Toma Taulant, a 41-year-old Albanian-born man, recently staged a daring escape from the Opera maximum security prison in Milan, Italy, using a method taken straight out of a Hollywood movie. He managed to snatch a file from the prison workshop without anyone noticing, and then used it to cut through the metal bars on his cell window, before rappelling down an improvised rope made from knotted bedsheets.
Taulant, who was scheduled to be released in 2048, crossed the prison courtyard and climbed the outer wall without anyone noticing, although some sources claim that the security cameras caught his movement, but the alarm never went off. That might have something to do with the time of the escape, which coincided with the changing of the guards.
Although the recent escape was impressive enough, what really caught people’s attention was Taulant’s reputation as a prison break expert. This was actually his 4th escape from prison, with the first occurring in 2009, when he escaped from a facility in Terni, followed by another successful escape in 2013 from a prison in Parma, and one in 2023 from a Belgian prison, where he used a “human pyramid” formed by prisoners to climb over the walls.
Although the 41-year-old Escape King never got to stay free for very long, the fact that he managed to repeatedly escape prison really caught the public’s imagination.
Toma Taulant’s most recent feat sparked renewed criticism of conditions in Italian prisons, where overcrowding and guard understaffing are longstanding problems.
In the past, we have written about inmates who managed to escape prison by hiding in other inmates’ luggage, or by disguising themselves as female visitors.
