Fugitives

Fugitives

Dramatic Accounts of Life on the Run

Gordon Kerr

Published by Canary Press eBook Limited at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Canary Press eBooks Limited

Copyright

© 2013 Canary Press eBooks Limited

This 2013 edition published by Canary Press eBooks Limited

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ISBN: 9781907795763

Cover & internal design: Anthony Prudente

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Contents

Introduction

PART ONE: BRITISH

John Gerard

Mary Queen of Scots

Jack Sheppard

Johnny Ramensky

Alfie Hinds

George Blake

Ronald Biggs

Lord Lucan

PART TWO: TERRORISTS

Osama bin Laden

Eric Rudolph

Ramzi Yousef

PART THREE: WAR CRIMINALS

Alois Brunner

Josef Mengele

Radovan Karadzic

PART FOUR: GANGSTERS

Bonnie and Clyde

John Dillinger

James ‘Whitey’ Bulger

Salvatore Riina

Bernardo ‘The Tractor’ Provenzano

Matteo Messina Denaro

PART FIVE: MISCELLANEOUS

Casanova

Frank Abnagale Jr.

Robert Vesco

James Earl Ray

Billy Hayes

D. B. Cooper

David McMillan

Heather Tallchief

The Texas 7

Joaquin Guzman Loera

Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov

PART SIX: KILLERS

Carl Panzram

Charles Starkweather

Ted Bundy

Andrew Cunanan

O.J. Simpson

PART SEVEN: POLITICIANS

John Stonehouse

Felicien Kabuga

PART EIGHT: FUGITIVES FROM SLAVERY

Henry ‘Box’ Brown

Harriet Tubman

PART NINE: WILD WEST

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

‘Black Jack’ Ketchum

Billy the Kid

PART TEN: PRISONERS OF WAR

Winston Churchill

Gunther Plüschow

Colditz Castle

André Devigny

The Wooden Horse Escape

Dieter Dengler

The Island Farm Escape

Introduction

Escaping from prison or the clutches of the law after committing a crime is one thing; staying free is another. Many have tried and few have succeeded in remaining a fugitive for very long. There are exceptions, of course. The mythical boss of James Earl Ray, for example. Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King, knew him simply as Raoul, and he has never turned up to end all the speculation about the great civil rights leader’s murder. Roberto Solanis, the man who armoured car hijacker Heather Tallchief, claims he hypnotised her into stealing more than $3 million. He vanished back in 1994 and not a trace of him has been seen since. She would in all likelihood also have remained a fugitive for justice had she not given herself up so that she and her son could regain their real identities.

For most other fugitives, of course, it all ends in tears, or, rather, a pool of blood. US Depression-era bank robbers, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, knew full well what they were getting into and their short criminal career was spent one step ahead of the pursuing law enforcement officers until it inevitably ended in a bloodbath on a quiet road in Louisiana.

John Dillinger, bank robber and serial prison escapee, spent many years on the run, carrying out audacious robberies. The death toll created by his gang was such, however, that there was little chance that Dillinger would be given the benefit of the doubt when they finally caught up with him, as they did, in a hail of bullets, outside a Chicago cinema in 1934.

Fugitives often have help, of course, friends or family who provide them with the means to get out of prison or who support them once they do. Bonnie and Clyde regularly visited family, even though they were on the run.

Nazi war criminals, however, had help from all kinds of quarters when the war ended. Entire networks were created to help mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Alois Brunner flee from war crime charges in Europe and establish new lives in South America. It is astonishing how often men such as these evaded justice for the remainder of their lives. Although Eichmann was famously captured by Israeli agents in 1960, Josef Mengele, the loathed ‘Angel of Death’ at Auschwitz, the man who with a nod of the head or the wave of an arm, selected those to be sent to the gas chambers when they arrived at the camp, remained free. He is presumed dead now, but following the war, after working on a remote farm, he was helped to travel to South America. Re-locating to Paraguay, he found a sympathetic right wing government headed by General Alfredo Stroessner that was prepared to turn a blind eye to a Nazi past. Alois Brunner, also responsible for sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers, found shelter for many years after the war in Syria where he even took on a role, advising the Syrian government.

Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the early 1990s, remained free for a number of years. Many claimed that the authorities knew all the time where he was, possibly backing up Karadzic’s claim that he had ‘done a deal’ with, US Envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke, that if he withdrew from politics, he would not face extradition to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. This deal was denied by Holbrooke and was made academic by Karadzic’s arrest in spring 2008. However, had anyone come up with a stranger life on the run than this former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of Bosnian Muslims? He grew his hair and a huge white beard and became an expert on alternative medicine who looked uncannily like Santa Claus. The most wanted fugitive in Europe for many years, he was openly delivering lectures and strolling in the streets of Belgrade.

Terrorists are by nature fugitives, if they have not been killed or captured. Osama bin Laden is without doubt the most wanted man in the world, with a bounty of more than $50 million on his head and it has been made known that he does not need to be found alive. The perpetrator of the 9/11 atrocity continues to taunt his pursuers with tapes railing against the West and encouraging radical Muslims to follow the example of the 9/11 attackers. Meanwhile, he is reported to be in remote areas of Pakistan or Afghanistan and some claim he is actually dead. Nonetheless, on the run, his spectre continues to terrify people around the world.

For others, it is less complex. British prison escapee Alfie Hinds, kept breaking out of prison because he wanted to draw attention to the injustice that had put him behind bars. His meticulous planning and detailed knowledge of the law helped him to escape without adding to his prison sentence when recaptured, made him unique amongst fugitives. Compare him with the Texas 7, the seven ruthless men who broke out of the John B. Connally Unit in Texas, simply because they were all facing lengthy sentences of between thirty years and life. They managed to stay on the run for a couple of months remaining together like a football team on the road and carrying out robberies to fund their lives as fugitives. Of course, it would all end in recapture and, as they killed a policeman while carrying out one of their heists, they will all find freedom soon. Unfortunately, it will be at the hands of the Texas state executioner.

Some fugitives are just so audacious that it is hard not to admire them. The remarkable Frank Abnagale Jr led American law enforcement agents a merry dance for years, cashing fraudulent cheques – many of which he had actually printed himself – and posing as impossible characters such as pilots and doctors and getting away with it. Abnagale has been celebrated in film and, remarkably, the Hollywood version of his life as a fugitive is a pale imitation of the real thing. Similarly the escape of the great lover and adventurer, Casanova, from imprisonment in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, is an astonishing tale of ingenuity and self-confidence, as well as courage. Possibly the most incredible fugitive story of all, that of German First World War airman, Gunther Plüschow, leaves the reader open-mouthed in amazement and admiration. Fleeing British forces in a German colony in modern-day China, Plüschow’s evasion of captivity took him into China and then to Japan, where he narrowly escaped capture, and then to the United States. All the while, the entire world was searching for him. He was eventually captured at Gibraltar and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Britain. Remarkably, however, he managed to escape and become a fugitive yet again – the only prisoner during the First World War to escape from a British POW camp – and make his way back to Germany.

Alongside Plüschow’s story can be placed some of the inspirational tales of flight from German POW camps during the Second World War – escapades such as those at Colditz or at Stalag Luft III where a vaulting horse provided the means of escape, have inspired generations with their tales of British daring.

Winston Churchill can also inspire with the story of his escape from captivity during the Boer War in South Africa. It was claimed by some that he showed a disregard for others in breaking out alone, but there is little doubting his courage in trekking long distances and hopping on and off trains for almost three hundred miles in hostile country.

It is a hard life being on the run and often lonely, as Frank Abnagale Jr admitted after finding it impossible to have meaningful relationships – a difficult thing to do when you are using a false name. Burglar Jack Sheppard also found it hard back in the 18th century when he broke out of the forbidding Newgate prison and took shelter in a cowshed. He quickly made up for it, however, donning the clothes of a dandy and getting roaring drunk with a couple of lady friends before being rearrested and hanged.

Ultimately, the life of the fugitive is impossible – the constant changing of identities, remembering who you are this week, waiting for that knock on the door and always keeping a window open in case it comes. Sometimes, however, like the people in this book, the only available option when you are desperate is to go on the run and become a fugitive.

PART ONE: BRITISH

JOHN GERARD

To be a Catholic in the 16th century was dangerous enough. England’s wars with the Catholic countries Spain and France, coupled with the fact that Pope Pius V had announced in 1570 that Elizabeth I was not a rightful queen and should be deposed, created a pro-Protestant wave of nationalist feeling and made anyone who worshipped as a Catholic a potential traitor. To be a Catholic priest, then, was even worse and they had to travel to Europe to be trained in the priesthood. The fact that their training took place at the English College at Douai in the Spanish Netherlands, an area under the control of England’s arch-enemy, Spain, made matters even more difficult and the government had little difficulty in branding priests as traitors to the crown.

John Gerard was trained at Douai and, like all other priests, lived most of his life as a fugitive, hiding from the authorities in priest-holes in great houses, in sewers and on one memorable occasion in the grate of a fire. When not preaching or hiding, he was in prison or escaping from prison.

Gerard was the son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn. He was born in 1564 and while he was still young, his father experienced some of the difficulties that John would endure in later life. In 1569, he was imprisoned for three years for plotting to rescue the Catholic monarch, Mary Queen of Scots.

John’s education began in 1575 when he was sent with his brother to Exeter College. Aged fourteen, he then went to the Douai seminary, studying there for three years and deciding to become a Jesuit. He spent the next year in Paris, studying with the Jesuits, but, having become seriously ill, he decided to return to England to recuperate.

However, so suspicious were officials of anyone with a foreign accent, such as Gerard, that as soon as he set foot on home soil, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison in Southwark in London. At the time, many Catholics were incarcerated in the Marshalsea leading Gerard to describe it as ‘like a school of Christ’. He was eventually released from prison through the kindness of another famous Catholic, Sir Anthony Babington. Babington, later hanged, drawn and quartered for allegedly conspiring with Mary Queen of Scots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, paid the bond required to secure Gerard’s freedom.

Gerard made his way to Rome to study at the English College there. However, the English Cardinal Allen, who would later help to plan the attack on England by the Spanish Armada, was impressed by the young man and petitioned the Pope to send him to England. Thus, Gerard became a priest several months before he reached the required age and left for England once again, in the company of Fathers Edward Oldcorne, Christopher Bales, George Beesley and two other priests. The group landed on the coast of England at night and went their separate ways, Gerard making his way to London to meet up with Father Henry Garnet, the head of the Jesuit mission in England.

John Gerard was a remarkable individual who behaved more like James Bond than a covert Catholic priest and more like a courtier, as one woman said at the time. He partook of gentlemanly pursuits such as hunting and gambling, spoke four languages and dressed fashionably. All the while, however, he was winning converts to his faith. People were desperate to meet him. One Protestant wrote, ‘The extent of Gerard’s influence is nothing less than marvellous. Country gentlemen meet him in the street and forthwith invite him to their houses; highborn ladies put themselves under his direction almost as unreservedly in temporal as in spiritual things. Scholars and courtiers run serious risks to hold interviews with him, the number of his converts of all ranks is legion; the very gaolers and turnkeys obey him; and in a state of society when treachery and venality are pervading all classes, he finds servants and agents who are ready to live and die for him.’

Gerard had to be very careful, however. In October 1591, for instance, he was attending a meeting of Jesuit priests at Baddesley Clinton, a moated manor house near Warwick. Baddesley Clinton was often used to shelter fugitive priests and was a warren of priest-holes and secret passages within which the clerics could secrete themselves. When the property was raided early one morning by the authorities, the priests, including Gerard, slid down a rope from the first floor through an old shaft into the house’s former sewers which were large enough to hold about a dozen people. They remained there for around four hours until the officers completed their search.

Gerard then made his base at Braddocks, home of Catholics and friends of the Jesuits, William and Jane Wiseman. However, a trusted household servant was actually a spy and a series of raids followed. Firstly the home of Jane Wiseman’s mother, also called Jane, was searched. She was arrested, put on trial and, refusing to plead either guilty or not guilty, was sentenced to be pressed to death – a horrific punishment where the convicted person is stripped naked and heavy weights in the form of stones and iron are placed on him or her. Her sentence, however, was commuted to imprisonment when the Queen’s Councillors became concerned about the public reaction to such a punishment.

Gerard’s house was also raided, but, fortunately for him, he was away for the night. William Wiseman was not so lucky. He was arrested along with several others. But Gerard was at Braddocks on 1 April 1594 when the pursuivants – as the officers were called – arrived. He concealed himself in a tiny priest’s hole beneath the grate of a fireplace while the pursuivants tore the house apart looking for him. Two days passed and all he had to eat were some biscuits and quince jelly. At this point the pursuivants decided to take the occupants of the house to London for further questioning. Jane Wiseman instructed a servant who remained behind while further searches of the house were carried out how to call Gerard from his hiding place when the search was over. Unfortunately, the servant in question was the traitor. He passed his information on immediately and the search resumed with increased vigour. Still they did not find him, however. One night they even lit a fire in the fireplace just above his head. Burning embers fell onto him, but he remained concealed. Finally, after four days had passed they concluded that he must have escaped. Jane Wiseman was freed and Gerard was at last able to crawl out of his cramped hiding place.

Not long after, however, on 23 April he was discovered and captured at a new lodging he had taken in London. Also arrested was Nicholas ‘Little John’ Owen, a master builder and craftsman who was the architect of many of the priest-holes and hiding places in which priests hid.

In his interrogation, Gerard was honest about his status as a Jesuit priest, but refused to answer questions about others. Unhappy with his answers, they ordered him to be locked up in the Counter Prison. He was brought before a magistrate and the notorious priest-hunter and torturer, Richard Topcliffe. When Gerard refused to sign a confession, Topcliffe ordered him to be clapped in irons. ‘I will hang you up in the air and have no pity on you’ he said.

Gerard spent three months in chains before friends managed to bribe the right person to have him moved to the Clink Prison in Southwark. Gerard was able to carry out his duties as a priest there and is even reputed to have converted the son of his gaoler. But his cross-examination by Topcliffe continued and, eventually, a warrant for his torture was issued. Gerard himself wrote about this in his Narrative:

‘They took me to a big upright pillar, one of the posts which held the roof of this huge underground chamber. Driven in to the top of it were iron staples for supporting heavy weights. Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps. My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and the rings of the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it slipping, and then, removing the wicker steps one by one from under my feet, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head.’

He was tortured in this way on three occasions, but still, he would not confess.

Finally, shortly before his trial, Gerard made an audacious escape. He had already tried once but the attempt was abandoned when the rowing boat waiting on the Thames for him got caught in a strong tide and stuck against some staging posts. The second attempt took place on the night of 4 October 1597. With the help of friends on the outside, including Richard Fullwood, an assistant to Father Henry Garnet, and a prison warder, a rope was strung from a tower across the moat. Gerard and a fellow prisoner, John Arden, clambered out onto a window ledge and inched their way across the rope by their fingertips. This was gruelling for Gerard who had only just recovered the feeling in his fingers following his torture. They made it across and fled in the boat that was waiting for them. Gerard was then provided with a horse and escaped to Morecrofts in Uxbridge, the home of one of the future Gunpowder Plotters, Robert Catesby. A few days later, having regained his strength, he resumed his pastoral work.

Gerard had no involvement whatsoever in the Gunpowder Plot, the failed attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics to assassinate King James I of England and VI of Scotland at the opening of Parliament in 1605, but that did not stop the authorities from issuing a proclamation against him. Once again he was forced into hiding in a house at Harrowden that was subjected to a nine-day search. He wrote an open letter protesting his innocence and had it distributed in the streets of London, but it was to no avail.

On 3 May 1606, realising that he was too much of a wanted man to remain in England, Gerard crossed the Channel concealed in the entourage of the Ambassadors of Flanders and Spain. Garnet, along with Nicholas Owen, had already been arrested at Hinlip Hall in Worcestershire and on the very day that Gerard left England for the last time, Garnet was beheaded, Owen having died while undergoing torture some months before.

John Gerard, a fugitive for much of his life, spent the remainder of it quietly, teaching and writing. He died in 1627 aged seventy-three.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

By the time she was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, had lived several lives, each of them extraordinary.

Born in 1542 to King James V of Scotland and his wife, Mary of Guise, she became queen at the age of seven when her father died, aged thirty, most probably from cholera. The next in line to the throne after Mary, James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, acted as regent until 1554 when Mary’s mother took over until her death in 1560.

The issue of Mary’s marriage was critical for the Scottish throne and at the age of just six months, she was betrothed by the Treaties of Greenwich to Edward, heir to the throne of the English King Henry VIII. The plan was that their heirs would inherit the crowns of both England and Scotland, uniting the two ancient rivals. It was an unpopular move in Scotland, however, and the Scottish Parliament rescinded the treaties. Henry subsequently began what was known as the ‘Rough Wooing’, taking military action against the Scots to try to persuade them to permit the marriage. The young Mary became a fugitive for the first time when Mary of Guise hid her in concealed chambers at Stirling Castle when the Duke of Somerset arrived in Scotland looking to kidnap the young queen.

Eventually, the French came to the aid of the Scots, the new King of France, Henry II, proposing a marriage between Mary and his three-year-old son, the Dauphin François, a solution to which Mary of Guise was favourable. But the English had not given up and Mary was once again moved and hidden at Dumbarton Castle. In July 1548, the French arrived and a Marriage Treaty was signed by both sides at a convent near the town of Haddington.

Mary, now aged five, would have to hide from the English no more. She was sent to France and would remain at the French court for the next thirteen years, accompanied by her own little court of two lords, two half-brothers and four girls also called Mary – the daughters of four of Scotland’s noblest families – the Setons, the Beatons, the Flemings and the Livingstons. They would become her ladies-in-waiting.

On 24 April 1558, when Mary was aged fifteen and François was fourteen, they were married at Notre Dame in Paris, François assuming the title of King Consort of Scots, Mary becoming Queen Consort of France.

Unfortunately, it was to be a short-lived marriage as François died in December 1560. Mary returned to Scotland soon after to face a complex political situation in which many of her people did not entirely trust her. Similarly, her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, was suspicious of her intentions, especially as the Scottish queen also had a claim to the English throne.

Scotland at the time was torn between Protestant and Catholic factions and Mary was a devout Catholic while her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, first Earl of Moray, was leader on the Protestant side. Nonetheless, she retained Moray as her adviser and tolerated the Scottish Protestants.

In July 1565, Mary married again. Her new husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was her half first cousin and also a claimant to the English throne and it was a marriage that pleased no one. Elizabeth was against it and so was Moray, as Darnley, like Mary, was a Catholic. He joined with other Protestant lords in a rebellion but they were defeated in battle at the Chaseabout Raid.

Darnley was an arrogant and violent husband, demanding that he be given the courtesy title of ‘king’. When he became jealous of Mary’s relationship with her private secretary, David Rizio, he entered into a conspiracy with the Protestant lords and joined a group of them in murdering Rizio in front of Mary.

Following Rizio’s murder, the nobles kept Mary prisoner at Holyrood Palace. Heavily pregnant and desperate to escape, she succeeded in winning Darnley round and they got away. Three months after their flight, the future king, James VI, was born. She was twenty-three years old and elated to have produced a male heir to continue the Stuart dynasty.

The nobles, however, felt betrayed by Darnley and they took terrible revenge on him. In February 1567, following an explosion in a house in Edinburgh he was found dead in the garden, probably already dead, by strangulation, before the explosion occurred. The perpetrator was believed to be James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, who would become Mary’s third husband.

On her way back from visiting her son in Edinburgh in April 1567, Mary was abducted by Bothwell and taken to Dunbar Castle. They returned to Edinburgh on 6 May and, knowing she was powerless to refuse and with a child to consider, she married Bothwell nine days later in a Protestant ceremony.

The Scottish nobles were outraged and an army was raised against the queen and her new husband. Defeated at the Battle of Carberry Hill, Bothwell fled, never to see Mary again and to end his life in prison in Scandinavia, while Mary was taken prisoner.

She was conducted to Loch Leven Castle by Lords Lindsay and Ruthven, under the instructions of James Stewart, Lord Moray. The castle was a rugged stronghold, built on an island in the middle of Loch Leven in the present day area of Perth and Kinross. And Mary was no stranger to it, having visited as a guest of its owner, Moray’s half-brother, Sir William Douglas of Loch Leven, in 1565. She had also taken part there in a meeting with the fiery Calvinist preacher, John Knox.

Also on the island was the young and handsome George Douglas who fell in love with Mary and would play an important role in her escape from her incarceration. Another Douglas, reputed to be an orphaned cousin, was present – ‘Wee Willie’ Douglas. He would also play a part in getting her out of Loch Leven.

Not long after she arrived on the island, Mary gave birth for the second time, with Bothwell as the father. There is debate about how pregnant she was at the time and about what happened to the baby. One account suggests that she had twins who died and were buried on the island. Another says that she had a daughter who was sent to relatives in France where she was sent to a convent to become a nun.

Towards the end of July, the Lords Ruthven, Melville and Lindsay arrived at the castle bearing abdication papers. Mary signed them on 24 July, and her son became James VI of Scotland while Moray, protesting to Mary that he was only holding her on the island for her own safety, became regent.

Mary was desperate once more to escape and her supporters encouraged her in this desire. Lord Seton was on her side, as were the Hamiltons, Huntly and Argyll. Meanwhile, George Douglas began to devise escape plans that all proved too risky to be attempted. As winter approached and the weather deteriorated, the chance of an escape seemed farther away that ever for the erstwhile queen.

Moray, realising that George Douglas was scheming for Mary’s escape, banished him from the island but before he left, Mary slipped him a pearl earring that she told him to send back to her if there was an opportunity for an escape so that she could prepare herself.

With ‘Wee Willie’ carrying secret messages back and forward between Mary and George, an escape plan soon developed. Mary was to borrow clothing from one of the laundresses who travelled across the Loch to work in the castle. She was then to escape on the boat that took the workers back in the evening. She did as she was asked and, dressed in the clothes of a servant, left the castle, went down to the castle’s jetty and climbed aboard the boat. Her plan was foiled when an eagle-eyed boatman spotted the unblemished fingers of a noblewoman holding her muffler tight and sounded the alarm.

William Douglas, realising how dangerous it would be for him if he were to lose his prisoner, tightened security around Mary. ‘Wee Willie’ was banished from the castle for his part in the attempted escape.

Mary was beside herself and dashed off pleas to her cousin Elizabeth I and to her former mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici. But neither paid any attention. George had not yet given up, however, and to get ‘Wee Willie’ back on the island, wrote to his mother, Lady Margaret Douglas, to say that he was going into exile in France and was, consequently, unable to look after the boy any more. ‘Wee Willie’ was allowed to live on the island once again and George returned to the task of helping Mary to escape.

The signal arrived in May 1568 when a boatman arrived at the island carrying Mary’s pearl earring. To make the return of the earring seem innocent, he said that another boatman from the island had tried to sell it to George Douglas and he had ordered it to be returned to Mary.

‘Wee Willie’ asked permission of William Douglas to stage May celebrations during which he would play the role of the Abbot of Unreason or Lord of Misrule. In this role, he would have the right to make anyone his slave for the day. On the appointed day, 2 May, there was joyous celebration and ‘Wee Willie’ ensured that everyone was joining in, drinking more than their fill of alcohol. At one point, however, all was endangered when William Douglas, looking out of a window, spotted ‘Wee Willie’ tying all the boats to the shore except one. Mary pretended to be ill at that moment and Douglas’s attention was diverted from the window. Her illness meant that she was excused dinner and was able to wait at the window of her room for the signal that would begin her bid for freedom.

Meanwhile, the courageous Wee Willie had the task of stealing the keys to the main gate from William Douglas, no mean feat, given that Douglas kept the keys in his possession at all times. Fortunately, however, Douglas had consumed a large quantity of alcohol. Wee Willie was able to casually drop a napkin over the keys where they lay on the table in front of Douglas and pick them up without their owner suspecting anything. He ran into the courtyard where he was seen by Mary from her window. Dressed now as a servant, she ran down to join him, accompanied by one of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Kennedy. Willie opened the gate and when they were all through, locked it again before tossing the keys into the barrel of a cannon. The three of them ran to the shore and jumped into the boat that had been left untied. Willie rowed furiously across the loch and the party was met on the shore by George Douglas. They fled west to the lands of the Hamiltons, determined to restore Mary as queen.

Unfortunately for Mary, things did