The Man Who Broke Into Jail

In 2019, over several months, Alexander Friedmann repeatedly disguised himself and entered a maximum-security jail, where he hid an arsenal of weapons within cinder-block walls around the facility. Friedmann, who spent years in jail for an armed robbery conviction before becoming a vocal advocate for criminal-justice reform, was caught, and convicted on a vandalism charge. “Friedmann’s plot, extraordinary in its audacity, had the trappings of a major criminal undertaking,” writes James Verini. And yet the plot itself—as well as the mind behind it—is more complicated, and confounding, than it first appears.

His image popped up everywhere. Sometimes he was dressed as a supervisor, carrying a clipboard and wearing a dress shirt and khakis. Other times he impersonated a laborer, in a Hard Rock Café T-shirt and jeans, carrying a bucket. He wore an assortment of hard hats and reflective vests. One feature never changed: the dust mask. Video from cameras on the jail’s exterior showed him walking to and from the jail in the mask. He could even be seen wearing it in a brief clip in which he was driving by the jail. Beazley marvelled at his discipline.

At the same time, Friedmann was brazen. He occasionally climbed a ladder to cover a camera. Otherwise, he let himself be recorded, as though he wanted his ingenuity documented. He painted and used a drill and a grinder, but it wasn’t clear from the videos just what he was working on.