A one-time murderer and many-time thief, Richard Lee McNair is the only person ever to break out jail, state penitentiary and federal penitentiary. Three escapes. McNair, a former US Air Force Sergeant, was 47 when he shipped himself out a Louisiana prison on the 5th of April, 2006. His escape came to within a whisker of failing when he was confronted on railroad tracks by a policeman, an event recorded by the officer's dashcam. The encounter became a famous crime video clip on YouTube. Month after month, McNair was featured on America's Most Wanted and led newspaper and television newscasts in the United States and Canada.Through more than 350 letters and 3,500 hand-written pages from his solitary-confinement cell at the 'Supermax' in Colorado, Richard McNair provides the never-before-known details on how he pulled off his three escapes, his encounters with police, and what can be best described as a semi-paranoid life on the lam.His Houdini-like escape in 2006 was the first from a federal prison in 13 years, and there hasn't been one since.Is Richard Lee McNair the world's greatest escape artist? The reader can decide.

A one-time murderer and many-time thief, Richard Lee McNair is the only person ever to break out of jail, state penitentiary and federal penitentiary. Three escapes. McNair, a former US Air Force Sergeant, was 47 when he shipped himself out of a Louisiana prison on the 5th of April, 2006. His escape came to within a whisker of failing when he was confronted on railroad tracks by a policeman, an event recorded by the officer's dashcam. The encounter became a famous crime video clip on YouTube. Month after month, McNair was featured on America's Most Wanted and led newspaper and television newscasts in the United States and Canada. Through more than 350 letters and 3,500 hand-written pages from his solitary confinement cell at the 'Supermax' in Colorado, Richard McNair provides the never-before-known details on how he pulled off his three escapes, his encounters with police, and what can be best described as a semi-paranoid life on the lam. His Houdini-like escape in 2006 was the first from a federal prison in 13 years and there hasn't been one since. Is Richard Lee McNair the world's greatest escape artist? The reader can decide.

The Man Who Mailed Himself Out of Jail is the incredible, true story of the World's greatest prison escape artist, Richard Lee McNair. Many know the story of the killer's spectacular escape from a Louisiana penitentiary in April 2006 and his near-capture shortly after by police on railroad tracks. But for the first time, we get the full story behind McNair's escape and his time on the lam.Now held at the Supermax in Colorado, Richard McNair has given Canadian crime reporter Byron Christopher exclusive access to his story. After nearly five years of research and travel across the U.S. and Canada, the author takes readers on a wild ride. They're with McNair every step of the way, through his three escapes. They see how the Oklahoma native avoided bloodhounds, search helicopters and a massive police dragnet. They feel the joys and defeats of McNair's time on the lam, get a play-by-account of his capture by the R.C.M.P. in the fall of 2007 ... and with proprietary information about the 1987 North Dakota homicide, readers get a front row seat to the murder that put McNair behind bars.

An award-winning journalist and producer of This American Life traces the stories of five convicted murderers to assess their struggles for redemption, efforts toward parole and first steps in transitioning back to civilian life. 25,000 first printing.

"In Curtis Dawkins's first short story collection, he offers a window into prison life through the eyes of his narrators and their cellmates. Dawkins reveals the idiosyncrasies, tedium, and desperation of long-term incarceration--he describes men who struggle to keep their souls alive despite the challenges they face. In 'A Human Number, ' a man spends his days collect-calling strangers just to hear the sounds of the outside world. In '573543,' an inmate recalls his descent into addiction as his prison softball team gears up for an annual tournament against another unit. In 'Leche Quemada, ' an inmate is released and finds freedom more complex and baffling then he expected. Dawkins's stories are funny and sad, filled with unforgettable detail--the barter system based on calligraphy-ink tattoos, handmade cards, and cigarettes; a single dandelion smuggled in from the rec yard; candy made from powdered milk, water, sugar, and hot sauce. His characters are nuanced and sympathetic, despite their obvious flaws. The Graybar Hotel tells moving, human stories about men enduring impossible circumstances."--

Reg Spiers arrived in England in 1964 as a world-class athlete. He returned to Australia in a box, but that was only the start of his adventures. Crazily impulsive, romantic, and free-spirited, Reg became a national hero for smuggling himself 13,000 miles home as air freight. But as his fame and sporting career faded, Reg decided to smuggle something very different. Soon, he was on the run with his girlfriend, playing a cat-and-mouse game with police on three continents. A wild road trip across India and Africa—idyllic beaches and prison hellholes, shady friends and shadier cops, gun-toting militias and drug-running gangsters —led to a court room in Sri Lanka and the fight of his life. Could Reg beat the death sentence he’d just been given, or was this box too big to climb out of?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the governor of Maryland, the “compassionate” (People), “startling” (Baltimore Sun), “moving” (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his. In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen? That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.