Harvey Guillén
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Which is why this escape has to be different.
Permanent.
Stephen can't just break out again.
He needs to make the prison system let him go.
Stephen is in the prison library one day, figuring out his next escape when he comes across the special needs parole.
It's a Texas program that allows for the release of terminally ill inmates.
Stephen gets an idea.
He uses a typewriter to forge medical documents, fake lab results showing he's HIV positive.
Then he uses the prison's internal mail system to slip them into his official medical file.
Next, he has to look the part.
Over the course of 10 months, between 1997 and 1998, Stephen performs the role of a dying man.
He starts losing weight, a lot of weight.
He uses laxatives almost daily, barely eating, making himself look skeletal.
He shuffles when he walks and winces like everything hurts.
He develops a cough.
He's method acting his own death and it's Oscar worthy.
The prison doctors watch him waste away.
They read the diagnosis in his file and they attribute it all to AIDS.
Nobody thinks to run their own test or double check.
They just see a dying man and try to make him comfortable.