Man Escaped Prison By Helicopter

Prison walls are built to stop men on the ground. They cannot stop a man who comes from the sky.

That was the lesson France learned from Pascal Payet, a prisoner who became famous around the world for escaping from jail by helicopter — not once, but again and again. Guards, watchtowers, locked doors and solitary confinement all failed to hold him, because every plan to free him began in the air.

Most escape stories start at the beginning. This one starts at the end, with the last and boldest escape of all, and counts down: 3, 2, 1.

Escape 3: The Night a Helicopter Landed on the Roof (July 2007)

On 14 July 2007, France was celebrating Bastille Day, its national holiday. Payet was sitting in solitary confinement in a prison in Grasse, in the south of France. He was one of the most closely watched prisoners in the whole country, officially classed as a prisoner under especially high surveillance. He was never kept in the same prison for more than about six months, and reports at the time said he was moved almost every three months, precisely because everyone feared he would run again.

It made no difference.

That evening, four masked men hijacked a helicopter at Cannes-Mandelieu airport and took its pilot hostage. They forced the helicopter toward Grasse and landed on the prison roof just as the night shift was starting. According to a prison security official who spoke to reporters, the men used heavy machinery to break open two doors and reach the isolation ward where Payet was held. The whole operation took only about five minutes. The layout of the prison meant the guards in the watchtower could not shoot at the helicopter or the men.

The helicopter then flew to Brignoles, a town about 38 kilometres north-east of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. There, Payet and his accomplices ran off — and released the pilot, unharmed.

Two days later, a European arrest warrant was issued for him. The hunt ended on 21 September 2007, roughly two months after the escape, when Payet was captured in Mataró, a town north of Barcelona in Spain. He was handed back to France on 4 October 2007, together with two accomplices caught with him.

This time, the authorities took no chances. Payet was locked up in a place kept secret for security reasons. In June 2008, a court gave him 15 more years, with no chance of early release, for a series of armed robberies and attacks on police officers committed while he was on the run in 2007. In April 2011, he received another five years for the 2007 escape itself. His three accomplices in that escape were sentenced to nine, seven and six years.

Who Was Pascal Payet?

To understand the countdown, you need to know the man at the centre of it.

Pascal Payet was born on 7 July 1963 in Montpellier, France. He spent his childhood in Lyon and later settled in Marseille, the big port city in the south. His police record started early. In 1988 he was convicted of aggravated assault, and in 1993 he was convicted again, that time for conspiracy.

He was married and had two children. But his life kept returning to serious crime, and in the late 1990s it crossed a line from which there was no way back.

What Crime Put Pascal Payet in Prison?

Behind every daring escape story, there is a reason the man was locked up in the first place — and in this case, the reason is a killing.

On 20 November 1997, Payet took part in an attack on a Banque de France armoured car in Salon-de-Provence. During that robbery, a security guard was killed. A man went to work that day and never came home, and a family lost someone they loved. Nothing in the escape story that follows should make anyone forget that.

Payet was arrested in Paris in January 1999, along with an accomplice, Éric Alboreo. In January 2005, a court sentenced him to 30 years in prison for murder in connection with the 1997 armoured car hijacking. The sentence was confirmed on appeal in May 2006.

So when people describe Payet’s escapes as daring or clever, it is worth keeping the full picture in mind: the planning was real, but so was the original crime, and so were the pilots held hostage and the officers attacked while he was free. In my view, the most honest way to read this case is that all the skill and courage spent on those helicopters was spent by a man running from a sentence for taking a life — and every single escape still ended the same way, with handcuffs and a harder cell than the one before.

Escape 2: The Helicopter Sent Back for Three Friends (April 2003)

Now the countdown moves back to 2003 — and this escape is unusual, because the man it freed was not Payet himself.

By April 2003, Payet was already a fugitive from his first helicopter escape, which is described below. Instead of keeping a low profile, he organised another helicopter breakout from the very same prison at Luynes — this time to lift out three other inmates: Franck Perletto, Michel Valero and Éric Alboreo, the same Alboreo who had been arrested with him back in 1999.

The three men did not stay free for long. They were caught three weeks later.

Payet’s own time on the run also came to an end, and it was in this period that his long 30-year sentence for the 1997 murder was finally handed down. His defiance continued behind bars. In December 2005, while held at a prison in Metz, he went on a hunger strike to protest against being transferred nine times in 30 months, and he published an open letter on a blog, titled “The Saga of My Transfers,” criticising the conditions of his imprisonment.

In January 2007, he confessed to organising the 2003 escape. A court gave him seven extra years for that, while his co-conspirators received three years each. He was also given another six years for his own first escape in 2001.

None of it stopped what came next — Escape 3, the Bastille Day breakout you have already read about above.

Escape 1: The First Flight Out of Luynes (October 2001)

The countdown ends where the story really began: 12 October 2001.

Payet was an inmate at a prison in the village of Luynes, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of southern France. On that day, a hijacked helicopter arrived over the prison, and Payet escaped on board it, together with another inmate, Frédéric Impocco.

Impocco’s freedom lasted less than a week. He was captured on 18 October and taken to Paris for questioning. Payet, however, stayed ahead of the police — and, as Escape 2 shows, he used his freedom not to disappear quietly, but to fly back and rescue his friends.

That single day in October 2001 started a pattern that would repeat for six years: a hijacked helicopter, a stunned prison, a nationwide manhunt, and, in the end, a capture. According to the records kept on helicopter escapes, Payet holds the record for planning the most escapes by helicopter of any prisoner.

Why Could Nobody Stop Him?

Looking back, the answer is simple and uncomfortable. Prisons of that time were designed against attacks from the ground: walls, gates, towers and patrols. A helicopter ignored all of it. It could arrive without warning, land on a roof or in a yard, and be gone again in minutes, long before help could arrive.

France tried moving Payet constantly, watching him closely and keeping him in solitary confinement — and in July 2007 he escaped anyway, because the weakness was not one prison. It was the open sky above all of them. After his final capture, he was held in a secret location, and his story became one of the cases most often mentioned around the world whenever prison security against attacks from the air is discussed, including in television programmes about famous jailbreaks.

Payet remained in custody from September 2007 until April 2019, when he was released on parole — an ordinary ending, on the ground, for a man who three times tried to leave prison through the sky.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many times did Pascal Payet escape by helicopter?

Payet escaped by helicopter twice himself — from Luynes prison in October 2001 and from Grasse prison in July 2007. In between, in April 2003, he organised a third helicopter escape that freed three other inmates from Luynes while he was already a fugitive.

Why was Pascal Payet in prison?

He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder, after taking part in a 1997 attack on a Banque de France armoured car in Salon-de-Provence during which a security guard was killed.

How was Pascal Payet caught after his last escape?

He was captured on 21 September 2007 in Mataró, near Barcelona in Spain, about two months after the Grasse escape, and was transferred back to French custody on 4 October 2007.

Were the helicopter pilots hurt in the escapes?

In the 2007 escape, the pilot was taken hostage by the four masked men and was released unharmed when the helicopter landed at Brignoles.

Where is Pascal Payet now?

After his 2007 recapture he was held in a secret location and received further sentences for the escape and for crimes committed while on the run. Records list him as being in custody from September 2007 to April 2019, and then on parole.

Sources

• Wikipedia — “Pascal Payet”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_Payet
• Murderpedia — “Pascal Payet” (including the Reuters report of 16 July 2007): https://mail.murderpedia.org/male.P/p/payet-pascal.htm
• Mumbai Mirror — “Convicted killer stages second ‘copter escape from prison”: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/news/world/convicted-killer-stages-second-copter-escape-from-prison/articleshow/15724221.html