Tales of notorious prison escapes in Kent and lives on the run
06:00, 18 October 2020
updated: 11:27, 19 October 2020
A people smuggler's elaborate attempt to evade officials by dressing his Albanian passengers in branded polo shirts, and pretending he was giving them navigational training on his 46ft yacht, was undone when Border Force officers realised a fatal, and extremely obvious, flaw in his plan.
Most noticeably, Charles Lynch couldn't speak Albanian, and the group couldn't speak English, so nautical lessons would have been difficult.
So ended Lynch's 28 years on the run, after he absconded from Maidstone Prison in 1992.
Kent is home to seven prisons, including three in what is known as the Sheppey Cluster, comprising Swaleside, Standford Hill and Elmley.
Lynch's story is just one of the many dramatic, terrifying and bizarre tales of escapes from our county's clinks.
Michael Williams, a convicted burglar who absconded from Standford Hill, was caught a day later, pedalling furiously on a mountain he had stolen during his short interlude from prison.
The inmate was a year into a 40-month sentence imposed for burglary when he walked out of the category D open prison. An open prison means inmates can leave the site on licence for work.
The day after he left, in August last year, he was seen in nearby Sheerness by a prison officer travelling to work at the same jail.
He followed Williams until the police arrived to arrest him.
To make him even more conspicuous, he was spotted carrying a prison-issue laundry bag.
During his brief time away, Williams had also stolen a gold bracelet, tablet device, sunglasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels from cars.
Williams, then 42, previously from Folkestone, claimed he was heading back to hand himself in when he was apprehended, and pleaded guilty to the escape and thefts. He was handed an extra four months' jail time.
A huge manhunt was launched after an armed robber, dubbed 'the Skull Cracker', for his habit of pistol-whipping victims during raids, failed to return to Standford Hill in 2014.
Michael Wheatley had been let out on day release and was already serving 13 life sentences following a string of brutal raids on banks and building societies.
Elderly, lone women were usually his targets.
It is believed a train timetable was found in Wheatley's cell after he fled, with the Sittingbourne to London route highlighted.
During his four days on the run, Wheatley, then 55, took part in a £13,000 armed raid at a building society in Sunbury-on-Thames.
Officers hunted him down in Mile End, east London, and at court he admitted to the armed robbery and being unlawfully at large.
A judge said he would serve at least 10 years in prison before being considered for parole, but Wheatley appealed and it was reduced to 10 years.
One prisoner used one of the oldest tricks in the book and seen in numerous films to fool prison guards.
Syd Whitelock was found by an officer climbing out of an open window at Standford Hill, after arranging pillows in his bed to give the impression he was innocently sleeping, in May last year.
The 31-year-old dad threatened a prison worker with a piece of broken glass before fleeing.
His bid for freedom came to an end when an off-duty police officer recognised him in London, in August that year.
A court heard Whitelock grabbed a piece of broken window and said: "Come any closer and I will smash you."
The prosecution said the father had not intended to escape but panicked when he was found in the toilets bringing contraband vodka into the prison.
Whitelock was ordered to serve another 21 months for the escape, on top of the eight years and eight months for conspiracy to burgle.
A search was launched in 2016, after an armed robber went missing from Standford Hill.
William Pearce, then 39, disappeared while serving a life sentence for a robbery in Bexley in 2001.
Members of the public were warned that Pearce was potentially dangerous if approached and police were criticised at the time for waiting three days to warn people he was on the loose.
After two months, he was found in Bexley .
Pearce's actions while on the run and how he was found are not known.
And we haven't forgotten about Lynch, whose story of a life on the run is the most unbelievable and shocking.
He was jailed in 1991 for theft, fraud and forgery. But just one year into his seven-year sentence, he absconded from Maidstone Prison, in County Road.
Lynch used at least 40 aliases to keep under the radar and during his 28-year escapade, he was jailed for a number of offences in France, including possessing indecent images of children.
The then 64-year-old was tracked down while attempting to smuggle people into the UK on a boat, a chartered motor cruiser Saquerlotte III, it was revealed in February.
Border Force intercepted the boat off the West Sussex coast.
Eight Albanian nationals were found on board, five men, two women and a child.
Lynch claimed to be a German called Wolfram Steidl and said he was providing his passengers with navigational training.
He was found in possession of false identity documents, including a Danish driving licence and a Romanian ID card, and a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation revealed his true identity.
Pleading guilty to one count of facilitating illegal immigration and two counts of possessing a false ID document, he was jailed for nearly four years.
And he was ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence from the 1991 conviction.
After his capture, NCA regional head of investigations, Shane Williams, said: "People smugglers like Lynch have no concern for the safety of those they transport, they are only interested in exploiting the desperation of others for profit and their own greed.
"Since his initial arrest our investigators have been able to identify him as a career criminal who has been on the run from prison for 28 years.
"He was able to stay free so long by staying on the move and creating a web of aliases for himself. We suspect he has used dozens of different identities during his career."
