In 1979, Mark DeFriest stole something that legally belonged to him.
His father had died suddenly. In his will, he left Mark his prized set of mechanical tools a natural gift for a boy who had been rebuilding engines since childhood.
But Mark, 19 years old and socially unaware, didn’t realize the will had to be probated. He collected the tools from his stepmother’s shed before the court finalized anything. She called the police.
When officers arrived, Mark panicked. He fled with a gun in his waistband. He never fired it, never aimed it, but he ran convinced a government conspiracy was unfolding around him. The paranoia wasn’t imagined. It was clinical.
The charge was minor. But the consequences were historic.
A Savant Behind Bars
Mark DeFriest was born in 1960 in rural Gadsden County, Florida, where his father a World War II veteran who served with the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA taught him survival skills, mechanics, and military evasion tactics. Mark was a prodigy. At six, he was dismantling and rebuilding clocks and engines. By his teens, he was conducting chemical experiments in the basement. He had a photographic memory and an instinctive understanding of machines.
But socially, he struggled. He couldn’t read people. He had trouble with authority. What today might be diagnosed as autism spectrum disorder was then dismissed or misunderstood. His mind was brilliant, but his behavior was erratic.
When he was arrested in 1979 for taking the tools his father had left him, he was sentenced to four years for violating probation related to an earlier firearm charge. But Mark didn’t understand how prison worked or why he should stay. To him, rules felt arbitrary. Escape made more sense than submission.
And so he escaped.
Then he escaped again. And again.
Seven Escapes, 34 Years
Over the years, Mark DeFriest attempted 13 escapes from prison. Seven were successful. He memorized guard key patterns and replicated them with scrap metal. He crafted zip guns from toothpaste tubes. He spiked coffee pots with LSD at the state hospital in a failed breakout attempt. In one case, he pulled out his own tooth to trigger a medical transfer, then threatened a guard with a prop gun he made in the woodshop. He climbed razor wire. He hotwired cars. He once broke into a friend’s house while on the run.
The press called him the “Prison Houdini.” But every escape added years to his sentence. Some disciplinary reports were legitimate; many were retaliatory. Former prison officials, including Florida State Prison’s own warden, later admitted many were fabricated to keep him locked up.
Mark never hurt anyone. But his behavior shaped by untreated mental illness was viewed as dangerous.
Solitary and Systemic Failure
Mark spent 27 years in solitary confinement. In Florida State Prison’s infamous X-Wing, he was kept one floor above the electric chair in a windowless concrete cell. At times, he was denied sunlight, toilet paper, or running water for days. He was beaten by guards, raped by other inmates, and eventually became the prison “wife” of a death row prisoner for protection. He called himself “Wendy the Punk” and survived by making moonshine, listening to a homemade radio, and building paper airplanes.
His mental health spiraled. At one point, four out of five psychiatrists found him unfit for trial. But one disagreed Dr. Robert Berland and his lone opinion sent Mark to prison for life. Decades later, Berland reversed his assessment after reviewing new evidence. Mark had suffered for over 30 years due to that single ruling.
Experts today believe DeFriest is a high-functioning autistic man with paranoid delusional episodes an inmate punished for an invisible condition the system never tried to understand.
Witness to Murder, Sent Far From Home
In 1999, DeFriest witnessed the brutal beating death of inmate Frank Valdes by a group of Florida prison guards. Mark cooperated with the investigation. As a result, he was moved out of Florida for his safety to California, New Mexico, and Oregon. But he didn’t get better care. In Oregon, a paperwork error landed him in a maximum-security unit where he once again ended up in solitary.
Filmmaker Gabriel London began documenting Mark’s story in 2001. Over 13 years, he produced The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest, a Showtime documentary that challenged the justice system’s treatment of the mentally ill. The film reignited interest in Mark’s case and helped push the Florida parole board to reconsider.
A Short Taste of Freedom
In 2014, Florida erased 70 years from Mark’s sentence. He was granted parole and released on February 5, 2019 nearly 40 years after his arrest.
But freedom lasted just 10 days.
As a condition of his parole, Mark was sent to Community Outreach in Corvallis, Oregon, a facility for addiction and mental health treatment. He struggled to adjust. A urine test showed meth in his system, likely tied to the addiction he developed during his long imprisonment. Within days, he had a manic episode. The facility expelled him. Florida issued a new arrest warrant.
On February 15, 2019, Gabriel London and Mark’s wife Bonnie a pen pal he married while incarcerated dropped him off at the probation office. He turned himself in. In a final photo, he hugs Bonnie as she buries her face in his chest. He looks into the camera weary but still half-smiling.
He was returned to prison, where he remains.
More Time Than Murderers
Mark DeFriest has now served more time than many murderers. His original sentence was four years. He never committed a violent act. His only armed offense stealing a car with a gun during an escape led to a life sentence that was later overturned by a judge due to inhumane conditions.
His crime? Taking tools that belonged to him.
His real offense, critics say, was being a mentally ill man the system didn’t understand or care to.
Former warden Ron McAndrew once said, “He’s not dangerous. I’d have him in my house.”
Even Dr. Berland, whose opinion put Mark behind bars for life, later admitted: “Everything could have been different.”
A Broken System, One Man’s Story
Today, Mark DeFriest’s story stands as a brutal indictment of the American prison system especially its treatment of the mentally ill. As psychiatrist Dr. James Gilligan wrote after watching the documentary, “We’re punishing him for being mentally ill. That’s what’s happening here.”
The U.S. now holds over 2 million people in prison. Most are nonviolent. Many, like Mark, need treatment not cages.
But Mark’s case is rare not because it’s extreme. It’s rare because it was documented.
Most others, like him, are invisible.
