Don't Fence Me In: Mark DeFriest

How does someone get a life sentence for stealing their own tools? Take one part probate, one part rebellion, multiple parts prison escapes, and one part Florida. What you get is the wild tale of Mark DeFriest, the Prison Houdini. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth, and I said I did like the millennial miss
So I got a question for you, miss Dan. Do
you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:13):
I do? I do aperol sprits. You've had one before, right, yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I think so.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
It's got apparol, which is like a bitter sweet orange
liqueur prosecco. Just you know, the Champagne of Italy, soda
water and orange slice. Yes, right, although when when I
was in Venice and having too many of them, they
put green olives up in there.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I don't like all so that's just like it was
an interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Do they make a dirty apparol sprits?

Speaker 3 (00:43):
That's probably with the olives a little in a little
Venetian canal water? So anyway, there's also now there's another
version that's the Italian drinks. You know what the American
version is?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Do I want to know this?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah? So it's appaol, right, you have the citrus except
for an orange, used lemon, and instead of prosecco you
use Miller High Life.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oh god, the Champagne of beers.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Right, and it's called a spaghett you're kidding me? No,
I'm not kidding it. It's called a Spaghett Miller high life.
Like they're wilding out right. They made that record of
bar Noises, all right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
You know I support them generally.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Oh yeah, well I feel like they were like, you know,
the millennials loved us, and they truck her hats and
and they're like come back, like no one drinks anymore,
come on, So they went one step further. Zerin it's
the Spaghett Sicle.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
You weren't such a good run.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I know, it's the Spaghett Sicle. So it's the Spaghett cocktail,
but in a push like frozen push pop and uh yeah,
so you can order them if you want. It's seventy
nine dollars for six packs. You really really love your friends.
This comes to us.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
That's an expensive joke.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah, this comes from us. From from Andrew Bowman on Instagram.
He's a member of the Subaru Forster Gang ps.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh wow, doubled up.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah double so. Yeah, spagatsicle ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Ridiculous and I'm gonna forgive that. That's a mashup. I know.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
I did that as fast as I could ripped it off.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
You're welcome.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well you're here. I got something for you. You want
to allow else is ridiculous? Yeah, okay, Elizabeth, I know
you're familiar with the saying there, but for the grace
of God go I yes, right. Out of all the
stories we've told here, I think this one feels very
much like that for me.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Really.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, In short, I relate to this cat, right. He's
this loner. He's raised by a father who trains him
and prepares him for the world, but such that when
he's faced with authority figures, he resists them, and like,
even if it cost him damn near everything. Yeah, so
I get that right, And well, I'll just put it
this way. You're ready for the mad story of a
prison escape artist.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Always ready for that.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heist and cons is. It's always ninety percent murder free
and what one hundred percent ridiculous ridiculous? Oh, Elizabeth, Like
I said up top, this is a wild ride, and
I guess the best way to put it is just

(03:28):
buckle up, Buttercup. I'd like you to meet Mark Defriest. Hello, Mark,
aka the Houdini of Florida. Known for that for his
Houdini like escapes in Florida. In Florida exactly. I figured
you'd catch on to that album quick. He could wriggle
out of straight jackets, he could slip free a handcuffs,
leg irons. What you got He is a water certified

(03:48):
escape artist. No, he's not that part of Yeah, he's
not so committed to the Houdini bit.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
We'll give it a little time. That's charming.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Give him a crowd, let him see what he can do.
So Mark he was born in rural Florida back in
August of nineteen sixty and a former prison warden at
the Florida State Prison, which is a real crazy place.
A man named Ron McAndrew once said, quote, I've met
a lot of brilliant people in my time, but I've
only met one, Mark Defriest. His brilliance is so great

(04:18):
that it's hard to describe. So that's a challenge I'm
up against today. I'm going to try to describe that
to you.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
He's what some folks would call a savant. He's also
he was a child prodigy. He's a true rare one
by many folks estimation. This prison escape artist is the
result of his misunderstood autistic soul. Now, let's start way
back when he was a boy. At the age of six,
Mark was known to take apart watches, clocks and then
put them back together, unlike me, who would take them

(04:47):
apart and just have a bunch of parts everywhere. So
all by himself at six he could do this right,
But not only that. His mechanical genius extended such to motors, engines, telephones,
transistor radios. He's like, if it moved, it's got you know,
dials and knobs and stuff. I can take it apart
put it back together.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
He had that like spatial uh like understanding of things.
How he look connects together one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
He had like that tesla, I can see it in
my mind, I can take it apart and put it
back together kind of saying going on totally well. For instance,
later on, when he was a little older, he once
bugged his stepsister's room and he didn't bug it like, oh,
I can hear what she's doing. He rewired her telephone
so that her calls were broadcast by a loud speaker
he'd set up out on the street for an amused audience.

(05:32):
Of neighborhood kids.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh no, yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
He was kind of like you, an agent of chaos,
or as Mark puts it, quote, I was a wild child.
You know. They tried to get me to interact with
other people, other children, and I was more interested in
how things work. Right. So they're in the basement of
his parents' house. He built for himself his own little
private laboratory, and I'm talking he would experiment with chemistry sets,
electronic sets that kind of used to be able to

(05:55):
buy it like radio shack. Yeah, rip, Oh man, do
I miss radio Shack, the old day dream store. You
went to radio Shack?

Speaker 4 (06:02):
Right?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Do you have any favorite like things about it you remember,
like you know, just like oh, I would go in
and see such and such that.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
At a very young age became obsessed with police scanners
that so well. My grandmother had one, and I loved
like getting into her bed in the evening and listening
to the scanner because it's like the best gossip and
like you just you hear all sorts of wild stuff
that's like not going to make the paper crazy story totally.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
It's like the subterranean soap opera.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yes and so and then we also there was a
time too when early cell phone days. My uncle had
a cell phone that had all these channels. Oh yeah,
and she and I used to sit there in the
evening and flip through and listen to other people's calls.
This is in Las Vegas.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
You guys are crazy.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, and like you know, you're in Vegas and you're
hearing cell phones. Oh yeah, you're hearing conversations.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
We had a great time.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Do you guys ever have to testify for the FBI.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
I'm surprised we didn't, but yeah, anyway, radio shack, it
was like, oh, if you want to like get a
police scanner, that's your joint right there.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
That was the best. Well, as he tells it, his
basement lab was quote like doctor Frankenstein's science fuction laboratory.
It's been days down there and a couple times, as
he puts it, I blew myself up. Oh no, oh yeah,
he was that kid. Now. The majority of quotes from
Mark that will will be featured in this episode come
from a documentary by filmmaker Gabriel London called The Mind

(07:25):
of Mark de Friest, came back out in twenty fourteen.
I highly recommend it. Now, in my telling of Mark's
life story, I'll be leaving out some of the more
brutal periods of his life in prison, thank you, not
for what he did. It's not like it like one situation. No,
it's due to what was done to him.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
I can't take stuff these days.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, I know you can't, So I left that out.
And also the documentary just so listeners, no, doesn't skip
over those, so if you check it, be warned.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah. Well, I mean that's the thing. It's like they're fuller.
Every story that we tell has fuller pictures around it. Yes,
and we're telling you the safe ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Parts often yeah, yeah, any time that there's like especially
a one percent. But in his case that's not the case.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
It's just some brutality, trauma and tality. Exactly what's the
point of sharing that with everybody? You know, let's hear
the funn.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Nothing funny about it.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Anyway, back to Mark Defriest in his childhood, a lot
of how he is can be traced back to his upbringing,
which we often find is the case with the criminals
we cover. Now, in Mark's case, there is his father, Everett.
He was very much like Mark. His stepsister Barbie Taylor
compared him to Indiana Jones. She said, quote, if it
could be done, Everett could do it. You gotta love that. Now.

(08:31):
His father, Evertt, was a World War Two veteran. He
was also a spy in the OSS, which is the
organization that predated the CIA. Now the war changed Everett,
it reshaped him, it left him perpetually on edge. The
filmmaker for the documentary, Gabriel London, says, his father quote
believed that the Communists were coming, and he sort of
prepared his child, his only son, in a way to

(08:53):
be prepared for the Russians who were coming. Now, when
Mark tells of his father, the emphasis is a little different.
He said, and quote he was into that whole fifties
and sixties thing about the threads were coming in. Now,
that was really a whole cultural thing back then. That
dude was nuts. He really was. I never saw Russian
yet gives you a little.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Sounds like you're saying those of the war changed him.
I mean, my god, what we put people through. No
train them to go to war, even when they don't
wind up going. You break someone down and rebuild them.
And then when you send them into these traumatic situations.
You know, we every generation we call it something different,
but we break minds and then we're like, oh yeah,

(09:36):
go out and be in society and raise a family
and like to peoria deal with these pressures.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, and he was out there on the bleeding edge
of the war, spy stuff, behind the lines, that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Anyway, with his dad's obsession, what that meant for Mark
was quote, I was trained from the age of six
and guerrilla warfare, guns, explosives, bombs, anti tank rockets. Can
you imagine from the age of six six, Dad's like, okay,
he got the red wire, not the blue wire. Anyway,
this fuels his own paranoid self reliance. If you dropped

(10:07):
him behind enemy lines at age nine, he's getting home like.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Little boys, like the worst of people, like and stuff.
But that's a fantastic version of a fantasy version. He's
getting like the like uncensored version.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Oh yeah, like how to like feel dress your own.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Wounds and with the fear on top of it. It's
not told as an adventure story. It's told as a survival.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
The reds are coming. Yeah. Now, next to Elizabeth, I'd
like you to meet his mother. She was the kind
of mom who would tickle the hell out of Alfred Hitchcock.
She was a real peach And I say that as
sarcastically as possible as Mark's first wife, Brenda put it.
Mark's mother, Marilyn was quote an ice cold.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Brenda also said, quote I thought that she didn't really
care for Mark. I saw no love, I saw no hugs.
I saw no I love you. I saw nothing of
that nature with her. So this is the world he's
raised in now naturally damaged people totally in these two charmers.
They eventually get divorced while he's still young, and as
a result, Mark gets sent away to a school for
wayward boys.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Oh he didn't go with either one.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
No. Yeah. So, now, being trained as he was by
his father, Mark of course tries to escape that school
and run away. Yeah, and then along come his teenage years.
Mark then went through all of the expected rebellions that
come with it. But once again, he's well trained, so
he wasn't a big fan of the other kids or
other people. So it was no surprise that Mark eventually
ran into trouble with the law. He was first arrested

(11:30):
in nineteen seventy eight, and at the time he was
eighteen years old. So when he gets caught, he gets
real time. He's locked up for a year, and when
he gets out, he comes back to be with his
father and live in rural Florida again in a part
of Florida is called a Gadsden County. It's his rural area.
It's in the west of Tallahassee on the Florida Georgia line. Okay, right,

(11:50):
so it's up there like in what used to be
tobacco country, like way back in the day. But by
nineteen nine.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
It's just the top exactly. Okay.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's the life that was making that area like profitable
was mostly gone. So the county at this point wasn't
exactly an economic powerhouse, but people got by right now.
When Mark got out after his first stretch inside, he
came home to be near his dad. But sadly, his
father passed away. This is nineteen seventy nine, and this
is the start of his life's troubles because you see,

(12:18):
when his dad passed away, he was left his toolkit,
like he left all his tools to his son, and
apparently he had an amazing tool collection and he was
like incredible. So Mark he knew it had been willed
to him. Everybody knew it, but he didn't want to
wait for the lawyers to process probate, so instead he
just went to his dad's place and he tried to
collect his dad's collection of tools. He had a key

(12:40):
to look the toolshad or the garage or what have you,
and all the tools had been left for him. As
I said, So his stepmother knew this, but when she
saw him, like as she could later claim, breaking in,
she called the local sheriff. And so the sheriff came
out to see what was what and was not looking
to bus. Mark just wanted to talk to him. But
Mark sees the police pulling up and he'd already been inside,
so he's like, I'm not going back. He breaks out

(13:01):
of a window and runs for it. Like with the tools,
Mark made it all the way to Alabama, where he
was soon caught. He had a gun on him when
he was busted, so he was charged with theft, gun
possession and extradited back to Florida. Since he was now
an ex con, the gun was considered a violation of
his parole. Right now, the tools that had been left

(13:22):
to him by his father. You might expect it when
a judge hears this, they would be a bit lenient, Elizabeth,
That's not what happened. If you had to guess how
much time do you think he got inside for his
second stretch for a huge tool.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Well he didn't wake out with all the tools.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Right, but he has a gun. He's extradited from Alabama.
What do you think a judge sees this in nineteen
seventy nine, nineteen seven nine.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
And you mentioned he's autistic, right, yeah, so he's probably
not going to convey himself like others do it. He
has different things he brings to the game completely, So
I'm going to think it's completely out of control. Yes,
like ten.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Years, not quite. He got four years in a floor
to state correctional.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Facility for stealing something that is his.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
It would have been his if he just waited like
an extra week or something. So that's no fun. Right,
there's boom. Now Mark had already been locked up for years,
I said, so he knew what to expect him. He
was going back inside. So I guess he didn't dig
his prison social life that he had previously experienced, because
within a month of being locked up, he makes his
first escape attempt. Yeah, one month and by the way,

(14:25):
that was the first of many prison escape attempts. Now,
let's take a little break, and after these messages we
will get into the many, many prison escapes of Mark
de Friest. Yes, we're back to Elizabeth. You're ready to

(14:59):
bust out the joint.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
I certainly am so.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
At this point, it's nineteen eighty. Mark Defriest has just
been locked up at a facility called Bay County Prison
in Florida. And like I said, he doesn't take him
even a month before he decides I don't want to
be here.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
It's not for him.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Now, thanks to the documentary The Mind of Mark Defriest,
we know exactly how his first month played out. And
so here's how Mark Defriest tells the story. And I quote,
it was Tuesday, I remember that Tuesday Bible study. You're
supposed to be escorted out of the compound at night.
Eight of us broke camp and hauled for the fence.
The plan was that simple, run eight of them, Yeah, exactly.

(15:35):
Can't catch all that?

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Maybe you bring some slow vas exactly.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
It's the whole thing about like if you're trying to
run from a bear, you just take time to put
on your shoes because you don't have to be faster
than the bear. It's got to be faster than the
other guy.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, So back to Mark quote, half of them got
hung up on the fence on that that razor wire
and he was scream at de freezed wait up for me,
And I was like, the f's wrong with you people?

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Man?

Speaker 2 (15:57):
So obviously, like I said a loaner, Yeah, Mark, he
gets over the fence and he doesn't look back. He
heads straight for the Florida swamps, which is not the
choice most folks would make. Sure, But you've ever seen
them Florida swamps? I mean that's for me. It's scarier
in jail.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Once and I saw some and it was pretty uh
And I don't even think I saw like the swamp swamp.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah no, But I've also.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Seen other swamps throughout the South.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know, it goes.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
I always would see him. You see like the the
you know, cypress trees coming out of this stuff, and
you think, I bet you there are so many bodies
in there, oh one d percent.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Also easily it's like America's version of Australia. It's like
everything wants to eat and kill your.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
And everything's outsized and yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, So Mark, though he's not afraid of the swamps
right due to his paranoid papa's war training. He's like, oh,
I can handle this, Yeah totally. So he and another
inmate they make it to the swamps together. They get
chased by prison guards and like at some point apparently
they're like shooting rifles at them, trying to scare them
out of the woods and make as they're making their
way through the swamp. But once again, thanks to Daddy's training,

(16:57):
they evade the enemy and they make it through the
darkened woods.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Back to Mark's telling quote, we went to one of
my old friend's houses. They had an old Ford pickup truck. Elizabeth,
You'll never guess what they did next. You guess, steal
a car. You win. So Mark hot wired his friend's
old Ford truck and as he tells it, quote, all
you gotta do is raise the hood, put a positive
wire to the coil of the battery, hit the solenoid,

(17:23):
and haul it. You can do this in the dark,
eyes closed, You know what I'm saying. Well, he can, Mark,
not everyone knows.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
What you're saying I can't.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
But Mark, Yeah, eyes closed too, that's what I want to.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Bump down the room.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
So this guy's I said, he's mechanically gifted. So now
thanks to his gifts, they have a hot truck. So
they hit the road and they make their escape to Tallahassee,
not spot I would go, but they picked Tallahassee. They oh,
the big city, will be able to hide and be anonymous.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
They hole up in room two sixty eight at the
Driftwood Motel. Hey, that's also where the police and prison
officials finally caught up to them. The cops and the
prison officials were very much not cool with his first
escape attempt. They were not impressed. Yeah, but if you
ask Mark, he says, nobody has a sense of humor. Anyway, Mark,
he catches new charges for this prison escape attempt, and

(18:10):
not a few. I mean he caught six new charges
that added a lot more time to his sentence.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Remember he's just twenty years old. He's got his entire.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Life and started a four year sentence exactly. So it's
not like, oh, it was just almost done, and now
he tack on a couple of years.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, Yeah, it's rough now, Based on his escaped attempt
and his odd behavior, the prison officials sent him to
the Florida State Hospital to test if Mark was competent
to stand trial for all these new charges. The Florida
State Hospital is basically like a facility like you would
see in One Flew Over the Cucko's Nest. It's a
mental health facility and like a state hospital. So the

(18:46):
year is now at this point, nineteen eighty one, and
here comes a new wrinkle in the story because at
the Florida State Hospital he reconnected with his wife because
that's where she worked.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
So he got married at some point.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, he was married when he was I should mentioned
that his first wife. He was married very young, and
she liked him. He was this handsome blonde guy. She's like,
oh my god, he's so free, he's so confident. He
just went to jail and now he's in jail, right,
and so can you imagine that, Like how rough it
must have been for her when her husband was booked
at her place of work. Yeah right, like that's no fun, right,
or she put it that sucked, Yeah, that's sure. And

(19:20):
she was a social worker there, so she's taking care
of inmate patience. And meanwhile, she put it, quote, I
had patients that were looking up to me as their
social worker, and then I was trying to help and
give them advice. And I've got this husband over there
at forensic services. Oh no, right, yeah, it's rough. H Meanwhile,
Mark takes one look at this place's security and he's like,
I can bust out of here, Elizabeth. This brings us

(19:42):
to his second prison escape attempt. We'll call it the
great lsdkper Oh no, yes, back to Mark's telling, no, quote,
I figured that I get everybody stoned. I got my
hands on Do you know what blotter as it is? Right,
it's LSD twenty five.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yes, he gets acid in yes, mental They.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Were using it for like therapeutics, right, trying to like
help people have like constructors. There was a lot of
that stuff coming out of like, yeah, the sixty seventies
and eighties, I mean even before that. That was the
part of the original intention was like this could be
and it's same with MDMA.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
They locked the cabinet.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
No, his plan was simple, straightforward. You give the prison
guards and the officials their acid, and in the chaos
he just slip away.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Nice so to enact his plan.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
He hid in a closet by the nurses station, and
there he waited for a shift change. Half an hour before,
like four in the afternoon, just before the new shift
came on, he snuck out of the broom closet and
as Mark tells it, quote, they got this coffee pot machine,
and I took the whole bottle of blotter acid. It
was like maybe seventy five to one hundred tabs worth,
So I dumped the whole thing in this fresh pot
of coffee. That's what I did in that's a lot

(20:51):
of acid, A lot.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
I used to have these like fantasies when I was
sitting in faculty meetings in the college and everyone was
just really pushing my buttons and they all love sweet tea.
Maybe out there like this huge like you know, caraffe
of sweet tea hitting the thing, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
And I used to think, like what if I put
like half a drop of LSD in this giant like
you know container, Yeah, like what would happen? Or if
I put a whole you know, like what would happen?
And this guy is taking like a quarter of the
amount of liquid and like a hundred times oh, my god,
he's gonna break brains.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Oh yeah, it'll certainly do the trick.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Meanwhile, Mark is rare and to go. He's just like
sitting there geeking out in the closet waiting for things
to happen. And also I should say he's got clothes
to change into once he gets outside, so he's like
prepared for this.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
And also he's worked out like which locks he'll need
to pick to make his escape, so he's got his
whole path planned. Is like he's got his like after
care planned, Like I'm gonna put on this outfit and
I'm gonna go get a cad like a diddy bag.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
To like make sure that he's all set exactly.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
So he just needs to wait for the LSD to
kick in, which it does around four to twenty pm.
Not to it's just coincidental. So the prison staff they
start to feel the strange disorienting effects of the acid,
and starts out with this one prison aide who's working
in the laundry room. As Mark tells it, quote, you
know how the clothes and the dryer go around and
around and around. Well he got really freaked out about that,

(22:19):
and he attacked the dryer. He beat the out of
that dryer. He ripped the door off, he started kicking
it and screaming. So, oh yeah, there's other ones, like
there's a psychiatrist, this redheaded woman psychiatrist. She's walking down
the center aisles like saying all kinds of nonsense and
like gripping out her body and stuff. Like everybody's freaking out.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Is my night mare?

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Oh yeah? And then you're in a prison because I'm.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Like, oh, don't talk to me until I've had my coffee.
I'm just gonna have a little pick me up. And
then all of a sudden, I'm just say my mind.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, faces are melting off of heads. Soon there were
other freakouts like happening all over the prison, and as
Mark tells it, quote well, somebody got wise and called
security right before I could make my move. They surrounded
the whole goddamn warden locked it all down, right, They
finally figured out the coffee had been poisoned. So much
for the Great lsd kper HeiG fizzled before he could

(23:09):
even get out of the facility. But don't lose hope, Elizabeth,
because next came his third prison escape attempt. The third
prison escape attempt was motivated by what he saw in
the prison wood shop. As you know, a wood shop
means tools, sure, and Marcus clearly good at using tools,
so yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
They're also like like pruce madeleine where it's like memories.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Oh yeah, he's having flashbacks. So back to Mark's retelling
of events quote, they sent me to arts and craft
school and they had these rolled up copper sheets. I'm
just looking at it and looking at them, thinking, they
really don't want me to stay here. So what does
he do, Elizabeth? Does he make a key? Does he
swipe a saw blade to cut the bars in his
cell window and then shimmy out to freedom? Instead he

(23:55):
makes himself a prison zip gun?

Speaker 3 (23:57):
A zip gun?

Speaker 2 (23:58):
What is a zip gun? I glad you out.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Great asking, and me for asking, and everyone for asking.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
So we'll have Mark tell you what a prison zip
gun is because it's better than my explanation. Quote. You
cut a twelve inch piece of it and roll it
up around a pencil, and you got a beautiful gun
barrel that's of the copper sheets. Right, And then back
to Mark, So I put two on a piece of
wood cut out like a pistol grip so I built
these two double barreled zip guns. So I took one

(24:25):
of the guns and taped it right in front of
my nuts, and I had the other gun in the
crack of my right. So now he's got a zip gun,
but he needs to find the perfect time in place
to use it.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
What's the ammunition in the zip gun?

Speaker 2 (24:36):
A bullet? He's got bullets in there, and there's like
a little cap that'll make it go.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's a gun.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, it's just a thing. It's like a single shot,
like a like a derringer, like a one hitter. Yeah exactly,
my goodness. So he decides the perfect place to use
this would be the dentist office. Right it's closing after
the front gate, that he can pull out his gun
and sort of just walk out the front door, just
like he's the reincarnated John Dillinger. Yeah, now to get
a ticket to the dentist's.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Office full of like butt sweat.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, he's good, but it's copper. It's like, oh,
it's just gonna turn it nervous. Yeah, exactly, you are.
So he gives his ticket to the dentist office by
using an ice pick and digging out a tooth from
his own mouth. Oh son, Yeah. Then he goes to
the nurses station where like, and the nurse takes one
look at all the blood in his mouth, and you
go rushing him to the dentist office pretty much. And

(25:20):
then he goes with his two homemade guns secreted on
his person. So, as Mark recalls, here's what went down
once he got there. Quote, you got two aids with
you and an armed guard. If you're a forensic patient.
The arm guard's got a little thirty eight. So I
go to the dentist and he takes one look at
my mouth and says it's self mutilation. So he patches
me up as best he can. And in the lobby
they got a bathroom. I said, I got a piss,

(25:42):
real bad man. So they let me go in there
by myself. Wrong move, super wrong move. So in the bathroom,
of course, he pulls out his two zip guns. Then
he comes back out all John Dillinger style. As Mark says, quote,
come out of the bathroom, and I threw down on
the arm guard. I pointed it right at his face,
and I said, if you move, I'll blow your brains out.
I got a pretty good psycho act when I want

(26:04):
to write, I want to But when the prison staff
and his fellow inmates were there waiting for their turn
in the dentist chair, they all catch sight of this
pretty good psycho act going down. They don't see John Dillinger.
They think it's all just a dumb joke, so they
all bust out laughing. So there he is holding us
two homemade guns and everybody's laughing like it's an all
big joke, Elizabeth, he was not joking. To get them

(26:26):
to understand that he was not joking, Mark says, quote,
I fired the zip gun, yeah, but not in a
person though. He was like safe. You know, Mark shoots
the phone off the desk, right, he goes.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Off Western right exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
So now everyone stops laughing, the piano player stops flying,
and it's time for Mark to get free. So back
to Mark's description, So I ran out of the dentist's
office and see there's a lot of traffic during the day,
and and just my luck, I'm looking for somebody driving
by who would be happy enough to donate their car
to a worthy cause, and there was nobody convenient. There

(26:58):
was no traffic. So with no cars for his what's
he supposed to do now, question Elizabeth. No, that's like
you you'd think, right. Well, as Mark puts it, I said, oh, well,
back up plan too. So I head for the.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Swamp with a mouthful of blood.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
By the way, wound. And Mark says it because I'd
already been there, I know that. So I run off
in the woods, right, and you can you can forget
catching me in a situation like that. Because all of
his dad's oss training, being a soldier behind enemy lines,
he knows he's got what he needs to survive. He does,

(27:35):
he puts it to work, and since he's armed and dangerous,
the prison guards they released the bloodhounds to catch a
whiff of his trail. The dogs and the guards, they
aren't able to catch him. He totally avoids the dogs.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah, he just swallowed all the blood in his mouth.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Apparently, you would think that these dogs will be able to.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Catch that's in the name, yes, right, blood exactly. And
this man is bleeding from the face and from the.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Mouth, and he's running so dribbling blood.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, you'd think that, like you know, in those cases,
you'd be like spitting out the salim and the blood.
But he's swallowing it. And that's his new fuel.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Apparently he makes it to the water, he swamps and
gets away.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
He marked that.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
What does he do next? He heads home, and he
makes it all the way back to his place that
this will not exactly his home, but like his neighborhood.
So he goes to this place that he'd worked as
a as a teenager. It's an old metal salvage yard
in like North Florida.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
So there he grabs some tools and he breaks to
maybe three different bolt cutters, trying to get the handcuffs
off and to cut off the leg irons because remember
also he's running away in handcuffs and leg irons.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Once he's fully free, where do you think he goes next?

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Disney World?

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Good guest. No, he heads to the trailer of his
estranged versus wife Brenda.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Oh that's gonna make her.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
That must have been really fun for her.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Right, Wait a second, Brenda's not the one who works
at the house.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's the one. Yes, Oh it is, yeah, same one.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
First wife. Well how young was he? Okay, so I'm
getting it.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yes, his first wife Brenda the one, so he knows
that she knows he's escaped.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, she's home from work.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
So the trouble is now she wants nothing to do
with her now outlaw husband, and so he broke out
of the place where she works, which is why in
the documentary she says he broke my heart. I mean,
like she really did care for him, but she just
cannot put up with this because mostly he just keeps
busting out, embarrassing her, and he just refuses to go
along with law in society. There's just no future there.
And also he keeps adding more years to his sentence.

(29:24):
So she tells him, you need to go. Yeah, now, Mark,
he needs a new plan, so else I would imagine.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
That the people at work would be like, we should
probably check Brenda's house.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Oh yeah, exactly. She knows that the thirty seconds behind him. Yeah,
so Mark, now he needs a getaway car and he
doesn't want to take Brenda's, so he leaves and he's
steal some other car. As Mark tells it, I got
jammed up and caught by the police. He doesn't make
it very far. Oh no, Mark wasn't on the loose
long before he's recaptured and he sent right back to
his previous spot at Bay County Prison, where he catches

(29:54):
some more charges since he stole a car at one point. Right,
So when he shows up at his old prison, the
correctional officers are none too pleased to see him back.
He's like their own cool hand Luke. Right, he's not
a movie cool. So he's put in a straight jacket
and he gets tossed in solitary confinements. But he's still
got that wild side, right. So next they throw him
into an escape proof cell. Spoiler alert, Elizabeth, it.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Was not escapade anytime they say it's escape proof. It
can't sink, it can't crash.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's crashing. Its sinking, and he's getting away this. Yeah, So,
as Mark tells it, they threw me in another cell.
But I smashed the light out and got into the wall.
You can actually climb into a pipe galley and get
all kinds of metals. I got this big long crowbars
and so I just bam. I rolled the door down
like a can of sardines.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Well, so it's not even that he went and got supplies.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
He reaches into the wall.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Escape We'll just go get supplies.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Now. This is about the point when Mark earned his
nickname the Houdini of Florida.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
I give it to him.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Y're also the prison Houdini. There's two different ones both.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
I think he's earned them.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, I think so too. Nineteen eighty one is the
year at this point, and the Florida prison system is
a doctor to find the determined if Mark Defriest is
mentally competent to stand trial for his now many new
additional charges. That doctor was named doctor Robert Berland, and
he worked as the director of the forensic ward at
the Florida State Hospital. So he knows Mark, and he
also knows Mark's now ex wife, Brenda. Plus he'd already

(31:18):
been made to look foolish when Mark pulled his LSD
stunt at the psych ward. His psych ward, so one
might say this doc holds a grudge against Mark. Surprise, surprise,
doctor Berlin deems Mark mentally competent to stand trial. Man
I should point out that there were other psychiatrists called
in to evaluate Mark. Four out of five of the
court appointed psychiatrists determined Mark is mentally ill and he

(31:39):
is incompetent to stand trial. But that fifth doctor, doctor Berlin,
the one with the grudge against Mark. He's who the
judge listened to. And he says he believes Mark is
faking it all major. No, it's like that old advertisement
four five dentists recommend try it's.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
All about the juicy. No, he shouldn't be doing that.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
So in this case, uh, you know, as he recommends juicy,
Ferdy also rules against Mark, and he's sent to prison
right now, he's now about to stand trial. So what
does Mark do? Well, you know the answer. He tries
to escape again.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
I mean, the thing is like they always say that
you know, by reason of insanity, means that like you
don't know that versus right versus wrong.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Oh yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
But it's all this is more of the competency and
it's like he's incapable of processing staying in jail. I mean,
and if you're going to gouge your own tooth.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Oh yeah, he's got plenty of evidence he's mentally under Yeah.
So when we'll get back.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
To that point, toss like what's worse prison or the
prison mental health?

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Truly? Yeah, it's a good question. So at this point
he tries to escape again, So he makes another zip gun. Sure,
as Mark puts it, you know how you go through
phases in life. I was in my Gunsmith phase. So
Mark makes a gun out of a rolled up toothpaste
tube and a bunch of rags. What Yeah, and obviously
in a bullet as well.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
But that's is he getting these bullets?

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Well, he's making them. You just have to, yeah, because
you just need like certain match heads as a propellant.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
And then you just put it in like a tube.
You've made this small metal tube and you put something
on top of that that's packed in with the match
hads and then they go boom. Right, Well, we used
to make firecrackers out a match shed. You can make
a hell of a bomb out of matchets. So he
busts out right with others. Now, the prisoners with him
for that prison escape attempt, his fourth one. They chicken
out at the last minute because one of them says,

(33:28):
my mom is here this day. She came to visit me,
and I want to go back and see her.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
And he's like, are you kidding me? We're escaping it
should have been. Everyone goes and then they all stop
and turn.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Long story short, the prison guards catch him before he
even makes it out of prison. So after his failed
attempt to escape, his fourth Mark is brought up on
even more charges. This time, Florida authority's charging with an
attempted murder because he fired his zip gun while he
was making his escape. He's thrown back in solitary confinement,
which is brutal. They want to break him and his
cavalier attitude about staying in prison. So there solitary, he's

(34:00):
stripped naked, he gets no mattress, no sheets, he has
to sleep on the stone floor. He gets no matches obviously,
no cigarettes, no toiletries, no toothpaste, no soap, no tissue,
no toilet paper, nothing. He doesn't even have water in
his cell, which means he can't flush the toilet. So
that's got to like just be like a health hazard.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Did worse than animals in the pound pretty much.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
And to wash him, guards would just like stick a
hose in and then hose him in the cell down
with a fire hose. And when he gets food eat
he has to eat with his hands because he's allowed
no utensils because he may use those to pick a lock.
He also had no light because he punched out a
light to be able to get out before. So in
the official prison documents, the authorities even compared his confinement
to being any North Vietnamese prison camp. In their own words,
the people doing it are like, this is just like

(34:40):
a North Vietnamese prison camp. Yeah, so they knew what
they were doing. And Mark compared it to being in
a dungeon, like all naked in the loan. Also, oh
I forgot. Also, he had no communication with the outside
world or even with the guards unless it was absolutely necessary.
The guards, we're not supposed to speak.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
This is worse than killing him totally.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
This is all done to break him right, to make
him recognize that they are in charge and there'd be
absolutely no more escape attempts. And then they send in
the same dock from the Florida State Hospital doctor Berlin
to determine if he's now competent to stand trial. Oh,
let me guess right now, I gotta say I admire
Mark's will to live and to deny the prison's attempts
to break him, because eventually Mark's taken to a courthouse

(35:16):
and as he tells it, quote, they walk me over
to the courthouse and they say, plead guilty to life,
and we'll drop all these other cases we're charging with
that you picked up in jail. So in order to
get out of the hellhole of solitary confinement. Mark waives
his rights to legal counsel. His court assigned public defender
objects to what's going down, but Mark takes the offered
deal and he's given a life sentence. So he's like
twenty one years old at this point. I remember, Elizabeth,

(35:38):
This all started because Mark allegedly stole his father's tools,
which were willed to him.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Go back, we go back to that as the core crime.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
All he had to do was wait for probate to clear,
but nope. So also if he had run from the
sheriff who came to his home back when he was nineteen,
and also he just lost his father, I mean like
he was in a lot of trauma and strain. Now
he's facing a life sentence in Florida's most brutal and
he's being punished for what being hard headed. He's just
being a punk kid who couldn't be broken. Yeah, But
also he's a savant and autistic loaner, right, but they

(36:08):
don't think of it in those terms. And therefore, the
one out of five doctors who determines he's competent to
stand trial, and he's now deemed competence, so they throw
away as the rights, he takes the plea deal. At
this point, at age twenty one, he's facing life in prison.
So let's take a little break and after this bevy
of ads, we'll get back to the story of Mark Defriest.
And I promise there is light at the end of
this tunnel, and also way more prison escapes, thank God,

(36:50):
And we're back Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
Hello, you're ready.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
To find the good side of this story.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I am desperate for you.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
There is one, I promise you.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Because they seem to love the old torture chambers down
there in Florida.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Oh yeah, what have all those like Spanish fortresses with
all the Spanish boss.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
And mentality apparently, you know, dehumanization is Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
They're like, hey, let's get medieval with this. Yeah, So,
as I promised, there's more prison escapes. In October of
nineteen eighty one, at a place called Lean County Jail
and Tallahassee, Florida, m hmm, roughly two months after he
received his life sentence, Mark gets placed on a cell
block with nineteen black inmates. He's the only white inmate.
This was obviously done on purpose because Florida and the

(37:31):
prison guards tell the black inmates. If this guy does
anything wrong, we're taking the TV's away for you all
and your canteen privileges. So now they're using they're trying
to weaponize the black inmates against give pretty much. Yeah,
so one man race, right, Yeah. But Mark is able
to charm all the brothers and win them to his
side because, for one, all those black inmates had heard

(37:52):
about him, and so they tell Mark, hey, look, man,
we're trying to escape and you want to join us.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
He's just real. I think this is when being on
the spectrum benefits, where he's like literal yeah, and he's
just going to tell you these you're just a person
to be a little sarcastic and funny about it at
the same time. And it's like he this is his wheelhouse.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
He's like hey, and they respect how he is this
guy is because you point out his one hundred percent reel.
So Mark tells him, you guys are trying to escape.
I think that's a great idea. He asked them what
they have to bust out, and so they show them
their stash and they have like a stolen diamond chip,
saw blades, like a few dang.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
They're like, yeah, we got supplies.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, they're ready. They're like, we've been waiting for a
Mark to come along. So Mark tells him quote, I say,
how long you guys had these? And they say, oh,
we had him about a month. I said, what are
you still doing here? So boom. Just like that, they
make him in charge of their prison escape plan. They're like,
show us how to do it, brother, Yeah, and the
first thing starts, as Mark recalls it, I ripped the
toilets off the wall. I took the damn light fixtures apart,

(38:52):
and I got some pipes and I made a double
barrel zip gun. Now we're talking. He's back in business.
Got double carrel' zip gun. He's cool. I do love.
He has no quit in him, like.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Just zero zero zero.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
So, as Mark tells it, quote, I started sawing the bars.
It takes eight hours to get through one cut, eight
hours to get through another cut. And I gotta admit
things were coming apart in there because they're starting to doubt,
like is this the plan? Like he's taking you a
long time. He's liked, don't trust me, give me another
eight hours. So Mark gets the idea that that he's
now about five minutes away from them. Taking away his
zip gun and just using it on him, or perhaps

(39:27):
handing it over to the guards, or handing him over
to the guards or whatever. But the brothers don't because
they still trust his escape plan. Back to Mark. So
at nine o'clock I made the move and Bob Seger
was on the TV playing Turn the Page. You know
that's all right here? I am on the road again, right, So,
I mean, like, what a perfect song to soundtrack your

(39:47):
prison escape. You feel like God is on your side. Anyway,
back to his escape attempt. Once the bars are cut
off the window, Mark looks out and he sees freedom.
He's like, we're rolling, guys. The guys are like, I
don't know, because he's three floors up. The brothers are like,
you're on your own, white boy, good luck. So he's
uses a bunch of sheets knodded together, and that lowers
him only part of the way down.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
I mean, you don't have to go all the way
to the ground.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah no, Well he gets down not close enough and
then just jumps Mark. But rather than me tell you
what happens next to Elizabeth, I'd like you to close
your eyes and I'd like you to picture it. It's

(40:30):
nighttime outside the Leon County Prison in Florida, and you, Elizabeth,
are falling through the air, plummeting to the ground because
you are marked to Freeze's right boot. The night air
is cool against your leather as you race toward the
wet grass below. When you slam into the dew laden groundcover,
you hear Mark de frieze grunt, ye, shock and pain.

(40:50):
But this doesn't stop him because he's bound for freedom.
You feel yourself lift and then fall, lift and then
fall again. You recognize he's running, or sort of half limping,
half running. You're now by the way in the women's
exercise yard at the women's prison next door, but not
for long. At a chain link fence, you're shoved into

(41:10):
a section of the fence, and with an audible pain
in his voice, you hear Mark muscle his way up
the hurricane of fencing. At the top is razor wire,
which soon enough scratches against your leather sides as he
flips himself up and over the razor wire. Now you
feel the hard asphalt of a road come rushing up
and booms strike. Mark then begins to limp walk down

(41:31):
the road, and you're guessing that He's probably broken his
ankle based on how quickly you can feel the swelling
start to press against you. But he doesn't stop. Turns
out he's broken both ankles and both wrists from the falls,
yet he doesn't give up. Instead, Mark keeps going, you
don't know this because you're a leather prison boot. But
he spots a big rig truck in the parking lot.

(41:51):
It's an International rig. You become aware of it as
he steps up onto the truck, opens the door and
climbs inside. He quickly hot wires the truck, and then
that big rig fires to light. Next thing you know,
you're pressing down on a gas pedal as the truck's
engine roars with throaty menace against the stillness of the night.
The big rig rumbles out of that parking lot. When

(42:13):
Mark spots the police cars parked down the road as
a roadblock, you feel him pressed down hard on you,
and you press down hard against the truck's gas pedal.
With a terrific boom, the cock cars give way to
the big rig truck. As Willie Nelson was saying, you're
on the road again. You can hear police sirens. They're
well tuned engines as they race to catch up to

(42:35):
the big rig. A police officer and a Ford Faremont
pulls up just behind the big rig. That's about the
same time when Mark uses you to hit the brakes.
You push down on the brake pedal, and then after
a grinding of the gears, it's back to the gas pedal.
I mean, now the big rig is moving in reverse.
The truck climbs right up onto that police cruiser, crushing
it with its way. Mark laughs with a fiendish glee.

(42:58):
And then come the gunshot. These Florida cups ain't playing around.
Bullets ricochet around inside the truck. One sings right past you.
But Mark isn't about to quit. He presses you down
against the gas pedal again. But he's no longer looking
where the truck is headed. Says he's hiding from the
hail of bullets. You feel the big rig hits something,
but something is stout and unforgiving. It turns out it's

(43:21):
the wall of a living room of someone's home. The
big rig barrels into the home. Luckily, due to the
hour of the night, no one is in the living room.
That makes you feel a little better. You are on
very moral boot and you feel much better knowing that
this wild ride is now done.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Good. So that was his fifth prison escape attempt. Now
in the documentary, Mark has asked about this, and more
generally about his series of terrible choices, his history of
resistance all and his many attempts to escape, and Marks
asked to explain why it is that he does the
things that he does. Yeah, he says, he sees all
of his attempts as attempts to survive, even if all

(43:59):
of his choice this is actually caused him more trouble
and earn him more time. Mark stoically explains, quote, I'm
still alive, and a lot of people I know, ain't
you know if i'd been just a rapist or a
murderer or something, they let me out. I'm the idiot
that made them look like idiots. Yeah, so he knows
why he's being punished, but he cannot stop himself.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
Well because they also they treat him like an animal,
and she's acting like a caged animal. Doesn't do anything
to get out.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Very good point, totally this, but also his quote kind
of says it all. Because Mark DeFries makes terrible choices. Yes,
most certainly he knows it. He's also punished unfairly because
he just won't let the prison break him. He has
this indomitable spirit that his father imbued him with, and
in response, he's punished far more than anyone else he
ever meets in prison, including murderers, rapists, horrific criminals. Ultimately,

(44:47):
so it's not his crimes per se, it's his attitude
that they're trying to punish. Now, the Leon County Prison
escape attempt was the last straw for the state of
Florida in nineteen eighty two. He's transferred back to the
hellhole known as the Florida State Prison, which the warden
there called quote hell on Earth. The ward knew what
it was, Yeah, Mark was by design, Yeah exactly. Marks

(45:07):
then put in the X wing, where only the most brutal,
hardened criminals.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Were sent for essentially stealing tools, yes, and.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Trying to constantly escape and make them look like idiots. Right.
His cell is located just above the electric chair, so
he have to hear all the executions. At one point
while he's there, the serial killer Ted Bundy gets sent
to meet his maker in that same electric chair. As
Mark tells it, quote Ted Bundy was my neighbor for
a long time. I was in the cell right above
him when they barbecued his dumb Oh god. Yeah. So

(45:35):
in the X wing, Mark was kept in a seven
x eight windowless cell that was specially designed to hold him.
And in that special windowless cell he spends ten years
without ever seeing the sun. They weren't letting him out,
not even like the hour outside.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Ten years.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
That's not all. There was also his prison diet that
they were feeding him. They serve him what's called prison loaf.
It's like a meat loaf, except there's no meat in
this loaf. Yeah, Instead it's just an unseasoned loaf of
like smashed vegetables, beans and enough starch to keep him
on this side of the grass. Can you imagine that's
all you ever get? Deep prison loaf?

Speaker 3 (46:06):
And then you think about like what that's going to
do to your physical health, I mean, like the vitamin
D deficiency alone totally, And then you think of all
of just like the health ramifications of not having the
full diet, not being able to move, not getting fresh air.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
So he starts to like spiral, if you will, oh sure, now,
if you can believe it, Mark still tries to escape prison.
At one point, he's able to pull this stunt reopens
all the cell doors on his cell block at the
same time. To this day, prison authorities still can't figure
out how this mechanical genius did it, so they don't
know how to stop it if that ever happened again.
Lucky there's no other Mark Defriese around to try this.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
All in all, his time inside earns him two hundred
and nine disciplinary reports. It's reported to be a record
number for a single inmate in the Florida prison system.
He holds the record for the most does they call
him dr So you get to that.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
Point, you're just like, yeah, let's let's see how far
he can push it.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Pretty much. And he also he can't. He is compulsive.
He cannot help him.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Over his decades inside the Florida penal system, Mark is
often able to use his special talents for taking things apart.
So he was known to memorize a prison guard's keys
on his key ring and just by seeing them, and
then he'd fabricate a copy of the key using a
prison dinner tray because they were aluminum and they were
the right way for him to make a key.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
No way so that.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Meant often when his cell was rousted and they would
go like searching through it, guards would often find homemade
aluminum handcuff keys along with hacksaw blades. One time guards
found this key hidden in his mouth. It was hidden
so well that only an X ray of his skull
revealed where he'd hidden it. They could not find it
just searching around. Yes, I do not know how he
did that. So, as Mark says, quote, I know a

(47:39):
lot of secret prison crafts, weapons, locks and keys, stashes,
all sorts of bizarre. My prison file is two and
a half feet thick, and it reads like a double
oh seven James Bond Spye novel Oh my God. Yeah,
and that becomes another prison nickname is a double oh
seven James Bond. Right. So I should also point out
Mark used his special skill set to make good things,

(48:00):
like at one point in the eighties he invented the
butt man. Elizabeth, you want to guess what the butt
man is? Oh, As Marcas says, Sony had the walkman,
he invented the butt Man. It's a homemade radio that
a prisoner so can secure in his holiest of holies.
It was the size of a big cigarette lighter and
so late at night he could pull this out and
listen to the radio in his cell, which gave him

(48:22):
a small escape. In the documentary, he talks about listening
to guns and roses knocking on Heaven's door. He also
remembers later on in the nineties listening to Alison Chain's
Man in the Box, all very fitting songs, all thanks
to his buttman radio now, which was of course illegal,
which means more prison time. When the guards found all
of his escapes and as many rules violation earned Mark
all sorts of additional prison time. At one point, the

(48:44):
date for his eventual parol was the year twenty forty.
Later on it was the year twenty eighty five. He
would have been one hundred and twenty five years old
in twenty eighty five. The state of Florida seemed awfully
optimistic about how long he'd last inside, because they're like, yep,
we're holding um till five. But then in nineteen eighty six,
Mark finally catches some good luck. Enter John Middleton, a lawyer.

(49:06):
Middleton starts to argue for his case, takes him on
as a client, and he argues for a compassionate release
of his client. While still acknowledging that he has a
disruptive and cavalier force. In a story from The Miami,
Harold Middleton says, quote, He's not shanking or stabbing anyone,
and he points out that Mark's disciplinary reports aren't violent offenses.
Instead they are quote for possessing contraband. He's made his

(49:29):
own alcohol. He's had weapons, usually defensive. He's not hurt people.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
Yeah, so that's a good point to make, it is.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
It needs to be said. Now, with Middleton representing them together,
they begin to fight to get Mark free. In this
fight last decades. But then Mark finds a second ally
and source of support. You see, Elizabeth Mark found love
enter his wife Bonnie. In an email interview with Florida Weekly,
she wrote about how the two met and first fell
in love, which ain't easy when one of you is
in prison on a life sentence. Yea, as she explained it,

(49:58):
although she lived in Montana, I first met Mark via
a pen Pal list, one dedicated to quote metaphysics and
higher consciousness and that it quotes somehow fell into the
hands of inmates at FSP like Florida State Prison. Somehow, Yeah, Elizabeth,
you worked in a state prison teaching English, so you
know firsthand how penpals can be a lifeline for inmates.
They could also be a love line, sure, and the

(50:20):
two began to share regular letters. As Bonnie told Florida
Weekly Quote, although I was a little uneasy about writing
to an inmate, as I had never known one before,
I felt drawn to him, and I chose love instead
of fear, feeling that this man needs my help, so
I began my letter to him, dear holy child of God,
Oh goodness. Eventually the two fall in love, and then

(50:40):
in May of nineteen ninety four, they get married in Montana.
How is that possible?

Speaker 3 (50:45):
That's a good question, Saren. Thank you for us.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
It was a proxy marriage, one wherein Mark's brothers stood
at the altar in his place. No, but then five, oh,
totally a thing. Yeah, military people do it. And then
five days after they were married in Montana, for their honeymoon,
she travels down to fl so they can meet for
the first time in person. Now here's Bonnie's version of
that first meeting, as told to Florida Weekly Quote. I

(51:07):
waited in the visiting room for him to appear, and
then saw him come through the door from the changing room.
I practically sprouted wings and flew into his arms. The
attraction was so powerful, the energy between us undeniable. His
response was immediate, as his tall, lanky bodies arms took
possession of me and he planted a wonderful, deep kiss

(51:29):
on my mouth. Yes, ladies, he is a good kisser.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Oh good God.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Now, Elizabeth, there are what we call May December relationships.
There was a May December relationship from like different calendar years.
Because Mark was born in nineteen sixty No, Bonnie was
born in nineteen thirty.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
No.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
When they married, she was sixty four years old and
he was thirty four years old. However, love doesn't care
about calendars, Elizabeth, as she told the Miami Herald in
a phone interview, quote through his letters, I could see
he was a good person in his soul and in
a lot of emotional pain. I love him on a
much deeper level than I have ever loved anyone. And

(52:08):
you know, like any couple, they shared their finances. For instance,
she was able to sponsor three orphans in India with
money that he made from selling contraband in prison, So
you know they were able to make do as a couple. Sure, Okay,
the Indian Orphans with contraband. It's of course it's difficult
to be separate from the person you love. The plus
there is that age gap. But Bonnie was optimistic and

(52:30):
remained optimistic as Mark is also equally realistic. As she
put it, quote, I have some heart problems and pretty
severe arthritis in my back and knees, so I have
to walk with some support. He feels determined to come
home and take care of me, And that's a plus
for me.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Like when you take her description of him and then
put it up against the quotes you've read.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yes, like it's a little in congress, a little bit.
Thanks to all of his time inside, Mark had time
for arts and crafts, so he would send her thoughtful
gifts and shows of his love. For instance, as she
told the Miami Herald, quote, lately he has taken up
knitting and crocheg. He's done a good job, made me
a shawl without dropping a stitch.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
There's a reason behind him picking up these crafts.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Like that's another We's got a lot of time on
his hands. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Yeah, And it's also it's like I'd be really keeping
an eye on him.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Yeah, there's getting their tools again.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
So to get her husband free, she works with his lawyer,
John Middleton to come up with a plan to get
Marked out, and as Middleton explained, quote we have a
detailed plan. It includes job offers, health insurance, a lot
of things. Right, it's a whole range of stuff. And
of course once Mark is free, he is quote gonna
have to behave himself.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
You know this is the truth.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
So now, ironically their efforts are soon aided by the
same doctor who first put him away. Doctor Robert Berland
was that fifth doctor who said Mark Defriese was competent
to stand trial way back in the day. Yeah, But
over time he comes to regret what he'd done and
he recants his prior testimony really starts to work to
help free Mark. Well, the years later, he was.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Probably from that moment forward just cursed and bad things
kept happening. When did this bad luck streak start up?

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Only if it worked like that, But he had more
of a like a real you know, come to Jesus,
as they say in the South. In an interview in
the documentary, we see Mark meet with doctor Berlin in prison,
like early on when there he's first coming to him,
going I'd like to help get you free. And after
they're done talking in this like you know, however much
time they were allotted, Mark says sarcastically, well, been nice
to see you again, Doctor Berlin, to which doctor Berlin

(54:24):
tells Mark, you're a gentleman to even say that, And
then Mark says, what was it you said? I was
a malingering idiot? And doctor Berlin confesses something meaningful. He says, well,
what can I say? There are things that you do
and say when you were young that you then decide
later we're wrong. So then Mark asked the big, big question,
but where's the fairness in all this crap? I mean,

(54:45):
for real, I went to prison when I was what
twenty for doing a bunch of stupid I ain't never
hurt nobody, and here I am still. I've done thirty
years and I got thirty more to go. Why ain't
that nice? Now? Thanks to doctor Berlin's interviews, in his
new assessment of Mark's mental health, he does all these
inventories of his mental health so he can prove it
statistically that he's psychotic. He's suffering from various mental ailments

(55:07):
along with his lawyer John Middleton and his wife Bonnie.
This team up secures Mark a new parole hearing after
his twenty nine years behind bars. Is when it occurs.
In twenty fourteen, his case gets heard before the Florida
Commission on Offender Review aka the Parole Board. His family
is also there to support him and a hearing in
November twenty fourteen, his stepsister Barbie testifies that quote, I

(55:28):
truly believe it's an autistic thing, but they didn't know
that at the time. It was a heartache after heartache,
So now they're already to have new language to describe
what's going on inside of him. Meanwhile, doctor Berlin suggests
that Mark's antisocial and compulsive and sometimes psychotic behavior might
actually be the result of shaken baby syndrome, going back
to his mother's effect on him as a child. In

(55:49):
after a few hearings of Florida Parole Board votes to
reduce his parole date from twenty eighty five to twenty
fifteen and to consider early release, that is, if he
can maintain good behavior for a review period of two years.
Then comes to this documentary that I keep quoting from
the mind of Mark Defriest and the efforts of the
filmmaker Gabriel London. The Florida Parole Board begins to change

(56:09):
its tone, as the Associated Press reported in twenty sixteen,
because he's not released even though they reduce his date,
they then bump it back out into a whole machination
of like, oh one prison parole board. A person said this,
another votes against it, So then they don't. They give
him two years review and they give him another year.
So in twenty sixteen, the Florida Commission on Offender Review
chairwoman at the time, Melinda Kohnrod, says of Mark's case, quote,

(56:32):
He's not a murderer, he's not a rapist, he doesn't
have a history of violence. He's in the worst situation
that he has been in for a long time. The
system has failed him, and we put him there. Yeah,
finally freedom comes from Mark defriest. In twenty sixteen, Florida
sends Mark to California to be enrolled in a transition
program they have there, and then in February of twenty nineteen,

(56:52):
he's granted full parole and is released to a halfway
house close to where his wife, Bonnie lives and now
an Oregon Okay, I wish I could say this is
where the story ends on a happy note. He's freed
and they get to be together. There is not exactly
happy ending, because sadly, his freedom is short lived. In
just ten days time, he's arrested for testing positive for
meth amphetamine at the facility, the Halfway House, and he's

(57:12):
sent back to a prison mental health facility, and he
has since been locked up and has remained there ever
since as well. In twenty twenty, Bonnie de Friest passed
away at the age of ninety, so she's passed as
for Mark Defriest. At the moment, best as I can find,
he's currently in a Washington, d C. Prison mental health
facility in DC Yes District of Columbia, but his status

(57:33):
was denoted as quote in transit, so I don't know
where he is exactly. He's now sixty four years old
or sixty five years old, either one. I don't know
when his birthday is, and has been inside for forty three,
if not forty four years. It is a damn shame
the Florida penal system has treated him the way they
have and now he's just bumping around This sure ain't
just as as far as anybody not in my book. Yeah, now,
I know I ended on a bit of a bummer,

(57:54):
but without being too tried, I got to ask you,
what's a ridiculous takeaway here?

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Well, I've talked about it a million in times, impulse
control being a core issue in the inmate population. But
I just struck with the fact that this guy is
so smart and so creative, and how had he had
the correct atmosphere growing up and resources and been encouraged,
like he could be like solving some sort of scientific

(58:22):
issue that we have, ye you know, discovering a medicine
or fixing some sort of you know, technology, and instead,
you know, he had this really rough home life. You're saying,
like possible shaken baby syndrome, so he could have some
sort of you know, damage coming in and you know,
but here you have people who you know, every different,

(58:43):
Every person is different, and whatever kind of issue you
have coming with you, mental, physical, whatever, you bring something
to the party, right, And so it's not a negative.
It's like I just come at something a little bit different.
So he comes at this a little bit different, and
he could have been making incredible positive things. But you know,

(59:03):
like you're saying, but for the grace of God. This
is the opposite. Like, you see, what could have been
is so painful. It's so painful to think about the
wonderful things he could be giving to society. Instead, we
just continue to punish, and instead of having some moment
where his behavior is caught and recognized and say all right,
let's work with you to figure out how we can

(59:24):
turn this positive because you're obviously a genius. Yes, But
instead we're so hell bent on dehumanizing and so hell
bent on punishing with no benefit to society. Let's say
he does get out, all right, Now, what what's he
going to do? Now he's sixty.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Four years old? He does nothing. I mean, he cannot
be his productive years. Not that I'm saying the person
who's sixty four can't be productive, but he had many
years he could have been productive. And at this point
he's so broken by prison.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
Yeah, no trade, no skill, no education, no experience. He's broken.
You look at his father, the ramifications of him being broken.
Now he's broken. And it's like, we aren't doing any
to benefit society with the system that we have. Yes,
you know, and yes people need to you know pay
for what they do, sure in one way or another.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
But come yes, and my ridiculous take away thank you
for asking about ahead, is like this is I mean,
ultimately it's the prison that's ridiculous. Like their whole idea
is like, oh, there's a lot of points in the
vide where people are talking about like you know, from
the prison, about we've got our woodshop here. It's to
help teach them productive skills and they can become you know,
productive members of society. And when they're let out, so

(01:00:31):
there's always this talk about reform and how we're going
to help these inmates, but they don't exceed the person,
so they're treating them like numbers and we're going to
push these widgets like they're making things as opposed to
shaping and remaking and refixing and doing what they can
to assess what's going on individually and then provide them
not just like you know, mental health services and physical services,

(01:00:51):
but give them an avenue for growth, give them a
place to be too.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Is it so slow moving that the trays that they're
learning have already been passed by they're useless, So they're
learning things that no one needs anymore. They're not learning
up to.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Date and usually used for prison labor that is essentially
for some corporation.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Well that's something too, is that in the in the
state prison where I taught, they were doing some sort
of airplane parts and they had a factory thing in
the corner. They're not going to have the skills. The
skills that they have there are not going to translate outside,
and so it's really only this very basic machine work
that again it's such old machinery that you can't get

(01:01:28):
hired at corporate.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
It's not like a real tool to die where you're
going to go all not at all.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
And so you know, we you know, with prison education
programs you're at least giving people like a degree to
walk out with sure, but even then it's like what
are you going to do with that?

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Or the firefighters in California where then they cannot then
become firefighters once they're outside of the system.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
I know that they're trying to change that, trying to
but weird in desperate need of firefighters through the Califire program,
and you've got some of the most experienced and courageous,
ageous people men and women doing this, and then they
can't get hired when they get out.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
That's criminal totally, and also the just ridiculous and it's criminal,
and the fact that it's like they still want to
break this guy because he won't bend to their will.
You see what the real point of the prison is.
It's not about justice. You in the mood for talkback
to I thank goodness, Oh my god, super I love Get.

Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
Ridiculous Crime With's Olivia. I'm also listening to your money
heist episode and I almost got scammed. I got a
phone call from someone that was trying to hack my
bank account saying that I did get scammed and anyways,
and it was just funny that the next episode is
about rods and scams. I love your Guys podcast. I
love you guys, and I love the Doggy and terranspect.

(01:02:53):
Thank you so much for all the laps and hopefully
not getting scammed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
That was a close one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah, we're glad we can help with your criminal education.

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Yeah, and I'm glad that you didn't get to get
taken totally.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
And you can probably hear the Doggy interns in this episode,
so know that they are also glad to be here for.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
You, glad to be here well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
As always, you can find us online at Ridiculous Crime
on Instagram and Blue Sky and occasionally Twitter who knows
or whatever x whatever it's called. Now. We also have
the account ridiculous Crime Pod on YouTube. Please go check
it out. Tell it to your friends or people who
like to watch videos. Even though it's mostly just an
animation of us talking, but it's still a video. What
have you. We also have our website, ridiculous Crime dot com.

(01:03:34):
We were the recent winner of the LP of the
Year for Finland. We were very excited. We didn't even
know that websites could count as LPs, So very exciting. Yeah.
LP of the Year's Long Play Record.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
So there you know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
And email if you like at ridiculous Crime at gmail
dot com. We always look forward to your emails. Thanks
for listening and we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous
Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produce
and edited by the inventor of the armpitman, Dave Cousten,

(01:04:07):
and starring Anaalice Rucker as Judith. Research is by our
prison lawyer Marissa Brown. Our theme song is by The
Blues Brothers Rhythm and Blues Review cover band Thomas Lee
and Travis Dutton. The host wardrobe provided by Bonny five hundred.
Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshop and mister Andre. Executive
producers are the cats who run this cell block, Ben
Hard Times Bowlin and Noel. What You're looking at? Brown Gee?

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
Why say it one more time?

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Geek Crime Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four
more podcasts. My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.