
to loop the rope through the window bars two meters up.
Then he used a rope to climb up. He scrambled
from window ledge to window ledge, using the fishing pole
(25:44):
to lift the rope and loop it through the next
set of iron bars. Can you fucking believe? Oh my god?
Now a prison guard was stationed on the roof, but
Michelle knew that the man in the helicopter was holding
him a gunpoint. It was when he reached the roof
that Michelle says that all the noise up with him
he heard the alarms blaring, the helicopter roaring, and the
prisoners below cheering him on, like obviously, it must be
(26:07):
such an emotive moment. Huh. So he jumped onto the
landing skits of the helicopter and flew away while the
prisoners clapped and celebrated his escape. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah, he just grabbed onto the skids his kids. Yeah. Yeah,
oh well, that's where all the yoga came in. I mean,
he had like muscle tone.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah. He was also really and people say that his
chi was really connected as well.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know that he could just merge completely with the helicopter,
the energy of the helicopter.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
There was a sense of oneness repeated by the person. Well,
at least that's Michelle's version of the story. You know,
he published that in a book in twenty eighteen, laying
it all out, but Michelle leaves out some key details
that were reported in the news at the time. Now,
first of all, Michelle didn't make the climb alone. Okay,
he had an accomplice, another prisoner named Pierre, who followed
(26:55):
him up to the roof and held off the prison
guards with a bundle of grenades.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Now, yeah, here, here, this out using a bundle of grenades.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
I'm about to tell you. I'm about to tell you. So,
as the news report tells it, a man with a
machine gun jumped out of the helicopter and slid down
a cable to the building's roof. He tied the core
around Michelle, who was lifted into the helicopter. Now the cord, Yeah,
the cord was dropped again to the gunman, who grabbed it,
and he was also raised into the air. Then the
(27:25):
helicopter turned and flew off, leaving Pierre behind. Pierre. No,
no good for Pierre. Can you imagine you did all this?
I guess we have it. We are free. And they're like, wait,
wait are we? Did you all get together? Your bastard. So,
Pierre was a waiting trial for armed robbery, and he
(27:48):
told the police that he decided not to join the
escape at the last minute. Shut the fuck up, Prierre,
you got left, Okay, it's one of these I didn't
he didn't, dumb me. I dumped him. Poor Pierre, Poor Pierre.
But the thing that Pierre could reveal to the prison
guards was that the grenades he was using were not real.
They were neck turenes yeah, yeah, so they were nectarenes.
(28:10):
Bro Pierre had hidden them and covered them in paint
to look like explosives. I love to think that one
of the guards knew they were in grenades, but it's
absolutely grossed out by fruit. Like you know, if the
dude took one look and he's like, absolutely fucking up.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Okay, hey those are green nectarinestrhea, Like I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
My mouth is just salivating thinking about the sellarness. And now,
as for the rest of the guards, I can't blame
him if I'm not wanting to get up close and
personal with some fucking grenades to see if they were
going to explode, you know, prison or yells grenade to me, Well,
there's a helicopter in the sky. I wanna believe him.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I'm surprised he didn't use cheese because I think, I
like those round cheeses would look a little more grenades, because.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
No prison guard will ever mistake cheese for grenades. Bro Okay,
that's true, that's right. Nectarines is yeah, you're right. It's
easier to confuse. So Nadine flew Michelle to a soft
field at a nearby university. When they landed, there was
a car waiting to whisk them away. No names of
their accomplices in the helicopter or get away car ever
(29:08):
came to light. So at least they were, you know,
honor among thieves in there.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Well yeah, I mean I'm still thinking about poor Pierre,
like standing on that rooftop.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Anybody, you guys are you guys are coming back though? Right? Yeah,
you guys are. You're just going to get more few. Yeah,
you guys come coming back though? Like should I just yeah?
Should I just wait wait here? Okay, I'll wait here.
I'll mean I got the nectarines? Ye, anybody hungry in
the meantime. So, Michelle was a contract burglar and the
(29:44):
escape was arranged by his friends in organized crime. He
never admitted who helped them, but it was obviously a
network with accomplices both inside and outside the prison. When
the police chased down the helicopter at the soccer field,
they surrounded it for more than an hour before moving
in to check it out. I mean, they were terrified
that it was movie trapped and waited to see if
it would explode, like holy shit, No wonder the nectarine
(30:06):
plan worked.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, I mean, these French police are pretty cautious, I'll.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Give him back to them. Yeah. So eventually they send
bomb sniffing dogs into inspected before they searched it but
found nothing. Now, some accounts say the Michelle and Nadan
escape to South America for a few months, but eventually
returned after running out of money.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I love that they staged this incredibly elaborate and expensive
escape with all the details in place and then all that,
you know, like wires dangling from helicopters.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
But they go to South America and run out of
money and I don't know how to spend. Yeah, we
talked economics. They didn't know.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, we can escape, but we cannot budget South America.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
They didn't come on, dude, seventeen months of I or
whatever it was, helicopter lessons, you didn't. You didn't do
one like accounting lesson. So if it's true that they left,
they were all also able to slip back across the
border into France and hide out in a small French town.
By that same fall, in nineteen eighty six, their two
(31:07):
daughters were twelve and five. They try to set up
a life as a family in this little small town.
French newspapers say that they were really happy together. Michelle
says that he was mad in Nadine. She wanted to
give up a life of crime and love a peaceful
situation as a family. But who do you think you
are with your sportsman woman like figure.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It's all about rebellion, man, come on man, the war
against society.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, she even considered turning herself in, and she told
them so. Now, what everyone agrees on is that Michelle
and Nadine were out of money. So just a few
months after the jail break, Michelle decided to try another robbery,
like fucking idiot, But he was pretty desperate and didn't
exactly have a plan or anything. So on the day
he got to the bank and saw that there were
(31:51):
three armed guards stationed at the front door, but instead
of backing out, Michelle tried to jump them and win
a fight three to one. Oh no, Michelle, man, and
all this yog is getting to your brain, dude, You
can't just like flow it in there. He says he
was able to disarm two of them before the third
one started shooting and the other cops arrived in the firefight.
One newspaper says that Michelle shot three officers before they
(32:13):
shot Michelle in the head with a magnum. WHOA, check
this out. The bullet launched in Michelle's brain. Somehow it
didn't kill him, Okay. One of the most extremely gross
parts here. Right. Michelle says that before he blacked out,
he saw bits of his brain floating away from his
head in a stream of his own blood. Pretty intense.
(32:34):
But why are you charging at arm guards, Michelle? Fucking hell? Oh? Man,
the guy has a death wish. Yeah. I want to
think it's karma for Pierre. Justice for Pierre. Justice. This
is what it's all about. Man, That's right, poor Pierre. Meanwhile,
it's still standing on that rooftop. Guys, anytime any anybody,
they're coming back. So Michelle fell into a comb The
(33:00):
police grabbed them and took him to the hospital. Now
they were able to identify him as the helicopter prison
escapee just by his tattoos. I mean, it didn't help
that one of the tattoos said folk the Belize escaped
in the helicopter. Get me. Eventually, eventually Michelle came back
to consciousness, but his left side was paralyzed. He was
charged with numerous crimes, and this time, when he was
(33:22):
moved to prison. He was locked in solitary confinement. You
can't blame him. Yeah, yeah, they're like, fucking the guy.
We're done now.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
The day he gets one round cheese, but that's it.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Okay, give him the camembert Okay, he get him stewing
there with it. The day after Michelle was arrested, the
police swept in and arrested Nadine too. They have been
conspirators before, so naturally she was suspected as part of
the plan for their most recent robbery. Apparently, Michelle tried
to escape again by helicopter in nineteen ninety three, but
(33:56):
the prison. Yes, but the prison had been alerted and
his plan was thwarted. People need to stop renting his
friends some helicopters, man.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Like they're there's one thing I hate helicopter escapes. I mean,
come on, there's a lot of other motorized vehicles. Yeah,
they just make a cooler right, like yeah, Trey harder,
Michelle something something.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
How about a team of pole vaulters, Yeah, get over
those yeah, or those Alaskan pulling dogs. What do you
call it?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, you mean like in the Iditarod, the like yeah, husky.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, just a bunch of Huskies.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well, you'd have to get some snowmaking equipment in the
prison somehow for the Huskies to have something.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Well, that's that's that's Pierre's job. This time.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
He convinced them that this time for sure, all the
snows and dig a tunnel for the Huskies to get out,
and then they would leave him, leave.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
His ass again. Here's the aftermath. Okay, Michelle was finally
released from prison in September two thousand and three. He
still had sixteen years left on his sentence, but changes
in French law allowed a judge to overrule the earlier decision.
(35:05):
This this surprised me about a lot of European law
bro that they were like, this man murders seventeen people,
we gave him ten years, ten years to think about,
you know what I mean. It just feels like like
sentences in Europe sometimes are so communtied.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I just get the feeling they're a lot more lenient
about a lot of things, you know, Like, I.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Don't know, they probably had it coming. I don't know
his life. You know, Pierre deserved it. Nobody liked Pierre, Yeah, nobody.
Fucking Pierre is still working at the fucking prison now.
He's like, fuck you guys. Now, when he was free,
Michelle had spent twenty seven years total in jail, seventeen
of those years in solitary confinement. WHOA, yeah, that'll do
(35:43):
some Maybe maybe that's where all this yoga and sense
stuff came in handy. Yeah, he had lived only forty
months of his adult life as a free man. Oh
my god. Now on the French legal system, Michelle said,
justice and all that stuff didn't exists for me. That
justice business was a complete con. Some people command the
(36:04):
poor folks below them, and I was one of the
poor folks, those who had no power, nothing. I was
the son of nothing. What an impassioned speech. He strikes
on some interesting points, but like, you know, I love
the idea of Michelle hairbillowing in the wind, coming out
of solitary confinement and being like I have.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
A declaration to make you know, Oh, I mean he
sounds very philosophical about it, you know, like for a
guy who would just bum brush armed guards, Yeah you really,
and just like Rob mercilessly and plan these elaborate escapes.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
So Michelle's escaped inspire many copycats between nineteen eighty six
and twenty fifteen eight, additional helicopter scapes occurred in French prisons. Okay,
you know what, they should just outlaw helicopters at some point.
It's the French prison's fault to this guard's helicopter escapes.
French prisons have started to put mesh nets and closely
spaced cables over our outdoor spaces. What about large glass
(37:02):
treenes or domes? You know, what about the Catholic priests
shaming you as you're flying in.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Just post Catholic priests on the roofs of all things,
shaming people.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
That would fuck is? Do you know that would stop me?
I'd be like, oh my god, I'm out. That would
stop you in a second. Yeah, I mean I'm out.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I'm out a Catholic priest or you're kryptonide.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
They really are now on the Nadine side. She published
a book about her life and especially about the prison escape.
In fact, she beat Michelle by a few decades. Her memoir,
called air Girl, was published in nineteen eighty nine. She
actually got a film deal out of it. A movie
of the same title in French is La fille le
laires and so much nicer in French and It was
(37:44):
released in nineteen ninety two. Now, Michelle Villere's biography was
published in twenty eighteen with the title Love Saved Me
from Sinking. He claims that today he is a change man.
He's still alive and his war against society is over.
He even says here that his yoga technique restored his
brain function and healed his left hand, his arm, and
(38:05):
leg with a reversal of consciousness. I believe it. Listen, man, okay,
I subscribe to Goop. You know I'm with it. I
live in la I believe in these things happening now. Actually,
the love that Saint Michelle was apparently not Nadine's ooh
son of God yep. A law student named Jamilla started
(38:26):
visiting him in prison, and one French newspaper says that
they held a secret wedding in nineteen ninety nine. He
even tried to have her He tried to have her
repeat the helicopter escape, but Jamila was arrested. Hearing me out,
she fucking said yes, but she was arrested before they
could pull it off and was sentenced to seven years
in prison.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Talk about repeating the same mistakes with every relationship.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
That's right, Well, so, like, how good is this man
in bed?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
I mean, he's obviously got a sort of an animal magnetism. Yeah,
because like now Nadine's on the rooftop with pir right.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, he just he just left them both. And now
Nadine and Pierre actually yeah, have a full trade cheese company.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
That they Hollywood version of this arturo like you know, yeah,
Pierre and Nadine definitely end up together.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
They end up together.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
They have an Etsy shop making keys out of wax.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So when Michelle and Jamila were finally released, Michelle went
to live with his new wife Jamila. No imagine, Nadine, bro, like,
what else did you have to do for this motherfucker?
And then he publishes a book name like Love Save Me,
but it wasn't yours. I know, that's so wrong. I mean,
she took helicopter lesson. She took helicopter lessons. I mean
a lot of helicopter lessons. She learned how to hover
(39:42):
like four feet off the ground, sucking really hard. I
don't know, personally, anybody loved him, that's right. Somebody throw
a tangerinea this fucking guy. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
I'm kind of angry at this, dude. I mean, we're
on society, okay, but to Pierre.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
And and to brag about it, I know, I know,
so listen. That's our story. But to recap, we learned
that Michelle was excellent at escaping, but really bad at
keeping personal relationships.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Which definitely definitely but it's very French too.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Hey a, I cannot speak to that, Jay. Can you
stop fucking with our French audience? No, I love our
French audience, my friend. What a fucking pleasure to talk
to you as always.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Oh my god, I love these escapes. Thanks man, I
would talk to you about anything in the heart.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Are you kidding? Yeah? Brother. We recently worked on a
film together called The Gift Right, The Gift right the Present? Okay,
the gift is a better, The gift is a better.
This is also a pitch session for titles for your movies, Jay.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
No, you see, the gift only works one way. The
present is also the present. It's like a gift as
well as the present moment.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
A little play on words there. Do you have anything
else do you like to plug? Brother? Anything?
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I might want my new line of pants that have
like the little zippered flaps. On the bottom, so perfect
fake when you're in shorts, yes, hiding for fake guns
and cheese.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Are you ever in shorts? But fuel you have to
run to a meeting. Try Jay's new catfish pants. Yeah,
I'll get you hired and then you never have to
wear pants ever again.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I have like a novel out on Audible now called
The Present as well.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
It's it's not a coincidence, a different story.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
But you use you want to get a thematic and
actually it should be called a Gift. And then I
have another novel coming out on Audible called Mayfly Man.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Oh wonderful brother. Much love to you, Thank you so much,
my pleasure, Turo. We'll see you next time. Greatest Escapes
is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation Entertainment in
association with Gilded Audio or Executive producers for Me are
to or Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka for Film
(42:00):
Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chugg and Witning Donaldson from Gilded Audio,
and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show is produced and
edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
our Research Overlord and Music Overlord, our associate producer is
Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
(42:20):
Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein,
Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
(42:41):
a rating or review. My mom will call you each
personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next
week
Host
Arturo Castro
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