Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
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?
I do? I do aperol sprits. You've had one before, right, yeah?
I think so.
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.
It's pretty good.
I don't like all so that's just like it was an interesting.
Do they make a dirty apparol sprits?
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?
Do I want to know this?
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.
Oh god, the Champagne of beers.
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.
You know I support them generally.
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.
You weren't such a good run.
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.
That's an expensive joke.
Yeah, this comes from us. From from Andrew Bowman on Instagram. He's a member of the Subaru Forster Gang ps.
Oh wow, doubled up.
Yeah double so. Yeah, spagatsicle ridiculous.
Ridiculous and I'm gonna forgive that. That's a mashup. I know.
I did that as fast as I could ripped it off.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
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.
Really.
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.
Always ready for that.
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 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 escape artist. No, he's not that part of Yeah, he's not so committed to the Houdini bit.
We'll give it a little time. That's charming.
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 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.
Got it.
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 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.
He had that like spatial uh like understanding of things. How he look connects together one hundred percent.
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. Of neighborhood kids.
Oh no, yeah.
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 buy it like radio shack. Yeah, rip, Oh man, do
I miss radio Shack, the old day dream store. You went to radio Shack?
Right?
Oh?
Yeah, totally.
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.
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.
It's like the subterranean soap opera.
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.
You guys are crazy.
Yeah, and like you know, you're in Vegas and you're hearing cell phones. Oh yeah, you're hearing conversations.
Oh yeah, yeah.
We had a great time.
Do you guys ever have to testify for the FBI.
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.
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 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.
I can't take stuff these days.
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.
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.
Parts often yeah, yeah, any time that there's like especially a one percent. But in his case that's not the case.
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.
Nothing funny about it.
Yeah.
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. 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 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.
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, go out and be in society and raise a family and like to peoria deal with these pressures.
Yeah, and he was out there on the bleeding edge of the war, spy stuff, behind the lines, that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
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 him behind enemy lines at age nine, he's getting home like.
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.
Oh yeah, like how to like feel dress your own.
Wounds and with the fear on top of it. It's not told as an adventure story. It's told as a survival.
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.
Oh yeah.
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.
Oh he didn't go with either one.
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 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, so it's up there like in what used to be tobacco country, like way back in the day. But by nineteen nine.
It's just the top exactly. Okay.
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, 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 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 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
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.
Well he didn't wake out with all the tools.
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.
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.
Years, not quite. He got four years in a floor to state correctional.
Facility for stealing something that is his.
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,
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 bust out the joint.
I certainly am so.
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.
It's not for him.
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. Can't catch all that?
Maybe you bring some slow vas exactly.
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.
Right.
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?
Man?
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.
Once and I saw some and it was pretty uh And I don't even think I saw like the swamp swamp.
Yeah no, But I've also.
Seen other swamps throughout the South.
You know, it goes.
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.
Also easily it's like America's version of Australia. It's like everything wants to eat and kill your.
And everything's outsized and yeah.
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, they evade the enemy and they make it through the darkened woods.
Yeah.
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, 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.
What you're saying I can't.
But Mark, Yeah, eyes closed too, that's what I want to.
Bump down the room.
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.
Yeah.
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 not a few. I mean he caught six new charges that added a lot more time to his sentence.
Sure.
Remember he's just twenty years old. He's got his entire.
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.
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 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.
So he got married at some point.
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 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
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.
Yes, he gets acid in yes, mental They.
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.
They locked the cabinet.
No, his plan was simple, straightforward. You give the prison guards and the officials their acid, and in the chaos he just slip away.
Nice so to enact his plan.
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 of acid, A lot.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Oh yeah, it'll certainly do the trick.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
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.
To like make sure that he's all set exactly.
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, 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.
Is my night mare?
Oh yeah? And then you're in a prison because I'm.
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.
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 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.
They're also like like pruce madeleine where it's like memories.
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 makes himself a prison zip gun?
A zip gun?
What is a zip gun? I glad you out.
Great asking, and me for asking, and everyone for asking.
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 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.
What's the ammunition in the zip gun?
A bullet? He's got bullets in there, and there's like a little cap that'll make it go.
It's a gun.
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.
Office full of like butt sweat.
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 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, 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 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 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.
Off Western right exactly.
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 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.
Swamp with a mouthful of blood.
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, 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.
Yeah, he just swallowed all the blood in his mouth.
Apparently, you would think that these dogs will be able to.
Catch that's in the name, yes, right, blood exactly. And this man is bleeding from the face and from the.
Mouth, and he's running so dribbling blood.
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.
Apparently he makes it to the water, he swamps and gets away.
He marked that.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Oh my god.
Once he's fully free, where do you think he goes next?
Disney World?
Good guest. No, he heads to the trailer of his estranged versus wife Brenda.
Oh that's gonna make her.
That must have been really fun for her.
Right, Wait a second, Brenda's not the one who works at the house.
That's the one. Yes, Oh it is, yeah, same one.
First wife. Well how young was he? Okay, so I'm getting it.
Yes, his first wife Brenda the one, so he knows that she knows he's escaped.
Yeah, she's home from work.
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.
So she tells him, you need to go. Yeah, now, Mark, he needs a new plan, so else I would imagine.
That the people at work would be like, we should probably check Brenda's house.
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
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.
Was not escapade anytime they say it's escape proof. It can't sink, it can't crash.
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.
Well, so it's not even that he went and got supplies.
He reaches into the wall.
Escape We'll just go get supplies.
Now. This is about the point when Mark earned his nickname the Houdini of Florida.
I give it to him.
Y're also the prison Houdini. There's two different ones both.
I think he's earned them.
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 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 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.
All about the juicy. No, he shouldn't be doing that.
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.
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.
Oh yeah, exactly.
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.
Oh yeah, he's got plenty of evidence he's mentally under Yeah. So when we'll get back.
To that point, toss like what's worse prison or the prison mental health?
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.
But that's is he getting these bullets?
Well, he's making them. You just have to, yeah, because you just need like certain match heads as a propellant.
Yeah.
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,
my mom is here this day. She came to visit me, and I want to go back and see her.
And he's like, are you kidding me? We're escaping it should have been. Everyone goes and then they all stop and turn.
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 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.
Did worse than animals in the pound pretty much.
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 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.
This is worse than killing him totally.
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 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, This all started because Mark allegedly stole his father's tools, which were willed to him.
Go back, we go back to that as the core crime.
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
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, And we're back Elizabeth.
Hello, you're ready.
To find the good side of this story.
I am desperate for you.
There is one, I promise you.
Because they seem to love the old torture chambers down there in Florida.
Oh yeah, what have all those like Spanish fortresses with all the Spanish boss.
And mentality apparently, you know, dehumanization is Yeah.
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
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 about him, and so they tell Mark, hey, look, man, we're trying to escape and you want to join us.
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.
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.
They're like, yeah, we got supplies.
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, 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.
Just zero zero zero.
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 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
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.
I mean, you don't have to go all the way to the ground.
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 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. 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 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 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.
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 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 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. 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 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.
Oh my god.
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 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.
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.
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, 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 then put in the X wing, where only the most brutal, hardened criminals.
Were sent for essentially stealing tools, yes, and.
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 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.
Ten years.
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?
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.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Point, you're just like, yeah, let's let's see how far he can push it.
Pretty much. And he also he can't. He is compulsive. He cannot help him.
Yeah.
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.
No way so that.
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 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, 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 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 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. 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 own alcohol. He's had weapons, usually defensive. He's not hurt people.
Yeah, so that's a good point to make, it is.
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, 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
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 in May of nineteen ninety four, they get married in Montana. How is that possible?
That's a good question, Saren. Thank you for us.
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 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 on my mouth. Yes, ladies, he is a good kisser.
Oh good God.
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.
No.
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
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
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.
Like when you take her description of him and then put it up against the quotes you've read.
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.
There's a reason behind him picking up these crafts.
Like that's another We's got a lot of time on his hands. Yeah.
Yeah, And it's also it's like I'd be really keeping an eye on him.
Yeah, there's getting their tools again.
Yeah, exactly.
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.
You know this is the truth.
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.
Probably from that moment forward just cursed and bad things kept happening. When did this bad luck streak start up?
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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, but without being too tried, I got to ask you, what's a ridiculous takeaway here?
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 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, 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, 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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,
but give them an avenue for growth, give them a place to be too.
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.
Date and usually used for prison labor that is essentially for some corporation.
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 hired at corporate.
It's not like a real tool to die where you're going to go all not at all.
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?
Or the firefighters in California where then they cannot then become firefighters once they're outside of the system.
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.
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.
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. Thank you so much for all the laps and hopefully not getting scammed.
That was a close one.
Yeah, we're glad we can help with your criminal education.
Yeah, and I'm glad that you didn't get to get taken totally.
And you can probably hear the Doggy interns in this episode, so know that they are also glad to be here for.
You, glad to be here well.
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. 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.
So there you know.
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, 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?
Why say it one more time?
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