Prisoners use peanut butter to escape Alabama slammer

All the great prison breaks of history and popular culture involved some degree of cunning and invention. But peanut butter?

CNN this week reported on what could be one of the strangest prison breaks on record, when 12 inmates of an Alabama prison used the nutty spread to star in the latest season of Prison Break.

Now, you might be thinking that they somehow squeezed through the cell bars covered in the slippery spread. But no, the story is even stranger than that.

‘Hope they manage to figure out a peanut butter proof way of numbering doors’

A comedy of errors, a new guard in the control room, and cell door numbers obfuscated by the sandwich spread resulted in 12 prisoners springing free.

“They changed the number over the door with peanut butter,” the sheriff told CNN.

“(Then) they hollered, ‘Hey, open door’ so-and-so, but (the number the inmates gave the worker) was the outside door. And unknowingly to him, he hit that lock and out the door they went.”

It took around eight hours to capture 11 of the inmates, but one remains at large.

Naturally, peanut butter became a bit of a conversation starter on Twitter.

Just read the story and am now crying with laughter 🤣🤣 hope they manage to figure out a peanut butter proof way of numbering doors 👍🏽👍🏽

— Zaya Jones (@ZayaJones77) August 2, 2017

There are 22 episodes in season 1 of #PrisonBreak when all Michael had to do was smuggle some peanut butter into Fox River https://t.co/4EkX6BkNgR

— Andy Lewers (@AndyLewers) August 2, 2017

You can’t make this stuff up.