Novel escape methods

Telegraph 21.3.01

Prisoner used foil to make blowtorch
By David Sapste

AN inmate's attempt to escape from a high security
prison using foil food trays and sachets of brown sauce
has been thwarted.
The bizarre plot was hatched by Nicholas Kelleher, 40,
an animal rights terrorist at Swaleside prison in Kent,
who has served almost half of a 10-year sentence for
explosive offences.

Inspired by a chemistry book borrowed from the prison
library, Kelleher's bid for freedom was only discovered
because he bragged to another prisoner that he had
already burned through one bar in his cell. The other
inmate then informed the prison authorities.

Kelleher, who was caught by officers at another prison
when he was in the middle of making a shotgun, cut up
the foil food trays to form a connection with the single
electricity socket that his cell contained.

Although the exact details have not been disclosed, it
is understood that the prison's plastic sachets of brown
sauce served as an earth as he used the makeshift torch
to cut through the two-inch bars. A Prison Service
spokesman would only comment yesterday: "We have started
an investigation following an escape attempt."

Kelleher, 40, from Ilford, east London, was convicted at
Basildon Crown Court in 1996 on seven counts of conspiracy
to cause explosions. He is due to be sectioned under the
Mental Health Act and sent to Broadmoor, according to
sources at the prison.

Comment:

This was very enterprising of the guy! Of course, the technical aspects of the case are totally wrong from this. Here is how I see it...

A very clever, if somewhat mis-guided fellow, he obviously owned at some point, an arc welder. Using the foil, he passed a terrific current via the fine edge. This heats the metal to the point of melting, and steel flows like water. The brown sauce was used as a filler for a resistor, in order to prevent the fuse from blowing. Given the noise and smell, not to mention the flickering lights, I can only assume his cell-mate was in on it too! I wonder if he knows that trick with non-diary whitener?

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