Escaping Thailands Death row - David McMillan p3

Summary

Podcast Summary: What I Survived

Episode: "Escaping Thailand’s Death Row – David McMillan Part 3"

Host: Jack Laurence

Guest: David McMillan

Original Air Date: March 31, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping season finale, Jack Laurence recounts David McMillan’s legendary escape from Thailand’s notorious Khlong Prem Prison (the "Bangkok Hilton"), the only Westerner ever to accomplish it. Picking up from the previous episodes, McMillan is facing imminent execution, pushing him to undertake an audacious, meticulously planned break for freedom. The episode explores every tense detail: smuggling tools, enlisting help, the psychological endurance required, and the final sprint from the prison to a new life—as well as what it means to be free, but "wanted."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Prison Escapes Through History

• Jack introduces the theme by referencing famous historical escapes, such as the 1962 Alcatraz escape, highlighting the blend of ingenuity and desperation required.

  “[ALCATRAZ]—from which no man has ever been known to escape, has its name for impregnability at stake.” (David, 02:32)

• Parallel drawn to McMillan’s own feat:

  “David McMillan is still the only Westerner to successfully escape his prison, the infamous Khlong Prem Prison…” (Jack, 03:53)

2. Smuggling the Tools for Escape

• David details the complex and clever process of smuggling hacksaw blades inside a faux “religious scroll” with an X-ray-blocking interior, manufactured and sent by his friend Michael.
• Discussion of how prison guards (and their aversions) were manipulated to smuggle contraband—by putting extreme pornography on top of the package to ensure guards stopped searching deeper.

  “Put four expensive, glossy, high-quality, color-printed, filthy pornography of the most extreme kind you can… put it on the top.” (David, 09:03)

3. Choosing Cellmates and Planning the Break

• David bought himself into a quieter cell, crucial to escaping undetected.
• Quirky character portraits: Jet the loyal "head butler," the miserly Mirage the people-smuggler, the Swede "Sten" who ultimately backs out at the last moment after seeing the brutal punishment inflicted on other failed escapees.
• Emphasis on needing trustworthy and quiet company or going alone:

  “...just as well the Swede did not join me or anybody for that matter.” (David, 28:41)

4. The Escape Night: Obstacles, Terrors, and Improvisation

• Escape attempt starts at midnight, but cutting through the bars is noisier and harder than anticipated.

  “2 o' clock's come and I'm still working away on one bar... a nightmare giant violinist scraping catgut across a raspy surface.” (David, 17:20)

• The importance of improvisation and focus on the moment—navigating the physical maze of Khlong Prem after dark, improvising with makeshift ladders fashioned from bamboo poles and picture frames.

  “Sten had pretended to take an interest in oil painting… made very solid picture frames… gave me two very long ladders…” (David, 23:26)

• Emotional moments with his loyal manservant, Jet, wanting to join the escape:

  “He’s standing there in his Sunday go to meetin’ best clothes… ‘I go with you.’” (David, 19:20)

5. Navigating the Prison's Fortifications

• Multiple internal and external walls, barbed wire, and the infamous "Mars Bar Creek" (a fetid moat full of waste and barbed wire) all stand in McMillan’s way.

• Every step is filled with peril:

  “That rotting flesh stays in the mind and stayed with me that night…” (David, 26:43, passing the AIDS ward)

• Strategies for working alone, relying on instinct:

  “...all the time clouding the only instincts that mean anything to surviving human beings...” (David, 27:45)

• The final outer wall—electrified and directly abutting the staff village:

  “Electricity, of course, on the top. Only 240v and it hadn't been arced up… there's no choice. Get it right or that's it, you're finished.” (David, 29:29)

6. Urban Camouflage and Last-Minute Miracles

• Last trick: the black umbrella as disguise, which—by lucky coincidence—proves invaluable as rain begins, allowing David to blend in as he skirts the prison perimeter.

  “Under the umbrella like Ripley getting off the alien spacecraft. I’m saying lucky, lucky, lucky to myself…” (David, 32:34)

• He crosses the highway, reaches the long-term luggage store at the airport, retrieves hidden resources, and—limited by a malfunctioning ATM card—flees to Singapore.

7. Life on the Run and Reflections on Freedom

• The tension does not end with escape. David describes the brief taste of freedom—swimming in a Singapore hotel rooftop pool—before anxiety about being “wanted” returns.

  “I found myself in a hotel room in Singapore working out how it would be that the authorities could trace me…” (David, 38:08)

• Discussion on the realities of using fake passports, tracking by Interpol, and the necessity of moving again, this time to Pakistan.

  “If the authorities had simply figured that I’d left the country… compare that passenger manifest with any reported lost or stolen passports…” (David, 38:08)

• Ultimately, limited resources and the cost of survival draw him back into the world of smuggling.

  “I went back into it really, because I’d used every scrap of everything to stay alive and get out of Thailand.” (David, 40:54)

• David reflects on living as a fugitive, staying ahead of global law enforcement, before retiring and turning to writing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Smuggling Hacksaw Blades:

  “The scroll had dull top and bottom… to place the saw blades in aluminium foil, which blocks the X rays…” (David, 05:27)

• On Manipulating Guards:

  “I said to Michael, find four expensive, glossy, high-quality, color-printed, filthy pornography… Put it in there and on the top.” (David, 09:03)

• Solo Survival Philosophy:

  “All the time clouding the only instincts that mean anything to surviving human beings, which is a sense of smell, really, and a sense of pattern and movement and the sounds of the night…” (David, 27:45)

• On Crossing the Electrified Outer Wall:

  “There was electricity, of course, on the top... Get it right or that's it, you're finished.” (David, 29:29)

• Escape’s Emotional Toll:

  “He’s standing there in his Sunday go to meetin’ best clothes… ‘I go with you.’” (David, 19:20)

• First Taste of Freedom:

  “Welcome to Singapore, ladies and gentlemen… to all Singaporeans and residents of Singapore, a warm welcome home.” (David, 37:39)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:59] — David begins recounting the hacksaw blade smuggling plot.
• [09:03] — The pornography smuggling trick.
• [13:50] — Swedish cellmate Sten decides not to escape.
• [17:20] — Midnight escape attempt begins—details of cutting the bars.
• [19:20] — Manservant Jet’s wish to join the escape.
• [21:10] — David gets out, faces the reality of escape.
• [23:26] — Makeshift ladders and climbing through the facility.
• [26:43] — Passing the AIDS ward; toll of the journey.
• [29:29] — Arriving at the electrified outer wall.
• [32:34] — Rain and the umbrella trick.
• [36:51] — Secures a rough fake passport; the dash to the airport.
• [37:39] — Arrival in Singapore, first moment of freedom.
• [38:08] — Reflections on being “wanted” and methods of tracking.
• [40:54] — Returning to smuggling due to desperation.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers an edge-of-your-seat account of David McMillan’s escape: the cunning, desperation, and practical skills it demanded. It’s also an unflinching reflection on what it takes to survive in “impossible” circumstances, the cost of freedom, and the complexity of living as a perennial fugitive. After years on the run and multiple close calls, McMillan ultimately trades a life of crime for a life of writing, turning extraordinary survival into storytelling.

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Next Episode Preview

The story transitions to former MI5 intelligence officer Annie Macron, who herself would go on the run—suggesting more jaw-dropping tales to come.

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For more details on David’s story, check the show notes for his book: "The True Story of the Only Westerner Ever to Escape Thailand’s Bangkok Hilton."

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(Ads, intros and outros have been omitted from this summary for clarity and focus on the episode's content.)

Transcript

[Jack Lawrence]

Hello Legends. Before we get into the episode, just a quick heads up if you have completed Season one of what I Survived. Firstly, thank you for the incredible support for the show and all the lovely comments. I truly appreciate it. I'm madly working on Season two, which will be out for you very soon. In the meantime though, I have just dropped listed as Season two in what I Survived, a previous show that I created a couple of years ago called Wanted. The entire show is there for you to binge while you wait for Season two of what I Survived.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

What does it mean to live a rich life? It means brave first leaps, tearful goodbyes, and everything in between. With over 100 years experience navigating the ups and downs of the market and of life, your Edward Jones Financial advisor will be there to help you move ahead with confidence. Because with all you've done to find your rich, we'll do all we can to help you keep enjoying it. Edward Jones Member, SIPC

[David McMillan]

ACAST Powers the

[Jack Lawrence]

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[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

this season on the Dream

[David McMillan]

Supplies are being provided by nurses who

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

run out in the middle of the

[David McMillan]

night and purchase diapers, but the hospital is still charging as if they still have these items.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

We are digging into every topic we've ever wanted to cover on this show. It's a spinning plate analogy.

[David McMillan]

The second that you stop spinning those plates, that crashes.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

So you can never stop working. The Dream Season 4 comes at you weekly starting Monday, January 20th.

[Jack Lawrence]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[David McMillan]

Acast.com.

[Jack Lawrence]

Prison escapes have been taking place for as long as prisons have been around. In fact, one of the earliest prison escapes on record was back in the 13th century when a Welshman was imprisoned in the famed Tower of London. He would craft a makeshift rope from bedsheets and cloths lowered from a window he'd climbed down. One of the world's most famous prison escapes was that of brothers John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris, three men who had escaped from the world's most secure prison in 1962. The famous Alcatraz Forbidding Alcatraz prison, from

[David McMillan]

which no man has ever been known to escape, has its name for impregnability at stake.

[Jack Lawrence]

A daring break for freedom by three

[David McMillan]

convicts triggers a manhunt through the caves with which the rock is riddled and

[Jack Lawrence]

throughout the entire San Francisco area. The escape had many elements that would capture the world's interest. The sheer planning alone was quite ingenious. The three men would make dummy heads of Themselves made from plaster and real hair. They'd place them in their bunks so as to fool the guards who would make regular rounds during the evening. They'd escape through vents in the cells, scaling up pipes and out of a ventilator grill on the top of the prison. Then they'd make their way down the building, climbing the prison fence and to the water's edge, the water being the frigidly cold San Francisco Bay. It was then a 1.25 mile or 2 kilometer swim to shore. They'd stolen 50 raincoats in which to construct a raft in order to assist them with the swim. But it's what happened next that is likely the reason this escape has become so famous around the world. Because to this day, no one knows if those men ever made it or not. These three men were the only ones to ever successfully escape from ALCATRAZ. And David McMillan is still the only Westerner to successfully escape his prison, the infamous Khlong Pren Prison, also known as the Bangkok Hilton.

[David McMillan]

Two o' clock's come and I'm still working away on one bar it might be fine during the day when you

[Jack Lawrence]

can make a bit of noise My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wanted.

[David McMillan]

I'm a wanderer of the soul before the end I plan to be whole But I know I'll lose myself along the way what's gone is gone what's past is past Let me leave what belongs in the past.

[Jack Lawrence]

So in our previous episode, David had just been told by his lawyer that things weren't good. It was all over. He was to be executed in two weeks. At this point, David had been an unwitting guest of the Bangkok Hilton from a couple of years and had spent that time scavenging for things that would be useful to him for his big departure. The one thing he didn't have was hacksaw blades. He could, of course, go to the machine shop within the prison and pay another inmate for the blades. But he says that he would be instantly ratted on and it would be straight to the punishment wing. So instead he has them delivered.

[David McMillan]

We'd let foreigners have care packages. The locals had a few things sent in. They'd cut their soap bars in half, pour their shoes, shampoo and whatnot into a newspaper to take it with them, dunk their clothes in buckets of water in case they'd dried out, drugs or intoxicants in them or something, I don't know what. But anyway, just to make the point, you can't have anything but Foreigners. Well, they're not going to be bringing drugs in from foreign countries. Foreign countries are just rich people in streets of gold. They don't do well. But I was a bit worried about hacksaw blades coming in, so I gave Michael a little task to do. In the care packages, there'd be clothing, there'd be food, there'd tins of stuff, the whole works, artist materials, all sorts of stuff. But one thing that did kind of mean something to them was religious sensibility. So Michael drew up a scroll like a neuron of parchment. What was written on it? Go placidly amid the noise and haste, you probably remember the opening line. It was from. Supposedly from some monastery. And change the things you can and fuck off everything off. You can't do anything about that kind of thing from some monk. Anyway, that would do it. And it did arrive in Michael's fine hand in this huge parcel with every imaginable exotic delicacy. And sent from. He must have trucked it over to the Melbourne post office to do it, like $150 in postage or something. And back then that meant something. Yeah, absolutely. And he'd gone to the trouble of. He'd followed the recipe for this thing perfectly. The scroll had dull top and bottom of which he had to use a radial arm saw to cut deep, but not too deep into it, to place the saw blades in aluminium foil, which blocks the X rays. Not that that really would have made a hell of a difference. You could barely see the teeth. Oh, and put gold painted and lacquered knobs on the end of this thing. But here it is. This is a very important thing. I might cast out a couple of cartons of cigarettes to keep the guard on side as he's poking through my stuff. But I needed a guarantee that this parcel wouldn't be looked at too closely. What could I do? Any ideas there, listeners? You've got a parcel coming in. You have somebody listless, but nonetheless thorough in their own ways because they've got their own loathsome trustees to do the poking and shoving and sniffing. You want to make sure all stops suddenly and no interest is taken in your puzzle. What do you put in there? You've got to put something in there

[Jack Lawrence]

that's going to stop them in their tracks.

[David McMillan]

Now.

[Jack Lawrence]

Okay, you heard him. What would you do? How would you ensure that guard looks no further? What would you place in that box that he will see as soon as he opens it that will make him stop his search?

[David McMillan]

Time's up.

[Jack Lawrence]

Okay, I'd make A terrible criminal.

[David McMillan]

Oh, I'm sure if you were in there with me, then you're. You'd improve in remarkable time. Especially when death penalty was rumored.

[Jack Lawrence]

Yeah, of course.

[David McMillan]

I said to Michael, listen, go out, find four expensive, glossy, high quality, color printed, filthy pornography of the most extreme kind you can possibly. Things that you wouldn't want to give your sick half cousin in Detroit. Put it in there and on the top. By the way, this guard was. I mean, he was trying to be like, do me a favor. He just was not going to. No. And the next one underneath would be even worse. And these trustees. I'll get rid of it, boss. No, fuck off, you will. I put it very carefully under his chair. Oh, yeah, Just take your stuff and get out of here. Get, get, get, get. Yeah, right. Sorry about that. It's my cousin, he's an idiot. He sent me off. So, sister,

[Jack Lawrence]

As mentioned previously, David had to get himself into a quieter cell. Most of these cells would usually hold around 14 men, which was just far too many people. One or more would certainly sound the alarm. Luckily, though, David had essentially managed to buy himself a much quieter room with just a few cellmates.

[David McMillan]

Who was in the cell? My manservant, Jet. Surnamed because Jet means seven. He was the seventh child. Tiny little guy trying to rob a bus. The passengers carried him out laughing. That must have been an embarrassment. Took his guns off him straight away. Ah. Laughed at the size of them. Big gun, little boy. Anyway, his story was shameful enough, but he found his calling as my head butler and I had in my section, which was the art studio where they sold shell paintings at exorbitant prices outside. And the chief guard of the art section was a notorious drunk. I had to prop him up in his chair every day and the only thing he'd sober up enough to was send out my mail, which he very diligently did because I had to time it sort of on his lunch break, so it was between hangover and imbibing again. So it was quite a nice little place. And Jet, I think we had a carpenter. We had a couple of French. Reggie Nol, who was the chef. We didn't burn charcoal. Oh, that was for commoners. We had our own electric ring. The boys who collected the ice, the ones who fetched my water for my little splash upstairs. I wasn't going to shower with the commoners. Yeah. I had to, you know, a life that they would never think that I'd want to walk away from. They let me run around inside the building. I even tried to Copy the keys at one stage and make one out of resin and chips of metal. It doesn't work. No, no, no. You'd be surprised how much torsion strength you need in the twist of a key in an old lock or even a new one, but a heavy lock nonetheless. We could speak ages on that and quite profitably too. But no, the keys were up and there was quite a little family there. Head butler was in the cell. Kevin from Hawaii and of course Stan from Sweden and myself. The only oddball in there. And it was kind of. I had to take him. I mean, at least he wasn't Kitty fiddler. It was Mirage from a respectable profession of people smuggler. I know they've got a bad name these days, but borders meant nothing to Mirage. Passports meant an awful lot. Because I said to him once, I mean, I used a few in my time. How often could you use these things? And what equipment did you have? A reading lamp. Hold it over and the plastic comes away and you change the picture. Well, that wouldn't be a really great job. Great job where they're being paid money at the airport. They need a great job. The guy had a passport. I was doing them a favor by giving him some documentation that was right and mostly Chinese who wanted to start a new life somewhere. But for all his virtues, Mirage was an absolute miser and a complete coward. I had to remonstrate with him at one stage for trying to mistreat my cat.

[Jack Lawrence]

So he has his room of somewhat trusty cellmates, but he would only have the help of one of them, a Swede named Sten, who was initially supposed to go with him on the escape, but would back out after seeing what had happened to another group who had been caught escaping a separate prison.

[David McMillan]

That night began about 12:15. Turned the light off, hadn't told anybody. That's why I was still there, to cut away at midnight. Sten didn't want to come anymore. I was going to get him a passport, all of that stuff. But he was one of those guys in prison, as they are, that are absolutely fine in controlled environment where they've got to fight very obvious opposition, as it were. Completely lost in the real world. People said to me, watch out, that guy. He stayed with somebody around town and robbed them of everything in the house. I'm not worried about my silverware, my dinnerware collection, or my Royal Doulton. He was going to come on the night. But these guys turned up from Chiang Mai who'd been in a little escape from a tin pot jail and Got caught. Israelis they were, and they had no plan B. And you know what the most important part of an escape is? Yes. Oh look, I can hear it down the line of the podcast listeners. They're saying what you do when you get over the wall.

[Jack Lawrence]

Yeah, exactly.

[David McMillan]

That's what they've all said. True audience, you're very right. And our Israeli friends, they may have been in the Israeli army prepared, but they were not prepared for a guest house in Chiang Mai where they'd done their ill begotten dealings. But when they went back to him, all he did was leech them money and hand them over to the authorities. When it finished, the guards didn't like the idea of them escaping and took such a dim view of it. They even had their picture on Tuk Tuk drivers all around town with a reward offered. Police are not involved at this stage or really never and didn't treat them too well when they got brought back in. I saw them down at our building's coffee shop, as they like to call it, around the banyan tree, telling people what had happened to them. And their legs were in heavy elephant chains, but all mangled and scarred and like imagine some angry kid in McDonald's scrunching up a bunch of drinking straws and throwing them on the ground. That's what their legs looked like, deary me. So I had a task of trying to explain to my Swedish friend how this wasn't such a bad thing. So around their little art shop, my office at lunchtime that day, I said, Stanley, hey, you gotta meet a couple of guys who just come is rare. They are but klutzes, they look a bit rough. I mean that's. Guys didn't like them getting out and you know, you can imagine iron bars on their legs and all that threw rocks on them. Hell was lucky. One could get some water and feed the other or they wouldn't be with us today. But glossing over that, no, we have a be plans and we, we have a place to go, we have plans. He just. That was it, he, he bailed out of that. Yeah, he didn't want to come along.

[Jack Lawrence]

Before plan B, it was time to put into action plan A. At midnight, David got started on his escape and instantly realises this is going to be harder than he thought.

[David McMillan]

And it was all different than I expected. 2 o' clock's come and I'm still working away on one bar. It might be fine during the day when you could make a bit of noise, but it was like, I don't know what the single stroke of that tungsten teeth across the ancient bower after midnight when we first started was like some nightmare giant violinist scraping catgut across a raspy surface. It really resonated in the wrong way. We had to slow down a bit. I left him to it because I knew I'd need my energy later. One of the bars was cut through and oh, at the first cut it sprang away from the rest of itself like it was under so much stress for 50 years being as the building had collapsed and this was going to be some job. About halfway through the other end of that bar and it's coming up to three o'clock in the morning. Let's go back to the next day. And I said, no, no, no, no. I knew, I looked at Mirage and I thought he will squeal his head off because he knows what happens to people in escapes. He would break a leg down there. And as for my head butler, well, of course he was perfectly loyal, but he just couldn't. He'd be busting with pride, wouldn't he? And I'll tell you why. I know he would have been like that. Because just as I was a little later on when I'm getting ready to climb out this tiny opening that's been left there, I turned around and this my master butler over in the court, he's standing there in his Sunday go to meet and best clothes, the ones he used for the occasional visit he got twice a year or something. He's got his little bits of letters and photographs wrapped up in plastic and a rubber band and he's even got a little tissue poking out of his good T shirt that's got a pocket in it and his good sandals on. I go with you.

[Jack Lawrence]

God, very inconspicuous.

[David McMillan]

Yeah, but it was touching to see him there, you know, in a kind of way. It was one of the troops head of his section and he wasn't going to see the chief go out without him being at his side and all of that kind of thing. No, no. I gave him money, I gave him my good watch. I said, look, it was like that speech out of Casablanca, where I'm going kid, you don't want to. And Sten managed to climb up on the window there and grab this bar and wrench it up with his hands, grasping this bar, pulling it up like it was strangling every everybody that ever cast some slight on his perfidy. And I managed to squeeze through virtually naked with just the things I'd.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

What does it mean to live a rich life it means brave first leaps, tearful goodbyes, and everything in between. With over 100 years experience navigating the ups and downs of the market and of life, your Edward Jones financial advisor will be there to help you move ahead with confidence. Because with all you've done to find your rich, we'll do all we can to help you keep enjoying it. EDWARD Jones member, SIPC.

[Jack Lawrence]

Finally, David was out, his face looking up into the night sky. An instant feeling comes across him that he is no longer one of them. He is no longer an inmate. In fact, he looks back into the cell he's just escaped from, looking at those men's faces as if they're strangers. But of course, he's still an inmate and there is still a long way to go. And time was running out before daylight. He uses the cell's bookshelf, which was just an old building plank, and pokes it out into the night sky. He would need to slide across this to get far enough out so as to avoid an extremely delicate and crumbling awning below.

[David McMillan]

I couldn't even put a toe on that. It would have crumbled away and alerted the loathsome trustees who slept in the second best cell in the building underneath.

[Jack Lawrence]

He slides down the army webbing to the ground below, flicks it clear of the plank as Sten the Swede pulls it back into the room. He calls down to David, send me a postcard. None of the men in that room ever thought he would get very far, but off into the night he goes. He has a rough idea of where the guards were and had a few dummy runs as best he could. However, the trouble was these had to be done previously during the day. The world is a much different place at night, and it was just as

[David McMillan]

well that I insisted on going that night and got out at that time because everything was slower. I timed it during the day, but the footsteps you take are not as quick as during the day as you're walking through it. The sound everything makes, as I've said, is there was some place that was meant a factory I needed to visit had been repaired and I had to take one nail out. And that made a real protest at coming out of the plywood as I tore it out with some pincer pliers I'd stolen from somewhere.

[Jack Lawrence]

So off he goes. And as mentioned, Klong Pren Prison is a vast facility and there's more than just one wall on the outside to contend with.

[David McMillan]

And all good prison escapes need a letter, and especially this one. Because it was internal walls, I knew not how many. It was made out of long bamboo poles and picture frames. Sten had pretended to take an interest in oil painting the last six months and had made very solid picture frames, which when I got into the factory that had a reason too long to go into to have long bamboo poles. I laid two of those down, put the picture frames in between them, used gaffer tape to tie it all up. That gave me two very long ladders, probably about what, four, four and a half meters each and kind of heavy with all those picture frames in it. I told him not to make them so heavy. I don't weigh much. But anyway, there they were. I mean, I'd been running and doing all of that as much as I could to build up some stamina. But I was stuck in the factory where the poles came from and had to climb out into the auto shop and then stop to have some water because it's dehydrating, then go up, then wait for a guard who's passing.

[Jack Lawrence]

He's walking past the kitchen area and suddenly freezes. A guard is up and moving around. He stays low and in the dark, so still he can hear his own breath. Luckily, the guards just grabbing some water and soon leaves the kitchen. After those few stops to pick up his previously hidden items, construct his ladder. It's time to move. And move he does quietly through the dark and muddy prison.

[David McMillan]

I only got to the first wall at about 4 o' clock in the morning and wasted time trying to hook the rolls of barbed wire down from that anchor them to the ground. In the end, I kind of found a short way to get over this by taping up the two ladders into one very long one, carrying it in the middle, sliding it up the first wall. The first side of the wall I wanted to cross, climb up the top, use what weight I had, but leverage really to walk along that ladder again. And it would tip the other way. So go into it at an angle, climb to the middle of the apex, walk down the ladder and it tilts back up onto the ground. The other side, you, you drag it off and carried it across in a loping stride that Michael at the polter had told me to use when carrying something long and floppy like that. Banged into a couple of things I didn't see in the night, including a big wire mesh thing. Got lost because I wasn't facing the right direction. I thought I was. And I'm seeing all new buildings that and places and worrying about guards and things.

[Jack Lawrence]

By this point he's exhausted. He felt like he had nothing left. But of course he knew what would happen if he was caught. And it wasn't the death penalty that he feared at this point, it was what the guards would do to him if they got hold of him. So he continues on when all of a sudden he's spotted.

[David McMillan]

But the smell triggered me as I walked past the AIDS ward where they were all dying horribly. That rotting flesh stays in the mind and stayed with me that night. And when I saw a little Mooney face up at the bars there having a look, his bed must have been pushed over on the edge. I guess anybody else would have screened the place down. Foreigner on the loose. Farang is past it. Pain so much, no interest in anything. No doubt his family income wiped out him by black market heroin in there just to keep him in his last weeks from screaming the place down yet again.

[Jack Lawrence]

He presses on and finally, at around 4:30 in the morning, he finds himself at the outer wall with a new

[David McMillan]

problem, which was three times as high as the ones I'd been encountering. No way of teetering over that one. And I'm covered in mud because I have to climb under one of the barbed wire bits and running out of water. And I'd forgot about Mars Bar Creek. It was. Well, I forgot about it. Tried to pretend it wasn't there. An inner moat that ran around inside the prison full of turds. Of course, that's where the name comes from, Mars Bar Creek and barbed wire. So I can't put my long ladder over it because it hits the wall, goes clunk. I can't ignore the creek because the barbed wire will tangle up the ladder. The ladder weighs more than I do by this stage. How do I get it over there onto this narrow strip that runs around on the inside. Now, if I'd have been with anybody else, we would have had a long, stupid, pointless, fruitless discussion about that and probably many other things about being lost and where best to go. And all the time clouding the only instincts that mean anything to surviving human beings, which is a sense of smell, really, and a sense of pattern and movement and the sounds of the night and the things that are dangerous therein, I suppose. Yeah, all of those things would have pushed me and who I was with beyond into the start of a new day and disaster. So just as well the Swede did not join me or anybody for that matter.

[Jack Lawrence]

So David is standing at the edge of this creek. Just across the creek is about a foot and a half of land before you hit this massive outer wall. He can't just wade through the creek because it's full of barbed wire. So how does he get himself across? How does he get his ladder across? Well, like every good storyteller, David says you'll just have to read his book for that one. But he manages it and finally makes his way to up the outer wall

[David McMillan]

once with the ladder above. There at the top of it, I could see dawn was coming. There was a glow in the sky, somehow heartening, but terrifying at the same time because I knew the shifts were coming. And there was electricity, of course, on the top. Only 240v and it hadn't been arced up. According to my a friend who was a bit of an engineer in there. We'd looked at it long and hard and decided there weren't any transformers. You know, if you've got a fence to keep cattle, you have this sort of high amperage, low voltage thing here. They had household voltage by the look of it, but it was just 240. So it's kind of manageable, providing you don't sweat on it. So that's what you don't do at the top of that. I'd never heard of anybody being up there at the time previously, so there was nothing to go on. But I knew where the insulators were, so if I needed a foothold, that's the only possible place. And I changed into my khaki. Long trousers. Prison inmates not allowed. Long trousers is a big thing in there. It's how you tell a prisoner from a non prisoner. But I was sweating and everything was damp, so I could feel a little tingle coming through from the current that was passing by. But I also knew enough not to over air. Anyway, there's no choice. No choice of anything here. Nothing. Get it right or that's it, you're finished.

[Jack Lawrence]

So David gets himself over the wall and down the other side. He's so close to freedom, he can taste it. The biggest issue with the part of the wall that he found himself at was that in fact it was spitting distance from a little village full of workers from the prison.

[David McMillan]

And at the wrong time of the day, as they're getting their shit together, get out and start taking bribes. It's hard work. Wear them out. Get ready. So I slid to the little footpath that goes around the outside of the prison and I had one little last ace up the sleeve. One of the nominal jobs prisoners must work. I can't remember whom did my work in which factory, but I knew it was the umbrella factory because I had taken the trouble to take a pop out black umbrella.

[Jack Lawrence]

So David has his secret weapon, an umbrella that can give him some cover from the guards in the towers above as well as anyone walking past him. The only issue being that you might actually draw more attention to yourself by walking around with an umbrella up at five o' clock in the morning when it's not raining. But as if by some sort of divine miracle the rain starts to.

[David McMillan]

So under the umbrella like Ripley getting off the alien spacecraft. I'm saying lucky, lucky, lucky to myself as I edge towards the front gate because I know where the front gate is, this footbridge or really cars can drive over, bring in vans of prisoners and so on and goods in and out but I can't, that's too much, I can't go there. But there's a little one I noticed at the side where the shop traders go and I think there was a guard looking down on me because I poked out just to have a little bit of a look at the towers to see who's looking down and they would have thought because of the khaki trousers that I was one of the guards sneaking in around the back way late for work as usual. And besides prisoners, what they may do when escaping, one thing they don't worry about is inclement weather and putting up, putting an umbrella up and in fact I think I saw the one of the guards coming to work that had one of my ATM cards as I crossed out of the front section.

[Jack Lawrence]

In front of the prison is a big eight lane highway with a large steel bridge going over the top of it which David climbs. Once at the top he takes one last look back at the prison behind him, a place he had spent over two years and witnessed countless atrocities and realised he'd made it. But of course by this time Thailand is starting to come alive. People are waking up and getting ready for a new day, including the prisoners and guards of the Bangkok Hilton.

[David McMillan]

All I had to do now at that morning was somehow get a passport and get to the airport and get out of town before they all woke up.

[Jack Lawrence]

Well, I was going to say because obviously how long have you got before they realise that you're not there?

[David McMillan]

Yes, not long. And oddly enough I did find out from somebody who stayed and was there a Scottish guy, they didn't know where I was and number one butler held out, he said I don't know, I haven't seen him this morning I woke up and he was gone because when they opened my door and locked it, they don't look inside because it's, you know, the A taipan's. So they were starting to get worried. By about 11 o' clock somebody even pointed the people smuggler ratted me out and said, look, he's cut the bars up there. I tried to stop him. Oh, but he beat me down, all of that. But they didn't believe it. Yes, yes, yes, you're right. It didn't look very open. I can't see how it could have got through there. And they sent around people calling my name. It was Daniel Westlake at the time. I had an Australian passport in that night and somebody said it was like looking for a lost sheep. Can you. Where are you? You can come out, we won't heat you, don't worry. I had an address and a place where supposedly a passport was waiting for me. My Chinese friends, well, actually one I'd met in prison, I'd given him a photograph and I didn't have a really good one and it came off my radio operator's license. So it had to be enlarged and changed and everything like that. And it had to go into a passport that was freshly stolen because it should belong to a tourist who'd just come in and hadn't overstayed his visa. And all this stuff with the stamps and the stickers and the little form stuck into it. So it was supposed to be in some guy's apartment, in the toilet there, behind a mirror of the toilet cubicle. I'm getting there and I've got the key to it which has been sandwiched in a little wooden handle so that if I was caught and there was no key, because if they found a key, they'd want to know who it is. Maybe they torture me, I don't know what I've got to the apartment, I got in there and I'm in the toilet feeling around, I'm thinking, what are the odds? Some guy in jail, for crying out loud. And they're given this photograph and he's going to get you a passport. And so I was really relieved to find the thing in there. I wasn't too thrilled to bits when I took a look at it. It wasn't the best work of art I've ever seen.

[Jack Lawrence]

So with his pretty rough fake passport in hand, he jumped in a cab and headed for the airport. He arrives at the long term luggage store where a friend had left a bag for him containing some clothes and more importantly, a couple of ATM cards. One of the cards, however, wasn't working. So this would leave David with just $500 in which to be able to travel. Furthest away he can get is Singapore. Although not in his plan, that is where he's headed.

[David McMillan]

Welcome to Singapore, ladies and gentlemen. And to all Singaporeans and residents of Singapore, a warm welcome home.

[Jack Lawrence]

He lands in Singapore, checks himself into a hotel and heads straight for the rooftop pool where he dives straight in. He might be free, but not for the first time in his life. He's wanted. And he knew it wouldn't take much for the authorities to begin tracking him down.

[David McMillan]

I found myself in a hotel room in Singapore working out how it would be that the authorities could trace me to Singapore. Which is, I think they could if the authorities had simply figured that I'd left the country, gone down, got all the passenger lists, figured that if I was in a false document it would be what? American, Canadian, British, I mean, quite a few to choose from, New Zealand, maybe even South African. And compare that passenger manifest with any reported lost or stolen passports. We were speaking about being wanted. And what's that like? Well, people often overthink the idea of going through an airport computer because the document they might have has been reported lost or stolen, but really they don't hold that information that's in the back room, the front room is the Interpol watch list. By this method they could really identify me and probably several others who were traveling on assumed names that day. So I knew I had to get out of Singapore fairly quickly and I sent for another passport.

[Jack Lawrence]

Getting this new fake passport took a little while, as his friends had been at this point scammed so many times from people either saying they were him or that they were breaking him out and just needing 10,000 here or 5,000 there. And so to begin with, they weren't convinced it was actually him. However, once that hurdle was overcome, they sprang into action and a new passport and new ATM cards arrived. And again, it's time to leave.

[David McMillan]

And you traveled. If you went to dinky enough travel agency, you'd end up with a handwritten ticket. The agencies could write them out by hand and then take all their slips to consolidate her. It was a very old fashioned system. It was glorious really, because there's so many mix ups riding at those tickets, you wouldn't believe it. Names would get backwards and forwards, but in due course I found myself in Balochistan in the eastern western provinces of Pakistan, where my old friend, tribal lord in chief Nurjon Magsi, whom I'd met back in the days of first crossing into Afghanistan, it was the right place to be because nobody could find Me there. And if they did, no good would come of that for them. If they. I heard the desert holds a lot of secrets.

[Jack Lawrence]

So were you still playing around in the world of the, shall we say, not legal.

[David McMillan]

Yeah, Smuggling. Not at first, but I found had limited resources. I went back into it really, because I'd used every scrap of everything to stay alive and get out of Thailand. I owed a few people some favors. Oh, they weren't being demanding. No, nothing. They'd been probably happy if I never did anything ever again, but just wanted safety and a little place to hide out. A few hundred thousand, maybe half a million or something. Modest, humble, in fact.

[Jack Lawrence]

He would again be arrested in another country and again face a death penalty. But that's a story for another time. David would do a few more stints behind bars in various countries around the world before retiring from from the life. In 2016. He decided it was far easier to write about crime instead of committing it. He in fact wrote a couple of books. One about his escape from Khlong Prem prison titled the True Story of the Only Westerner Ever to Escape Thailand's Bangkok Hilton. The link to which is in the show notes of this episode. David spent his life on the run, running from a third authorities, always trying to stay one step ahead of them, trying to study their tactics and just how they operated. But what if you knew how they worked? What if you knew every inch of how they tracked people? Because at one point in time, you were one of them.

[David McMillan]

So my recruiter said you can tell that you're in the process of being recruited by this organization to your husband, partner, or your best friend or very close family members. But all I could say was this is the organization that I'm talking to. But I can't say anything more.

[Jack Lawrence]

Annie Macron worked as an intelligence officer for one of the world's most famous government spy agencies on the planet, MI5. That was until the day she went on the run.

[David McMillan]

My family, my mother and my father certainly knew something was up because I wouldn't talk about those things on the phone. I was worried about the communications. And there were certain indications as well that they might be on to us

[Jack Lawrence]

next time unwanted I'm a wanderer of

[David McMillan]

the soul before the end I plan to behold But I know I lose myself along the way what's gone is gone what's past past has passed Let me leave what belongs in the past.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities and even another passenger or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones Member SIPC

[David McMillan]

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.

[Jack Lawrence]

Here's a show that we recommend.

[David McMillan]

Hey guys, welcome to Giggly Squad, a

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

place where we make fun of everything, but most importantly ourselves.

[David McMillan]

I'm Paige desorbo.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

I'm Hannah Berner.

[Jack Lawrence]

Welcome to the Squad.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

Giggly Squad started on Summer House when we were giggling during an inappropriate time.

[David McMillan]

But of course we can't be managed,

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

so we decided to start this podcast to continue giggling.

[David McMillan]

We will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching fashion trends pep talks where we give advice, mental health moments and games and guests.

[Edward Jones Financial Advisor]

Listen to Giggly Squad on ACAST or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jack Lawrence]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[David McMillan]

Acast.com.