- In a maximum-security jail,
criminals are packed into overcrowded cells.
- A lot of the inmates are held in basically dormitories.
- It's a recipe for violence.
- People who are just awaiting trial
on something like low-level felony,
right next to actual murderers.
- Facing years in this hellish prison,
three inmates plan a high-risk escape.
- The last bit of the plan all hinged on one thing--
will this rope hold?
- If their plan fails and the rope breaks,
they will pay a heavy price.
- They faced almost certain death.
[dramatic music]
♪
- Some of the greatest stories ever told
start behind bars.
[inmates clamoring]
Locked up in the most notorious prisons
in the world,
spied on by guards and fellow prisoners...
it takes a devious mind to find a way out.
♪
It could lead you to freedom...
♪
Or it could cost you your life.
♪
But wouldn't you try...
when you have nothing left to lose?
♪
[cell door closes]
♪
Think you could hide in plain sight?
Well, that's exactly what you would have to do
to escape from here--
the Orange County Men's Jail.
No dark corners,
no isolated cells at the far end of the cell block...
just you and over 60 of your closest friends,
sitting day after day in a giant fishbowl,
patrolled by guards with a full view of everything.
To make it out of here would be a real vanishing act.
♪
- The jail in Orange County
is a monolithic, old-school kind of a building.
It's five stories tall. It was built in 1968.
- It's known as Men's Central Jail,
and it's a maximum-security facility--
kind of right there in the middle of Santa Ana.
- The first floor is where attorneys
and visitors meet the inmates.
The second floor is the hospital wing.
The third and fourth floor
are where the prisoners are housed.
And the fifth floor is recreation area on the roof.
- The Orange County Jail has always held a mix of people--
people who are just awaiting trial
on something like a misdemeanor,
right next to child molesters,
right next to some of the worst people in society.
- All the offenders are thrown together in big dormitories
known as holding tanks.
- It's a dormitory-style setup--
68 bunk beds.
The modules are set up next to each other,
and there's a walkway between the modules.
So there's a guard that has access
to walk what they call "the beach."
- As an additional layer of security,
the first floor houses the County Sheriff's Department.
Anyone attempting to escape
would have to avoid the dozens of armed officers
coming in and out on a daily basis.
But even against those odds,
in 2016, one man comes up
with a plan to escape to freedom.
His name is Hossein Nayeri.
♪
- Mr. Nayeri was very charismatic,
very intelligent.
- He was a son of Persian immigrants,
grew up in Fresno, went to the Marines,
but he went AWOL for a bit.
- Nayeri's temper and refusal to follow the rules
leads to his discharge
after only two years of service.
- He then started to have brushes with the law.
In 2005, he was arrested for drunk driving,
in an incident in which the passenger died.
- And from there,
his criminal activity only gets worse.
- This guy is diabolical.
In 2012, Nayeri was accused of kidnapping
a marijuana dispensary owner in Orange County,
taking him to the desert, pistol-whipping him,
beating him with a rubber hose,
burning him with a blowtorch,
and then ordering his accomplice
to cut off the man's penis.
- With law enforcement hot on his tail,
Nayeri does more than skip town.
He flees the country.
- He fled to Iran.
This guy was a sophisticated criminal
who would run.
- But after two years on the run,
the police used Nayeri's ex-wife as bait
to lure him into custody.
He's locked up
in the maximum-security Orange County Men's Jail
to await trial for his heinous crimes.
- If you're going to kidnap someone and mutilate them,
you're going to spend a lot of time in prison.
And Hossein Nayeri was facing life in prison.
- Having overwhelming evidence against him,
combined with his attempt to elude authorities,
Nayeri's shot at escaping prison the legal way
is slim to none.
- Hossein knows that if he's going to try to escape,
this is the time, a county jail,
because if he gets sent to state prison,
to federal prison, the security there
is way, way, way more difficult.
If he's going to be able to do it,
his best chance is going to be at the Orange County Jail.
- Hossein Nayeri's trial is on the horizon,
so time is running out for any potential escape.
The moment he set foot in the jail,
he's placed in Module F, Tank 28,
a holding cell
on the Orange County Jail's fourth floor.
He immediately begins looking for a possible escape route.
- So, if you're in the Orange County Jail,
you're looking around.
You think to yourself, "How can I escape?"
You can't go through the bars where the deputies are
'cause the deputies are there.
You're not going to be able to go out through the window
because that is a straight fall down.
So Hossein is trying to figure out how to do it,
but then he notices something.
Near one of the bunks is a grate.
That's where the ventilation is,
the air conditioning is.
So you start imagining and thinking to yourself,
"Well, if I could cut through there,
"especially in a place like this,
the ventilation has to lead somewhere."
- The vent poses a few challenges as an escape route.
First of all, Nayeri has no way
of removing the metal grate.
Second, how is he going to pull off
the ultimate Houdini act in an open room
filled with inmates and patrolled by guards?
And third, even if he manages to get through the grate,
there's only one conceivable way out
of the Orange County Jail-- the roof.
- The thing about the Orange County Jail
is it sits above the Sheriff's Department.
♪
So, in order to get out of a housing unit,
you got to either go down,
in which case you go right into the Sheriff's Department,
or you go up, where you may be 60 or 70 feet in the air,
in which case, you've got to figure out,
"Well, now, how do I get down to ground level?"
- But even if Nayeri is brazen enough
to attempt the death-defying escape
from the top of the jail,
the most important thing he will need is tools
to get up there in the first place.
♪
- Nayeri needed people that he could manipulate
into joining him in this,
'cause this isn't the type of thing he could do himself.
He's extremely intelligent. He's extremely manipulative.
And that gives him kind of an opportunity
to rule the roost in an area like this,
because you're going to house a guy like that
with people that aren't criminals,
and they're going to be afraid of a guy like Hossein Nayeri.
- Nayeri knows he needs to bring in some accomplices
for his plan to work,
and who better than his two gang-affiliated neighbors?
♪
- Bac Duong was the oldest of the three.
He was the gang member.
He was charged with attempted murder
after a shooting in Santa Ana.
♪
- Jonathan Tieu was a child of Vietnamese refugees,
a younger man.
He was involved in a Vietnamese gang
in Orange County, California, called the Little Rascals.
And he was charged as being accomplice to murder.
- He needed these other two men
in order to effectuate his escape.
He needed their help in immediate ties to the outside.
So he needed people
that he could either intimidate into helping
or manipulate into helping, one way or another.
So he had a whole laundry list of stuff,
but the most important thing that he needed was,
he needed willing participants that he could control
that were inside the jail.
- Having an affiliation with a gang
can open relationships with people outside
that can help manipulate things inside
and to smuggle contraband into the tank.
- Bac was a fixer. He knew how to get things.
He knew who to talk to.
And he knew, more importantly,
how to not get caught when he was doing all these things.
He needs that fixer. He needs that soldier.
And he found them in Bac and Jonathan.
- Nayeri works his charms on the two men,
filling their mind with delusions of grandeur--
a future outside of the prison walls.
But before this future can be realized,
Nayeri will need something to cut through the metal grate
behind his bunk.
- You have a steel grate in front of you,
well, you're not going to be able to pull it out.
You're going to need a saw.
♪
- Hossein Nayeri has asked Bac Duong, the fixer,
to use his connections to smuggle a hacksaw
into the Orange County Jail
in order to execute his escape.
- But it's one thing to ask for something.
It's another thing to get it.
♪
- Putting your life in the hands of a lifelong criminal
who's being charged with attempted murder is risky.
- There's a lot of risk in corrupting somebody else
who's serving time in the tank
to bring something into the prison
because you don't know if they're working
as an informant.
- It's not uncommon for prisoners
to rat out other prisoners in lieu of reduced sentences.
But with his trial on the horizon,
Nayeri doesn't have the time
to fully vet his new accomplices.
He's confident the way out is to go up
through the inner workings of the prison
and then scale down the outside walls to freedom.
But first things first--
he needs that saw.
But in prison, rule number one is,
never trust anyone.
If Bac is indeed a rat,
Nayeri will be destined to spend the rest of his life
in a concrete box.
[dramatic music]
♪
- Inmate Hossein Nayeri
has put his life in the hands of a fellow prison fixer,
Bac Duong.
It's risky entrusting Bac with the critical task
of smuggling a hacksaw
into the maximum-security Orange County Jail.
If Bac delivers on his promise, the escape plan is a go.
But if Nayeri's charms have inadvertently turned Bac
into a prison informant,
Hossein Nayeri will actually spend the rest of his life
in prison.
♪
- Bac goes out.
Through his connections on the street,
he gets a saw smuggled into the Orange County Jail.
Not just smuggled into the Orange County Jail,
but in his hands that then are able to go to Hossein.
- The chaotic nature of the jail
creates a breeding ground for smuggling opportunities.
- Some prison gangs will actually instruct somebody,
"You're going to get arrested.
"You're going to bring in these items that we need,
"and then they're going to release you
for the minor crime."
- To this day, no one is talking
about how exactly Bac pulls this off,
but no one thinks it's impossible.
- It's like, "Okay,
"everything that you said you could do, you did it.
"I trust you a little bit more.
"I'm never going to trust you completely,
"but I trust you a little bit more.
But this is the first part. Now we got to get to work."
- Saw in hand and trust established,
the only thing left to do is to get started.
♪
But they'll need to work in such a way
that they avoid all the eyes
of both the inmates and the guards.
- There was a steel bed frame
blocking this ventilation grate.
So they had to not only saw through that steel bed frame
to be able to move it to get to the grate.
They're going to have to do it in a way
where the deputies are not paying attention,
that they're not caught.
- One of the things about living inside of that open tank
is there's just a complete absence of privacy.
So a lot of times what people serving time in there will do
is they'll hold up sheets to try and block somebody
while he's changing
or while something else is going on inside of that jail.
Now, guards will try and block it.
But when you have one or two officers inside
of a housing unit with 60-some people,
sometimes they get tired.
Sometimes they don't do it.
And when they are not paying attention,
that opens an opportunity
for somebody who's trying to scheme their way
or facilitate an escape.
- If any part of their plan is discovered by the guards--
if the guard sees one of them holding a sheet,
if the guard sees their bedpost out of place,
their chance at freedom is gone.
♪
- This is a process that's taking weeks.
- After 16 days of monotonous sawing
while avoiding the prying eyes of the prison guards...
♪
Nayeri breaks through the bed frame.
Now they have unobstructed access
to the ventilation grate.
♪
It takes just eight days to get through the metal grate.
The three men now have the ability to leave their cell.
But Nayeri has wasted a lot of time
just getting into the walls.
With his trial looming, he'll have no time for setbacks.
- Once they succeeded in removing the grate,
not breaking it so they could replace it every night,
their next move was going to be to figure out,
how do they get out, and where do they go?
- Hossein Nayeri
carefully squeezes his way
into the inner workings of the jail.
- When he got through, he wasn't finished
squeezing through things,
because he had to go through a long, skinny shaft
that was made for the pipes of the jail.
It's a opened shaft
where you can see two stories above you,
but you've only got about two feet of space
on either side.
So you've got to walk straight ahead
through the cobwebs, through the dark.
These guys had to be feeling their way along
because they couldn't see anything.
- It's going to require many reconnaissance trips,
because it's like
a labyrinthine environment in there,
with all types of pipes and vents.
And you don't know which way it goes--
up, down, sideways.
- Nayeri realizes that the dark maze of the prison walls
would be impossible to explore blind.
Without a light source,
they'll never figure out their path to freedom.
♪
But Bac, the fixer, has an idea.
♪
Why settle for just one tool
when you can get two for the price of one?
What they need is a cell phone.
- Inmates are not supposed to have cell phones.
There's a lot of cell phones in Orange County Jail.
Don't get me wrong, the jail is a very secure place.
But you can get a lot of things
that you can get out on the street in jail as well.
♪
- Like clockwork,
one of Bac Duong's gang connections
arrives with a shipment.
- So the cell phone would serve
multiple purposes, of course.
Number one, it could allow them to see
because it has a flashlight on it.
Number two, it may allow them to communicate
with accomplices that are outside.
- Phone and flashlight in hand, Nayeri,
always a narcissist,
decides that if they're going to escape,
they might as well film their caper
on their newly acquired cell phone.
Perhaps they'll be famous.
- They start filming themselves on their cell phone,
like true millennials, like true narcissists.
- The light from their phone reveals the complexity
of the maze before them.
With so many, many twists and turns,
one wrong decision could lead them straight
into another holding cell.
They have to be certain that the path they choose
is the way out.
And then one night, they find a path to freedom.
- And then they finally find something,
but it's not what they expect.
It's 12 feet up.
There's wrought iron all around,
but it leads somewhere.
- 12 feet off the ground
and covered by thick wrought-iron bars,
the men are hopeful this duly protected shaft
is the exit to the rooftop.
But sawing through wrought iron
in a very precarious position
could take months.
With his trial looming,
Nayeri doesn't have the luxury of time.
If the men spend months sawing through the bars
only to find another maze of corridors,
then their dreams of freedom will be just that--
dreams.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Hossein Nayeri and his fellow escapees
have made it into the plumbing corridor behind their cell,
but they can't waste time doing endless explorations
of the secret passageways.
Before they figure out how to climb up to the ceiling vent
and cut through the bars,
they need to make sure
it leads them exactly where they want to go.
♪
They'll need more than just a map.
What they need is satellite imagery.
♪
A Google Map layout
that would not only show them
the details of the roof
but the layout of the surrounding neighborhood.
But in this jail, there is no access to Wi-Fi,
which means no Google Maps.
I guess this is the end of the road.
♪
However, Nayeri is nothing if not relentless,
and the master manipulator
has recently started taking English classes
in prison.
Perhaps there's something else he can learn.
- So he tries to figure out,
"Who is going to be the person who's going to give it to me"?
And he finds it in an ESL teacher
named Nooshfarin Ravaghi.
♪
- She's a Persian-to-English teacher
that they bring into the jail.
And, you know, Nayeri grew up in Fresno.
He was born in Iran, and he traveled back to Iran a lot,
but his English is perfect.
But, you know, he got to program in the jail,
and he has the ability to wrap women around his finger.
So he wound up getting this woman,
who lives at home with her dogs, she's a nice lady--
essentially got her to fall in love with him.
And one of the things he said was,
"Look, my lawyer isn't seeing me enough.
"Can you give me a map showing me where his office is?
Because I want to see how close he is to the jail."
Now, Nayeri already knew that Sal's office
is essentially across the street.
So he knew that by getting a map of Sal's office,
it would automatically have to include a map of the jail.
- Nayeri works his charm on the hapless ESL teacher.
But if Noosha is able to see through his facade,
she'll notify authorities,
and Nayeri's plot will be foiled.
- She doesn't know what he wants it for.
She just figures, "Oh, it's a student of mine.
"He's friendly to me.
"Oh, sure. I'll print this out.
"How could it possibly be criminal
for me to give something like this to a student of mine?"
Never in a million years thought that it would lead
to something as terrible as what ended up happening.
- Once again, the manipulator's charms work.
Noosha Ravaghi brings a Google Maps printout
of the rooftop and delivers it to Nayeri.
The innocent, lovestruck ESL teacher
is now an unwitting accomplice.
- He could see the ventilation system.
He could see the distance between the ventilator
and the edge of the roof.
He could see the outline of razor wire around the roof
and could see the area where they were gonna rappel down.
- Hacksaw, cell phone, and map in hand,
the barriers keeping these three deranged individuals
from being released into the free world
are growing increasingly thin.
But now they face their most difficult obstacle yet.
- At the bottom of that shaft,
looking up at the ventilator,
it seemed almost like an impossible task.
How did they not only swing themselves up there,
but how did they get through the bars?
- Ever the problem solver,
Nayeri comes up with an ingenious way
to access the ventilator.
♪
- They took bedsheets and used them as ropes.
They would swing the bedsheet up over a pipe,
hold it so it was tight,
and then shimmy their way up
until they got to the ventilator opening.
How did they use bedsheets?
The bedsheets were supposed to be accounted for.
Every day they took an inventory
of the stuff that was issued to the prisoners.
So, in this case, someone dropped the ball.
- The escapees know that they can't continue
to count on administrative mistakes
for their breakout's success.
But they'll take their lucky breaks
where they can get them.
After all, with Nayeri's trial on the horizon,
a broken ventilation grate,
and a room full of inmates
eager to get a reduction in their charges,
the clock is ticking.
- They're in a jail with 68 bunks full of people
who would love to snitch on them
to get lesser sentences so that they can get out of jail.
The whole plan would go up in smoke at any moment
if any of those other inmates went to the guards.
So they had to do this as quickly as possible.
- "As possible" being the operative phrase.
Every night Nayeri disappears into the vent.
He has to work silently in order to avoid detection.
This slows their progress
sawing through the wrought-iron bars.
- It took about six months from start to finish
to accomplish the things that they needed to do.
♪
- After five months of avoiding
the keen eyes of guards and sneaking off
into the inner walls of the prison each night,
Nayeri finally breaks through the last barrier
to the outside world.
- They get on the roof.
Oh, my gosh. They're finally here.
But they realize, okay, there must be cameras there.
Then there's a rec area where they were used to it.
But they realize that all the cameras on the roof,
they're only pointing at the rec area.
The place where they're at,
there's no cameras there whatsoever.
- But their relief is short-lived.
Getting down from the roof
will require the men to risk everything.
- It was not a place for someone
who had concern about heights.
You look down, it's a significant amount of space--
60, 70 feet.
- Obviously, getting down safely--
once you've gotten to the roof
and you've done sort of all the legwork--
getting down safely is really important.
And so they had to have a system
that would afford them that safety.
- So Hossein asked Bac,
"Okay, you've been good so far, but now we need a rope."
♪
- This time the tools
they will need will require
the highest level of connections.
- The last step of this equation to freedom,
again, is relying on Bac.
And Bac has been good so far, but you never know.
- If Bac comes up short on securing a rope,
then all of their hard work will be for nothing.
Authorities have never been able to crack
the exact methods used to smuggle in
such an important set of tools.
But with free access to the rooftop of the prison,
a whole new world of possibilities
are opened for the fixer.
- One of the operating theories on this one
is that these guys were actually able to get
supplies from drones.
- Be it from drones, corrupt prison staff,
or highly connected gang members,
Bac manages to pull off his biggest fix yet.
- Bac, to his credit,
he makes it happen one final time,
and now they're ready to try their escape.
♪
- Everything is set.
The path is clear.
Tomorrow night
the three men will literally put their lives on the line
in their quest for freedom.
♪
[dramatic music]
- Six months after they began sawing out of the holding tank
in the Orange County Men's Jail,
inmates Hossein Nayeri,
Jonathan Tieu, and Bac Duong
are ready to make or break for it.
The plan--
sneak out of the tank through the utility corridor,
up an air vent to the roof,
and then down five stories
into the middle of a major urban area.
A million things could go wrong,
but they're willing to risk it all
for a chance at freedom.
- So now it's the night.
This is the night that Jonathan Tieu,
Hossein Nayeri, and Bac Duong are going to escape.
- That evening, the escapees set their plan into action,
consequences be damned.
- They have two checks every day--
one at 5:00 a.m.
and one at 8:00 p.m. at night.
- If you're going to escape the Orange County Jail,
it has to be under cover of night
because it's right next to federal buildings.
It's right next to coffee shops
and the downtown area of Santa Ana.
So you're going to have to do it at night.
And so that's exactly what they do.
Instead of doing it at the 5:00 a.m. call,
they do it right after the 8:00 p.m. call.
After that, it's go time.
♪
- They left after the 8:00 census count.
That would give them all the way till 5:00 in the morning
before staff would know.
♪
So, one by one, each man squeezes through the gate
and into the walls of the jail.
♪
- Once they get out of that ventilator,
it's a short walk to the edge of the roof.
They must have been able to tell at that point,
they were almost home free.
- As the three absconders approach their final obstacle
between the confines of the Orange County Jail
and the free world beneath them,
the gravity of the situation grows heavy.
♪
- The roof is approximately 5 stories high--
60 to 75 feet off the ground.
[chuckles] That's a long way down.
- The last bit of the plan,
get to the ledge and get down the side,
all hinged on one thing...
will this rope hold?
They faced almost certain death.
- This isn't you climbing down the wall at your local gym.
This is you going down 60 to 70 feet from a jail,
with a pulley system that you're really going
to finally try out for the first time.
You've never had the chance to practice.
It's just one and done, or one and you're dead.
- Not only was it going to hold once,
it had to hold three times,
and it had to hold
to whatever they had tied it up against
on the roof of the jail.
They were facing horrible injuries
if this thing went wrong.
So imagine standing on the ledge
and being the first one over the side,
counting on that rope,
because they had to go five stories down,
and when they landed, they were right in front
of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
- Clearly, what's going through the mind
of somebody like this is they are saying,
"There's nothing going to get in my way.
"I would rather die trying to escape
"than face life in prison,
where I'll never get that opportunity again."
They're going all-in.
There's no turning back from their decision,
and they know it.
So, one by one, they start making their way down,
the smallest to the biggest.
- Jonathan Tieu makes it all the way down.
They had to feel really good about their chances
at that point.
Duong goes second. He makes it down.
- Nayeri has been the architect
of a flawless escape plan.
His accomplices are officially free men.
Five stories below his feet, freedom awaits.
But he must move quickly to avoid being spotted
rappelling down the side of a jail.
- As Nayeri, the last guy,
is rappelling down the side of the building,
two sheriffs
from the Orange County Sheriff's Department
come outside to have a cigarette break.
♪
Nayeri stops.
He hangs in midair, holds his breath.
- If he sneezes,
if the wind blows and he hits the wall and they look up,
his plan is completely foiled.
- Trapped in midair, frozen with fear,
all Nayeri can do is watch and wait.
His chance at freedom hangs in the balance.
♪
- Hossein Nayeri's two accomplices
leave him hanging...
literally.
Just moments ago, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong
rappelled down the side of the Orange County Men's Jail
and disappeared into the darkness.
But as Nayeri makes his way down,
two officers emerge from the building
for a smoke break.
Just one casual glance up,
and his chances at freedom are over.
[dramatic music]
♪
- Ultimately, the guards finished,
went back into the building.
He was able to lower himself down
and take off from there.
♪
- The three fugitives rendezvous outside the jail.
- So now everyone's ready to escape,
but it's Jonathan's turn now
to start stepping up as the good soldier that he is.
So he already made the connections
with his gang members.
- One of Jonathan's connections
has hidden a package containing $900 and a gun
in the surrounding neighborhood.
♪
They figure they have about five hours
until morning headcount
to get themselves set up on the outside.
So they decide to go shopping for new clothes and supplies.
But first, they need a ride.
- Bac calls up a cab company.
He gets in contact with Long Ma.
He's this 71-year-old man, has his own cab company.
The guys tell Long Ma, "Hey, can you take us to a Walmart?"
And when they come back, they have bags of clothes,
they have bags of material,
they have a bottle of whiskey, too.
- Then the three escapees make a decision that will impact
the rest of their lives.
♪
- They held a gun to his stomach and said,
"You've got to take us away."
- Long Ma's simple cab fare has turned into a nightmare.
- Orange County is about two hours from the Mexican border,
and Mexico has diplomatic relations
with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
All they need to do is cross into Mexico.
He'd be able to make his way back to Iran,
which was never going to extradite
back to the United States.
- If Nayeri and his accomplices
make the two-hour trip south across the border,
the three men will escape justice.
But Nayeri, Bac, and Jonathan
seem to be more interested in a road trip?
- They forced the driver to take them 400 miles north
to the Bay Area.
♪
In the early-morning hours of January 22nd,
Hossein, Jonathan, and Bac are free.
But bed check is still going on at the Orange County Jail.
Somehow they get a compatriot inside to answer for them
during that bed check.
And then it isn't for 15 more hours,
the 8:00-at-night bed check,
when they are found to be missing.
- Then all hell breaks loose.
- At that point, it becomes all hands on deck,
where the staff members are going to order
the people serving time in the jail
to stay on their bunk and not move.
The staff members then
are going to begin scouring the jail,
looking everywhere.
And it was that search that led the staff members
to find the vent and to begin their search
of looking inside of all of the walls of the jails,
looking on the roof, looking on the surrounding areas,
trying to find the three escapees.
- So the Orange County Sheriff's Department,
the Orange County Jail crew
had a huge problem on their hands.
There are three guys,
armed and dangerous, on the street.
250 officers were assigned on jailbreak detail.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department
made the unusual step
of seeking out help through the media.
- The inmates are unaccounted for and have escaped.
- Everybody's interested, from New York to Seattle,
on these three people that escaped from prison
because they're three violent people.
- Desperately in need of tips,
law enforcement established a reward.
So what we've got now is a nationwide manhunt.
♪
- Holed up in a seedy motel in San Jose, California,
the three men are enjoying
their little impromptu vacation
when the reports of their escape
are plastered across their TV screen.
- They're seeing themselves on television,
and they're kind of proud of what they're doing
'cause right now the story's huge.
So they're cheering,
they're applauding, they're laughing.
"Hey, we're on the television! Yeah, people know who we are!
Yeah!"
- It kind of made them proud
that they had got such national attention
from this escape.
- But after the buzz
of newfound freedom and alcohol wears off,
Nayeri realizes how much more difficult
this is going to make their escape.
He decides that they need a new vehicle
to help cover their tracks.
However, they have already run
through a lot of their $900 stake.
But then again, they are criminals.
- So Bac, 'cause he's the resourceful one,
he's the fixer--
he goes on Craigslist, and he finds for sale this white van.
So he calls the people up, and they go out and test it,
and they just never give it back to them.
- And there was another loose end Nayeri wants to tie up.
- Now Hossein's dark side starts coming out.
He realizes, "We can't have any witnesses to what we did.
Long Ma is a witness. Long Ma needs to be killed."
- They kept a hostage,
which increased the likelihood that they would get caught.
But what two of them decided to do was kill the taxi driver.
- But the feeling isn't unanimous.
And now the soldier is not ready
to keep taking orders from the captain.
It's one thing to kidnap.
It's another thing to kill someone,
at least that's how Duong sees it.
- Once they decided to kill the taxi driver,
Duong wasn't having it anymore.
He had developed a relationship with this guy.
The guy reminded him of a favorite uncle.
Duong and Nayeri get in a fistfight.
- Hossein is a wrestler. He's younger than Bac.
He's way more fit than Bac. He's bigger than Bac.
- The third escapee, Jonathan Tieu,
watches from the sidelines,
knowing that his chance at freedom
hangs on the outcome.
Long Ma watches as well.
But for him, the stakes are even higher.
In fact, they are life and death.
- Holed up in a motel
with their faces plastered all over the news,
a split forms among the escapees.
[dramatic music]
Hossein Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu
want to kill their only witness, Long Ma,
a cab driver whom they've kidnapped.
But Bac Duong has formed a bond with Ma
and refuses to go along with the plan.
So Nayeri and Duong battle it out to determine
whether Long Ma lives or dies.
- The fight goes nowhere,
because Hossein has every advantage over Bac.
- Duong gets the crap beaten out of him.
- Incredibly, Duong loses the battle but wins the war.
- Nayeri goes from, "I'm going to kill this guy,"
to, "I'm going to let him live."
- Long Ma is relieved.
But Bac can't help thinking
the reprieve is only temporary.
♪
- The following morning, Hossein and Jonathan,
they decide to leave the motel
to get the windows tinted on the van,
and that gives Bac the opportunity.
He goes to Long and he tells him, "Uncle, we need to leave.
"They want to kill you.
We need to leave, and we need to leave now."
- Nayeri and Tieu left the motel.
They took the white GMC van.
And when they were gone, Duong and Ma, the taxi driver,
escaped.
♪
- Bac Duong decided he was going to come back
to Orange County and turn himself in.
- When Nayeri and Tieu return to the motel
to find Duong and Long Ma missing...
♪
They gather all their belongings,
hop in the van, and head west.
♪
Running low on cash and places to hide,
the two remaining escapees
have gone from prisoners in a cell to prisoners in a van.
- When Jonathan and Hossein
realize that Bac and Long had left,
they know now their time to escape
is even shorter than ever before
'cause part of the equation is gone now.
They now know that they're probably going
to be cooperating with law enforcement.
- At this point, law enforcement
has completely lost the trail of the three escapees,
but a split in the ranks and a moral dilemma from Bac Duong
might just be the break authorities need.
- I know Hossein Nayeri. I know how smart he is.
And I'm thinking, "There's no way
he is not back in Iran by now."
And then we get a tip.
♪
- So Duong and the taxi driver, Long Ma,
have made it away from San Jose,
back to their home in Orange County,
when they stop at a hardware store.
He walks inside and tells people in that hardware store,
"Call the police."
♪
- Bac and the taxicab driver had this plan
that they would turn themselves in
and get the reward money.
And so that's what they attempted to do,
as the only person in history who ever tried to collect
a reward on himself.
- The fixer that Nayeri
had cautiously come to trust with his life
has now ratted out his former confederates,
giving up the location and the details of the van
that Nayeri and Tieu are traveling in.
- They knew Bac, when he got to Orange County,
was going to spill what was going on
and where they were, et cetera.
And so because of all that,
I know the feeling inside that van was,
"It's just a matter of time."
♪
- They're in the stolen white van.
They're in the Park District of San Francisco
near a Whole Foods Market
when a homeless man named Matthew Chapman
recognizes the van that he's seen on television.
- Within minutes, officers approach the van.
♪
- Jonathan gives up without a fight,
but Hossein tries one more time to escape.
He starts running away from the police.
He's not going to go off to Iran.
He's not going to be able to escape his crimes.
He can't even escape a parking lot.
He is tackled.
Once they catch up, it's over for him.
♪
- The men are taken back into custody
to face justice for their crimes.
At the Orange County Men's Jail,
serious reforms are put in place
to ensure an escape like this never happens again.
- As a result of the escape,
I know that the then-sheriff came under fire
for procedures maybe that were outdated
in terms of how they kept track of inside the jail
and inmates' locations, and things like that.
I know a number of changes
went into place because of the case.
- The Orange County Men's Jail has hardened its defenses
with motion-detection cameras in the utility corridor.
Prisoner badges can be tracked through radio signals.
They even have a cell-phone-sniffing dog.
♪
As for the escapees themselves,
Bac Duong was sentenced to 20 years in prison
for attempted murder and his part in the escape.
Jonathan Tieu and Hossein Nayeri
are still awaiting trial for the prison break.
But for the mastermind, Nayeri,
the trial will be a moot point.
He was convicted for his previous crimes
and sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Unless Nayeri can pull off another daring escape,
he will never see life on the outside again.