Drug smuggler facing death penalty reveals how he fled ‘Bangkok Hilton’ maximum security prison in incredible escape involving hacksaw blades, bamboo poles and gaffer tape

A drug smuggler has revealed how he escaped a maximum security prison in Thailand in an extraordinary escape involving hacksaw blades, bamboo sticks and gaffer tape.

David McMillan, who faced the death penalty, became the first Westerner to escape from Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison in a daring plot on August 26, 1996.

The British-Australian, 67, had a friend send him a care package containing four hacksaw blades hidden among cigarettes for the guards and extreme pornography.

He slowly cut the bars of his cell with the knife to make as little noise as possible, before a friend “stopped that bar and gave me six inches to slip through.”

Mr McMillan got out and slid to the ground on nylon straps before using a ladder made of bamboo poles, gaffer tape and picture frames to climb over a high wall.

He climbed over the wall before taking out an umbrella that hid his face as he walked under the watchtowers and then took taxis to get to the airport.

There, Mr McMillan picked up a passport left behind by a friend and fled to Singapore and then Pakistan, where a tribal leader kept him safe and new passports were arranged.

He returned to London in 1999 and has now spoken to MailOnline in a new episode from our YouTube series ‘My Story’ with people with special life stories.

Mr. McMillian entered the criminal world after living a relatively normal life in his late teens and early twenties, working as a cameraman, for an advertising agency and then in a movie theater, where he “met the family of some retired thugs.”

Speaking to MailOnline, he explained: ‘They had been safecrackers and had committed a number of selective robberies but had some money to invest and narcotics were the best option they thought.’

This led to him becoming involved in the drug trade in Australia in the 1970s, setting up an international smuggling ring involving mules that operated in South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania.

Mr McMillian was first jailed for 11 years in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison in 1982 after being convicted of drug trafficking. During that time, he survived a fatal fire that killed six fellow inmates.

In 1993, while still on parole in Australia, he fled to Thailand to retrieve money he had stashed there – but was spotted and arrested at Bangkok airport just before boarding an outbound flight.

Mr McMillian was found with a fake passport and illegal drugs, which ultimately led to him receiving the maximum death penalty.

After spending two years there, he was sent to Klong Prem and told that he would be found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to death within two weeks, with execution by machine gun. That’s when he decided to escape.

Mr McMillan also described the shocking conditions at Klong Prem – ironically dubbed the ‘Bangkok Hilton’ – and said he was kept in dormitories with 200 prisoners, despite them being only built for 16 people.

He said the prisoners were “strewn like sardines on the ground” and that many of them were chained and facing the death penalty – including himself.

Speaking about why he was in prison, Mr McMillan said: ‘I think they found 20 grams of heroin somewhere at the airport. I did point out that if it had been mine, it probably would have been a lot more.”

He added: ‘The escape from Thai prison was probably the longest night of my life and the most tiring. It was an old-fashioned escape, because telling anyone would have been fatal.

‘I had Michael, my business partner, send me a care package containing four hacksaw blades hidden in a huge amount of very distracting material…cigarettes to give to the guards and pornography that would shock them.

“And I took my hacksaw blade and began sawing after midnight. After about two hours I had only finished one bar. At night it is different. Anyone thinking of escaping…there’s no point in figuring out how long you think it will take in daylight.”

He said that at night “you can hear a pin drop even if there is some background noise from other cells.”

Mr McMillan explained: ‘You touch an old steel bar from a prison cell with a hacksaw blade. It screams in protest as you drag it along. You have to go slowly.

‘Half a strip was cut in two hours. Should I go that night or do what I knew was fatal? When it comes to escaping, don’t hesitate. Seize every opportunity that comes your way.’

He described how his “great Swedish Viking friend Sten” held back the bar to give him six inches of space, through which he slipped and got out, then “slid to the ground on a piece of nylon I got from one of the factories got’. ‘.

Mr McMillan continued: ‘By the time I tripped over what luckily was an outside wall… very high, too high, with electrical wiring running along the top and a ladder I had to make out of bamboo sticks, gaffer tape, some picture frames covering the forming rungs of the thing, all stuck together.

‘It was almost sunrise. Strangely enough, I thought, even when I saw that glow of sunrise at the top of that prison in Bangkok, even if I failed, at least I felt free in that moment.

‘Well, I stopped all that nonsense and made it my job to get over that wall, slid down, got my prop out of my bag, an umbrella from the umbrella factory, and kept my white face well hidden under it as I walked under the watchtowers.’

He then “grabbed a few taxis, went to the airport, picked up a passport that a friend had very carefully left for me” before fleeing to the Baluchistan province of Pakistan to “my friend from many years ago, from the 1970s” . .

That friend was Mir Noor Jehan Magsi, from the Balochi Magsi clan, and Mr McMillan said: “It was only then that I knew I was safe.”

He continued, “I found myself as a guest of the tribal lord, sitting on a bed looking at some new passports. Over there. Should I stay or should I go? Should I throw myself into it again?

‘But there really wasn’t much choice. I had used up a lot of favors by escaping from Thai prison, by escaping a certain death sentence.”

He was later arrested in Lahore after being run errands by a drug courier and remained in the country, in and out of prison, for three years before returning to London in 1999, where he was born in 1956.

In 2012, he was arrested in Orpington, south-east London, for possessing 35 grams of heroin, which was allegedly sewn into the lining of a shirt and sent to his home.

McMillian denied any involvement, but a jury found him guilty and he was jailed for six years, but released in 2014.

Shortly afterwards, the Thai government initiated extradition proceedings and he was detained at HMP Wandsworth in London.

But in September 2016, he learned he was being released and that the threat of extradition – which could have led to a death sentence – was over.

Speaking about his wider criminal activities, Mr McMillan also explained how he continued to survive in an extremely dangerous market of smuggling.

He said: ‘People have sometimes asked me, looking at me, how did you survive dealing with cocaine and heroin and in a market that was so ruthless and cutthroat? But one of the keys to surviving that was to be worth more alive than dead.

‘My clients were all crooks, so to speak. And of course my well-being was important.

‘It was necessary that I lived, that I participated in the smuggling, so that they could make a profit. So everyone from their world who came to attack me.

“Anyone who would kidnap me and hold me to ransom for money, anyone who would come follow me and try to steal the goods, he would be subject to the most immediate and permanent punishments from my clients. So I didn’t have to worry about that.’