Peanut Butter Caper: 12 Alabama Inmates Captured In Nutty Prison Break

The comical references to the 12 inmates who escaped an Alabama prison are never-ending today after their tool of choice for their great escape was discovered to be peanut butter. However, these inmates didn’t make sandwiches with the peanut butter — they found an ingenious way to escape using the nutty spread and by taking advantage of a brand new guard.

When you first hear that the inmates escaped using peanut butter, the image of them smearing themselves with the product and slipping through a tight space may have come to mind, but that wasn’t the case.

At a news conference in Jasper on Monday, Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood described the Alabama prison escape and the prisoners as follows.

“It may sound crazy, but these people are crazy like a fox.”

As WPIX 11 reports, “authorities in Alabama have finally put the lid on the unusual jailbreak.” All the prisoners were back in custody within eight hours on Sunday night, except for one. The last escaped inmate was taken back into custody Tuesday night. The prisoners actually made a run for it on Sunday night when they tricked a new guard at the jail.

All the escaped prisoners were captured within the Jasper area. According to Jasper Mayor David O’Mary, the inmates stayed together after their escape, which was the reason they were so easily apprehended in such a short period of time. Two of the escaped prisoners were serving time on allegations of attempted murder.

So how did the peanut butter dozen break out of jail?

They didn’t actually break out; instead, it was more like they walked out of the prison on Sunday night. These creative prisoners took advantage of a new guard working in the control room, which keeps track of 120 prisoners, according to WPIX 11.

According to Underwood, the prisoners changed the number over the door that leads to outside the prison to match a cell door number. They did this by using peanut butter. Then when all 12 were ready to make a dash for it, one of them hollered to the new guard, “Hey open cell number so-and-so.” That cell number they shouted out was really the outside door with a changed number. The guard opened the outside door believing he was opening one of the prisoner’s cells.

The prisoners walked out the door and made a run for it. Sheriff Underwood talked about the prisoners taking advantage of the new guard.

“The young man, he was a weak link and they knew it. … That’s it in a nutshell.”

Underwood was talking about the new guard being the weak link only because he was new. The sheriff considers the entire ordeal as a “mistake.”

Prison Break, Peanut Butter edition: Inmates Who Used Peanut Butter, and Guile, to Escape an Alabama Jail Are Caught https://t.co/xuhrO9NnTY

— Mario Zúñiga (@MZunigaP) August 2, 2017

Underwood conveyed how they house some “evil people” inside this jail. He also said the following about the inmates.

“And they scheme all the time to con us and our employees here at the jail. You have to stay on your toes. This is one time we slipped up. I’m not going to make any excuses. It was a human error that caused this to happen.”

In all, the great peanut butter caper took about 10 minutes for the inmates to make their escape. That was the time estimated by the sheriff. One inmate was in the hospital to “have his thumb sewn back on” after the razor wire cut it. The inmates needed to climb over this wire to make their escape. Other than the cut thumb, no injuries occurred during the jail break.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ft517g4aoA

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