[dramatic music]
♪
- A rebellious thief sent halfway across the world...
♪
To serve a life sentence
in a horror-filled prison colony.
- It was about punishment.
Prisoners were treated horribly.
It was a hell on Earth.
- Will this criminal's street smarts
be enough to conquer nature?
- They are starving.
They have not eaten anything for several days.
- Huge waves are crashing down on the boat.
- Can he outlast his fellow prisoners...
- He was afraid he may be the next victim.
- And escape his living hell?
♪
Some of the greatest stories ever told
start behind bars.
♪
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?
[siren wailing]
♪
[tense music]
♪
- Don't let the ocean view outside this window fool you.
This is a cell in one of the most frightening
prison camps in history.
Located in French Guiana on the South American coast,
it's the notorious penal colony known as Ile du Diable,
Devil's Island.
And it's as hellish as it sounds.
♪
- Devil's Island was a living hell.
First of all, you have the almost impenetrable jungle
that surrounds the colony,
filled with insects, snakes, venomous toads,
and even larger, more dangerous animals.
♪
Beyond that, you have the colony itself,
where prisoners were treated horribly.
It was a hell on Earth.
- Prisoners eat scraps of bread and rotten meat.
They regularly die from starvation,
exhaustion, and disease.
80% don't live to the end of their sentence.
Some call it the dry guillotine,
because the execution is bloodless and slow.
You simply waste away and pray for death.
♪
From 1852, France uses the colony
to dispose of a range of criminals
from murderers and rapists
to political prisoners and petty thieves.
[whip cracks, prisoner groans]
The message is clear:
if you're sent to Devil's Island,
you're not supposed to come back.
- This was not a place with any designs on rehabilitation.
It was about punishment.
♪
- The penal colony lives up
to the "devil" part of the name.
It's the island part that's a little misleading.
What most call Devil's Island is a multipart complex.
On the mainland,
there are iron-shackled blockhouse prisons,
as well as low-security timber camps.
Off the coast are three island prisons.
One of them, Devil's Island,
lends its name to the whole godforsaken colony.
Basically, it's the worst of Sing Sing,
Alcatraz, and a Southern chain gang
all rolled into one.
And as a consequence, it has more
unsuccessful escape attempts than any other prison.
♪
- By the time the penal colony closed,
at least half of serving convicts
had attempted to escape,
which is really remarkable.
- What makes Devil's Island so uniquely inescapable
isn't being locked up.
It's the geography.
On one side is a dark and deadly jungle,
on the other a rocky coast
and the shark-infested Atlantic Ocean.
Whichever route you choose,
it's hundreds of miles past Dutch Guiana
to friendly territory
where police won't turn you over to the French.
Of the thousands who try to escape Devil's Island,
only a handful succeed.
They've become the stuff of legend
and, of course, Hollywood movies.
The most famous is the story of Henri Charrière,
aka Papillon.
But many believe "Papillon" is based on someone else's story:
a rebellious young thief named René Belbenoît.
♪
His story stands alone among the greatest prison escapes.
It spans 14 years and multiple harrowing escape attempts
featuring murder, betrayal,
and cannibalism.
♪
It's a quest that starts in the hell
of the Devil's Island penal colony
but eventually, thousands of miles away,
gets its own Hollywood ending.
[dramatic music]
In 1921, René Belbenoît is a 22-year-old war veteran
turned petty thief on the run from the law.
He's lying low, working as a servant
in a countryside mansion.
It's a good job and better cover,
but the career thief can't help himself.
- René Belbenoît was exposed at a very early age
to the Parisian underworld.
He's learned some street smarts
but also contempt for authority.
- Belbenoît grows tired of having a normal job,
so he takes things into his own hands, literally.
He steals a string of pearls and a package of money
meant for other servants.
But no thief is completely without honor.
Belbenoît leaves a thank-you note.
- He would go from town to town,
commit his robberies, and then move on.
- But Belbenoît's luck runs out.
He's arrested in Paris
and sentenced to eight years at Devil's Island.
♪
His imprisonment begins
as soon as he's thrown on the ship
bound for French Guiana.
It's as good as a death sentence.
♪
- He arrives in French Guiana,
where he is assigned his number, 46635,
meaning that he was the 46,635th prisoner
to arrive at Devil's Island since 1852.
- All incoming inmates to Devil's Island
are brought to Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
for processing.
They're given striped canvas pajamas
and are assigned their duties in the colony.
Since Belbenoît is young and able-bodied,
he's assigned to a labor camp
a few miles inland from town
known for killing almost half
of the men assigned to it.
- They were given hand axes and told
to begin clearing trees.
This was grueling work
in a climate none of the men were used to.
Sometimes, if the men were especially bad,
they were made to do this work completely naked,
nothing but a straw hat.
- Belbenoît does find one stroke of luck, however.
Because he served in World War I,
the administration gives him a lighter assignment
within the camp: making the straw hats.
♪
Even with the lighter work, after a month,
Belbenoît grows restless and decides he's had enough.
- He spends his morning plaiting the hats together,
and he's actually free to wander about the jungle
for the rest of the day.
And it's while he's wandering around
that he begins to put together
his first plan for an escape.
- Belbenoît decides to try a jungle escape route first.
He'll float down the Maroni River,
then cross over into Dutch Guiana,
where he'll make his way through the jungle
to the friendlier British Guiana.
Besides the jungle, an added risk
is that any Dutch authorities
will turn him over to the French,
but he has an idea.
- He plans to do this on a Dutch holiday,
'cause he assumes that all of the soldiers and other people
will just be too busy celebrating
to pay too much attention.
- What he also has going for him
is that the French guards in the penal colony
don't really care if he tries to escape.
- Penal colonies are very different in character
to prisons, and they're much more open sites
where prisoners are often
less well guarded and surveyed.
- The surrounding environment is so dangerous,
the guards know that any escape attempt
will likely end in capture or death for the fugitive.
- The guards were not necessarily gonna
run after escaping prisoners in the middle of the night,
but getting away from the prison
and a successful escape
were two different things.
It was pretty much the preparation of escape
that made all the difference.
- The hardest part to prepare for
is getting across the river,
and for that, he's going to need help.
Luckily, there's another prisoner in camp
also eager to escape.
- He strikes up an acquaintance with another prisoner,
a young man named Leonce...
♪
Who is also eager to get out of the prison camp.
- Their escape plan is simple:
build a small raft and use it to float downriver
and cross into Dutch Guiana.
Thanks to the virtually nonexistent security
at the timber camp, they can get to work.
♪
- The escape attempt was made by raft
made of bamboo and liana vines.
It's a very improvised vessel.
- The best material would be bamboo
because it would be light and it would float.
And possibly, with some luck,
it could get you across the Maroni River.
♪
- On the eve of the Dutch holiday,
Belbenoît and Leonce slip out of the timber camp
and set out down the tributary.
♪
They make it several miles before deciding
to take cover on the riverbank for the night.
♪
It's a sleepless night.
The duo is constantly attacked by mosquitoes, ants,
and every insect imaginable.
♪
They wake the next morning having barely slept.
As they set out across the rapids
of the Maroni River,
they immediately find themselves
in extreme danger.
The currents could drag them under
and dump them in the ocean.
♪
Belbenoît is about to find out
you don't break the devil's grip so easily.
♪
- The raging rapids of the Maroni River
thrash René Belbenoît and his fellow prisoner
on a makeshift raft as they try to escape
into Dutch Guiana from Devil's Island.
But just when they're about to be swallowed up,
a calming breeze rolls in,
and somehow, someway,
they make it to the other side.
[dramatic music]
But their success is short-lived.
- They're able to make their way
to the Dutch side of the river,
only to be seen and apprehended
by Dutch authorities to be extradited
back across to French Guiana.
♪
- Petty thief René Belbenoît
fails his first escape attempt from Devil's Island,
an effort that lasts a mere 39 hours.
As punishment, he's chained up in a barrack with 40 other men
in the most unsanitary of conditions,
where he will spend the next 60 days.
♪
Blockhouse prisoners are kept in cramped rows side by side.
Lying on wooden boards,
they are shackled into irons at their feet.
The air is fetid and filled with the stench of men
with no place to relieve themselves.
There are rats
and no protection from insects.
- [screams]
- Prisoners in the blockhouse typically were allowed
an hour of exposure to the daylight,
but the rest of the time,
they would be in cellular confinement.
Conditions were quite bleak.
♪
- Belbenoît's body becomes riddled with malaria
and black ant infestation.
♪
He often spends as much time in the infirmary
as he does in the blockhouse
and describes it as the lowest moment in his life.
♪
It's enough to kill many men
but not the stubborn Belbenoît.
♪
He survives the hell of the blockhouse
and begins planning his second escape.
♪
His first plan failed
because it wasn't risky enough.
Instead of crossing the Maroni,
he decides the next attempt will ride the river
all the way to the Atlantic Ocean
and then sail northwest to freedom.
♪
Ironically, his bouts of ill health
earn him a new job: cleaning the infirmary.
It's not glamorous
but far better than slowly dying
of heatstroke in the jungle.
♪
The cleaning job also allows him
to put his next escape plan into action.
♪
He knows that he's going to need more men
and, more importantly, money.
♪
Unlike most prisons, Devil's Island
allows prisoners to carry a small amount of money.
The guards take their cut, of course, perhaps 50%.
But 50% of something
is better than 100% of nothing.
- Outside of solitary confinement,
prisoners were kept together.
Gambling and sex are really the only diversions.
So prisoners do amass small things
that they can use to either acquire goods
or, particularly, bribe guards.
♪
- To keep their money safe,
the prisoners develop an unusual means
of keeping it hidden:
a small metal capsule called a plan.
- Nearly every convict in French Guiana had a plan.
It was seen as essential for your own survival.
It's basically a cylindrical metal suppository
that's obviously inserted into the rectum.
The plan was the most common item used to store money,
to store whatever valuables you can.
- And that could make the difference
between life and death.
A prisoner who had money
had the possibility of financing an escape.
- Thanks to his new job,
Belbenoît has a plan to earn money for an escape.
He knows that all the prisoners,
himself included,
suffer from malnutrition
and lack of fresh fruits and vegetables.
- The entire hospital is suffering from scurvy.
Belbenoît discovers an orange tree
and goes into the business
of selling oranges to prisoners.
- In addition, Belbenoît catches and sells
blue morpho butterflies to the guards,
who would then sell them in town.
So, little by little,
Belbenoît starts to accumulate money.
♪
A year and a half into his sentence,
Belbenoît is ready to try another escape,
this time not near the jungle
but the ocean.
- Belbenoît had enough experience hearing
other prisoners talk about their escapes
in the blockhouse
to realize that the best chances to escape
would be through the sea.
- He and a few men will float a boat
down the Maroni River
13 miles to the Atlantic Ocean.
They will then raise a sail
and head northwest along the coast
all the way to Venezuela and freedom.
It's much more ambitious,
and that means he's going to need
a whole team of accomplices.
In the year he's spent at Devil's Island,
Belbenoît has made friends with many of the prisoners,
so he sets up clandestine interviews
in bushes, empty barracks, anywhere he can find.
At the top of the list is a navigator,
because sailing down a raging coast
is different than just crossing the river.
He recruits a scrappy man known only as Basque,
who assures Belbenoît he's an expert sailor.
For muscle, to deal with any authorities along the way,
he enlists Marseillais,
an ex-mercenary who was too brutal
and sadistic even for war,
so, of course, he got sent to Devil's Island.
♪
Next is Gypsy, an older veteran.
Gypsy's missing a leg, but he's brought on board
because his friend Robert
offers cash, lots of cash,
essential to get an escape this size rolling.
For everything they can't buy, they steal with the help
of a master thief, Dede,
a man Belbenoît calls a helpless degenerate.
Belbenoît rounds out the crew
with his gambling friend Poletti
to help with the rowing and sailing.
Belbenoît's team is now set.
It's a risky, foolhardy plan.
The question is, is it crazy enough to work?
♪
- To pull off his second escape attempt,
Belbenoît assembles a team of six other prisoners.
They hope to slip out
through the poorly guarded timber camp.
They target Christmas Eve for their escape,
giving them three weeks to get ready.
[dramatic music]
♪
Because it's a major holiday, Belbenoît figures the guards
will be too drunk to notice them leaving.
But in order to leave, Belbenoît and his team
need a boat, something a lot bigger
than the raft he made the first time.
♪
They first attempt to construct the boat themselves.
Dede is put in charge of building
along with Marseillais in the late afternoon
when the guards are barely watching.
Marseillais starts hacking down branches
and hollowing out a large rubber tree.
Meanwhile, Belbenoît and Robert, the money man,
start bribing guards and prisoners for provisions.
- The team, as it were,
devotes about 100 francs to purchase food,
and so they're able to provide a variety of things--
condensed milk, tapioca, a bunch of bananas--
bribing various guards
and also bartering with other inmates
to acquire the cash that they think
they're going to need to sustain them
on their escape.
- In addition to food,
the men have to secure a source of water.
Their solution is not for the faint of heart.
- Latrine buckets on Devil's Island
were stolen to be used for fresh water during escapes.
They had to be cleaned out, cured with fire and tar
to make them leakproof and disinfect them.
- It's not pretty, but it works.
However, the men need more than just a canoe,
food, and water
to power them through the rough Atlantic waters.
Basque, the captain, arranges for a sail to be made
that they will hoist once out in the open water.
- One of the free men in the village
sells Belbenoît some old pants,
as well as a discarded hammock.
With those materials, they're able to fashion
a crude sail for their dugout canoe.
- It all seems to be going to plan,
but when Basque inspects the boat,
he does not approve.
It's so crude, there's no way it could survive
the pounding of the open ocean.
- Part of the challenge is finding a vessel large enough.
That's gonna be difficult to construct on your own.
♪
- But Belbenoît is undeterred.
Through his contacts, he gets word of a large canoe
down in the Chinese quarter of Saint-Laurent.
♪
The merchants refuse to sell for the money they have,
so they let Dede handle it.
Why buy what you can steal?
- What they end up doing
is stealing a very long dugout canoe
that's going to be able to carry
not only their weight,
the weight of all of their supplies,
but also endure the rigors of the choppy Atlantic waters.
- Stealing a canoe is a risk they don't need.
If they're caught lurking around at night
committing a crime,
they could be sent to solitary
or, worse, executed.
But they have no other option.
Under the cover of darkness, Dede and Poletti
creep around the edge of the Chinese quarter.
The canoe is tied to a post.
The two rush toward the canoe
and they cut the ropes holding it down.
But a nightwatchman catches them in the act
and grabs Poletti and slits his throat.
♪
Dede thinks he's next,
but Marseillais jumps out of the bushes
and makes quick work of the man with his machete.
♪
When Belbenoît learns about Poletti, he's upset,
but he also knows it means one less
mouth to feed on the open ocean,
and they've got their canoe.
♪
So, on the night before Christmas,
Belbenoît and his now five compatriots
are set to make their escape.
But what happens next
is not exactly a Christmas miracle.
[dramatic music]
♪
- On Christmas Eve, their supplies and boat set,
Belbenoît and his fellow prisoners
slip out under the cover of darkness.
They pile into the canoe and float down to the Maroni.
At first, all is calm,
and the men are in good spirits.
♪
This happiness is short-lived
because the dangerous rapids
rear their ugly heads once more.
[thunderclap]
♪
Fighting brutal currents, the men wrestle their boat
for three hours and over 13 miles
to the ocean.
When they arrive at the mouth of the river,
their plan hits its first snag.
♪
Due to the tossing and turning,
much of their food and water has been knocked overboard,
food and water that was supposed to last them weeks.
And as their rickety canoe slips out into the ocean,
things go from bad to worse.
- French Guiana to Venezuela,
you're talking about 1,000 miles.
You always risk being pushed back onto the coast.
It becomes extremely hazardous.
- These are the conditions that call
for a skillful and heroic captain.
Unfortunately, they don't have one.
Their captain, Basque, has taken ill.
- Huge waves are crashing down on the boat,
so the men are furiously bailing out the canoe.
Basque, the supposed navigator,
refuses to take the helm of the canoe,
saying he was feeling ill.
- They try to raise the sail, but it's no use.
Again, they press Basque into serving.
But it soon becomes clear
that Basque is not the man he claimed to be.
- He continues to refuse to take control.
He is revealed to be a fraud.
He knows nothing of sailing, navigation.
It was all a lie.
♪
- They don't have time to confront him
because, at the worst possible time,
a squall hits, capsizing the boat,
sending all of the men into the water.
They frantically swim
and make it to the nearest shore.
♪
In the morning sun,
the grim reality of their situation sets in.
- Their vessel ceases to be seaworthy.
They lose their rudder. They lose their sail.
All of their food supplies and their fresh water
is missing.
- Belbenoît calls a meeting to get their bearings.
It's then that he realizes exactly where they are.
Despite a bigger team and a bigger boat,
Belbenoît has ended up in the same place
his first escape attempt ended:
Dutch Guiana.
- They hadn't gotten anywhere.
They've gone next door,
to the place where they would be turned in.
- All that struggle has been for nothing.
♪
This many criminals in such a dire situation
is a recipe for disaster.
Tempers quickly flare, and the group's anger
is turned towards Basque.
To Marseillais, there's only one solution.
Basque must be punished for his betrayal.
- Marseillais, knife in hand,
walks up to Basque...
♪
Stabs him dead...
♪
Drags his body out to the shore,
and tosses him out into the Atlantic.
- Two dead men wasn't part of the plan at all.
The more crew they lose,
the closer their escape comes to doom.
♪
With no boat and no captain,
their only choice is to try
and forge their way through the jungle.
With hardly any food or water,
the men struggle to make progress.
♪
After days of trying,
they're forced to admit defeat.
Getting stuck in the jungle would mean certain death.
♪
The men must change the plan from escape to survival.
If they turn themselves in, they might be given leniency.
So they turn around and head back towards the river
and French Guiana.
- Robert and Gypsy lag behind the other men.
Eventually, Gypsy will catch up to the group
and will report that Robert
had been ailing and lagging behind.
Perhaps he's gotten slightly lost.
- But after an hour, Robert has not arrived,
and so Marseillais decides to retrace
the group's steps back to the jungle.
And what does he discover?
Robert's still warm
but very dead body.
♪
Inspecting the body,
Marseillais sees
a massive wound on the back of Robert's head.
♪
- Robert, the money man, is dead.
The question is, at whose hand?
Marseillais finds Gypsy's spare walking stick
with blood on it next to Robert's body.
He's pretty sure he's got his answer.
What's more, he searches Robert's sack,
which was carrying the group's only salvaged can of rations.
The sack is empty.
♪
Marseillais returns to camp
and asks Gypsy for his food sack.
When he opens it, out falls the smoking gun:
a bloody can of condensed milk,
the only food the group has left.
Marseilles has seen enough.
- Gypsy is wary.
He has an idea of what's coming
as revenge for the murder of Robert.
♪
- Plunging his knife straight into Gypsy's heart...
♪
Marseilles ends the wounded vet's life.
♪
With three of his crew murdered,
Belbenoît knows his plan has gone horribly wrong.
Not only has his second escape attempt failed.
He might not even survive it.
♪
- René Belbenoît's second attempt
to escape French Guiana fails.
Marooned in Dutch Guiana, hostile locals or soldiers
could overtake them any a moment.
But the real threat is his fellow prisoners.
One of the crew has murdered two fellow fugitives.
For Belbenoît, this escape
is turning into a nightmare.
[dramatic music]
♪
- They are, at this point, starving,
have not had any fresh water for several days.
They have not eaten anything for several days.
- That night, the crew's quest for survival
takes an even darker turn.
- Suddenly, at the center of camp,
is a dead body.
♪
Now, what to do with this dead body?
Dede proposes,
after all, he's no better than a beast,
and what are beasts if not to be eaten?
♪
- Marseillais and Dede agree to eat their dead prison mate.
Belbenoît has no choice but to go along with it.
- He describes an orgy of sadism and cannibalism.
♪
He was afraid that if he did not comply,
he may be the next victim.
♪
- After they eat his foot,
the men completely butcher Gypsy's body.
- Very quickly, they are roasting
Gypsy's liver over the fire,
a fire kindled with Gypsy's own wooden leg.
♪
- Cannibalism has reduced the group's morale
to a new low,
at least Belbenoît's.
But their nightmare soon comes to an end.
♪
The next day, they continue their march
and find a welcoming Indigenous village.
♪
For the moment, they're safe.
They're fed and given a place to sleep.
Belbenoît may survive after all.
♪
The only problem:
it's a setup.
- They're awakened the next morning by the police...
♪
And taken back to French Guiana and to prison.
♪
- Belbenoît, for his repeat offense,
is banished to solitary confinement
on the feared Saint-Joseph Island.
♪
Prisoners are kept in tiny cells
with little room to move.
It is the worst of the prisons.
- Solitary confinement on Saint-Joseph
was punishment on top of punishment,
to show the prisoner, we will go to this extreme
if you get out of line.
Don't think that we won't do it.
[maniacal laughter]
- He spends the next year in solitary,
but this gives him time to think of a new way
to fight back,
to record the horrors of Devil's Island.
♪
He's able to bribe a guard to give him a pen and paper,
and he begins writing.
♪
Little does Belbenoît know,
his talent for writing
will be his best chance at freedom.
♪
After solitary, Belbenoît serves almost a decade
in various parts of the colony.
During this time, a reform-minded official
takes interest in Belbenoît's writings,
and he's able to get a few articles published.
With this new sense of purpose,
the time just flies by.
♪
After 11 years on Devil's Island
and multiple failed attempts to escape,
René Belbenoît is finally released from prison.
But according to French law,
he's merely a libéré
and is forbidden from leaving the colony.
Then something happens that you'd swear
could only happen in a movie.
♪
Belbenoît is tracked down
by an American movie producer
who has seen his writings
and wants to turn them into a movie.
♪
Belbenoît dishes as much detail as he can,
and as a thank-you,
the produce a gives Belbenoît 200 francs.
This is enough money to put together one final mission.
This time, he sets his sights on the United States.
- He thought the United States
was the right place to alert the world
about Devil's Island.
♪
- In spring 1935,
after 12 years confined to the penal colony,
Belbenoît pushes off in a small boat
with several prisoners,
this time, thanks to his 200 francs,
with a real sail and a real navigator.
- Belbenoît's final escape
showed the learning curve of escapes:
don't repeat the same mistake twice.
- The goal is to reach Trinidad,
a British island colony friendly to fugitives.
From there, they'll head north,
all the way to Miami and freedom.
♪
The 14-day journey is harrowing,
filled with blisters, hunger, and infighting.
But, amazingly,
they make it 700 miles to Trinidad.
They continue on their way, but the ocean has other ideas.
The strong currents push them far west,
crashing them on the shores of Colombia...
♪
A country not friendly to convicts.
♪
Belbenoît is thrown into a cell
to await the French consul,
1,500 miles for nothing.
Will Devil's Island finally get its way with him?
♪
[dramatic music]
- René Belbenoît finds himself on the brink
of going back to Devil's Island,
but his lifeline is surprising.
It's not his criminal skills.
His words become his most important currency.
He's stuck in a Colombian jail,
and the locals get word that a famous prisoner is in town.
- He had already published many, many things,
and the local Colombian press
actually took an interest in him.
- In exchange for a few new articles,
a local news editor arranges a little cash and a way out.
♪
- With the complicity of the guards,
he was given the opportunity
to walk out of the prison in a cell purposely not locked.
♪
- Belbenoît spends a few days furiously writing...
♪
And then is allowed to slip out into the night.
He's free.
- So begins another arduous journey for Belbenoît.
- Belbenoît spends months
working his way through Central America,
through Panama to El Salvador.
He's able to stow away
on a freighter bound for Canada
with stops along the U.S. coast.
Finally, one boat that won't easily crash.
♪
After a week at sea, on June, 11, 1937,
René Belbenoît finishes a two-year journey to freedom
and arrives in Los Angeles.
- Finally, after all of his attempts,
all of the troubles,
after 14 years, he is free.
♪
The man from Devil's Island arrives in the City of Angels.
From there, his life takes a completely different turn.
- In 1938, Belbenoît is able
to get his manuscript published
as the book "Dry Guillotine."
The atrocities laid bare in his pages
spread around the world.
Stunned by Belbenoît's revelations,
France begins the process
of shutting down the notorious prison.
- The French authorities were extremely embarrassed
by books like "Dry Guillotine."
It was one of the reasons that led to the French
to close down
the Devil's Island prison colonies.
- In another plot twist, Belbenoît's writing success
also leads to him working as a technical advisor
on the 1944 Humphrey Bogart film
"Passage to Marseille,"
a story centered on a harrowing escape
from Devil's Island.
The film helps further capture the public's imagination.
♪
Finally, in 1953,
after decades of bad press and media portrayals,
Devil's Island penal colony closes for good.
♪
Of the nearly 80,000 prisoners
who went through that living hell,
almost 3/4 died.
René Belbenoît was one of the lucky ones.
In Los Angeles, René Belbenoît,
once a petty thief and fraudster,
finds success, love, and work
on Hollywood movie sets.
It's an unbelievable journey from hell to Hollywood.
In 1956, he's granted U.S. citizenship
after his coworkers vouch for him.
Three years later, at the age of 59,
in the small store he owns in Lucerne Valley, California,
he suffers a heart attack and dies.
The social changes
his writing and prison reform advocacy inspire
cement his legacy and preserve the story
of one of the world's greatest prison escapes.