- It may look like an innocuous building
in a typical American suburb, but Alton City Jail
is one of the most high-tech facilities on American soil.
[heavy metal music]
These eyes in the sky monitor prisoners,
but Alton's perfect record of no attempted escapes
is about to be tested by the brilliant mind
of a determined father...
♪
- I just took off running,
anticipating some bullets piercing my back.
- A man who is desperate to break free or die trying.
[dramatic music]
♪
Some of the greatest stories ever told start behind bars.
[inmates shouting]
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 clanks]
[tense music]
♪
Alton City Jail may look like a middle school
in a typical American suburb,
but inside the maximum security federal wing
lies a state-of-the-art surveillance operation
that would deter even the most ingenious prisoners
from trying to escape.
♪
- You really can't tell it's a jail
from looking from the outside, 'cause it's actually combined
a part of the police department itself.
♪
The Alton Police Department was constructed in 2002
and it was one of the most secure facilities
in Madison County, Illinois.
Very high-tech security system
as far as cameras, consoles to control doors in and out.
- Cameras cover every corner of an inmate's life,
including this 9x12 cell.
- Each cell was equipped with a camera
so that the prisoners could be monitored
by corrections staff 24 hours a day.
- They're checked no more than half hour apart,
and they come through and they check each cell physically.
- The lights at Alton are never turned off,
keeping inmates visible to corrections staff
24 hours a day.
♪
But perhaps the most challenging aspect
of incarceration at Alton
is that inmates are confined to their cell
at all times.
- Alton City Jail was what was known
as a 23 and 1 facility,
which means 23 out of 24 hours a day,
inmates were locked down in their cell.
They only had one hour of rec a day,
so the rest of the day was spent
either working out, writing,
and for some of the individuals,
they spent most of their time
figuring out how to agitate corrections staff
and cause problems.
[dramatic music]
♪
- Escape from this high-tech steel and concrete cage
is impossible,
but Quawntay Adams has been facing the impossible
ever since he was a child.
- By the time I was 12,
gang culture in LA was at its peak.
♪
My family was heavily involved.
♪
- As a Black man in a white world
growing up on the rough streets of Compton,
Quawntay felt his only path to success was in the streets.
- The only person that I thought or believed
that I can be was the people who were around me,
and those were the Crips, those were drug dealers,
so as I dreamed as a child,
I dreamed of being the best Crip
or the best drug dealer.
Had I been exposed to something else,
then maybe I would've wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer,
but my only escape that I saw was selling drugs.
♪
- He was in and out of the prison system since 15.
His upbringing taught him to trust no one,
that the only way to navigate the world is on his own.
In 2004, he hoped to score a payday
that could turn around his life,
a $1.4 million marijuana deal.
But he was caught in an FBI sting.
[siren wailing]
Sentenced to 35 years, a severe, life-ending term.
- I felt like my life was over.
- But Quawntay has a stubborn habit
of taking a bad hand in life and making it good.
He's an ingenious man capable of wearing many hats.
He's a listener, a learner, and observer.
- Quawntay Adams was unequivocally
the smartest inmate I had ever come into contact with.
[soft dramatic music]
- But Quawntay has a reason to escape
that is far bigger than himself.
The night of his arrest,
he learns he's about to be a father.
- Once my ex-girlfriend told me
that she was pregnant with my child, it hit me.
I had told myself that if I brought a child in this world,
I would want to be there for that child
from the beginning till the end,
and it hit me hard because I was facing life without parole
and would never have the chance to be there for my child.
And I started thinking about how I grew up
and then I started realizing
that I was repeating that same cycle.
And I started having thoughts of breaking out of prison.
[tense music]
♪
- Quawntay Adams is checking out escape routes
from the moment he arrives.
- We pulled up to Alton Jail.
I looked up at the building, studied the structure of it.
The roof, cameras, gates, everything.
- His careful observation leads to a discovery.
- Well, the first thing, I saw an exhaust vent
on the side of the attic of the jail.
- If he could somehow get to this vent,
he thinks he can get out.
Quawntay's keen eyes focus and record the scale
and size of the building,
the operation of the gates, armed guard locations,
and the angle of the cameras.
But without a cellmate or time on prison grounds
mingling with other prisoners,
there's another hurdle to escape:
Quawntay will have to break out
without help from the inside.
Not that Quawntay was about to trust a stranger anyway.
Growing up in the streets taught him that.
He would have to go it alone.
- In order for an inmate to break out of that facility,
it would have to be with the assistance
of somebody from the inside.
- In the four years
since the Alton Jail was constructed,
there had never been an attempt to escape by an inmate.
- The walls of Alton are impenetrable
with the exception of a very small,
rectangular vent for airflow.
There's no grille that might lead to a crawlspace
or offer an ability to tunnel out.
The floor below belongs to the chief of police,
so that's a dead end.
The ceiling, which would inevitably have to be accessed
to get to the air vents--
well, good luck with that.
♪
- The cells were constructed of block-and-mortar cement.
The tops of the cells were solid steel.
It was very thick steel.
- This was the first time I had been to a prison
where everything was high-tech.
I started feeling like I would never get out.
♪
- Breaking out of this impenetrable fortress
will require a miracle,
but one night, he gets his first smell of hope.
- I was laying in my bunk one night
and I smell that distinct smell of rain.
[thunder rumbling]
Growing up in Southern California and LA,
it didn't rain much, but when it did,
I studied every little thing about it.
I walked over to that exhaust vent and I started smelling.
I knew that that exhaust vent
was leading to somewhere close around,
and I knew that if I could just follow that exhaust vent,
I'd find my exit.
♪
- Remember, no matter where you go,
no matter what you do, you're always on camera.
♪
Except maybe right here.
♪
- I started looking to try to figure out
what angles of the cell
that the camera was not capturing
and I noticed that behind the camera,
there was 12 inches of blind spot.
♪
- This tiny area occupied by the toilet and the sink
are just out of view of the surveillance system.
- It's the only place in the cell
that isn't visible on the cameras
because, of course, it's over the toilet.
- It's from this most miniscule of spaces
that Quawntay Adams, who stands 6'4" tall,
thinks he can escape the claustrophobic,
high-tech hell of Alton.
To pull this feat off, Quawntay realizes
that he has to get through the steel ceiling.
It's his only means of getting to the ventilation system
that might lead to the outside world.
- I knocked on the ceiling. [tapping]
Once I felt that it was hollow...
[tapping]
I knew then that
if I get my hands on a hacksaw blade,
that I can crawl around in that attic,
follow the exhaust vents,
and break the slats out of the vent and escape
and see my daughter.
♪
- For Quawntay, this is a mission bigger than himself,
but it is impeded by his lack of tools.
Alton doesn't have working tool or machine shops
where prisoners can gain access to tools
if they're clever enough.
And even if they did,
there are metal detectors at every turn.
But the observer's brain is always at work.
♪
- I reached out to my cousin,
and I sent him a coded message
behind a postage stamp asking him to send me a saw blade
inside the cover of a hardback book.
- And how does one send a coded message
on the back of a postage stamp?
- We had developed a code to communicate with each other,
a numerical system which would unlock secret messages.
- Only the person getting the letter
knows how to break it down.
For him to deliver that kind of message
of what he wanted and how he wanted it
again shows Quawntay's mind.
♪
- Getting that blade
is Quawntay's only way out of Alton,
the only option to avoid
spending the rest of his life behind bars.
♪
But will the postman deliver?
[tense music]
- Quawntay Adams has spent the past two months
in the maximum security federal wing
at Alton City Jail...
one of the most high-tech prisons on American soil.
Prisoners are confined to their cell at all times,
where they are monitored by 24-hour security surveillance.
Quawntay devises an ingenious way to smuggle in a blade...
♪
The U.S. Postal Service.
He orders a book and sends it to another inmate.
♪
- He had no idea that the book was coming.
I sent him that book and a couple of more books,
which I knew that he wouldn't read that book
because he was more into reading urban novels.
- Inside the book binding is a hacksaw blade
he plans to use to cut a hole in the solid steel ceiling
just out of view of the cameras.
♪
But this is Alton, where the latest tech is used
on packages that arrive within its walls.
If the book is X-rayed, it will set off an alarm
and an investigation as to how it got there.
♪
- I was in the first cell,
so I saw every time the guards entered.
I saw them pass the book to him.
You could tell he didn't know who sent him the book.
Once they closed his tray slot behind them,
I felt a sense of relief.
I knew that my saw blade had arrived in that.
[chuckles]
♪
- Quawntay's bid for freedom
is officially underway.
- I convinced one of the guards
to pass the book to me
and told him that I didn't have anything to read.
It would just be a matter of time for me to start working.
- The bed checks every 30 minutes
present a huge problem.
However, Quawntay has a solution.
He'll use the security of Alton against Alton.
- The benefit of their security system
is that in order to get back there to the cell block,
you have to go through two or three different doors,
and when they would open,
there was a loud buzzing noise.
[buzzing]
[door clanks]
- The door buzzers provide an early warning system,
but that alone isn't enough for Quawntay.
♪
- I would study every guard that worked the prison.
The way they walked,
I knew what their footsteps sounded like,
and I knew how long their strides were,
and so I can hear footsteps
before they made it to the cell block,
and when they left,
I started scraping.
[dramatic rock music]
♪
[metallic scraping]
♪
- He spent literally months
scratching a fraction of an inch at a time
through a stainless steel slab ceiling.
♪
- I might saw for 60 seconds
and then pace around, then get up there
and saw for 30 seconds.
Then pace around and get up there
and saw for another minute.
- Over the course of five weeks,
Quawntay meticulously saws
until he finally breaks through.
♪
But there's a problem.
The cracks in the ceiling are visible,
easy to spot during inspection.
Q would need to make his own spackling paste.
- They would have little white bars of soap
for us to use.
I would just play around and experiment with the soap
and the clear toothpaste until I got, like,
the right color that matched the ceiling.
♪
- The observer is now the chemist.
♪
- We were locked in the cells 24 hours a day.
The only time we could come out of those cells
were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
for five-minute showers.
The guards would go inside of our cell and inspect it.
When you have this cut in the ceiling
that can be discovered at any moment,
those are the most terrifying moments,
and this happens three times a week
at the very least.
♪
- Six weeks after smuggling in his hacksaw,
Quawntay cuts an oval
about the circumference of a basketball.
He's about to push through it.
It's a feeling he dreams about,
visualizes very day since his incarceration.
- Once my saw had its last stroke,
I had to push up to break the well,
and now you have this plate
and there's nothing holding it now,
so you can't put it back. [chuckles]
So it would just fall through, so I had to just kinda, like,
slide it over on the top of the roof,
and I heard the buzzer.
The guards were on their way back to the cell block.
♪
[buzzer blaring] [door clanks]
- It's bed check.
The excitement of the moment
gets the best of the fastidious Quawntay.
The second buzzer sounds.
The guard he fears most, Mike Morelli,
is ever-so-close to his cell.
- Morelli was the super-cop.
Nothing would ever get past him.
But if I got caught this time, no way in the world
would I ever be put in a position
to try to escape again.
- He maneuvers his hands
to put the ceiling section back in place.
[metallic crash]
- He hears the banging.
It's maybe two, three seconds
before the guard comes to my cell to look in.
Ran to the door to kind of, like, try to block his view
so that he wouldn't look and look up in the corner
and see the hole in the ceiling.
- Morelli knocks on the door.
Quawntay is about to come face-to-face with his destiny.
♪
[tense music]
- After months of cutting through a solid steel ceiling,
Quawntay breaks through.
♪
[buzzer blaring]
But as he attempts to put the section of ceiling
back into place...
[metallic crash] It falls...
♪
Just as the guard he fears most, Mike Morelli,
does his second bed check.
♪
- And I'm standing right there in front of the cell window,
and he's like, "What's going on in there?
What did I hear?"
- He's face-to-face with his nemesis, Mike Morelli.
- I'm in here working out.
And he looked for a moment.
[suspenseful music]
And then he walked off. [chuckles softly]
♪
- Quawntay is spared,
but now he'll need a solution to the fallen ceiling plate.
The chemist goes back to the lab.
- There's nothing holding it now, so you can't put it back.
[chuckles]
So it would just fall through.
♪
You can order commissary at the jail.
I ordered the little round peppermint candies.
So what I did is,
I let those candies sit inside of water for days.
It just soaked inside of a bowl of water,
and they become real gooey and sticky.
Took that plate and I took the candies
and I stuck it all around the edges
of the top of this plate so it made like a little ledge.
And it dried up real hard so that the plate wouldn't fall.
[tense music]
- With the ceiling secure,
he now faces a moment of truth.
Will the crawlspace above lead to the ventilation system
and the outside world?
♪
Quawntay waits for his moment,
disappears into the blind spot,
and hoists himself up into the hole.
- So as I stuck my head up through the hole
and I started looking around, it was pitch dark.
It was devastating.
I was boxed in.
I'd just cut into the ceiling and cut myself into a box
that I can't get out of.
- It was difficult to imagine
how anybody had cut through that,
and upside the hole, it's completely pitch black.
There's no light,
so inside there is the interior guts of the roof
of the building and where the ventilation system is.
♪
- It's only so long that
I can be out of the view of the camera.
I needed to come up with a way
to where I could crawl around in that vent
for an extended period of time.
♪
- Quawntay's solo act needs backup.
Quawntay recruits an unwitting collaborator.
He enlists a fellow prisoner.
- There was another prisoner in there with me.
He liked to call hisself Sammy the Bully.
[chuckles]
Anything to be in trouble
and to [bleep] with the guards,
he'd thrive by it.
So I sent him a note and told him, "Look,
"when a guard come through here,
I want you to create a distraction."
♪
- [inaudible]
[tense music]
- [screams]
♪
- With him creating a distraction,
the guards would flip their monitors
on his cell in the hallway,
taking the monitor off of my cell.
Made a little dummy out of newspaper
and other little leftover materials there,
took a little cup and I covered the camera.
They wouldn't see me place this dummy in the bed.
Then I come back behind the camera,
and I remove the cup.
- Quawntay carefully lifts his 6'4" frame
into the miniscule hole.
- The space that I'm crawling around in
is at the most 4 feet, and I'm 6'4",
so I'm just squatting down
trying to find any sign of an exit.
There was nothing.
Felt like it was over.
Like, I was stuck in there.
- His dreams of freedom
have figuratively and literally
hit a brick wall.
- And I jammed my foot on some piece of metal.
Hurt like hell.
Just outta anger,
I just start rattling it and bending it.
And it broke off.
♪
And then I took it and I just start beating.
And I hit the part up here, and I just hit it.
♪
And then some debris fell down.
♪
I hit it again.
More debris.
And I just kept hitting it.
Debris, debris, debris.
All this insulation came through,
and then there was just a hole.
♪
And then I, like, stuck my head through it.
It was nighttime.
[dramatic music]
And I saw light.
And there was this huge exhaust vent,
the exhaust vent that I saw
when I first arrived at the jail
that I had been looking for was right there,
And the light from the streetlights outside
were shining through it.
[chuckles]
It was like heaven, the Holy Grail.
♪
[suspenseful music]
♪
- The break he's been waiting for has arrived.
♪
The heavenly glow of freedom
illuminates the louvers at the end of the attic.
He sees a way out.
The architect now has his blueprint for escape.
[tense music]
- Quawntay Adams is ready
to put his escape plan into action.
He has miraculously avoided the eyes of Alton,
the ever-present cameras that track every move.
But this lone wolf may need an accomplice after all.
♪
- The greatest thing that was created for inmates?
Pen pal services.
- Pen pals, relationships between strangers
that are forged and maintained by letter writing,
even in the digital age,
for prisoners to have contact with the world
outside their prison.
- Tonya came into play.
Initially, we started off to where
I figured she was somebody who can share details
about the area with me.
We started talking and we just connected.
- When Quawntay first called me,
I fell in love with his voice.
He was an intelligent individual,
so I was impressed by him.
He was so very soft, sad.
I just felt so bad for him.
- [over PA] "Quawntay Adams, you have a visitor..."
[normally] Were not words he ever expected to hear.
♪
He's a one-man operation, controls everything,
but enter Tonya Goodwin,
the unaware and lovesick accomplice.
- I was surprised because no one was on my visiting list.
She somehow convinced them
to let her inside of the jail to see me.
[chuckles]
♪
And I was kinda, like, impressed with that.
♪
- When I first saw Quawntay,
I thought, "So handsome."
He wasn't paying no attention to me.
He's looking all around, you know, asking questions.
Where the vents were, where are the cameras,
where's the door that I'm coming in and out at.
- The more Quawntay talks to her,
the more Quawntay reads her and feels her.
He start wooing her.
It's like--it's like a drama.
Getting her mind so infatuated by who Quawntay Adams is,
nothing else matters.
- She was cool.
I told her to stand up, and she did.
She looked cute in the clothes that she was wearing.
- Quawntay's a Casanova.
He works his manipulative charms.
- And I made a comment about,
"I wish I could jump
on the other side of this window,"
and she made a comment, she said...
- Go ahead, jump. I'll be there to catch you.
[chuckles]
[smooth music]
- Once she made that comment about catching me,
I started asking myself,
"Does she mean she's willing to give me a ride
if I break out of here?"
If I get on the other side of this glass,
will she actually take me away and hide me?
♪
- He starts to believe Tonya could be the key
to a successful escape...
once he clears the crowds of Alton.
- Just couldn't get that out of my head,
so I kept seeing if that's really what she meant.
But at the same time, I didn't want to reveal to her
that I was in the process of escaping,
because I didn't trust her.
I didn't know her like that.
[tense music]
♪
- The next time
the star-crossed lovers meet,
Quawntay's hidden messaging system returns.
- Without telling her that I was escaping,
I wrote a note behind a stamp.
- He convinces corrections staff to give Tonya a letter.
- Quawntay kept pointing at the stamp.
The whole time pointing at the stamp,
so I knew something was under there.
I'm thinking it's love messages, sex.
[chuckles]
♪
- Underneath the stamp
are details about where she will pick him up
and how she will be contacted.
- He told me he was scheduled to be released.
He had a old warrant for his arrest out in California.
They had 72 hours to re-arrest him on it.
If they didn't do it within 72 hours,
then they weren't gonna do it.
- So I asked if she can give me a ride,
and I told her to park up the street from the jail
for the following three nights
because I wasn't sure which night they would release me.
- This is not what lovesick Tonya was hoping to read.
Nevertheless, it appears she's in.
♪
- Tonya didn't have a chance.
You've given Quawntay Adams every opportunity in the world
to caress you with his words,
and when your self-esteem is not good
and you got a man like Quawntay "Bosco" Adams,
you're done.
- I couldn't wait to get him out of jail,
get him home
so we could start our life together.
- The final piece of Quawntay's escape plan
is in place,
but the man whose mantra is "trust no one"
must now put the fate of his future
as a free man and a father
into the hands of a woman he hardly knows.
♪
[tense music]
♪
- Like a perfect puzzle,
Quawntay's plans are falling into place.
The one piece he's unsure of: will Tonya show up?
If she doesn't, he's doomed to fail.
Regardless, freedom has never felt so close.
♪
- I went up during the daytime and I was sawing the vents
and just stared out the vents
and just kind of looked at freedom for a moment.
So I just sat there and just watched people
as they would come and go.
♪
And started thinking about
seeing my daughter for the first time.
- Quawntay spends several nights
sawing through the final barrier
between him and the outside world.
♪
Everything is falling into place,
but before the determined father
can sail off into the sunset, he'll need one last tool.
♪
It's about a 30-foot drop to the ground
from the escape vent.
A fall from that height will shatter bones.
- The blankets are, like, 10 feet long and 8 feet wide.
♪
I ripped my blanket into these strips to make a rope,
tied 'em together,
made, like, 70 feet out of my blanket.
[tense music]
- It's a few hours before go time
and the observer has designed a flawless plan.
But unexpectedly, Quawntay has a problem.
A change in schedule
has super-cop Mike Morelli on duty.
- Ironically, I told myself
that I would never do it when Officer Morelli was working.
I tell myself that I'm leaving tonight,
so I was up late.
Officer Morelli walked by,
looked in my cell and saw that I was standing there.
He asked me, "What are you doing up so late?"
And I told him, "I'm waiting to go home."
[chuckling] And then he said, uh...
"Good luck with that." [chuckles]
And he walked on.
- It's go time for Quawntay.
But in order to kick his plan into action,
he must first create a diversion.
For that, Quawntay requires
the trusted services of his favorite bully.
During one of his last one-hour breaks
outside of his cell, he tells his next-door neighbor
exactly when to create a distraction.
- He knew that I was always up to something.
He would never even question it.
He would just say, "You up to something."
[buzzer blaring] That's it.
He would never ask what I was doing, though.
- Quawntay waits for his moment,
puts a cup over the camera,
and carefully moves his dummy into place.
♪
He slips into his prison-issued thermals
to avoid standing out on the outside
and then squeezes into the ceiling.
As the mastermind makes his way
towards the light at the end of the tunnel,
the gravity of the operation hits home.
♪
- They catch me coming out the vent and trying to flee,
they can shoot and kill me.
♪
- Much to Quawntay's delight,
everything is going according to plan.
His ride has arrived.
- I saw Tonya's car parked up there,
popped the slats out of the vent.
- I almost called the jail that night
to see what time Quawntay was being released.
And then I seen something peculiar,
something out of the corner of my eye.
It was the louvers on the side of the jail.
One side kept coming down.
- Got ready to throw the rope out.
Bright lights shined on me right in my face.
Immediately moved out the side of the lights.
It was a truck coming up a alleyway across the street.
- False alarm.
Freedom for Quawntay is a mere 100 yards away.
♪
[dramatic music]
- And so I started sliding down
and burnt the palms of my hand
to the point to where I couldn't grip anymore.
So once I was I was, like, 8 feet from the ground,
I just fell.
[thuds]
- Tonya now looks in the direction of the prison
and can't believe her eyes.
- I just took off running in the direction of Tonya's car
just, like, anticipating, like, a, "Freeze!"
Or some bullets just piercing my back.
♪
- The dude kept running, kept running,
got up to the car and then I realized it was him.
- She's just looking at me, like, shaking her head.
- We both reached for the door at the same time.
I reach to lock it, he reaches to unlock it.
[locks click] - And she locked the door.
♪
- Quawntay broke his cardinal rule
of "trust no one,"
the repercussions of which may now show their fickle face.
Tonya has no idea he's planning to escape.
Quawntay is locked out.
♪
- And so I'm telling her, like, "Let me in,"
and she's just pulling off a little bit slowly.
- This look that he gave me, it was just so pitiful.
It's like, "I can't leave him out there."
So I opened the door and let him in.
- I hopped in and I told her to drive over to Missouri,
go across the river.
- The dreams of freedom for Quawntay
are no longer just dreams, but how long can it last?
- Once we got across the bridge in Missouri,
I started relaxing.
That's when it start hitting me,
like, I'm about to see my daughter for the first time.
It was like the best feeling in the world.
[tense music]
I said, "I need to go to Chicago."
She said, "I can't take you to Chicago,"
but she said, "I know a motel room
where I can get it without showing my ID."
So we stopped at a ATM machine.
She started walking away
and she got the key out the car and she said,
"I don't want you to leave me."
♪
It had never crossed my mind to do such a thing.
When she did that, it showed she didn't trust me.
♪
This is a woman who I don't know.
- Has Quawntay made a fatal mistake
in trusting Tonya,
and will it cost him his freedom?
♪
- Quawntay Adams has just scaled down the wall
of Alton Jail with a homemade rope
made of shredded blankets.
Tonya Goodwin, his getaway driver,
is now face-to-face with the reality
of her involvement in a prison break
and by early morning, she's not the only one
who's discovering what Quawntay is really up to.
[tense music]
♪
- A paper carrier had seen bedsheets
hanging out of one of the ventilation ducts.
♪
- On the morning of May 2nd,
I received a phone call from the jail superintendent.
He told me that a prisoner was missing from his cell.
[siren wailing]
- The manhunt for Quawntay Adams is on.
Local law enforcement goes into action.
[indistinct radio chatter]
- If he had been out for 15 minutes,
then we knew that we had
a 30-mile in diameter area to cover.
If had been out for an hour to two,
then we potentially had
a 120- to 240-mile diameter circle to cover.
It's then a geographic impossibility
to seal that area.
- Quawntay has been on the run for almost two hours.
The lone wolf's plan has gone perfectly,
but his introduction to an accomplice
may come at a cost.
♪
- We went through all the prisoner logs.
We learned pretty quickly that
Quawntay had made a couple of phone calls to a woman
and had visits from a woman
before the escape,
and her name was Tonya Goodwin.
♪
- As soon as we got to the motel,
the first thing Quawntay did was turn on the TV.
All the channels was plastered with it.
That's all you seen.
Breakout, breakout, breakout.
♪
- She wanted to stay there at the room with me,
so I told her, "You can't stay here
"because if they see that you're missing,
"you're a willing accomplice.
It's gonna raise a red flag."
♪
I told her just don't go home until later,
because I knew that once she got home,
they would be there waiting on her.
I called my cousin Rocky.
I told Rock to call one of my other cousins
and they got me a ride coming from Chicago.
- Quawntay's access to a vehicle is gone
and his future rides on Tonya's ability
to throw off the authorities.
- I drove home and I just sat there
and the cops were there probably within 15 minutes.
- You're harboring a federal fugitive.
This is potentially prison time for you.
♪
- It became a pretty forceful interview,
and she gave up the actual location
where she had taken him.
♪
- To not go to jail for nobody, not even Quawntay.
♪
- Quawntay's greatest fears are realized.
His accomplice cracks under pressure.
♪
Police are closing him on him,
and now it's a race against time.
Who will arrive first?
His ride to freedom or his ride back to jail?
♪
- Our vehicles drove as fast as we could
to the motel in Wentzville.
♪
We quickly approached the room,
got our bearings together ready to hit the door.
- I heard a bunch of noise...
[thudding]
And that's when I knew, like, the cops are out here
and they're coming to get me.
♪
- Kicked it open.
♪
When we came in, guns out on him,
he was laying in bed.
It reminded me of a child.
He responded like a child would.
He grabbed the sheets and just pulled them up to his nose
as if to hide for the very last time,
but the look in his eyes was, "I'm done.
♪
- I just knew everything was over then.
I'm never getting out of prison.
I'm never, ever going to see my daughter.
♪
- Quawntay Adams is arrested.
He's sentenced to 35 years
based on his earlier marijuana trafficking charge
and now his attempted escape.
- I'm going to a supermax federal prison
where I'm gonna be buried alive until I die.
♪
- But the escape artist has one last trick up his sleeve.
- In the beginning,
I focused on finding loopholes in their security.
But ultimately,
I started finding loopholes in the system.
- After being sent
to the Federal Correctional Institution
in Victorville, California,
where was to serve a 35-year term,
Quawntay began the appeal process.
He hired lawyers and soon realized he could go it alone.
He fired his team, hit the books,
and became his own defense attorney.
The observer won his case in federal court
and was released from prison on July 24, 2020,
after serving 16 years of his 35-year sentence.
[upbeat music]
- The jail has granted me immediate release,
and I saw my daughter for the first time
as a free person.
♪
- Quawntay took full custody of his daughter
and began a new life.
- When Quawntay Adams won his appeal,
that was the most ultimate prison break
a man could ever want in life.
- Here I am, producing a movie,
published a book,
working with foundations
to help prevent other young people
from taking the same road that I did.
- Quawntay Adams offers a rare example
of someone beaten down by life and the system
who in the end, overcomes it all.
♪