A man who broke into jail | Hacker News Reader

A man who broke into jail

newyorker.com

130 pointsfortran7759 comments

> Friedmann’s infatuation with the game had continued after he moved to Nashville, becoming so intense that his psychologist stipulated in the terms of his parole that, along with being kept from weapons, he be prevented from playing fantasy games such as D. & D.

Now that's ... that's weird.

cruel and unusual

Or fitting and flexible?

I don't think we can really say without being experts in psychology and the case ourselves, but as a general principle I think I like it for not being a heavy stamp with the usual mould, there was undeniably consideration of the particulars even if someone else would reach a different conclusion.

"Its not a fantasy game, it's far future dystopian post apocalyptic implied hyper technical ethereal augmentation science fiction."

"Very clever sir. But Im aware of what dark sun is. You'll have to come with me."

Should have banned him from playing Top Secret.

To be fair, he sounds a little more intense than your average player:

"A psychologist concluded that Friedmann suffered from dysthymia, today known as persistent depressive disorder, and schizoid personality disorder, writing that he showed “indifference to social relationships and a restricted range of emotional experience and expression.” He also had a tendency to “blur fantasy with reality.”

Friedmann was convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder"

Yesterday I was just watching an episode of futurama where bender (the robot) “finds” his imagination and believes that he is a dnd character. He goes around Don Quixote style.

To defeat bender, Fry pretends to a destructive spell on him.

I couldn’t find the exact scene but…. https://youtube.com/watch?v=chjVoVcVi3A

> A young college student disappeared 40 years ago, and the blame was placed on an unusual suspect.

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/09/disappearances-d...

The whole article is peppered with interesting tidbits about Friedmann and his crime spree, enough for readers to want to speculate further, it's a shame he spent so much energy and time and money to place all those weapon caches in and outside of jail (how did he make enough money and have enough spare time for these obsessions!) and did not direct his focus towards a less destructive outlet like his talent in writing. This article presenting just the facts and not having any fake conversations typical of a lot of crime stories ala Capote/Larson should be lauded. Maybe the rape is true but his behavior scaring off his mother while so young seems to point to him just being somewhat broken from the start.

One of the Peter Sellers films (Pink Panther?), he goes to prison to visit an inmate only to have the inmate take his identity, fake beard, moustache and clothes, and walks out of jail. This happens several times. In the very last scene, he's walking out of the jail, a smirk on his face, and tries to pull off his fake beard and moustache but it doesn't come off. "Good heavens! The wrong man has escaped!!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Fox

I didn't know about about this film. Thank you!

Aw man, I'm kind of jealous of you. To be able to go back and see Peter Sellers movies for the first time again would be amazing. My dad absolutely loved him, and I can still hear him cackling at his movies growing up. As a kid, they weren't very funny, but as an adult I now get it.

I watched the Pink Pather movies with my dad growing up, and re-watched them with my son a year or two ago. Watching them with him was kinda like watching for the first time.

He was so funny. I need to watch some of his other films.

If you've never seen Being There, put it at the top of your list.

Chauncey Gardiner

Most county jails don't do any identity checks as they release detainees (except ask their ID number and birth date), they are usually small enough for the staff to know all the prisoners.

I remember one incident at the Cook County Jail where two prisoners "swapped identity":

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/escaped-inmate-jahquez-...

That looks like a case where the normal identity checks weren't done:

>> Scott donned a medical mask and posed as Henderson, using his name and personal information to leave the jail, according to the sheriff's office.

Jail is a unique place. If you break in, they’ll gladly let you stay or at least welcome you back at a later date. They may even insist on it. It is a deeper more interesting story, but that is the first thing that came to mind.

I thought this was going to be about someone that wanted to go to jail in order to receive meals and/or healthcare. But this article was far more interesting.

> I thought this was going to be about someone that wanted to go to jail in order to receive meals and/or healthcare.

Tbf, there’s probably an easier way to achieve that goal that involves much less serious charges than breaking into the jail lol.

I'm sure there are. One of my mother's husbands — she had four, all cops — loved to tell the story about arresting a man outside of a Zippy Mart on Virginia Loop Road in Montgomery, AL.

The cashier called 911 and told them that a man had robbed the store. When he pulled up he found the man sitting on the curb just waiting for him. He had pulled a knife and stolen one pack of Big Red chewing gum from the store.

All because it was getting cold outside and he needed a place to sleep. And he also had a toothache that had been bothering him for weeks. So he hoped to see a doctor while he was in county jail.

Out of all the places to be incarcerated, county jails in the USA have a pretty poor record on healthcare. They are run by the counties, not the states, and therefore it is open season on how they provide the services. Most [1] just contract to the lowest bidder private provider. These providers' jobs are to dispense the lowest amount of healthcare to the lowest amount of patients in order to maximize profits. Mostly providing only emergency care to those who are in immediate risk of death. Many also require the prisoners to use the funds provided by their family (for phone calls, letters, clothing, food etc) to pay to even put a medical request into the system in the first place.

In terms of dental, most county jails will only do tooth pulls, not any other type of dental work. They will not try to save teeth at all.

[1] some larger areas like Cook County have their own healthcare systems and can be somewhat more sophisticated and less constrained by monetary concerns

State prisons are usually only a smidge better than county. They’re a slight improvement in that they’ll give shitty prison dentures instead of just pulling all the teeth.

The other side of it is that prison is the first time many people get any dental work done at all so they cone in with large problems all ready.

Yes, sadly a lot of people coming through these institutions have terrible dental issues and probably need a lot of teeth removed already. Hopefully in the future the dream of regrowing adult teeth will come to fruition.

Tooth regrowth therapy will not be available to them, because the avaerage American id says "If minimum-wage earners don't get healthcare, criminals don't deserve teeth"

> All because it was getting cold outside and he needed a place to sleep. And he also had a toothache that had been bothering him for weeks. So he hoped to see a doctor while he was in county jail.

https://www.wmtv15news.com/content/news/MFD-Shed-fire-at-aba...

    A man committed arson because he said he wanted to go back to prison and learn a trade this time.

    ...

    The suspect said he thought he had done enough to stay locked up earlier this week when he was arrested Monday for stealing $10,000 worth of property and a SUV from family members. Tuesday he was released from the Dane County Jail. He said to an officer that threw him for a loop, and he didn’t know what to do. The officers asked the man about another piece of paper found at the shed which was a handwritten bank robbery note. The suspect said that was plan B in case starting the fire didn’t work. He didn’t want to do that because he didn’t want to scare or hurt anyone. He figured igniting an abandoned shed should cause no significant hardship.

While I can't find it anymore, the police report for it was written in a much more literary style than the typical "notes and facts".

im reminded of an o henry story where a guy tries that.

same. there's a classic o. henry short story, "the cop and the anthem", based on this premise.

fascinating article. while i certainly sympathise somewhat with Alex - it is clear his actions are at least in part a consequence of mental conditions - i can't help but feel like being caught wasn't his plan as the article seems to suggest, and he wanted chaos upon the prison's opening, as some kind of strange payback or revenge

I like to think all of my actions are a consequence of my mental conditions.

Not a chance, all of our actions are disconnected from our mental conditions and have been pre-decided for us.

Partly agree, the hiding of his "escape kits" with weapons do not make sense if he wanted to be cought doing it. Because then they are removed (he knew of the camerss) and he would not get power from them, but be helpless again in prison (to be raped again etc.)

So maybe there was a subconscious plan to get in prison after he prepared everything. Or maybe just a "insurance". Or maybe indeed a bigger plan, mass breakout, .. or having all those options. Being in prison shaped him. He tried to control it (one of his quotes are "placing the kits was therapeutic"). Or he was indeed just really insane and orchestrated a plot/game setting like in D&D. Might be a mix.

TL;DR: "while a new jail in Nashville was still under construction, staff discovered missing keys and other anomalies. Surveillance footage eventually revealed that someone had repeatedly disguised themselves as a construction worker and entered the building many times. Inside, they hid weapons, tools, and escape items in walls and rooms around the facility."

Reminds me of the US Embassy in Russia that was built, by Russians, who embedded thousands of spying devices within the building itself. It took 27 years to build, then debug the building.

It’s all part of the game it seems.

The US bugged the “toilet partitions” of the Russian embassy in D.C. during its construction[0] and the FBI built a tunnel under it for espionage purposes in the 80s[1].

[0] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/CIA-RDP90-00965R000...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100514112651/http://articles.o...

And it was the person both least, and most suspected.

It's always someone you either do or do not suspect!

Leaving keys etc. I could understand as a political statement, but loaded guns? Madman!

He gives a reason for doing so, although the article points out that his reason is suspect.

More like the sheriff is butthurt at the explanation, even were it proven true he wouldn't be able to accept it as such.

Though, Friedman also does have a touch of the narcissim thing going on, in that he enjoys it that Hall says "he can't be understood".

Fascinating story... This was covered on the GoneSouth podcast as well:

Part 1: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/274-gone-south-88714714/episo... Part 2: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/274-gone-south-88714714/episo...

I assume this is following the podcast -> (new yorker / atlantic) article -> netflix doc pipeline. In a good way.

interesting article, though i probably would have skipped if not for a hand injury i'm dealing with.

mentioned in the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Berne

all i can think is the guy is nuts. why sabotage the new jail where you have a personal relationship with with the new sheriff and are supposedly making progress fixing all the problems with the old system? i don't know what i was expecting...

I don't know. I've communicated with Alex a few times over the last decade or so and he's always seemed one of the most rational, smart and pragmatic jail reformers I've ever know. He has always followed the legal path through the courts, even though it is often broken, trying to make it less broken for those coming behind.

You can't see inside anyone's mind. What caused him to commit his original offense that got him locked up for a decade? It wasn't a crime of necessity, I'm sure. Most crimes aren't. A lot of people commit crimes because some untreated mental health issue which lowers their self control. Then followed by ten years he was locked up, who knows what damage that did to his psyche which lay undiscovered?

edit: I've now read the rest of the article, and I knew nothing of the extensive mental health issues Alex suffers from

Otis Campbell was known for locking himself into the Mayberry jail.

I recommend reading on "Witold Pilecki" - old story, but pretty fascinating.

Nowhere near as amazing a story as that of Witold Pileski, who broke into Auschwitz and back out, to reveal to the world the horrors that went on there. And ended up murdered by the Communist regime after the end of the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki

> reëlection

> reënacted

whats with the ree-s in the article...

that's the New Yorker signature style

i thought jaywalking was the new yorker signature style :P

It's a diacritic marker that indicates how the word is supposed to be pronounced, with a syllable break on the marked letters - as though readers might get confused and think the word is pronounced "reel-ection" as opposed to "re-election." It's a pretty archaic practice, but The New Yorker persists. They have a lot of unusual stylistic preferences, like preferring the spelling "vender" over "vendor," which also occurs in this article.

A more common example of the diaeresis would be the name "Zoë" - the "ë" indicates the pronunciation is "zoe-y" (2 syllables) not "zoe" (1 syllable).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)#English

til, thank you! i guess it's important for them we all coöperate on pröper spek :P

thought i was seeing this because some ebooks also have missing/poorly substituted ligatures for me

As a Dutch person, what’s interesting to me is how this exact rule applies to Dutch. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice it while reading the article…

Some style guides recommend the diaeresis over doubled vowels when they are pronounced separately. The idea is I believe from French: maïs, Noël, etc.

I was taught to do it that way in public school here in Canada in the 90s; it is the textbook proper way to spell words like coördination. I was also taught that no one actually spells it that way and that co-ordination and coordination are both fine and far more common.

> The idea is I believe from French: maïs, Noël, etc.

Apropos of nothing, except that it will allow me to vent a bit, it also changes the rule for the pronunciation of the last consonant of French words.

Normally the lack of a trailing "e" would mean the last consonant is not-sounded but the diaeresis changes it: maïs/"my-isz", Noël/"noh-ell", etc.

And yes Moët (the champagne) is pronounced "moh-ett" in France and by French speakers.

It's incredibly annoying having someone subtly but in a slightly superior manner "correct" your pronunciation by repeating the mispronunciation right after you've pronounced it correctly - "sure, I'll order some some MOHAY". Outside I'm smiling and nodding pretending not to notice, inside I'm screaming "IT'S MOH-fcking-ETT MTHERF*KER - MOH-ETT."

> it also changes the rule for the pronunciation of the last consonant of French words.

This was a very well explained distinction, with the exception of you using "Noël" as one of the examples, since "Noel" would still have a sounded "L". It would be weird to a French speaker but would most likely end up being pronounced somewhat like the English "null".

> And yes Moët (the champagne) is pronounced "moh-ett" in France and by French speakers.

My favorite Moët mispronunciation is one that it took me several months to understand: Russians pronounce it as if it was spelled in Cyrillic, so they say "mah- yacht".

There is a famous MORGENSHTERN song which I only understood was about champagne when I saw the music video for the first time.

> This was a very well explained distinction, with the exception of you using "Noël" as one of the examples

Do you have reason to believe it's true, or are you commenting to say that it would have been a well-explained distinction if it were true?

I tried to verify it, and found nothing but evidence that implicitly or explicitly contradicted it.

(The best I could find in favor were the English wikipedia page on the house of Perrier-Jouët, which lists a pronunciation with /t/ -- the French page lists no pronunciation at all -- and the 19th-century book Comment on prononce le français, which confirms that maïs is pronounced with a final /s/, but lists it without comment alongside several other words that feature the same irregular pronunciation of "-s", none of which include a diaeresis. I'm compelled to infer that the realization of /s/ in maïs has nothing to do with the diaeresis.

https://archive.org/details/commentonprononc00martuoft/page/... , page 302)

The way I was taught this in French school is that the diaeresis causes the letter to be pronounced separately, so in maïs the "¨" forces you to say "a" and "i" separately (ah- ee) instead of together ("eh" as in "mais" which is an existing French word).

It only affects the diphthong AFAIK, so I agree with you that it's not the reason for why the "s" is pronounced out loud.

The final "s" is usually silent in French and I'm not aware of any rule for what defines the exceptions.

The outcome for the final "-s" is somewhat influenced by the origin of the word, as you would pronounce "bis" differently depending on whether you mean "beige" or half-whole-wheat bread, vs. if you mean "repeated" (from latin).

There are a bunch of such weird exceptions, like "vis" (screw, or past tense of "to see") or "bus" (bus, or drank) which both can be pronounced either depending on their meaning, or "os" which is different depending on plural vs. singular.

For the ending "-s" there is also some regional variation. Where I was born, you would normally pronounce the final "s" in words like "plus" or "moins", and I was very surprised as a teenager to meet people from other French regions who made fun of it.

> The final "s" is usually silent in French and I'm not aware of any rule for what defines the exceptions.

I don't think there is a rule. The 19th-century book said this:

>> L's s'est maintenu ou définitivement rétabli depuis plus ou moins longtemps dans maïs, jadis, fi(l)s et lis (y compris fleur de lis le plus souvent, malgré l'Académie); dans metis, cassis, vis (substantif) et tournevis. La prononciation de ces mots sans s est tout à fait surannée; on ne peut plus la conserver que pour les nécessités de la rime, et encore!

The reference to /s/ being maintained or reestablished, and the pronunciation without /s/ being out of date, suggests to me that the rule was that final /s/ was lost (in Parisian French, I guess...), and that there was a specific effort to put it back into some words. But that's speculation on my part.

It seems clear that bus "bus" and maïs "maize" have a final /s/ because they are foreign words. It's less clear to me why they're given those spellings as opposed to something more like busse.

> And yes Moët (the champagne) is pronounced "moh-ett" in France and by French speakers.

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mo%C3%ABt

> Moët \mɔ.ɛ\

> Nom de famille.

For the champagne, we see this heading the French wikipedia page:

> Moët & Chandon (prononciation /moɛt‿e ʃɑ̃ˈdɔ̃/) est une maison de Champagne fondée en 1743

But that doesn't imply that there is a /t/ pronounced in "Moët" when not followed by a vowel; that's just normal French liaison. The explicit liaison marker in the phonetic spelling strongly implies that there isn't a /t/ in citation pronunciation.

This is all wiki information though - do you have a better source?

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