Man’s Attempt To Break Wife Out Of Jail Using Helicopter Goes Wrong in So Many Ways

Just because jailbreaks look easy in movies, doesn't mean they're going to actually work in real life.

24-year-old Mike Gielen from Brussels decided it was time to break his 27-year-old wife, Kristel Appelt out of prison. She was in the big house for suspicion of murdering her ex-boyfriend.

Mike decided he'd book a helicopter tour, and when he was on the tour, pulled a fake gun and threatened the pilot to fly to the prison. The plan was to land in the yard, have Kristel jump in, and fly away presumably into the sunset, where they'd live happily ever after with no worry of law enforcement looking for them.

Unfortunately, Mike's fantasy didn't go to plan. First, his stomach wasn't ready for the helicopter ride, and he started throwing up out of the door of the chopper.

Then, when they got to the prison, there wasn't enough room to land the helicopter, causing him to have to scrub the escape after circling multiple times.

Mike had the pilot move on to the next step in the plan, which was landing in a nearby town, where a getaway car was waiting, with his 50-year-old adoptive father in the driver's seat.

The only problem Mike had now was that he booked the helicopter tour under his real name, so he was arrested within 24 hours. Police found him at his father's house.

Mike's facing charges of theft with violence, participation in a criminal organization, and attempted escape.

It turns out Mike has his own criminal history, and he and his wife actually met in the prison when they were both serving time.

“When both Kristel and I had visitors in January 2019, we bumped into each other in the visitors’ area,” Gielen told the Het Belang van Limburg newspaper in an interview last year. “We still knew each other from before, but hadn’t seen each other for a long time. Because we could never see each other, we both started taking computer lessons in prison. That was the only way to be together.”

Read more at The Guardian