Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Real Prison Escape Story That Inspired "Midnight Express"

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Go to https://ground.news/Inside for abetter way to stay informed. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access to world-wide coverage through my link.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Billy Hayes was arrested and jailed for trying to smuggle 4½ pounds of hashish out of Turkey in 1970. Caught at the airport as he was about to board his US bound plane, he spent five years in jail in Turkey. He escaped from prison and upon his return to the US wrote a book titled Midnight Express, which Oliver Stone turned into a movie.⁣ ⁣ Billy's Site https://ridingthemidnightexpresswithbillyhayes.com⁣ ⁣ ⁣ F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code COX15 at theperfectjean.nyc/COX15 #theperfectjeanpod ⁣ https://theperfectjean.nyc⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ 📧Sign up to my newsletter to learn about Real Estate, Credit, and Growing a Youtube Channel: https://mattcoxcourses.com/news⁣ ⁣ 🏦Raising & Building Credit Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/credit ⁣ 📸Growing a YouTube Channel Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/yt⁣ 🏠Make money with Real Estate Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/re⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the the Cadillac definition of luxury. I'm now looking at the rest of my life in prison. I'm going to escape one way or the other. I'm getting out. I had heard of the movie Midnight Express. So I just watched it for the first time. I do have a lot of questions.

But is it possible that you could maybe just explain and I could ask as we go along if that's not too. I can, anything you like. And again, once I get babbling about this, you have to cut me off. Usually I have my wife around at a party or something. And then she'll like step on my foot or give me an elbow like, you know, you're revving into the red zone, slow down. Because I tell people all the time, you just have to walk away. Yeah. I tell people when they're talking about my listen, bro, you're just going to have to walk away because I'm just going to keep talking.

Right. You're not going to have to me. So interject, stop me, focus me anywhere you want. And literally, any question you want to ask, I jokingly used to say to people, ask me something I've never been asked before. because I've done this. You know, since the moment I was busted in 1970, I escaped in 1975, I stepped off the plane at Kennedy Airport into 100 reporters. I've been in jail for five years.

My big media event was like the mail coming through the door once a week, if you got mail. And suddenly, I got 100 people asking me questions and yell it. And it never stopped. I'm still doing it. My idea of getting out of jail eventually was I wanted, just a nice quiet place. In fact, I wanted to go to, my dream was to go to a little beach in south of Rabat in Morocco, where I always visioned, I have a nice quiet place and a woman who just wanted to make love and swim and eat fruit. And when I escaped, that little beach in

Morocco was in the middle of a war zone and they literally were fighting back and forth. So, you know, expectations always lead me to a fall anyway. But getting home was weird. stepping off the plane, suddenly everybody's talking to me. Well, can we start at the beginning, like, just to start, like, where you were born, you know, how you ended up in Turkey, right? I was born in the Bronx, in 1947. Jesus, I can't believe in that old. I wake up, I keep thinking I'm 18 till I look in the mirror or start to move.

And it's like, oh, no, no, no, that was a long time ago. A friend of mine came back from Istanbul. This was a 1969. His dad did travel to world. It was a wine distributor. My friend came back from Istanbul, and he had a little chunk of hash. Best we had ever smoked hidden in his money belt. And we smoked it, and he said, it's cheap.

It's easy. They sell it right on the street. It's like, really? And I started thinking, and I was working as a child psychiatric aid. How I got that job is just too long a story. At the local hospital in Milwaukee at Marquette University, where I went to school, journalism school, always wanted to be a writer. Jack London is my hero. And wandering around the hospital, I passed what was like the cast room. And I see a doctor dipping a roll of plaster of Paris tape

into water and wrapping it around this patient's broken leg. And an idea came to me. And two weeks later, I was in an Istanbul hotel room. I had two kilos of hash plaques, best incredible hash tape to my leg. And I was dipping the roll of plaster of parastatement of water, wrapping it around the hash and watching as this rough, bulky, but beautiful white cast took shape. I spent the rest of the night smoking hash watching the cast dry. And next day, I'm clomping across the Istanbul airport up to the customs guy with this cast on my life. I was 21, the first time I smuggled. I actually smuggled four times, three successful.

And I couldn't say that when I was. I got home and got busted in the fourth. I should have stopped when I was ahead. But who does that? Especially when you're young. And I got, I smuggled, I smuggled, I smuggled. And the fourth trip in October 1970, the PLO had just hijacked and blown up some jets out in the Jordanian desert, the beginning of all this airport security and control. Before this, nobody got searched boarding an aeroplane.

You could walk on a plane with a chicken under your arms. Nobody bothered you. Now they were bothering people. They were searching. And I saunter out there. I've got two kilos of hash plaques strapped all over my body. I'm real skinny, so it fit. And I put a sweater on.

And I got to the airport. And I actually went out the day before to watch people. You could usually be able to do that. Go up on the observation deck and watch people going through customs and getting on the plane. Not now, of course. But I went out the day before because I'm thinking airport security has got to be increased since they just blew up these jets up in the desert. And I watched people going through customs.

Nobody was getting searched. They didn't have to be metal detectors. I figured, piece of cake. And I actually headed back to this English girl who was studying belly dancing here in exotic, erotic Istanbul, instead of going up on the observation deck as I planned and watching people until I actually got on the plane. So next day, I show up. I've got my two killers of hash plaques strapped under my sweater. and I go through customs. Nobody searches me. I'm sitting downstairs in the waiting room,

which is kind of odd, but it was okay because, you know, James Bond, I'm through customs. I'm feeling fine. Again, this is my fourth trip. I figure I'm invincible. After the first trip at the hash, I'm in the cast on my leg, I could do anything. I was invincible. I could, so I kept doing it. And suddenly, I'm in the downstairs room on my fourth trip. And then they put us on a bunch of old buses to take us out to the plane, which is a little bit out on the airport, which, again, it's a little bit odd, but no problem. And this little old lady from Chicago is talking to me, telling me about her grandson who's stationed here in the Air Force and how much she likes Istanbul. And then the bus stops. And I look out the window. And there's Turkish soldiers

with rifles surrounding the plate. And they've got a long brown table set up in front of the boarding ramp, with two cops on each side where apparently they're going to search people getting on the plane. Like, what? It was, I was so surprised. They could have knocked me over. I dropped to the floor, pretending I've lost my passport because I need time to think. And then this little old lady says, your passport, it's right there in your top pocket. It's like, thanks. And I'm out the door and all of these men are funneling down around the table on both sides. And there's nowhere to go. I can't unstrap this shit. I got it all over my chest. And all I could do. And I couldn't get back to the airport. All could do is bluff my way onto the plane. That's where I've gotten myself at this

point. Real quick, was in the movie you were with your girlfriend. Yeah, they did that so you'd establish her beforehand. No, I was not. I was by myself each of these times. Okay. I tried to bluff my way. They were moving down and I kind of moved through the bunch of men and I circle around the first cop and then sideline past the second cop, putting my yoga book back into in my shoulder pack as if I've already been searched and I point indicating the first cop got me. And just at that point, the other cop here finished with another passenger and caught my cop's eye who points to me like, did you search him? And the first cop shakes his head, no, and the grip on my elbow tightens as this nervous young cop out here looking for terrorists.

They're not looking for hash smugglers. He realizes, I just lied to him. So he pulls me aside and he gestures lift your arms, which I do, and he starts to search me. And he hits the hard plaques under my arms. And he keeps going. And he hits the hard plaques, take to my waist. And he keeps going down my legs. I find myself praying. Please, Jesus, get me out of here. I will never do this shit again. But this is a Muslim country. I'm praying to the wrong God anyway. And this time, the cop comes up. And he hits the heart plaques under my arms. And he freezes. And his eyes widened. And he drops to the ground. picks this pistol out and starts screaming, bomber, bomber!

And all the soldiers bring their rifles down. And the people are screaming and collapsing. And I'm frozen there waiting to be shocked. The cop, now the cop is really freaked. The shaking gun is pressing into my stomach. This young cop lifts up my sweater. And it takes him a moment to realize it's not a mad bomber wired with explosives, just some idiot out here smuggling hash.

I can see the people. tension go out of his face. It's like, hashish. And he screamed. He says, hashish, hash. And he pulls the gun from my stomach. And all the soldiers put their rifles down so relieved and everybody so relieved, except me, because that was the beginning of a very long five years. They put me, they drug me into the police station at the airport and the private soldiers and cops. And they ripped the hash from my chest. They ripped the hash from around my waist and they pile it up out front. And all these soldiers are there and then the couple of cops start talking me, you know, name William Hayes, William, and they write that then and the door opens another cop, but two stars on his shoulder

comes in and he, what's your name? William Hayes, and they started writing this down. It was the beginning of what was the most bizarre and difficult five years of my life, but also it was the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me. Prison, life was so easy for me. Markett University Journalism School, the 60s. I love the 60s. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, free love, no AIDS. I love the 60s. It was the start of a very long five years. So did you realize at that moment, like, I'm in a lot of trouble. Like, this is a big, big deal here. You know, I knew those moments where you literally know your life is hanging in the balance. When I tried to get onto the plane and I made that first step. when this cop grabbed my elbow, I knew this is the moment where my life is hanging in the balance. And, you know, once he hit the plaque, once he searched me and hit the plaques and everybody was screaming.

And it was a very rude awakening to reality. That's how stupid I was. That's because, you know, again, I got away with it the first time. I told you, I put a cast on my leg and I clomp through customs in Istanbul with this cast on my leg with all the hash in it. When I got to New York, I was clomping across New York airport heading towards the U.S. Customs and I see a little trail of white flakes. And I realize my cast is crumbling beneath me. But they just stamp my passport, wave me through. Yay, I made it. Not quite the flawless planning I'd hope for, but now I'm back. And I'm selling hash

to all my friends and making a chunk of money. You get laid a lot. You're talking about the summer of love. I was six months later, I went back to Dinda Dubble because I'd run out of money. I was making, I don't know, back. It was about $5,000 is the profit I made off this, which doesn't seem like a lot of money for the risk I was taking. But again, I was 21 and that was a lot of money back then. And I was footloose, fancy free. I didn't have any obligations. I didn't, I wasn't married, a lot of girlfriends, but I wasn't married. I didn't have anybody back waiting for me. I get lost when I start telling you were you were you had been caught and I asked if

if you realized how it you know how serious the charges were so they caught you they asked you a bunch of asked you your name and everything so now you've got to be you're actually incarcerated at this point yeah how long before you go in front of a judge um I was at the airport for a couple of hours then they took me to uh temporary prison which I spent the day and that night in my first night in jail, in this old beat-up Sultan-Amet jail prison, and the next day they took me out to the big prison where I spent almost four years

before I transferred off that prison to an island prison. I bribed the... Everything in Turkey is Bakshish. Probably old, you know, Bukh. You have money you can buy anything. You can do virtually anything in prison. And I had money and I arranged with my friend the prison doctor, who I've been bribing for the last four years, making friends with,

the American Council would come out to visits and bring me cartons of Marlborough, which were forbidden in Turkey back then for some reason. And I would take the carton of Marlborough and give them to one of the big head guards, which means we're kind of friends. And then, you know, if you and I are in jail and they find something like a piece of hash on the floor, and I've been bribing the guard every couple of weeks with the carton Marlboro, and you haven't, guess who's hash that is? It's yours. Everything. Everything in jail works like that.

So it seemed to me that was going to work okay until I got busted and I got thrown in the jail. And then everybody worked for me. I had lawyers from the United States eventually would come and work. And people kept thinking, you know, well, you'll get out because an American, there was a big article in American papers about an American can buy his way out of any prison sentence in Turkey. which wasn't true to start with and certainly wasn't true for me. And again, this was the beginning of the war on drugs. I got busted because Richard Nixon started the war on drugs and when pressuring Turkey and all of the other countries that the U.S. gave money to,

which is everybody, to increase their drug penalties. So I stepped right into the worst place I could possibly be. And there I was with four kilos of hash, two kilos of hash, 4.4 pounds of hash, the best hash. The guy I got it from in Istanbul was a Kurd. He's part of the ethnic groups that are in Turkey. In fact, Kurds say they're not Turks. They are.

They live in Turkey, but they're ethnic. And they live in the eastern part of Turkey, sort of in the highland, the mountains, and they grow the best hash. That's the climate, the soil. Everything is like that. So I had the best hash you could get out of Turkey. When I brought my hash back, I went to Marquette. University of Milwaukee. I took, I went to Milwaukee. Everybody was like, what? They couldn't believe

how good this hash was. People said, well, how do you go about selling it? You don't have to go about. You just sit there. People come to you. People, the word got out. Crazy. That was my nickname for some reason at college. People say, crazy's back. And I'm a chess player. So I have a chess set. I open up. There's a board you lift out where the pieces are. I was cutting these chunks of hash. I could cut it. I could balance it right down to a gram. I knew perfectly.

So I cut all these chunks of hash, put them in the bottom of my chest set, went to the park. I would sit in the park playing chess with people and lifting these little grams of hash out and selling them. And taking the money and my hash, I kept my hash and my money in a safety deposit box in the bank. I didn't know how to write a check. I literally had never written a check at this point. So I had my cash and my hash in a safety deposit box, and it worked very well the first time. After six months, I was running out of money.

So I went back and did it again. Second trip, I didn't use the cast since it was crumbling underneath me by the time I got back on my first trip. I just taped it to my body and jumped on the fabled Orient Express train and chugged out of Istanbul, heading west towards Paris. And six months later, I was out of muddy again, and I went back for my third trip. By now, I've fallen in love with Istanbul. I love Istanbul. People say, well, you must hate Turkey because I actually don't. I love Istanbul. I had a Turkish girlfriend. I love the city. I love the hash.

I'm not real happy with their government now for the last 20 years with this authoritarian dictator that they have. Erdogan, but that's a whole other issue. You ever read a headline and think, wait, that's not what I read. earlier or hear a story that was covered two totally different ways and think, I wonder which one's telling the truth. We all know the news can be biased. Algorithms push stories that they think you want to see. And some outlets spin stories to fit a certain agenda. It's exhausting trying to figure out what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just straight up misinformation. That's why I use ground news. It's a news platform that doesn't just show you the headlines. It shows you the whole

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Back then, it was in a magic place, a magic time. I smuggled it the third time. Six months later, I should have stopped. I went back. And that was what I told you from the beginning. The PLO had just hijacked the jets and started all this airport control. Now it's normal. But back then, nobody did that.

Nobody searched yet on a plane. Right. So how long were you locked up before like the embassy showed up or your parents found out and did they get you an attorney? I was locked. They busted me at the airport. For a couple of hours, I was out there dealing with stuff and getting searched and strip searched and all the weird shit that happens in the beginning.

And then the next day, they, they chained me up and took me to the big, big prison, some module of a big place. And I spent my first three. and a half, four years in that prison. At first, I was in an individual cell, you know, 12 feet long, stone, a little hole in the floor in the back for your toilet. I always have to keep a can or a rock over it, keep the rats from scurrying up at night. They do anyway. And I hated that little cell. I hated being locked in at night. I hated being in that little cage. And then about the beginning of my second year, they suddenly moved us into a big barracks like set up. And I realized,

Once again, like everything else in life, I took everything good for granted. I didn't appreciate that little cell because being locked up by yourself at night is bad, but it's really good compared to a big room with 72 beds and, you know, three holes in the floor at the far end. And there's always more prisoners than that. So people are always sleeping on the floor or under the bunks or on the downstairs table. What's it? Jean-Pol Sartre talks about hell being other people. Always people, always watching, always waiting, always aware. That drove me crazy. I mean, a lot of things drawing.

Yeah. How long until your lawyer and the embassy showed up? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting so ahead of myself. The second day, a third day, there was somebody from the American council who came out there. Actually, he was a Turkish guy who spoke terrific English. He worked for the council. And he asked me how I'm doing, you know, am I okay?

meaning what happened to you the first night in jail there? He was okay. He worked for the council. He gave me some advice. He gave me some a list of lawyers to look at, you know, a bunch of Turkish names. I can't even pronounce. He pretty much said, you're going to be here for a while. Everything he told me about my situation was quite discouraging. But, you know, I'm wanting good news. He doesn't happen. And I'm glad he didn't give me bullshit because I needed to start facing reality. I didn't do that. I was, again, I was at college.

I was young. I was dumb. I was full of come. I'd do anything I knew I could get away with until suddenly the world crashed on my head and forced me, again, prison was the worst. But prison forced me to grow up and to take responsibility for my actions and realize I I just can't run wild and not worry about the consequences. And the first morning that that guy was out at the lockup before they took me to the big prison,

he, at one point, he gave me a pencil and a piece of yellow paper and left me alone in this little locked room to write a letter home to my folks. And that's when I was forced to face the reality of what I've done. I wasn't thinking about anybody. I could get away with anything. and suddenly I realized I've just put my family in prison. I just 50 years. Every time I talk about it, 50 years later, it gets me.

My mom went to sleep with pain in her heart every night because of me. And like, that shit, that was the hardest part of jail for me. I was 23 when I went in and 28 when I escaped. And I was in good health and I was really strong and healthy. I used to do martial arts and shit. I didn't worry about that part of jail. I mean, you deal with it. one man the dirt and such i don't care about that what really got me was my parents all the people

who love me was suffering like i was and i was just that was one of the many lessons that uh was forced upon me that i needed to learn about taking responsibility for your actions because you have to live with the consequences and i never considered the consequences until it was too late did you have any i mean did you realize like when the guy from the consulate comes and he's talking to you Are you still saying like what kind of time am I looking at? Like I mean, at what point do you realize? In the movie, they discussed like, look, well, there's possession and there's trafficking. Like you want to be charged with possession.

Right. You get three or four years. You'll be fine. That's pretty much what happened. Originally, I was sentenced to, I went to court 14 times. They have a prison system. You're not, again, I took everything for granted. I didn't appreciate the guilty till proven innocent part of American jail.

Turkey is a little different. They assign you a percentage of guilt. In my case, it was 100%. And then you have to argue your way back towards innocence. So I didn't appreciate it. And I thought one way or the other, I'm going to get out. I'm going to go free. That was not happening.

I got sentenced originally to four years and two months, which still left me more than two years of prison, which felt like forever. Again, this is the beginning. Now two years is different than what it was, back then. And I just, one way or the other, I'm going to get out. So I talked to everybody I could. You know, that's a preoccupation in jail. Most jails is, everybody's got escape plan. So they know if you do this or if you go there. But I literally learned the best escape routes near the Greek

border. And there's a river that comes down from Bulgaria, separate Turkey from Greece. I knew if I could swim across that river, again, I'm a swimmer. I used to be an ocean life garden. If I could, if I could get off this island, which I know I can do, I can swim one way or the other, I'll get off this island. If I can make it to Greece, I'll be free. Because the Greeks and Turks have been, you know, enemies for a thousand years. They will never send me back to Turkey. Not for two kilos of hashish. You know, if I killed someone, that's different, which is one of the things I had to consider in the escape plans, which, you know, do I want a gun? Do I want a gun? You got money. You can buy a gun. You can buy anything. If you got a gun. But if I've got a gun and the guards got a gun, somebody's going to get shot. Either me or if I shoot him, aside from the you know, the carmic implications of killing another human being. Legally, I wouldn't be free anywhere in the world. I'd have to, like, hang out in Uruguay or somewhere. So I didn't buy a gun.

Well, when you, so I don't know how accurate the film, the film is, but there were a couple of characters that are kind of like your buddies hanging out with you. And initially, you get like four years. And you're just kind of sticking it out. You're like, eh, I'm going to stick it out. That's how it seemed new. When I got the four years, I still, no, I'm going to escape. One way or the other, I'm getting out.

And I tried various things. I got myself transferred to a, who I've been a lot of places in my life, but nothing comes close to Bakukoi Mental Hospital. It's a big hospital on the grounds of Istanbul and with many, my big, big hospital, a lot of different sections. And one of the sections was Section 13 for the criminally insane. You got to do some bad stuff, probably mostly to be a prisoner. To be criminally insane, you've got to do some really bad stuff.

But for me, that was the perfect place to go because I learned as a clause in the Turkish law that says, if you're judged to be crazy, they can't keep you in prison. But if you're that crazy, they don't put you on the street. They put you in Bacakakoi. But I know that's got to be a better place to escape from than the big. big Samajala prison with the walls and the wire and everything that I've been in all these years. So I got myself transferred to bribe the prison doctor, of course, and got myself transferred to Bakakoi Mental Hospital, the idea of convincing them that I'm crazy, I get a crazy

report, they'll keep me there. And the place we were in was this, it was walled, it was originally of barracks for the Sultan's Janussari troops. That's how old this building was. And the walls were crumbling with the barbed wire on top of it is all rustles. and such, but it was a good place for me to escape from. So, at least I thought. So I wanted to get to this crazy hospital and convince them and get a crazy report. And then I got there and I looked at the competition. I mean, crazy is just a word until you live in and among crazy, really crazy people. Again, I wasn't too much worried about the physical stuff. I can deal with that. I'm too, I'm too, smart for the tough guys and I'm too tough for the smart guys. So people pretty much left me alone.

My first night that I was locked up in this big prison, this prison trustee guy, this weasily fuck who works for the guards and tries to run things. He puts me in a, my very first night, puts me in this bare empty cell with no blanket, a little metal frame bed with wood planks. And you know, it was cold. I told this guy, you know, I get a blanket. He says, yeah, yeah, tomorrow, tomorrow and he's fumbling around a big jangling key ring trying to find the right one to lock the prison again this is 1969 1970 there's no electronics there's no internet they don't have buzzers to open the doors they're they got big keys so this guy's fumbling around this key ring trying to find the right one and i see he gives up i don't think my cell is really locked and i hear him jangle off and when they jangled

away i hear from the next cell I opened my door. The guy in the next cell, who I actually had met a couple hours earlier when I first got here, he gives me a stick with a big nail in the end. And he tells me blankets last set, a big German guy. So I sneak down to the last cell and I hope a blanket and I hope another blanket and I come back and I give him a blanket, give him back his stick, close my door, curl up and collapse on my bed, exhausted from no, no sleep for two days. And I just collapsed. and then the door slams open. And this amine guy come charging into my cell, yelling and screaming.

He's grabbing my blanket. And again, I'm not real big, but I used to be very fast and nasty. And I'm scared, shipless. And I nail this guy in the face. Bam! He goes down. Oh, fuck. His nose is bleeding.

He's screaming for the guard. The guards are rushing and they're dragging me out. I'm trying to explain in English, which they don't speak. He woke me up. He hit me first. All they know is new guy. First night. in a fight lesson needs to be taught and they have a form of punishment in turkey all the middle

east called falaka where they tie up your feet and drag you up and they beat your feet with a stick they did that scene pretty good in the movie scared the shit on me watching it and brad of course he said they were hitting me brad davis the actor who played me who i love and i miss immensely he's long gone now but brad said the hey i found that afterwards brad told me he said that the director Alan Parker, the guard who was beating my feet with the stick said, you know, I don't want to hurt him. And Alan said, you can hurt him a little bit. We need, we need these things. And Brad said, he beat the shit out of my feet, got all bruises. But the scene works because of that. That's a great scene, by the way. And what you just portrayed is very well portrayed in the movie. It happens right away. But it's funny. A lot of the scenes that you're things you're describing, they, they, it's not quite. quite in the movie, they do it.

The chronological order is different because I'm sure they have to consolidate. They have to be more streamlined. Sure. And they have to, you know, I was in there for five years. They got to pick and choose just as I did writing the book. What scenes do I take? When I first came back, I'm a writer. It's what I wanted to do.

It's what I always done. It's why I went out into the world to experience life so I could write about it. Surprise, surprise. I got my books published, but not the way I expected them to be. But because he beat my feet and they dragged me back, because this guy, Ziat, I keep changing the names from the book to the movie. But this guy walked around the prison with a big black eye in a swollen face, which, again, I didn't, I wasn't happy getting my feet beaten. But that really served me well around jail because, you know, people said, what happened to Ziat? Because this eye, it got really black.

I really hit him strong in the nose. His face went out. people said, well, the new guy, Willie, which is my name in jail, the Willie. And then they come and they see me. I weigh 150 pounds. They say, this guy, B.B.M. Z. It was really helpful because if they're looking for somebody to fuck with, they'll pick somebody else. They gave me a little edge. Again, everything in jail is attitude. And that gave me an attitude that helped me in prison for a while. My feet were fucked up for a couple of days, old bruised and swollen, but a small price to pay for the balance of people left me alone for the most part. Again, I'm too smart for the tough guys.

I can talk to them. I can work my way and too tough with anybody else. I can deal with that. And it gave me a little edge that helped me a bit in jail. I mean, at what point, so in the movie, you get whatever, you get four years and change, right? And then at some point, like, I don't know if this is, this was to me killed me. Because as you know, your time's etching away and it's, you know what I'm saying? I know. And then suddenly you're like, I'm out of here in like 45 days. I had a calendar.

I had a calendar. I was crossing out the day is 56, 55, 55, 54 days prior to going free. The American Council showed up for an unexpected visit. And I think, yay, the Turks will let me out early. And as soon as I see his face, I know it's bad news. I'm worried. Somebody at home. Somebody's sick.

Somebody hurt my family. not me, I'm free in 54. I'm out of here in my mind already. I mean, gone. And then he said, Billy, you know, the American council and the pressure, the Turkish government,

and the high court in Ankara has rescinded your original sentence. And now you're going to go back to court and you will be given a life sentence. So that's what I said. So instead of going free at 54 days, I'm now looking at the rest of my life in prison, which the same judge,

when they brought me back, I had a chance to speak before being sentenced to life in prison. The same judge who originally sentenced me to four years and two months was now forced by the high court to sentence me to life. This judge said, I wish I had retired before I had to do this. He held his hands up. He said, Kalepsi, I mean, like, I'm tied by the high court to issue this verdict. He had to give me a life sentence, the Mohabat, life. The only prerogative he had was he could lower that to 30 years, which he did. thanks I guess 30 years life wasn't much of a difference for me but at that point I'd been to I've been in there four years or so I tried the madhouse to escape I tried other stuff none of which worked and at one point I had my best friend Norman came to help me get out seeing how the the

madhouse was set up with the old broken down walls I climbed like a squirrel I could have got up I need somebody on the outside with clothes and a car and a false passport and the balls to come and do this. And that was my friend Norman. So he was working the fishing boats off Alaska. He gave up everything. He came to Istanbul. We talked a little bit. He got a good job in the John Deere Tractor factory in Mannheim, Germany, making the money and organizing.

We need for the big break. He had to get a car. He had to get a false passport and so on. Norman was a poet and a writer and he was the kind of guy that women just wouldn't leave him below. He's the guy that you'd go out somewhere, you send Norman out and he'd find three or four girls and he'd bring them back. They just loved Norman. So he was willing to do that. He went to Mannheim.

I was constantly with my prison friend, the doctor. Then I got a telegram from dad saying that Norman was found. dead in his hotel room in Mannheim with an army bayonet through his chest. Which, who, he was, I got in a letter from Norman from, from Mannheim telling me, you know, we're making plans, write it code and such. But he was telling me how he was baffin the wife, this American army sergeant from the nearby base, typical Norman. And somehow or other, it's, uh, the sergeant, I guess, didn't appreciate what was going on and put a bayonet through his chest. in this hotel room. The German government at first said that it was a

he's got this big bayonet. It was just and I know this guy. He's not going to commit suicide. He's coming to help me escape. That's how but he was wanted and he was full of life. He was just full of life. But when he when he died that pretty much took the bottom out of my world. Things have been bad but that was that was the low point. At that point I realized not only have I I fucked up my own life and causing my parents and everybody who loves me daily pain. But now my best friend has died because of me. And I just said, I need to grow up.

I need to make some decisions. And I need to take responsibility for me, for what I'm doing. And I turn the escape switch off. I said, I'll do my time. I'll finish my sentence. I'll learn my lesson. 30 years? No, no, no. This is before the situation. This is before I even got the 30 years. This is still

four years. I had about two years plus and Norman was going to get me out. When he died, I said, you know what? How selfish can I be? I fucked up my life and everybody who loves me or in jail with me. I'll just, I'll stop. I'll do my time. I'll take responsibility for myself and I'll spend the next two years here. And I turned the escape switch, which was on from the moment I got arrested. Escape, escape, escape. I've turned that off. And that changed everything.

Prison literally became a different place. I mean, I'm seeing it with new eyes. I'm a little Japanese guy, Koji, calmest guy in prison. He used to talk to me about trying to get me to live in the moment. He said, just take care each little minute. each little minute and apparently the hours and the days and the years take care of themselves. And I remember William James from college philosophy who said, William James said, people can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.

And I did. I altered my attitude, which changed everything. Suddenly, it's weird. I was enjoying prison. I was living in the moment. I was enjoying being alive. And I knew I'll do my time. And it made life so much different. I wasn't always there.

I was so anxious. I could be calm a bit. I used to do, I did yoga every day. And I did meditation. And now that I've only got only two years or so left, I can handle that. I can just do that. And it made, it changed me. It changed the prison.

It changed everything. And I was happy to spend my time and do the time. And, you know, after Norman was gone, I thought, I'm so selfish. I need to change my attitudes. And I did. And that made things very different. I was, I did a lot of writing in jail. I wrote poetry.

I wrote story. You did it too. Everybody's in jail. I was a writer before I got there. That's what I did. That's what I always wanted to do. So I have thousands of letters every, every, every day. I wrote letters more than five years.

And I've got notes and stuff. And I was putting together what was going to become something. some kind of book or rather. And I was, I was calm in a way that I had not been since I, since I got busted. And that helped. And the days were ticking away, the calendar was ticking, and 54 days, as I told you, that's when the council came and said, bad news. And now you're going to look at going to prison, you're going to go to court, you're going to get sentenced to life. and the escape switch slipped back on because now, now there's no question.

Even my dad who'd been telling me for all these years, stay calm, don't do anything foolish, don't make it worse than you already have. And my dad's a smart guy. He was giving me good advice. But even he knew I'm not staying. So two months later, my dad showed up at the prison. Shue, my dad worked for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

He taught at NYU. He was teaching early X's and O's I used to call. He taught early computer shit. If he had stayed in that, he had a guy who worked with him in the Met who was going off on his own to get into this IT stuff. And nobody even knew what it was back then. And my dad was, I guess he was a programmer to some degree. And he learned how to do that. And this guy wanted him to go with him and start the new company.

But my dad had been working for 20, 30 years at the Met, which Metropolitan Life Insurance was they called it Mother Met. because once you get there, they take care of you, they get your insurance. He's got three kids he's raising, so he couldn't take the chance. Oh, I wish he had. I'd be one of those young rich guys who their dads are billionaires. Maybe it would have changed my attitude towards life. I'd like to have given it a try, but I didn't have the choice. And it, God, I get so caught up in this shit.

It's been 50 years. So he showed up. He knew. He knew you were going. He knew there's no way this. this kits. I convinced him to, I coaxed him into staying for the past three or four years here, but I know damn well he's not dying. He's not going to be able to die. He brought me a photo album. He had cut the back of big photo album, pictures of my family, my friend, my beautiful sister in a

cheerleader outfit. In the back of the photo album, he cut it open and he pasted $27,100 bills in the back of this photo album. Fixed it up, perfect, and brought it into me. When you, when you have visits if you have, normally you're between glass and stuff, but you can get certain visits out in the side room if you got family or the council comes and you talk and whatever they give you, you have to bring back into the jail. And of course, the guards search everything before they take it in. And I had this photo album. And when I went back back into the prison, I went past the guard. They said, what did you got here? I said, oh, I've got a gun and some hash. You have to be around for a while. You've got to know the guard. You got to be able to play the game. And they kind of like laughed at that.

And they looked at the photo album and I showed him. Here's my beautiful sister in a Chilean. And he said, your father does he works for, he works in New York. Can I get a job? If I get to New York, could your father get me a job? It's like, guys, whatever you like. And I took the photo album and brought it back into the prison. And I just laid it on my bunk, left it there, showed other people.

Here's my sister. Here's my family. One thing, people to see this and feel okay about it. Because I didn't want to have to like everybody hiding it. Prison is so, well, you know, prison is so. boring, the same people, the same, same clothes. We didn't, we didn't have outfits in prison. Everybody wears their own clothes. So everybody's in there, in their own clothes. And there's, they're talking about the same shit every day. They got the same food, the same, it just becomes so fucking

boring. I put the photo up in my bed. I let people go through it and look at it. I wanted them to feel all right with it. Because I knew that I'm going to eventually cut out that money and use that money to get out. And that's what I did. And I got myself transferred to an island prison, 26 kilometers off the coast in the Sea of Marmer. And I knew this prison was considered half open. People work there. It's a prison island. And they bring produce, boats from the mainland come over. Turkey has incredible fruits and vegetables. I don't even know what they are. I know the names in Turkish. And we brought them up, and we on the island, supposedly short-termers went to the island. So, they're not going to escape because they've only got, what, half a year or a year, whatever.

I got to the island and I told everybody and they believed that they said, you have a life sentence, 30 years? No, nobody gets that. Well, nobody ever got it until I did. And unfortunately, a couple of American women, that's when the Turkish government increased their penalties because of Richard Nixon and the pressure from the U.S. government to increase their drug laws, have beginning of the insanity of 30 years of drug laws, putting people away, destroying their lives for cannabis for fucking pot. I mean, please. So they, I kept that.

More like 50. Yeah, yeah. Or whatever you're going to get. They're still giving guys 15 and 20, 20, 25 years for a $10 crack rock. Yeah. What's you doing? This is some kid that. grew up in the projects. He's selling crack to, you know, on the corner and you just

keep 20 years? Yeah. That's from the day I've got home, the very, whatever else I would talk about, I'd always say, one message, which is stop putting our kids in prison for pot. You're destroying their life. Everybody who loves them, you're destroying their life. You're crowding the prison. You're corrupting the legal system. The insanity of the war on drugs. I'm still talking about it, and it's almost over. But it's not over. there's still people inside right now as we speak as you know and people are getting busted for cannabis which i you know that's beyond me anyway i had the the money this episode is brought to you by loreal group beauty is a powerful force that moves us that's why loreal group has built a business

that is inclusive at its heart with 100 percent of its brands championing diversity with 25 000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54 percent of leading positions held by women. Diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal Group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit L'Oreal.com to learn more. Hear that? It's your money calling.

It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-S-A to learn more. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. I got myself, a bribe the prison doctor, my buddy now,

and he got me on like a mental discharge because I was just, I was so crazy having this life center, a 30-year sentence, and he got me transferred to this island prison, again, 26 kilometers off the coast in the Sea of Marmara. And I knew if I could get there, I'm a swimmer, I'm a lifeguard, one way or the other, I'm going to get out. And I was there for a couple of months working, carrying produce and stuff back from the boats would come over from the mainland, unload their produce. We'd bring them up to the canning factory up on the hill, cheap labor, where we did the canning.

And then we'd bring the cans back to them and they would take it back. These prison boats, I mean, the boats with the produce, they were not allowed to spend the night on the island because it's a prison island. Except as I noticed one day, there was a storm building. At lunch one day, I climbed, I took a break from the cans, and I climbed the hill, and I was sitting there looking down at the harbor, and this storm is approaching. It's out at sea now, and the big storm is approaching, and I could see the boats were actually anchoring for the night, and each boat had a little wooden dinghy tied behind. Again, I thought about swimming, and at first, you know, 26 kilometers after five years in jail, that's a long way to swim. I was desperate enough. Desperate men do desperate things.

was ready to do anything, but I didn't want to be stupid about it. So I waited and I saw these boats. If I can get, so I had to wait till the next storm. I'd arranged to get past the night bed check. Again, I could run, go off in all directions. Stop me when you need me to move on. They have no, no, you're good. I mean, I wonder, you know, people listening to this, like to me, I'm, to me, in in prison they have count. Like at four o'clock, everybody gets counted. And when you're saying the night bed check, I'm assuming, because I'm picturing the unit I was in,

and I'm thinking of the CO sitting, the correctional officer, sitting in his office at the end of this huge room where all our beds are, you have to basically get past him to get out of the unit. Not that you could in federal prison. The doors are a lot. There's multiple layers of doors. But anyway, I mean, it's like as you're saying this,

I do have a couple of questions I want to ask. Yeah. Can I ask real quick? I was going to wait until the end. No, no, no. Stop me because I just ramble on and then I find something else and suddenly I'm gone. No, no. I'm following it.

And I like that it's different than the movie, that your version, you're giving better details. Because some of the stuff didn't make sense. So for example, in the movie, you've got, I want to say, is it Dennis Quaid? Not Dennis Quaid. It's his brother who plays. Randy Quaid. Randy, he's great. Crazy, but great.

He plays crazy in the, oh, he's crazy in real life too. Yeah, he is, unfortunately. So he and another guy, another great actor. Brad Davis, John Hurt. Yeah, that was, this is the one in the where you guys, I want to feel like it's like a restroom area where you guys cut out the blocks. Yes. And go down.

I was always wondering if that one, if it was a really, if that is a real thing. And two, the catacombs in the in the movie, it's, this is a bad scene. It's not a good, it's not good the way they set it up. Because you guys go down there and you're wandering around, which one, I can't imagine it was as large and clear and clean as it looked in the movie. But two, you guys are wandering around down there. And I guess you can't figure out a way out of this whole thing.

Right. And then you get. But in the movie, doesn't show that. It just shows you it clips from or the cut is you guys wandering around like where where how can we get out of here and the next thing you know you're you're back in the prison and apparently someone has figured out that these blocks have been removed and then they grab or they start grabbing you guys to yeah I'm wondering what what happened there like it's not a great transition actually it's not a great transition because that that didn't happen that scene was again

I wrote notes. When I sat with Oliver Stone for about a week in a hotel room and we got back and he was crazy. You know, snorting smoking joints and knocking down Rocky. I loved his energy because he was nuts, but I love that energy. I told him about something I'd written, which was a short story I'd written about going, it says, cut the block and going to prison up was on a couple of levels. And one of the bottom levels was the kitchen and they had like a dumb waiter. that would lift stuff up and then people would take stuff out and i wrote a scene where we did that

went down into the catacombs which were down below is Istanbul the truth is Istanbul has catacombs for thousand years beneath it all the streets of this incredibly fascinating city so i wrote that as a short story as part of a and oliver stone heard it and he said really and he included that part of the escape as one of the things that he put in so it doesn't really fit again i didn't have much to say about it once i signed the rights to my book i asked my agent i said so once i signed the rights to this book what's going to happen if i if i don't like the movie he said you're done if you sign that card you know you work with guys in jail you can get ripped off so easy if you don't know what's going on i had a good agent he said when we sign the contract and

they get the book they'll do what they like i said well suppose they change he said you have a little clause in here that says if you do not like the film you can take your name off the title he said but they're selling the goddamn film on your name yeah you cannot whatever they do they're going to do i got lucky that i had i had the people who were involved the changes that they made that i don't like that's personal that's that's you know i'm the least objective of viewers of the film so i think i was lucky because they made a very powerful movie brad davis the actor gave his heart and soul to this thing. The music, I mean, Georgia Marota did this music. Then, then, then, then. People still, they hear that music. It's like Midd That Express.

Then, then, then, then. I hear little clips to that music. I'm out somewhere. It's like, holy fuck. That's the music that he put in there. And the acting in John Hurt, he played the junkie, and he had the cracked glasses with the lens cracked. And he was so, oh, he was so good. And Brad, again, put his heart and soul. And Randy Quaid was terrific in this movie. That's before he got two off the end. So I got lucky that the people who did it did it. And it turned out to be a good film in many ways. It was good for me because, you know, getting out of jail, what you know what kind of jobs you're going to get? You know, previous employment the last five years, convict. That doesn't get to a lot of work. And I didn't know how to do anything except right. So I wrote.

You know, I've I've optioned the life rights to probably six different guys life life rights, right. You always have this, it's always that, you know, of course, I've written several books and I've written a lot of synopsies, right? So, you know, synopsies are like 10 or 12,000 words. You know, they're not, they're, you know, about double the size of a Rolling Stone magazine, true crime article. They tell the story. Yeah, they tell the story. They're good. Basically, you could easily turn it into a script. So what's funny is I'll always get these guys because, of course, I would have them attach their life rights to the project because I'm not spending three months or two months

writing your story. So I can then get out, promote it. Some producer talks to you and then he runs with it. No. So, you know, they always did the same thing. Always the same thing. Well, what if they change it? Well, I want to be able to have controls.

Like, stop it. Nobody. is going to dump $40 million or $80 million into a movie about your life and then have you doing things like, wait, that's not exactly how it happened. Or my car wasn't gray, it was silver. Or like those little details that mean so much to you don't mean anything. And they don't work. Your movie, your 300 page book is about 20 hours of screen time.

They have to consolidate that into two hours. And they're going to have to remove and conflate many, many stories that you're not going to be happy with. That's what my agent told me. When I got there, when I said, can I change it? He said, you're done. If you sign the contract, you're finished. And for good reason. I wanted to sign the contract.

I had no money. I owed my dad for years. For years, they'd been supporting me and such. So I was thrilled to sign a contract. I was thrilled to have the movie move forward as quick as it did. I mean, I just got home. I was barely a couple of weeks home. And suddenly my aging call, he said,

Billy, we have a phone call from Columbia Studios in Hollywood. And they want to fly you out and talk to you about making a movie. It's like, making a movie. I mean, I've been in jail for five years making a fucking movie. It was wonderful. And they flew me out. And I got whined and dined and met whoever. I was in the Columbia cafeteria and all these famous faces are sitting down and having their lunch and such.

And it was wonderful for me. I was so happy about it. When it got to the film, they sat me down in a little screening room in like Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Columbia had a room and by myself in this little room and they showed me their version of Midnight Express. People said, well, could you get, how much input did you have? none. I mean, when I gave the script to Oliver Stone, that was it. I was done. They showed me the film. I could barely breathe because they made such a powerful film. There were things in it that, you know, the escape was, one thing I knew when all of this started is they'll love the escape.

I escaped off the island and the storm and the robot running through Turkey, die in my hair, black, getting to Greece. I mean, it's made for films and they didn't use it, which I could, I couldn't understand why. I know now how much money it would cost to shoot at night and a rowboat and a storm. And then I asked one of the producer guys, you know, why didn't you do? He said, Billy, what 45 minutes of this film? That's Alan Parker said. What 45 minutes of this film do you want to cut out to put in your escape?

The audience is hell enough. Get them out of the fucking theater. And they were making a film about hope and fear and blah, blah, blah. They didn't necessarily want to tell my story. I mean, it was part of it. So I was good with all of that. It was, it was fine. It was what it was. And, you know, I couldn't change it. I didn't have any power over it. So don't get excited about things that you can't affect. So I learned that in jail, one of my lessons. And so how did the, how did you escape? You were, I interrupted you with my question. I escaped the island in the rowboat in a storm. I knew when I saw that when I was, I got transferred to the prison island with the money. My dad smuggled it. My dad, if the. they caught us, he would have been in jail with me. That's, yeah, well, sorry. So, um, where am I? So the story, you had to wait for a storm. You knew they had low boats. You knew

they tied up during the storms. Yeah. And oh, we get back to, how do I get past night bed check? There, a couple of guys on the island, the guys called Kapidae, meaning these are the big gangster prisoners. These guys live like kings. They literally run the jail because outside they're rich. They got gone. But for some reason, this guy didn't bribe the right guy and this guy bribed the other guy and suddenly this guy has to deal with a couple of months in prison, but he'll get out again and then he'll probably get vengeance on the guys who put him the normal bullshit back and forth. But, you know, for me, I made friends with the number one Kappa Dai. who these guys at night after bed check would go down to the accounting shed.

A couple of nerdy guys with adding machines were toting up the day's canning profits. Because again, we do work on the island. And I'm the only foreigner on the island at this point. I speak pretty good Turkish by now. I've made good friends with the head copadai who I always found out the best way is you find the number one guy somewhere and make friends with him. or if it happens a different way, you catch him in the throat or in the eyes and he goes down and then other people leave you alone,

but now you've got to deal with him. I made friends with people. I had to. That was a good way to do it. Again, I'm not real big. I tried not to fight, but I didn't have to do too much. People pretty much left me alone.

And if they didn't, I could deal with it. I could find a way around it. The head copadai, he got me permission to be an accounting shed at night after the night bed check. These guys are drinking rocky and smoking joints and they're playing cards and knocking down dominoes. I arrange with them to be able to be past the night bed check, which means it'll really be mourning before anyone he really knows I'm gone. Again, this is 1969, 1970, 1975.

They didn't have electronics. They didn't have everything was so crude back then. There was no internet. There were no cell phones. It's hard to remember now what life was like back then. But I knew if I can get past the bed check, I can get out to one of these boats. So I waited for the next storm, and it blew and it blew. And I saw the early boats were starting to lock down for the night.

And then we finished work. I worked in the canning factories, loading all of the shit back and forth, wanting to get hard and healthy with the escape. And I got down to once the bed check was coming, I went down to the accounting shed. I'm cool. The guards know where's, where's Willie? He's down at the accounting shed. the head coppa die if they have any questions they'll go ask him politely because he has way more power than any fucking guard and he'd say yeah he's all right leave me alone so they wouldn't bother me they

wouldn't know till the next morning when everything got unlocked and they do a count what happened to willy so i knew i've got the night to get by and i stayed there a little while and i told the guys i don't feel so good have some hash no i don't want to have some rocky no i don't want any rocky i'm just i'm going to go back to the barracks and rest but instead of going back up to the barracks, I make my way down through the cobblestones and the wind and the rain to the harbor. And underneath this little wooden overhang, I climb up at the lip of this big empty concrete vat that's used to whole tomato paste and stuff. And it's empty now and drop down it to the bottom. And, you know, and I'm listening and I'm waiting. I want to be sure no other prisoners

around. And I'm thrilled to be this close to escaping and scared shitless. Of course, there's no turning back now. And I waited a little while. I got my, one leg up into the top of the shed, and I hear a noise clattering on the stone beach. And I drop down to the bottom into this little vat. And one of the patrolling soldiers out here patrolling, it's raining, it's nasty, but he's route patrolling. He steps in under the overhang. I can see the flare of a match as he lights a cigarette. I can smell the smoke.

He's right on the other side of the wall. I'm thinking stone, inanimate object, no human vibrations. And after I heard him clatter away, I, got to the wall, I went up on the top and it dropped down onto the mucky sand and crawled down towards the water and then slid right into the cold waves and breast stroking my way out again. I'm a swimmer. I'm not, that's not the hard part, but I was worried about being seen by, you know, somebody in one of the boats that are anchored here or shot the guard. There's a pier that goes out and there's a place out there where the guards are with guns, but they're not

out in the rain. It's the fucking rain and wind and again. People, People don't really escape. These guys, most of the people at this prison were short term. They had less than a year or whatever left to go, which their incentive for escaping was almost minimal, which is why when I got there, the first thing I said to everybody, I still got a 30 year sentence. But people were like 30. How did you get that? Nobody gets that sentence. Yeah, except me.

And unfortunately, these two women who got it around the same time. I said, you know, the American Council, I'm here for a little while. The American Council is going to help me. and take me back to New York, which sounded very logical to people who don't really know. That's not the way things work, especially now with the incentive of the drug laws being pressured. But it made it easier for me to just, nobody was really thinking I'm going to escape from here. So I got out, I swam out, I got the dingy, I got to one little dingy and sit, got the oars, and I start to pull.

and I'm starting to move out and the dingy is when I actually when I cut the rope on the dingy I had a knife that it's stolen from the canny factor and I get the one little dingy and I know I start saw on this big thick hemp rope and it it won't cut and it's like fuck and then I hear whack and a wooden hatch opens in the boat above me and this Turkish uh fisherman leans out and spits out over me into the sea I'm frozen there. If he looked down, I wouldn't be here now. I'd be dead by now. And then the hatch closes. And I start to saw at the rope again and it won't cut. And I'm ready to gnaw this fucker apart with my teeth when the rope lets loose and the diggies starts drifting back towards the rocks and the guards with the guns. And I grabbed the oars and discovered they don't

have oarlocks on Turkish dinghies. They have like a little peg in the rail of the boat. and big pretzel of rope around each oar, and somehow you put it over the top, and I figure it out, but I'm drifting back and forth, and I'm scared out of my mind. But I get a little bit of movement, and the dinghy stops drifting and starts moving out in the other direction, out past the other boats, out of the harbor, away from the prison. And I'm rowing, and I'm stroking a little bit, trying to keep the oars, and keep the... And when I look up, I realize I'm past the last of the fishy boats. out into the open seat. I'm free for the first time in five years. I almost lost the day.

I almost lost it or, but I got it together and started rowing. And I knew the island is like a horseshoe-shaped island and the prison is at the head of the horseshoe. So as I was rowing, I knew again, I got maps. I knew everything. I knew that's all I had to do. I had a lot of time. I studied. I knew I got to get just opposite Imrali Island and hit the mainland of Asia Minor otherwise I'll be swept far south out to sea. In fact, I knew the current was coming from this direction, which is why I had to pull harder in my right oar than my left. And my hand got all bloody.

I wrapped a handkerchief around and I kept pulling because I know I want to hit right across and hit the mainland. And I use the lights of the island. So if I was drifting too far, I'd have to pull and get the other way. But pretty soon, I lost the lights of the island. And I'm basically lost out here in the rainy night. and I'm rowing and I'm stroking. I'm singing to myself to keep the rhythm, but they catch me, they beat me.

Make it, I'm free. Make it, and I'm rowing and I'm rowing. At one point, these big waves started coming up under me, big swells. I felt like I was on the back of a rising whale, but far off in the distance, I saw what I think was tiny red blinking lights, and I head towards them. And I'm exhausted, but driven and I'm motivated. I grow a thousand fucking miles. I was so ready to go.

And the night passed and I was rowing her and then getting us on that suddenly the dinghy scrapes up in the sand and a wave list of them. We scrape up again. And I look up into the really dawning, pale dawning light and I see this rocky coastline. It's the edge of Asia Minor. And I know I made it. I pulled the dinghy up. What I should have done was put a hole in the bottom and sunk the boat, the little dinghy that I got. But I love this little dinghy.

I pulled it up on the sand. I hugged the bow. this little diggy, and the sun was rising and the storm was passing. But far off in the distance, I can see in Raleigh Island. And I know the clock is ticking. So I started running north along the beach, along the rocky edge of Asia Minor. And it was truly the finest morning of my life. Up against a cliff, I find a puddle of fresh water. You quench my burning thirst, washed up the salt, and I make my way around these boulders where the waves are crashing. And up on the cliff top, I see three tall blinking lights.

They were my markers during the night. Turns out it was an army base. I go back around the bouldice. I climb up on the other side. Again, this is still Turkey. This is Asia Minor that I got to. And I make my way around the army base with these wooded fields and stuff. And later I come out of the woods and I can see farmers off in the distance.

And the dirt road becomes cobblestones. and up against the plaster wall, there's an old Turk squatting down smoking a pipe. And I ask him for directions to Bursa, a big town up the coast. And he looks me over, wet, muddy, bloody bandaged hand. He wants to know where I learned Turkish. In prison in Istanbul. For hashish? I said, yeah, he said, and now you want more hashish?

No, no, Baba. I don't want hashish. I just need to get to. Bursa. He says, oh, you take this bus. So I paid, I think, like 12 lira, a couple of days. dollars to for a farmer who had this old Volkswagen bus with all those produce and stuff on the roof. And I got crammed into the back of this bus with all these sweaty peasant farmers.

I'm up against the dirty crack window. They're passing around a bottle of scented water like that helps. And we made our way up the winding coast, up to the top, and then back to Istanbul, where I knew. I had a friend in Istanbul who had been in prison with me for a couple of years. he spoke terrific Turkish. He'd become a Muslim and he owed me big time. I saved them from a bad beating once in jail. I knew some people they go, they don't care.

You never hear from the most guys. I knew this guy. He'd stand up if I got there. So I'd get to the hotel and the little hotel manager. He says, oh, Wolfie. No, no, no. You just missed him. He left yesterday.

Afghanistan. It's like, oh, fuck. That's the end of my plan. I'm so freaked out. I mean, I have a plan B, but now I'm wandering the streets and I'm just, I'm blown away by sights and sounds and smells and women and dogs and hair, perfume. Hair, hair. I've got really blonde hair and a blonde mustache back there. So I go to a C.Renque Boyer, which is black hair. I go to a post office place and I got some black hair dye. See a rank boy and I checked into a really funky little hotel down by the waterfront and I locked the door, press a chair against the door.

I checked the window for the jump down to the alley, and I squeezed this gooey paste. It smells like cat piss onto the little rag, and I'm rubbing it in my hair and my must. The hair looks bad. It's all lank and black. The mustache, it looks, it was passable. The mustache, it looks so funny, like a big chunk of licorice on my upper lip. I go out, I buy a razor, I come back, I shave it off. Now I got this blank black hair and a kind of raw space covered with whatever.

and black all around it. I was a mess. I collapsed into bed and waiting every creek on the stairs. I'm ready to jump out the window. And when morning came, I went down to the bus terminal here, and I knew I wanted to get to Edirne, which is a border town, a couple of hundred kilometers west, on the Maritza River that runs down from Bulgaria,

separates Turkey from Greece. And I knew if I could get across that river, again, I'm a swimmer. I can get across any river. If I could get to Greece, they would never send me back to Turkey, not for my crime. Again, if I shot someone and killed someone, I wouldn't be free anywhere. So I have the moral, carmic implications of killing another human being. Literally, legally, I wouldn't be free. So I got to this little border town and, shoo, oh man, it's so long ago, but it's right there. I got to the little border town. The bus stopped and I was at a cab stand and I picked out a young long-haired Turkish cab driver with an old blue like 1952 Buick or something.

They had all these old American cars in Turkey back in the day. And so I told him, I said, I'm, you know, I'm camping with some friends of mine south of here near the river and I've gotten separated. Can you take me there? He wants to know, where did you learn Turkish? I said, in prison in Istanbul. He said, for hashish? I said, yeah, you want to buy hashis? No, no, no, I don't want any hashish.

I just need to get to the... So he took me down, and we go down and we wind around, windy towns, and he stops at one place and yells up to some people for directions to the campground, which doesn't even exist, and I see a newspaper headline. I've got all these pictures, by the way, with a full-page drawing of this muscle-bound,

I should look like this, this muscle-bound blonde guy cutting a rope on a dingy in the stormy sea. It's like, holy fuck, go, go, go. And we drive down past and we stop again and the road winds. And he yells at some people sitting on a wooden porch. There's a little bar place up there. And he yells for directions. And this big guy in a blue uniform with a tie hanging loose and a beer bottle on his hand saunters down the steps.

He's an off-duty cop. He leans in the window. I can smell the beer on his breath. He said, no fucking campground here. And I'm telling the guy, go, go. We drive a little ways. We get down the dirt road kind of peters out, and the kid driving the cab, he stops, he won't go any further. It's going to hurt his car. I offer him more money. I tell him, I know my friends are just up ahead here somewhere.

So he drives a little way as we stop at the edge of this dry cornfield. And I get out and step on the front bumper of his car. And I'm looking west towards these rolling hills. And there's a crimson sun setting back behind the hills. And I know somewhere out there is the river. And that's what I need to get to. I stayed in the corn until the sun went down. I hear farmers bringing in their sheep or goats or whatever they bring in for the night. I know I'll have to be really quiet. I can hear these tinkling bells in the quiet air. I didn't even swap at the mosquitoes.

They landed on my face. It was like, drink my blood because you're not going to get another chance. And when the sun went down, I started moving west up over the hills and the rocky. I'm looking for silence, but the stones are sticking out from sliding out from under my feet. And I know somewhere up ahead here in the darkness is the river. And I spent a couple of hours making my way up over the hills. And at one point, I heard dogs barking. That freak me out, not fucking dogs.

No dogs, no dogs. And I tore off my stinky old sneakers and socks. I've had these sneakers on for a while now and buried them at the base of this tree thinking, smell these, you fucking dogs. And then I climb up in the tree and I shimmy out on a branch and drop down and scurry away. It shows you how goofy I'm getting because now I'm barefoot. I'm walking along barefoot. My feet are getting all chewed up, but I didn't care.

I was so close. And eventually I make my way up a drop. There's a ditch beneath a ridge line. And I, this is a tough border. I saw little blinking lights on and off the hilltops. These are soldiers patrolling this border. The Turks and the Greeks are not friends. And I dropped down into this little ditch and collapse in the mud.

Just exhausted. It's just kind of relaxing a little bit. I'm just starting to make my way out of the ditch when I hear singing and drop down into the bottom. And these two Turkish border guards stroll along the top of this ditch, singing little snatches of folk ditty back and forth to each other. It's Byram. It's holiday time they're happy. I'm down in the ditch. Again, no human vibrations.

And when I hear them fade away, I come up out of the ditch and over the ridge line and down and more trees and more bushes. And the ground starts, this is all marshy, marshland, which is I knew from before. This is where I need to go. There's cities and there's towns, and there's a bunch of marshland in between. I knew if I could get to that marshland. That's what I need. And I start moving forward and that I can, the ground is starting to get muddy. That's good.

Muddy is good. That means the river is up here ahead. And I moved through some more bushes and trees. And I think I see some like metal glint somewhere. It's tanks crouched down in the woods. This is a tough border. I avoided the tanks. I went the other way.

Now the bushes are getting real thick, but I can hear the water. It's getting louder, and I'm moving through bushes, and the branches are wacking me, and I part some bushes, and there's like this black water flowing in front of me in the dark night. And I wade right in, up to my knees, up to my waist, ready to swim, when suddenly the water goes down,

and I'm climbing a riverbank, and I made it across. But it just can't be that easy, and it's not. It's just a little, Little river. I part some more bushes. There's the real river. The Barthas River stretching down in front of running down from the Bulgarian mountains to the Adriatic Sea. And on the other side is freedom. The river has, that's the border. But over the years, you know, rivers change their banks. So the, the border has changed. And I wasn't really sure where the border was. I just knew if I could get across that river. So I weighed right in. And I again, I'm a swimmer. I'm not worried, but I'm swimming. And I'm trying

not to make too much noise because I'm, you know, whether it's a Turkish bullet or a Greek bullet shooting me in the water. It's the same. So I'm trying to be quiet. And then it's like, fuck quiet. I don't want to drown out here. So I'm kicking and stroking and stroking. And I make my way, my knee hits a rock and my feet find the bottom. And I brace against the current and drag myself up on this riverbank and collapse on my back, staring up at the stars and this wild giddy burst of joy bursts out of me. But I'm exhausted. I'm sleepwalking now. I'm, I'm tired and I'm cold and I'm hungry. And again, I don't want to go up to the first guy I see and have him be a Turkish border guard.

So I avoided anybody. Later on, I come out of the woods to this dirt road. And again, I know I shouldn't be on it. But it feels so good on my bare cut up feet. And then some dogs come barking up. I think I see a farmhouse. And the dogs come barking up and I rush away from the dogs. And I say, I got to get back in the woods.

And I'll do it just up ahead. It's like a tunnel through some trees. And I say, I'm going to get back in the woods just past that. I didn't realize at the time. It looked like a wooden kiosk, an outhouse. And suddenly I walked past it and this bayonet slashes down in front of me. And that's what you do. When somebody sticks a bayon in your face, you put your arms up.

And this guy yelled something at me. And I didn't understand him. And he yelled again, and I realized, I don't understand. And I speak pretty good Turkish, which means he's speaking Greek, which means I made it. I collapsed on the ground with this. big shit-eaten grin on my dirty face and this this border guard he's he's blowing his whistle and other guards come out and they got flashlights around me in a circle and this one top guy he puts his pistol in the light he says who are you who are you i said i'm an american i just this gay from turkey

they kept me in a little room in the woods for 12 days while the greek government decided what to do with me because again they they don't know what to do with me uh but i knew once i got there once i got to the Greeks, they're going to be fine. And they put me in a little room and with the, actually, the next morning, this Greek military intelligence officer comes in to question me. And he's got the bushy eyebrows and his piercing eyes and speaks great English. And he starts asking me all these questions. It's like, wait, wait, wait, stop, stop. People have been pushing me around, asking me questions for five years. I'm an American citizen. I know my rights. I demand to see the American counsel. I know my rights. This guy, this looks at me, blows some smoking,

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Please support our channel and tell them we sent you. Fuck your khakis. Get the perfect genes. You covered with mud, we could take you and throw you back across the river to the Turks. We could take you out in the woods and shoot you. Nobody would ever know or you can shut up, cooperate, and we'll send you home. It's like, well, what do you want to know? He's asking me about the insignia on the uniforms or the soldiers on the island

and about the radar base on top of the Amrali Island. And these tanks, I told him I saw in the woods. He's got a detailed map. I show them, here's where I think I saw the tanks. And here's where I think I crossed the river. He said, you're a very lucky man, William. I said, yeah, yeah, I know. He says, no, no, you don't know.

all this land we think is mine. Mind? Later when I got home, my old grandma used to say, oh, actually my mom first would say, you know, God looks out for saints and fools. And then my granny, when we'd go to bingo with my mom, she would tell everybody, and this is my grandson, Willie.

He was up the river, at the treas in her mind. He was up the river for a while, but he's home now. My mom is like, I don't know who this lady is. but it was they treated me pretty well they decided at some point that they could they contacted the American government they found that what I told them was the truth and they did the best thing they can do the Greek government deported me as being a bad influence upon the youth of

Greece which is the same charge against Socrates bad influence upon the youth of Greek I love being in that that category and eventually I I got a plane from there. I flew to Amsterdam. Actually, I did it a little in between, which I leave out of most of the story because it's too long. I flew up in West Germany.

Anyway, I got, eventually I got to Amsterdam, and I knew if I'm going to be safe anywhere in the world, it'll be Amsterdam. They're not going to worry me. And I get to the abs of the customs and the plane stops. And, you know, I just pass through customs. They signed, I got a passport. And the American Council came.

out, got a passport with that black hair that I dyed myself, the passport picture has that black hair on it. I spent a couple of days in Amsterdam, just incredible. And I knew this is, I'm free now. Once I got here, I'm free. And I hung a little while in Amsterdam a couple of days and got my hair dyed. I went out and dyed my hair blonde again. I got it cut short and dyed blonde, which is how it used to look. And my first morning of Freedom in Amsterdam, I wandered out in, I found myself at the Riks Museum, and I was in front of this Van Gogh painting called Prisoners Exercising.

We're a circle of convicts of marching around the stone prison courtyard, and in the foreground of the painting, this blonde-haired prisoner, that Van Gogh had his red-blonde hair, is staring out at the viewer, staring out at me while I'm staring back at him, and I know what it feels like behind his eyes, and I flip into the painting, and I'm staring out at myself on this amazing, wondrous Amsterdam morning. And there's tears in my eyes as I back away from the painting

and leave him hanging there and move out into my life. I know. I didn't answer whatever questions, but I told me. No, you answered all. I'm lost to the whole stuff. No, I am wondering. So when you fly back, you said you flew back and there's just, there's tons of, like, did you realize when you were, did you realize you were flying back and that your story had hit like the media? Well, what I knew was Long Island newspaper, Newsday. I was, you know, local boy goes bad. They picked up my story five years earlier when I first got arrested and got my four years and two months sentence. So I was, I was in the papers and blah, blah, blah. when my sentence was changed to life in jail, that's when the press hit. And every newspaper had this story. The American, I was probably the first American who got a life sentence out of all of this increased drug penalties. And that made a big deal. So they were following the story. My lawyer at the time, Mike Griffith, he was, he was sort of my PR guy. And he arranged, he arranged when I told, I got somehow, found these guys.

and told them what flight I'm on, and he arranged to be at the airport. And so I, when my plane landed, I got off the plane. Actually, a guy came on and up in front and he said, Mr. Hayes, Mr. Hayes, and I'm thinking, is the police and they got a fingerprint. I hate, I hate getting fingerprinted. I hate that fucking ink on my hands. And I said, you're with the police. I assume. He said, no, no, I'm with Pan Am. Follow me, please. And he texts me down some side door. I didn't even go through customs, which had me thinking, hmm, no, no, don't think like that anymore. And he led me downstairs and there was my father and my brother to see them and have my dad hugging me and my brother hugging me. My mom, she stayed home. We didn't, we didn't want her to

be in the middle of this. She never came to visit in prison. I didn't, I didn't want her to see me in jail. I, uh, it was okay for my dad and my brother, but I couldn't have dealt with my mom, seeing me in jail. So, but we got home and we got in the car. We did this press call. Conference. People are asking me all these questions. I've watched it a bunch of times. I've got my arm around my dad's shoulder. I needed something solid to just anchor me here. And people are asking me all these questions and yelling and screaming. It was crazy, but it was good crazy. Again, all of the difficulties that I experienced when I got home, relative to where I'd been, I'll deal with press con. Whatever. I got to the house. There were 20 reporters. We live in Babylon. I don't know that. There were 20 reporters. in front of the house. You know, I see my mom looking out at the front door. I hadn't seen her in five years. I wanted to go up and I had to get to guys, leave me a look, get through this pilot reported, just to see my mom. And that was the first, that's when I knew I was home. When I sat down at the kitchen table and my mom made some, some roast beef and my old grandma cooked rice pudding for us,

and that was my first weekend at home. The phone, we had to take the phone off the hook because it just kept ringing. If I could have gotten away from all that, I probably would have, but I not only couldn't I, I shouldn't, I needed to get, what am I going to do now? I owed a lot of money. I don't know how I'm going to pay people back. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. People are what are you going to do now? It's like, I told them, I guess I'm going to write a book because that's what I was doing. I was a writer and I didn't know what else to say. I don't do anything else. That's the only thing I've ever known is to write and to act. So I talk. to people on the phone and by Monday I was in I was meeting literary agents and a couple of pretty big name writers I don't have to mention them but two or three of them turned out to be total douchebags and then I found Julian Bach this agent he was like an obuncular like our Mr. Chips and I met him in his office and I look up on the wall and he's got a a picture of him running around the loop in Central Park and I'm a runner I used to run marathons and shit so I love this guy right away and he's the guy that hooked me up and started talking to people and he made a

deal with e p dutton this big big publisher back at the time and he's the one that we just started that i he said to bring me something so i i knocked out about 12 pages next day i gave him the 12 pages and he read all of this and he said well billy this is very good because now we know we need a professional writer. I said, no, no. I went to Mark. I went journalism school. I could write this. He said, yes, yes, yes, but your style, he turned it the hysterical subjective. He said, your style might work for, you know, Rolling Stone and your immediate peers, but we need to get beyond that. You need to write a book that's going to be able to go out everywhere if you're going to make any money off this, which again, I needed to make some money. So he focused me down. We met a

couple of writers who I didn't like much and then I met a guy who I liked instantly. And he kind of reminded me of my wife. He was calm and steady, but he never let up. My wife's like that. She's calm and said she's the stubbornest human being I've ever met, which is good for me. And we started to work. And the first thing we did was he sat down and turned on a tape recorder

and had me babble like I'm doing here for about two days. And then they went and transcribed it. I hate to be the girl who had to go transcribe this because I speak back and forth and I've got these things. And we put it all together. It was a humbling experience to read how I speak in line. But that we chopped up into pieces. And he said, so look, what he gave me, I'm a writer. I'm good at that. But I just, I didn't know where to go with this. I've been in two years. For five years, where do I start it? And there's so many characters. There's so much stuff.

It was overwhelming. And Bill said, come, come, come, come. Here's what we do. We started here. you get arrested and we end it here when you escape. All we got to do now is fill in the middle. And that's what we did. I couldn't mention actually when I got home, my lawyer, Michael Griffith, he said, what are you going to do now? So I'm writing a book. I want to talk about, you know, all my stuff and my first three, my first three escaped,

my first three smuggling trips and all the good stuff in between because I was running while in between the trips. I was in Europe. I was in Spain. I was riding motorcycle. I was running with the bull. It was a wonderful time for me. He said, wait, wait, wait.

You want to write a book and mention your first three smuggling trips? I said, yeah, why not? I want to tell the truth. He said, one more question. Are you out of your fucking mind? You can't say that. I said, why not? He said, they have no proof.

They can't do anything for me. He said, they don't need proof. The Turkish government, you're an escape convict drug smuggler. The Turkish government is going to ask for your extradition. And the U.S. government is either going to say yes or no. And you want a publicly say to the government, Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I made three escape.

I made three smuggling trips before I got busted. He said you cannot talk about any of those first three trips, which certainly made a little logical sense once I thought about it. I spoke to other people, but what it made difficult was writing the first book because I had to start my book where the fourth smuggling trip happened and then escape. I couldn't mention the first three, which made it a little difficult because I spent a lot of time in Istanbul. I made a Turkish girlfriend. I loved my first three trips. It was an amazing city. It still is. It's changed a lot in 50 years, but it was a wonderful, magical place for me. But it made it difficult to write the first book. But getting the first book done and out of me, I had a lot of people say, you know, you should seriously consider some therapy. I said, I don't need therapy. I'm fine. I'm free. I so did therapy. And the writing became the therapy. Because as the words came out, they kind of stuck to the page. And Bill was a, again like my wife just calm and steady but never gave me an inch he said wait a second you're you're

saying this and this but i've i had all my letters i wrote thousand letters people sent kept all my letters and when i got back i got calls and emails there's no there was no email i got calls and people saying you know i've got 20 30 letters here from you you want me and they all sent me my letters which was great because i used that as the basis for the book and we we divided everything up and bill got me that order. You start here, you start there, and then we use these letters to fill in the middle. So, you know, he'd say, now, wait a second, you just wrote, because I'd write two, three or four, 10 pages, and I'd send it to him. And he'd look at it, he puts some red lines, and we'd go back and forth like this. That's how we worked. And he said, you're saying this and this and this here.

But I've got this letter from that very time where you say, I was saying blue, blue, blue, blue. He said, your letter is saying red, red, red. I need the guy. I don't need the guy who's out here now getting late and he's famous and he's on TV and he's happy. I need the guy who wrote the letters back in prison who was desperate. That's where you need to get back to. I didn't want to go there. I wanted to talk about it. I didn't want to feel it.

I didn't want to really get into how desperate I was. But he never let up. He forced me to keep going. And every day I'd have the last thing we did. He said, we're done except for, I believe it was chapter nine, which was the madhouse. what I mentioned to you when I went to the crazy house and what was going on there. He said, you haven't done this yet. I said, you know, but he said, we're done.

You need to write that chapter. So I was like, all right, fuck it. So I went back. Basically in two hours, I wrote all chapter nine with hardly any changes. He gave it to bill. And he said, okay, but, you know, this is terrific. We're done. And then Julian took it and we, the book got published.

And suddenly I was really out there. I'm doing the Today Show. And, you know, you do book publicity. And that back then, now you've got to publish your own self-publishing, which is, it's hard. You know, you get the money, but it's hard. Back then, E.P. Dutton set me up. They'd tell me, you go here, you go. They'd send me a car and bring me to the studio.

And I talked about it endlessly. And the book, the book was hardly even out when Julian called. And he said, Billy, they want to fly you to. California and Columbia Pictures. Peter Goober, head of Columbia Pictures, wants to talk to you about doing a movie. Nice. It was nice, but it was so strange. Movie. Again, I've been in jail for five years. I've been out for a couple of months, and now I'm flying to California to talk about a movie, which, again, I'm, when I'm hot, I'm really hot. And when I'm not, I'm really hot. I was not hot for five years. And suddenly I got hot again. And it kept going and it kept getting better.

And suddenly there was a movie. And the movie premiered, I got, I busted. And I guess I was arrested in October, 1970. I escaped in October, just missed my fifth anniversary in October, in October, and pretty soon the book was finished. And I was sitting in a room with Oliver Stone telling him this story. And he was taking notes and snorting, drinking Rocky and whatever he was doing. And then he went off into the mountains and wrote a script.

And then there was a movie. and the movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, which usually doesn't happen for some little small film, but these producers, they had some balls on them to do that. And they premiered the film at the Cannes Film Festival, and I was sitting in my seat, and the movie came on, and for two hours, I was caught between the memories behind me and the movie in front of me. And I kept sliding down further and further in my seat. It was when the film ended, it was... Like, boom, the film ended.

And there was silence. Peter Gourb, I heard him later talking about it. He said, I'm sitting with David Putnam, the other producer, he said, the film ends dead silence. I look at, I look at David. He looks at me. We're thinking, they hated it. Let's get out of the theater quick. Suddenly, the lights come up and the audience stands up and starts cheering and screaming.

And I'm like, whoa, because this was just such a weird thing. But it was, it was wonderful in so many ways. And at the after party across the street where they had, Rona Barrett, that's how long ago this was, she was the, the host interviewer. Rona Barrett is asking me and stuff. And I'm in the middle of this big thing and people are dancing and they're in the tuxedoes and it's the after show thing.

It was okay. But, you know, in jail, you don't want to be the center. Again, I'm saying, you know this. You don't want to be the center of attention. I usually had, I always wanted to have my back. against the wall in jail. I want to know what's in front of me, what's around me.

And now I'm surrounded by people and they're yelling and screaming. And it was good, but it was just freaky. I wanted to get away from all this. And I look out in this music playing, and I see this kind of blonde-haired angel moving across the floor, which puts out her hand and asks me to dance.

And I take her hand and I take her in my arms. And I've been married to her for 44 years. Again, prison was a lot of her. worst. Very nice. Prison was the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me. And so from there, we, well, I can stop. You asked. Well, I mean, what did you do? What industry did you go into? Are you continue to write? I started. I wrote and then I, in the course of the writing, I had some friends who said, you know, you really, in fact, it was Brad Davis, the actor, who, who. told me about an acting teacher and he said you know you need you need this guy and i went to this acting teacher eric morris who he was known as the the mad dane is he had this crazy style but he was a wonderful teacher he looked at me he looked right through me he knew all my bullshit i'm good at talking and being glib and covering stuff up he saw right through all my bullshit he said yeah

you you talk about this stuff and stuff but you you gloss it over you don't really get down into to what's going on. I said, well, of course I do and I wrote a book. He said, no, no, no, you don't. You cover it up. You don't want to touch. There's stuff, phew, there's stuff that you don't want to deal with. And he said, if you're going to become an actor, you need to touch that. That stuff is your gold, G-O-L-D. And if you can't deal with it, if you can't bring it up, don't waste your time or my time here in this acting class. I said, you lose your time. Fuck you. I'm telling you the stuff. This is all really. He said, no, it's not. You're covering it up and blah, blah, blah, We're screaming and yelling.

We would leave class. I'd be saying, fuck you. I don't need you. He says, you need me like air. You need this class like your air. Like, fuck you. And I get in my car and I start to drive and two blocks away. These tears start pouring up.

I got to pull the car over. Tears are running down my face. This is such a strange thing because all of this stuff that had been locked up in there was really starting to break out now. And it was overwhelming. But I met Eric and I met Wendy, right around the same time. And between the two of them, I was lost or found, actually, because he forced me to deal with it and she saved my life. She makes my heart sing, still does,

44 years later. So I began acting and I started to do a lot of theater. I've done weird films. I was in assassination. I got shot to death by Charlie Bronson, which I loved, machine gun to death by Charlie Bronson in this movie and a lot of strange, weird movies, but mostly theater. And I love, and I still do. I did a lot of theater. And I just started to direct a lot of theater. And I did that for, I'm still doing that. I mean, recently, we, I wrote a show called, writing The Midnight Express with Billy Hayes. You want to use the plugs. You use all the plugs we got. And it was me telling the story. It was about 75 minutes. a producer who I'm now still working with she said she called me one day she said we've been working on the

script of the play and she said Billy somebody just dropped out of the last three this is 2013 somebody just dropped out I had a spot for the last three nights of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival which is the big theater marketplace in Edinburgh Scotland and he said we have the last three nights and would you want to do your show now I said well sure I said when is this he said said two weeks. It's like two weeks. No, no, no. I've got about 150 page script. She said, he said, you just got to cut this down and you got to make this 70 minutes or whatever. That's all they allowed in the initial stuff. So I had to cut it down. I was working back and forth every day. Suddenly I'm in Edinburgh and it's my turn and I walk out onto the stage in a sort of a big

auditorium that bleachers going up like this and I walk out onto the stage. And the whole place starts clapping and cheering and they're standing up. And I've got people that yell at and screaming. This guy in the front row does this me. It shows me. He's got a joint in his hand in the front row. That's what I knew. It's okay.

And I got to do my show in front of this audience. And their response was amazing for me. It made me realize I need to do this. You know, I'm not healed. I'm whatever I am, I need more. And I need, and I've been talking about this story. A lot of folks. I said, Jesus, don't you want to stop talking about this shit? Forget about it. No, actually,

I learned some valuable lessons that you don't forget. You know, you don't get eaten up by them, but you just, you don't forget them. You have to use them. And this was the beginning of me talking about my story, which I was doing this on the road. We did it for, let's see, 2013. We did it for about six years. I was in New York a couple of times. I was upstate in in Rochester, New York or six times they brought me there. We did the show in London and in Scotland and in Beirut, Lebanon. I did the show in Melbourne, Australia, traveled the world telling my story, which again, I'm, I guess I need this because I'm still doing it. I'm doing it here. I'm telling you my story. It became the focus of my life. No matter what else I was doing, everybody remembers

is Midnight Express. People don't know I did X, Y, and Z. They don't know I was in this movie. It's like all they know is Midnight Express, which is what it is. I should have bigger problems than that. This was so good for me. Yeah, yeah, not a bad life. No, no. Well, you know, you take what you learn. You took it while you were in jail, you were learning it and using it and now still using it in your life out here. And I'm still doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say I've had a guy that, you know, I was talking to it at the gym one time that knew me beforehand. And he, he had said, well, you've really turned this into something, haven't you? And I said, well, I said, I mean, you know, you got two choices.

You can run from it or you can lean into it. And I said, you know, so I decided everybody else I know in prison is, they're planning on, they're getting out and they're going to run from what got them into prison. And I said, I'm not just, I'm just not going to do that. It doesn't work. You cannot get that far away from it because it's still there. And it's going to stay there in ways that probably aren't healthy for you if you're not getting it out or using it. Actually, it never goes away, but I find a way to use it now.

So I'm very emotional when I talk about, you know, my mom and that kind of stuff. But it's good emotions. It's healing in so many ways. Yeah, I get the same way. Yeah, I know. That's why you're still doing what you're doing. Which is good for you and good for the guys in jail who you were trying to help. Because I know that no matter how good their story is, they're going to get ripped off if they're not careful. Even if they are careful, they're going to get ripped off.

So I think you were an intermediary for them in the biz and maybe try and help them make this work. Most guys in jail are not terribly literate, as it were, or aware of how to do business in the entertainment field like that. I got lucky. Again, I was really lucky. Not for a while, but then I got lucky again. And I'm still lucky. I'm the healthiest guy I know. I got lucky because in the summer of 1969, I discovered yoga. And I've done yoga every day for the last 60 years, more than that. And again, I'm the healthiest guy I know. Knock on everything. Do you have anything else you want to cover? Can you see that? Midnight Express. Midnight Express, find your freedom. It's cannabis. I'm working with a company called Pharmaceutical. And they've got a line of product that they did, a big company. They do a lot of healthcare, pharmaceutical wellness.

And I'm now working with them and they're going to represent my Midnight Express, Find Your Freedom, which is my wife designed this whole box for me. So this has got our story in it. And I'm back into cannabis, which. Well, what's what's in it? What does that care? Is it like a, this one is CBD and CBG hemp pre-rolls, but they're also doing, you know, it's one plant. Less than 3%, a 0.3% of THC, you can classify it as hemp, which basically is all going free now. But it used to be you could sell something because it was less than 3%. Three points of THC and it made it legal and they could call it hemp and sell it. We're now. they're going to be doing a line of hash, which is perfect for me. So you will have my Midnight Express, find your freedom hash out on the market. And I wish my dad was still alive because the look on his face would be, you're doing what? Didn't you learn anything? It's like, yes, dad,

do it legally and make some money off it as opposed to wreck my and everybody who love me, their lives. I'm doing that and I've got some, what else? I've got a TV show out now called The greatest prison escapes with Billy Hayes. And it's 10, 10 episodes. We shot it before COVID. That's what we started. And they got 10 episodes. And it's on, where do they have it up on Amazon?

I believe they have it up now. Greatest prison escapes, which is stories of, and I'm the moderator, as it were. Right. Perfect job for me. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say the host thing, you'd be a great host for. And it sounds like very, very similar. My favorite kind of like true crime documentary series is locked up abroad.

They did my version. Oh, did they? Have you ever seen those? That's probably the best. Those are probably the best. You know, they've got some that are super cheesy. They do a really good job for, you know. No, no.

It's probably the best one I've seen. I was very happy about what they did in terms of telling my story because other people have tried and back, they were really good. Well, they had some money and they were really professional. And everybody who's seen my locked up abroad story said, they did a great job, which they did. I was very happy to see that come out. I love the reenactments. I love the way they cut it with the real.

They do a great job cutting in with the real, the subjects, you know? Yeah. Yeah. They're good at that. And they, it was around that time. Also, they, uh, these a Danish ballet troupe did the Midnight Express ballet, which, again, all my New York friends were like, fuck a New York ballet. Would they make you wear a two-to? It's like, but they did a wonderful job and they flew me and Wendy to London in the huge,

I forget a spectacular old theater in London and we got to see the ballet of my story, which again, I'd like that my dad to hear like, what ballet? Because, you know, from going for the worst thing that happened to me, strangely enough to the best thing, prison was the worst and the best thing that happened to me. And it's still going on. It's still working. Hey, you guys. I really appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, we're going to leave Billy's social media links in the description box. And I'm going to ask him if he has a link to the website that sells his hemp product. If he does, I'll leave that in the link.

Also, once again, really appreciate you watching. Thank you very much. Please share the video, hit like, subscribe. Thank you. See ya.