The 1995 HM Prison Parkhurst escape took place on 3 January 1995, when three Category A prisoners, Matthew Williams, Keith Rose and Andrew Rodger, escaped from HM Prison Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, England.
The group spent four days on the run, attempting to leave the island via both airplane and boat. However, this failed and the men were captured and returned to prison, receiving an additional two-year imprisonment for escaping lawful custody.
Prior to 1995, the last time a person had escaped from Parkhurst, was George Jackson, who, in 1946, was on the run for 11 days before being recaptured near the Hare and Houses pub in Downend. Another similar example of an escape involved Parkhurst prisoners in 1966, however, they escaped a prison transport bus, not the prison itself, while being returned to prison from court.
After the 1995 escape from Parkhurt, it would be another 17 years before another Category A prisoner escaped, when 31-year-old John Anslow was freed by three men armed with sledgehammers in January 2012.
Background
HM Prison Parkhurst At the time of the escape, HM Prison Parkhurst was a Category A prison with 100 prison officers guarding 200 inmates. The prison a bad reputation of being a violent prison. Prisoners there included those who had committed murders, including serial killers, as well as terror-related offenders. A former prison officer at the prison, Ian Jannaway, stated that Parkhurst was 'the end of the line' in terms of it being a prison which received: "Prisoners who were hard to control [and] prisoners who were problems to other staff or threat to other inmates."
Involved prisoners
Matthew Williams Matthew Williams had been robbed whilst a microbiology and genetics student at the University of Leeds, Yorkshire and decided to seek revenge. In April 1989, having made an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) nail bomb, he placed it under a bench in Liverpool city centre, where the group who had robbed him hung out, attempting to injure them.
However, the police located the device and defused it, finding Williams was responsible. Williams was convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions, possessing an explosive substance, administering poison (having tried to poison his mother, having stolen enough cyanide to kill 300 people), as well as arson. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, receiving five discretionary life sentences. At trial, he was described as a: "gifted student who so hated the human race that he set out to destroy it." Having been convicted, he was transported to prison. At the time, Williams was unsure what prison he was being transported to, but worked out from the further south they were travelling, that it could only be one prison – HM Prison Parkhurst.
Comprehending the seriousness of having a life sentence and knowing that he could be in prison until he died, Williams had previously attempted to escape. He knew that the easiest way would be when he was in transit in a prison van. In 1994, Williams had concealed a hypodermic needle and, despite being handcuffed, managed to retrieve this from his trouser pocket. He stabbed himself several times in the arm, telling the prison guards that he had AIDS (this was a lie) and if they did not release his handcuffs, he would stab them with the now dirty needle. The driver, following procedure, raced to a local police station, where the door to the van was left open and Williams attempted to escape. However, police officers detained him.
Williams was described as having 'an air of menace', being described as a 'sociopath', who was 'extremely clever' and manipulative. He had previously dreamed of 'killing all mankind by germ warfare.' He was given the nickname 'psycho'.
Despite being 20 years younger than the other prisoners who escaped, Williams was the mastermind behind the plan.
Keith Rose Rose, a man with no previous convictions until 1990, was a former computer company director, who had first been imprisoned that year having been sentenced to 15-years-imprisonment for two counts of kidnapping, having a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and blackmail. Having high levels of both debts related to his personal and business life, Rose, armed with a sawn-off shotgun and wearing combat clothing and a balaclava, forced entry into the home of a food wholesale's deputy chairman, Victor Cracknell, who was the son of food tycoon, Desmond Cracknell. Having entered the address, located near Guildford, Rose handcuffed Cracknell's wife to furniture, leaving a ransom note that demanded £1 million for her husband's release. He stated that if she attempted to contact police, he would execute her husband.
He led the deputy chairman to a secluded gully on Dartmoor, where the man, who was blindfolded, gagged and handcuffed, had a noose tied around his neck and a tree branch. Meanwhile, despite being warned against it by Rose, Cracknell's wife informed her husband's father, Desmond, who went to the police. Detectives imposed a news blackout, whilst Desmond negotiated a ransom fee with Rose during 96 hours of telephone conversations. Eventually, a reduced ransom was paid to Rose of £147,000. Cracknell was held for five days, trussed up in a sleeping bag with the noose around his neck, until he managed to free himself, staggering to a cottage after days of being out in the cold and rain. Police investigated and the majority of the money was located with Rose when he was arrested by officers from Surrey Police in Exeter, having been under police surveillance.
Having been arrested, police reopened an investigation into the wife of a wealthy supermarket owner, Juliet Rowe, who had been murdered in 1981 in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, during a botched kidnapping. As the victim attempted to resist the kidnap, she was shot four times in her back as she fled, with another two shots fired at point-blank range into her head and heart. Despite denying his involvement in this offence, he was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Rose was described by a prison guard as being 'polite', presenting 'well' to staff, focusing his attention on attending education classes within the prison. Rose and Williams knew one another, having served imprisonment at a different prison. Williams considered him trustworthy.
Andrew Rodger On 1 June 1986, Rodger had been caught stealing from a vending machine at Ilford swimming baths by nightwatchman John Garrett. Having been caught, Rodger "went berserk", bludgeoning Garrett with a crowbar in a locker room, killing him. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life-imprisonment, with a minimum term of 19-years-imprisonment.
Rodger's was reportedly an abnormally strong prisoner, who was known for bending the doors of cells and his iron bed.
Planning the escape Immediately on his arrival, Williams started to think of ways out of the prison. He knew that he had to get past guards and CCTV cameras, over a 20 ft steel fence adorned with razor wire on the top, followed by a 24 ft wall that had a dome built onto the top to stop grappling hooks or similar items being attached. Furthermore, Williams understood that there was another difficulty of getting from the prison, located on an island, to the mainland.
At the time, construction work was being completed at the prison. Lorries and diggers drove up and down inside the prison itself, providing a way for a potential exit out of the prison.
Rose and Williams started talking about possibly escaping from the prison. Rose stated that he had been watching the guards and locks, noticing that a recent lock change had led to them being changed to colour-coded locks. Some of the locks were green, whilst others were red. It was noticed that not many of the locks in the prison were of the green colour-code, but lots of others were of the red colour-code.
Williams spent a day or two simply walking around the prison, seeing how if he was able to access a red key, he could access approximately 95% of the prison, including the vehicle compound. Williams thought that if he could access and hide himself using a vehicle, he could escape.
Discussions between Rose and Williams about the escape became serious. Rose stated that all they needed to concentrate on was making a shaped piece of metal that could work like a key. Convincing Williams of his ability to make an improvised key, Williams applied for a metalwork course in the workshop. This allowed him to have access to the tools and materials he needed to make a key.
Within the music room, there was a door with a red colour-code lock, which allowed Williams to surreptitiously study how it worked, in order to develop a key. However, the more he looked at the lock, the more complicated he found it was. Inadvertently, some of the information about how the lock worked was through observing the guard's keys.
Within the workshop, Williams was able to create a rough design for the key. However, the intricacies of the key would take longer and therefore could not be done within the workshop without raising suspicion. Williams therefore completed this work within his cell, having secreted the key. Williams knew he was faced with a very laborious task, whilst having to be careful about the noise he was making, noting that there was no excuse if he was to be found with a key on his person.
Over several weeks, Williams made slow but steady progress in shaping the key for the red colour-code locks. Williams found that the music room, where he had studied the locking mechanism, was the perfect place to test the key, due to staff and prisoners leaving the room altogether for a tea break during the lesson. On one of these occasions, Williams tested the key, finding it fitted perfectly, however, the key bent. Attempting to take the key out of the lock, Williams found it was stuck and desperately attempted to remove it before a guard returned to the room.
Williams was not able to remove the key, as guards entered and exited the room, all the while, being oblivious to the improvised key being stuck in the door. When people left the room, Williams attempted and successfully removed the key.
Williams made modifications to the key design, remaking it with steel, a much stronger metal. He found difficulty in attempting to cut through the steel with an inch-long piece of hacksaw that he had in his cell. Over a week or so, Williams developed the second key, before again going to the music room and trying the key.
On this occasion, the key was successful in opening the door, leaving Williams feeling 'pretty elated', knowing the access to the prison he had just given himself.
However, Williams' escape plan was interrupted, when a rumour emerged that prisoners were planning to steal a digger or lorry and attempt an escape from the building compound, similar to Williams' plan. As a result, security at the prison was upgraded and Williams and Rose had to discuss what they would do as a result of this development.
The pair thought as to how else they could use the key. Whilst knowing that many of the internal doors could be opened with the key, Williams was not sure which doors they were. In an attempt to discover this, Williams built a mental map of the prison, identifying the areas he knew that the key could open and where they led. He found that these areas led to the prison yard. However, there was still the issue of the interior fence and exterior wall to scale.