The greatest – and strangest – prison breaks in history

Poor old Daniel Khalife. He must have thought his exit from HMP Wandsworth, hidden underneath a delivery van, would win ‘Most Creative Prison Escape of the Week’. But actually that title had already been nabbed by Danelo Cavalcante, who stood in a narrow external passageway at Pennsylvania’s Chester County prison, leaned forward so his hands were on the wall facing him, then placed his feet on the wall behind and ‘crab-walked’ upwards, his body parallel to the ground.

Khalife’s escape isn’t even the most inventive in Wandsworth’s history. His van was a normal one – the removals vehicle parked outside the prison by the team helping Ronnie Biggs in 1965 had a sliding panel cut into the roof and a platform lift inside, which the team extended to reach the top of the wall. For sheer Britishness, though, you need the spy George Blake’s escape from Wormwood Scrubs the following year.