Mark DeFriest: How 4 Years Became a 39-Year Sentence

Mark DeFriest is the Florida man known as the “Prison Houdini,” whose 1980 four-year sentence for taking mechanic tools his late father had willed to him grew into roughly thirty-nine years behind bars through a chain of escape attempts, hundreds of disciplinary reports, a disputed competency finding, and institutional errors that kept pushing his release date out, at one point as far as 2085.¹

The Tool Charge That Started It

In 1979, nineteen-year-old Mark DeFriest used a key he already had to take mechanic tools from his late father’s shed. His father’s will left the tools to him, but probate had not yet been completed. His stepmother reported him, he fled from police, and he was arrested and charged with theft. Probate later confirmed the tools were his — after he had already been convicted and sentenced to four years in a Florida prison.²³ His longtime attorney, John Middleton, later called the whole episode “a family matter that got out of hand.”

The Competency Finding That Cleared the Way

Shortly after DeFriest entered the system, his mental fitness came into question. Four or five court-appointed psychiatrists evaluated him and concluded he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. One psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Berland, disagreed and testified that DeFriest was faking. Berland’s conclusion prevailed, and in 1981, at age twenty, DeFriest was cleared to plead guilty.¹⁴

Middleton later argued that Berland had a conflict, having supervised a hospital ward DeFriest had previously escaped from. Middleton and filmmaker Gabriel London described DeFriest as having high-functioning autism along with savant-like mechanical ability.⁵ Decades later, Berland re-evaluated him for a documentary and reversed his finding, describing DeFriest as “decidedly psychotic” and pointing to possible childhood brain injury, trauma from prison beatings, or other psychosis. According to London, Berland said “everything could have been different.”⁶

How Four Years Became Thirty-Nine

DeFriest earned his nickname with thirteen escape attempts, seven of them successful. He could memorize master keys at a glance from guards’ belts and fabricate working duplicates. At Florida State Prison he once copied a master key and released fellow inmates. On another occasion he spiked staff coffee with LSD to create a diversion. He also went over razor wire.²⁷ The same fine-motor skill went into artwork made from Popsicle sticks, chip-bag foil, and scraps of paper.⁸

Each attempt brought new charges and more time. By 1981, the escapes and disciplinary record led to a plea deal for a life sentence, entered at age twenty. Middleton got that life sentence overturned in 1986, but the stack of escape-related charges, roughly 400 disciplinary reports, and additional convictions kept pushing the release date out. At one point it stood at 2085.⁹¹⁰

What His Time Inside Looked Like

DeFriest spent twenty-seven of his roughly thirty-nine years in solitary confinement.⁹ Much of that time he was held on the X-wing of Florida State Prison in Raiford, one floor above the execution chamber, as the only non-violent prisoner housed alongside death row inmates.⁶ He went years without sunlight, and once spent eleven days naked in a dark cell.⁷

Journalistic accounts and the documentary record that he was gang-raped by inmates soon after entering prison in 1980 and sexually assaulted repeatedly during his incarceration. Guards allegedly beat him and fabricated disciplinary reports. At one point he was forced into a survival role as the “prison wife” of a death row inmate.⁹³ His advocates argued the escape attempts were desperate reactions to those conditions, not defiance.²

In July 1999, DeFriest was on the X-wing when death row inmate Frank Valdes was fatally beaten. He told investigators he heard and saw the attack and said Valdes’ “whole face was covered with blood” as guards dragged him onto a walkway and kept stomping and kicking him. His letter about the killing was used as evidence against the four former guards charged with second-degree murder.¹¹¹² After his testimony he was transferred out of Florida for security reasons, moving through prisons in Alabama, New Mexico, and Oregon. His advocates say each transfer brought retaliation and misclassification that kept him in high-security housing.⁹

The Documentary That Moved the Parole Board

Filmmaker Gabriel London spent thirteen years on The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest, released in 2014. The film used animation and voice-over by actor Scoot McNairy, drawn from DeFriest’s own letters, to depict solitary confinement, sexual violence, and the escapes. A pivotal element was Berland’s re-evaluation and reversal.⁶⁹

After members of the Florida Commission on Offender Review watched it, the commission scheduled a special hearing instead of the usual multi-year setbacks, which had sometimes pushed his parole review out by as much as twenty years. In late 2014 the commission cut his release date from 2085 to March 2015, citing a two-year stretch without disciplinary issues.⁷¹³

Release still took years. A 1980s contraband charge was parole-ineligible, requiring more time. Oregon officials misread his file, classified him as a lifer, and placed him in solitary in a maximum-security facility instead of pre-release programming.¹⁴ In July 2016, the Florida Commission on Offender Review voted 2-1 to set a July 26 release date. The plan sent DeFriest to a California prison to finish a two-year sentence for drug possession, after which he would move to a group home, receive mental health treatment, keep a temporary curfew, and report to a parole officer. Commissioner Richard Davison, the lone dissent, called him “a consistent risk to not only himself, but to the communities which he has gone through.”¹⁵¹⁰

Ten Days Out

DeFriest walked out of prison on February 5, 2019, after thirty-nine years. His wife Bonnie, whom he had met through a prison pen-pal program about twenty-five years earlier and married while he was still inside, had been planning for his return for the length of their marriage.¹⁶⁹

He was free for ten days. He struggled with mandatory counseling requirements and drug addiction. On February 15, 2019, with Bonnie, he turned himself in at the San Joaquin County probation office in California after his parole was revoked. London, Bonnie, and the rest of his advocacy team filed an appeal asking Florida and California authorities for medical treatment instead of re-incarceration. It was denied, and he was returned to custody.⁹

Why His Case Keeps Being Cited

Reformers point to DeFriest to show how a nonviolent property offense can turn into a de facto life sentence once escape charges, disciplinary infractions, and bureaucratic errors stack. His case is also used to illustrate the cost of incarcerating people with serious mental illness without treatment: five of six psychiatrists found him incompetent in the early 1980s, and he then spent four decades in punitive settings rather than therapeutic ones.³ Commissioner Melinda Coonrod, who voted in 2016 to release him, captured the bind the system had built around him: “I do not think that society would be best letting Mark DeFriest come out of prison without the benefit of any mental health treatment.”¹⁰

1
University of Florida Digital Collections. Mark DeFriest Feature
2
CBS News. Mark DeFriest, Prison Houdini, Set to Make First Legal Escape
3
Tallahassee Democrat. Mark DeFriest Film Exposes Broken Criminal Justice System
4
New America. The Mind of Mark DeFriest Podcast
5
The Guardian. Serial Escaper With Mental Health Issues Faces Life Behind Bars
6
IndieWire. Review: The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest
7
Democracy Now!. The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest
8
CBS News. Prison Houdini Mark DeFriest, 36 Years for Stealing His Own Tools
9
Bitter Southerner. Mark DeFriest’s Long Road
10
WJHG. Prison Houdini Mark DeFriest Back Before Parole Board
11
The Ledger. Death Row Interviews Tell of Inmate’s Beating Death
12
Tampa Bay Times. Fearful Inmate Asks to Move Out of State
13
Found Object. Press Release: Mark DeFriest Preparole
14
Everett Herald. Prison Houdini Still Seeking Release After 36 Years
15
Florida Politics. Florida Parole Board Sets Path to Freedom for Prison Houdini
16
KOIN. Wife of Prison Houdini Hopes He’ll Get Out for Good