[RADIOLAB INTRO]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Tired of the everyday routine?]

ROBERT KRULWICH: Ooh!

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure?]

ROBERT: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Want to get away from it all?]

ROBERT: Yeah!

[ARCHIVE CLIP: We offer you escape!]

ROBERT: What is this?

JAD ABUMRAD: Shh. Just wait.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Escape. Designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure.]

JAD: Okay, so this is an old-time radio show from the 1940s, late-'40s.

ROBERT: I figured that.

JAD: Called Escape.

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

JAD: It always starts the same way, you know, with ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: We offer you escape!]

JAD: ... that phrase. I love how they say it. And here's what's great about this show, and why it seems like a good way to start this show, our show, is that immediately after they say that phrase?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: They then present you with a scenario from which there seems to be no escape.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You are hanging by your fingertips on the sheer face of an ice cliff.]

JAD: Like, here's one.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Suspended a thousand feet above instant death, with your strength running out, and with no chance for escape.]

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: There's a million of these.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You are aboard a Chinese junk run aground off the coast of Borneo.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You are lost in the London fog.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You are a passenger aboard a submarine.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You are the subject of an experiment.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Nazi agents ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Nameless terrors ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Gigantic department stores ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: No escape!]

ROBERT: Ooh! [laughs]

JAD: Wait, one more. One more just for kicks.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: You are trapped in the remote valley of the Andes, walled in by sheer rock precipices. And surrounding you, closing in on you, is a band a blind men who want your eyes.]

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] How could you not listen to that? What is better than, like, a story where the walls are closing in on you and you don't know what you're gonna do and what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And then suddenly ...

ROBERT: Escape!

JAD: It's like the best story ever!

ROBERT: That's true.

JAD: So, you ready?

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: This hour ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: We offer you ....]

ROBERT: Three bizarre scenarios.

JAD: True stories ...

ROBERT: Of people ...

JAD: And planets ...

ROBERT: Trying ...

JAD: Yearning ...

ROBERT: To ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Escape!]

JAD: Will they make it?

ROBERT: And if they do, what are they escaping to?

JAD: Okay, enough of that. I'm Jad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And to start, let's talk about escape artists.

ROBERT: Because why not, right? I mean, this is an escape show.

JAD: Exactly.

ROBERT: The most famous escape artist in history is probably Harry Houdini.

JAD: And our first story is kind of a Houdini story. It comes from our producer Pat.

PAT WALTERS: Yes.

JAD: It's about a guy whose nickname is ...

ROBERT: Little Houdini, right?

PAT: Yeah. I heard this story from my friend Ben.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Hello.

PAT: Like, months ago.

BEN MONTGOMERY: How are you, brother?

ROBERT: Ben, your journalism friend.

PAT: My journalism friend, yeah.

BEN MONTGOMERY: I'm a reporter with the Tampa Bay Times in Florida.

PAT: But our story begins at the Turney Center Penitentiary ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: In Only, Tennessee.

PAT: That's where we caught up with Little Houdini. He was between escapes. A couple of guards walked us into this huge cafeteria, sat us down at this little tiny table and brought out Chris.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Chris Gay.

JAD: That's his name?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

CHRIS GAY: Did y'all interview my brother and everything?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah, we talked.

CHRIS GAY: Everything come okay?

BEN MONTGOMERY: I guess the first thing I noticed was he was even smaller than I expected him to be. I knew he was gonna be little ...

PAT: You know, nickname...

BEN MONTGOMERY: But ...

PAT: He was a very little Houdini.

BEN MONTGOMERY: A short little guy.

PAT: Maybe 5'5".

BEN MONTGOMERY: You know, 140, 130. Like, his prison uniform was pretty baggy on him. He was wearing a white ball cap, and he's got a big smile stretched across his face.

CHRIS GAY: Escaping? I think it's actually addicting, I think.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Addictive?

CHRIS GAY: Yeah, I think it is. I think what's addictive about it, it's a way to punch you in the stomach and say, "Hey, this can be done. I can do this. Y'all might've told me I can't do nothing all my life—"more people and all have told me that, "—but I know I can do it."

PAT: How many times have you escaped?

CHRIS GAY: Probably about 13.

BEN MONTGOMERY: 13?

JAD: 13?

BEN MONTGOMERY: 13.

JAD: Out of jail?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

CHRIS GAY: And I'm fortunate to—all 13, I made all 13.

JAD: Wow!

BEN MONTGOMERY: I did a little research to see how that compares to other Houdinis, and there are a few people who come close, but as far I was able to find out, nobody alive has that many escapes.

PAT: Can we say pretty safely that he's the greatest jailbreaker alive?

BEN MONTGOMERY: [laughs] I'll go ahead and call him that, yeah.

CHRIS GAY: So I got away from them and ...

PAT: Pretty much without even asking, Chris began to list his escapes.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He has escaped every way you can imagine.

CHRIS GAY: Slipped my handcuff off and went through the air ducts. Went out the back—in between the razor wire—jumped the fence. Pulled all my clothes off except my boxer shorts. [laughs]

BEN MONTGOMERY: Like handcuffs. He said picking a handcuff key is one of the easiest things he's ever done. He's used everything from a pin spring to a safety pin. Even once ...

CHRIS GAY: A zipper thing. Made a handcuff key out of my zipper.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He scrambled out windows. Ran out doors. Climbed over walls.

PAT: Snuck under walls.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Drilled through them.

PAT: He's faked suicide.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Twice.

PAT: He's tricked the cops by drawing up fake escape plans. Fooled their dogs by ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: Covering his clothes with pepper.

CHRIS GAY: Bunch of pepper.

PAT: Another time, he didn't have any pepper, but ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: He had found some roadkill.

CHRIS GAY: It stunk. It did smell like a skunk.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And he rubs it all over his body to erase his scent.

PAT: Pretty good at hiding, too.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He's hidden in trees, jumped down a trapdoor that he cut in the floor of his trailer.

PAT: Once he hid in a grave.

CHRIS GAY: It was a shallow grave.

PAT: Beside a dead body.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Another time he ...

PAT: ... ended up on a college campus someplace outside Atlanta.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And he hid out on top of an air duct for two days until the coast was clear. [laughs]

PAT: But one of the interesting things about Chris is that even though he's been doing this for 20 years ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: There's never a record of him assaulting anyone.

CHRIS GAY: No. I refuse to do it.

PAT: Stole things, but pretty much only things to help him run.

CHRIS GAY: I always refuse to go in somebody's house. I always refuse to go in somebody's garage.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He says he's got rules for himself about how he breaks the law.

PAT: Almost like a code. In fact, the story that got Ben interested in Chris in the first place is kind of the perfect example of this.

BEN MONTGOMERY: This was a few years ago in 2007.

PAT: Ben got a press release.

BEN MONTGOMERY: From the Florida Highway patrol. "Be on the lookout for Chris Gay."

PAT: And according to the press release, here's what happened. Chris had been locked up in Alabama when he got a telephone call from his family.

CHRIS GAY: Said my mom was—was dying.

PAT: She had cancer. So he faked suicide, busted out of the prison transport van that was bringing him to the hospital, stole a truck and just started driving home.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He was going to see his mom to pay his last respects.

CHRIS GAY: I didn't expect her to live very long.

PAT: As he comes around the bend in the road to where his mom lives, he's driving a Walmart tractor trailer and he's got, like, a dozen cops on his tail.

CHRIS GAY: When I get down there I run off the road.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Crashes the truck into a field near his mom's trailer.

PAT: Jumps out of the truck ...

CHRIS GAY: Just as I was running toward the house, they start—they jumped out of the cars and running toward me.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And just before he makes it inside, they chase him into the woods.

PAT: And he disappears without seeing his mom, who would end up dying before he could see her.

JAD: Oh.

PAT: A few days later, Chris turns up in Daytona Beach.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Driving a tour bus that belonged to Crystal Gayle.

JAD: The country singer?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

JAD: He stole Crystal Gayle's tour bus?

BEN MONTGOMERY: In Tennessee.

JAD: And then drove it to Florida?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

PAT: So you get this press release and you think what?

BEN MONTGOMERY: I thought, "How do you miss with a story like this?" [laughs]

PAT: So Ben writes this story for the newspaper.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Big news.

PAT: And pretty soon ...

[NEWS CLIP: Tonight, a luxury tour bus that normally carries ...]

PAT: ... TV news people are on it.

BEN MONTGOMERY: It took off.

[NEWS CLIP: He's an escape artist, and something of a folk hero.]

PAT: And soon Chris something of a folk song, literally.

BEN MONTGOMERY: The week Chris got caught, a Grammy Award-winning bluegrass picker named Tim O'Brien put out a song called The Ballad of Christopher Daniel Gay.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Tim O'Brien: [singing] ... of Christopher Daniel Gay.]

PAT: Pretty soon, a famous Hollywood director ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: ... bought the rights to the movie.

CHRIS GAY: They were originally trying to get Johnny Depp to do it but they ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Tim O'Brien: [singing] They said his heart was just as big as his head.]

JAD: [laughs]

PAT: It's perfect.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Now here's the underdog making a run for it for what seemed at that time to be really good intentions. And part of me thought, you know, "This is awesome, but it's also [bleep][00:08:50.16]."

PAT: I mean, there's gotta be more to this story.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Absolutely. Who is this guy, really? And why does he keep running?

[GPS: Approaching destination on the left.]

PAT: You want to tell us where we're going?

BEN MONTGOMERY: We're going to Buckeye Bottom Road to talk to Tarre Gay.

PAT: Tarre is Chris's older brother.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He says he can tell us the whole story about how they grew up. Here we are.

PAT: Chris grew up in a small trailer out in the middle of nowhere west of Nashville.

BEN MONTGOMERY: There are some junk cars off in the woods.

PAT: We find Tarre hanging out with a couple buddies, drinking some beers.

TARRE GAY: Y'all have any certain things you want to know about or anything?

PAT: And we start talking about what it was like when they were kids.

TARRE GAY: You know, we lived in a little bitty trailer down there.

PAT: He points off into the woods across the street.

TARRE GAY: On this land.

PAT: It was Chris and Tarre. They had a little brother named Eddie who went by Cotton. And then there was Leann.

LEANN GAY: Leann Gay.

PAT: The eldest.

LEANN GAY: I'm his older sister.

PAT: Cotton's in jail, so we weren't able to interview him, but Leann and Tarre both told us that growing up in that trailer was hard.

LEANN GAY: We grew up like mountain people, you know?

PAT: No electricity, no running water. Did their wash in the river. Wasn't always much food around.

LEANN GAY: There used to be a big field of plums, a big plum thicket. We'd go down there and we'd eat.

PAT: But you can't live on plums, and ...

LEANN GAY: A lot of days we would be hungry.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Leann remembers lying in bed one night, and she couldn't go to sleep because her hunger pangs were so bad. And Tarre said, "Here, this'll help ya," and he ripped up ...

LEANN GAY: A little thing of notebook paper.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Gave it to Leann. He said, "Just chew it up real good and swallow it and it'll help you."

PAT: And for Chris and his little brother Cotton, those were the good days, because ...

LEANN GAY: When my daddy and her separated ...

PAT: ... mom and dad got a divorce and the family split apart.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Tarre and Leann went to live with mom. Chris and his little brother Eddie ...

PAT: Who were 10 and 11 at that point, moved in with their dad.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And the dad ...

TARRE GAY: Dad, he really wasn't, you know—I don't guess ...

LEANN GAY: He just wasn't no provider.

PAT: He wasn't around very much.

LEANN GAY: Uh-uh.

BEN MONTGOMERY: I mean, he was a deadbeat dad, yeah.

CHRIS GAY: He got where he'd get off of work on Friday, and he wouldn't come home for weeks at a time.

LEANN GAY: He'd tell them to go—if they was hungry to go steal from churches.

PAT: Sometimes they'd hike through the woods to their grandfather's house, their mom's dad, who Chris says hated him and his little brother Cotton.

CHRIS GAY: We would go down there, and he got where he started making us fight each other. And if we fist fought each other, then the winner got something to eat. You know, he was mean.

PAT: That was their life: beating each other up for food.

CHRIS GAY: He had dogs. He'd sic his dogs on us.

PAT: So one night, one of them went and found their dad's rifle, an old .22.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And a tube sock full of rusty bullets. And went out behind the barn, lit a tire fire, and made a suicide pact. Cotton was gonna shoot Chris in the forehead and then shoot himself. And Chris closed his eyes and Cotton put the gun to Chris's forehead. Chris heard him whimper, and he opened his eyes and Cotton said, "I can't do it." And Chris said, "Well, let me do it." He took the gun, and he put the barrel to his brother's head and he couldn't pull the trigger either.

JAD: And they were 10 and 11 at this point?

BEN MONTGOMERY: 10 and 11.

JAD: Man.

PAT: But Ben says if you take a step back, you can see that it's right about here at this point that Chris and his brother start to steal. Like, really steal.

TARRE GAY: They started out with bicycles, and then they went to, I guess, four wheelers and motorcycles.

PAT: It was all stuff with wheels.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Chris remembers going with Cotton to sit on a bluff.

CHRIS GAY: That was on Interstate 40. We would go watch the trucks go by.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And they would dream about getting in a semi and driving far away.

TARRE GAY: And they went to, I guess, four wheelers and motorcycles and cars, and gradually got bigger and bigger and bigger.

PAT: Until one day when Chris was 17 ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: ... he stole a semi.

PAT: Didn't even really know how to drive it.

CHRIS GAY: But I climbed up inside it. The keys was in it, so I started it up.

PAT: And from there, there was really no looking back.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Can I pause you right there before you continue? Let me just name some modes of transportation, and you tell me 'yes' or 'no' what you've stolen.

CHRIS GAY: Yep.

BEN MONTGOMERY: A semi.

CHRIS GAY: Yep.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Bulldozer.

CHRIS GAY: Yes.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Skid steer.

CHRIS GAY: Skid steer.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Tractor?

CHRIS GAY: Backhoe. [laughs]

BEN MONTGOMERY: Anything that flies?

CHRIS GAY: I actually got in a helicopter once. And we got in there, started flicking switches, and we finally got the blades to rotate, but it was at a low, low thing, and we got scared and got out of it.

PAT: The point is ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: This is his life for more than two decades.

PAT: Stealing things that move, getting caught and escaping. Stealing things that move, getting caught and escaping. Until eventually, he became that guy on TV.

[NEWS CLIP: Called a Little Houdini, who has police on the run in six states.]

PAT: But then one night something happened that seemed like it might break this loop forever.

BEN MONTGOMERY: He met a girl.

CHRIS GAY: Yes. Yes.

PAT: Her name was Missy.

BEN MONTGOMERY: She was waiting tables at a little campsite diner. He thought she was cute.

PAT: And Missy ...

MISSY: He's a smooth talker, I'll give him that. [laughs]

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

BEN MONTGOMERY: She liked the way he talked.

MISSY: I was taken right off the bat.

PAT: A few months later ...

MISSY: I got pregnant with my daughter, and me and him ...

PAT: Moved in together. And for a while, life was really good.

CHRIS GAY: We still had a little money in the bank, and I was working good for Gregor Construction. Had a good paying job running that bulldozer. And I was actually going to school in Lebanon to get my safety license.

MISSY: We had a nice trailer, and it had a refrigerator.

PAT: Did you like it?

CHRIS GAY: Yeah. Oh, yeah, I really liked it.

MISSY: As a matter of fact, I was talking to my daughter last night.

CHRIS GAY: I became real close with my daughter.

MISSY: She remembers it like it was yesterday. He got her a dog. She named him Blackjack. First puppy she ever got.

CHRIS GAY: That right there was the ...

MISSY: It was the best moments and days of ...

CHRIS GAY: ... the happiest days of, I think ...

MISSY: ... mine and his life.

CHRIS GAY: ... ever, I think.

PAT: But then things got complicated. One day, when Chris and Missy were driving in the car together ...

MISSY: We were going right through the middle of Nashville, and ...

PAT: Chris says, "Look, I gotta tell you something. I stole something."

CHRIS GAY: I stole a Bobcat tractor.

PAT: "From my construction job."

CHRIS GAY: I sold it.

MISSY: To make ends meet.

PAT: As soon as she heard that, Missy whipped her head around.

MISSY: And I hit him with a Big Mac right in the middle of Nashville on I-24.

PAT: [laughs] A Big Mac?

MISSY: Yes, I did. [laughs]

BEN MONTGOMERY: But it was only funny for a little while.

PAT: A couple of days later ...

CHRIS GAY: Somebody told on me.

PAT: He got arrested.

MISSY: He stayed in jail for about two years, and ...

PAT: And then escaped. I don't know how, exactly.

BEN MONTGOMERY: But before long, he stole again.

PAT: And ended up back in jail again.

MISSY: And ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: And Missy?

MISSY: I stayed by his side.

PAT: Again.

BEN MONTGOMERY: She was determined. He'd come home from these escapes saying ...

CHRIS GAY: I just hated being locked up.

PAT: "Hated being away from you guys."

CHRIS GAY: I didn't want to be away from my kids, and I didn't want to be away from Missy.

PAT: Each time he got locked up, Missy would write him letters.

MISSY: I would send him money, because I worked the whole time I was pregnant with my 13 year old.

PAT: What kind of work were you doing?

MISSY: Worked on a sanding line, sanded rocking chairs.

BEN MONTGOMERY: And Chris meanwhile was thinking about his next escape.

PAT: And when he came charging through the front door ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: ... stinking of roadkill ...

PAT: Telling Missy that, again, he had escaped ...

MISSY: I stayed with him.

PAT: Again. But this time ...

MISSY: I started asking for check stubs on a weekly basis, and adding hours up that he'd been gone from the time he left the house, which I would knock down riding time there and from. [laughs]

PAT: You were keeping tabs on him.

MISSY: Yes I was.

PAT: She even went so far as to take $5,000 out of the bank account that they shared and buy a trailer for them to live in—one that wouldn't move.

MISSY: You know, I was trying. Trying more or less to make him do right.

PAT: And it seemed like it was working.

BEN MONTGOMERY: But then one night ...

PAT: ... Chris came in after work and sat down in the living room with Missy and their daughter to watch some TV.

MISSY: Next thing we know we heard a loud beating at the door. Well, you know, I jump up and he jumps up, and the next thing I know he was moving that kitchen table and sliding it out. Next thing I know, he raises the rug up off the floor. He jumps down and then he says, "Cover it back up." So I covered it back up, put the table back, and answered the door. And they came in and they walked all around the house and—and they left.

PAT: You bought this house to keep him still and he'd cut a trapdoor in it.

MISSY: Yep. He was stayed up under the floor the whole time and they were walking over top of him.

PAT: Wow.

MISSY: You know, I guess it was more or less I was young. I knowed, but I was also in denial.

PAT: But eventually, something happened that kind of forced her to admit just how bad things had gotten with Chris.

MISSY: Day before Halloween, Danielle and her daddy had went down to Walmart and she had picked out a little witch outfit. Because she was old enough. You know, she was four. Trick-or-treating for a four year old, that was a big thing.

BEN MONTGOMERY: The next morning it's Halloween.

MISSY: Her daddy looked at her said, "Well baby, I'm going to work. I'll see you this afternoon. When I get home, we'll get your outfit on you and we'll go trick-or-treating up in Nashville." And that afternoon, Danielle was sitting on the back step, and she was just sitting there in a white t-shirt. And I ask her, I said, "Danielle, what are you doing?" "I'm waiting on my daddy to get home, Mama. He said we're gonna go to Nashville and we're gonna go trick-or-treating." I said, "Okay, he'll be back in a little bit." And she sat there and she sat there, and he never came home that night.

BEN MONTGOMERY: You—I don't really hear—like, I don't hear a lot of bitterness from you.

MISSY: No.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Is that accurate?

MISSY: Yes.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Why?

MISSY: Well, as far as me being upset with Chris or hating Chris?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yes, ma'am.

MISSY: Is that what you're asking me?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yes, ma'am.

MISSY: How could you not forgive Chris? 18 years. That's how long I've known that boy. And I have seen first-hand where he lived, how he lived. I'm a fighter. I go to church. My kids go to church. I learned to forgive people. And Chris has had a hard life. He needs help, help that I can't give him.

BEN MONTGOMERY: You thought for a while that you could give him that help.

MISSY: Yes, I did.

CHRIS GAY: I should've been there for my kids.

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

CHRIS GAY: It'll take a lifetime of making up for what I've done.

JAD: So what do you make of this story, Pat?

PAT: Well, somewhere along the way for Ben and I, this story really became about the simple question: can a person like Chris, you know, who grew up the way he did, can a person like that change, or do you just never escape a childhood like that?

MISSY: People live with how they grew up.

PAT: If you ask Missy, she says ...

MISSY: If two kids and a wife that he loves, if we can't stop him, I don't know what can.

PAT: But when we asked Chris, he said ...

CHRIS GAY: It's in my mind I'm gonna change. And I'm not only gonna change, I'm working to change.

MISSY: Really?

PAT: Of course, he has said that before.

MISSY: Truthfully?

PAT: What's different this time?

CHRIS GAY: You know, I'm doing classes that I don't have to take. I've taken every one of them. I'm taking how to be a better daddy. I'm taking everything. Matter of fact, when I come up for parole this month I'm gonna go ahead and ask them, "Can I go ahead and complete another nine-month program?"

JAD: Wait, is he saying that he's gonna ask them to keep him in jail?

PAT: Yeah.

BEN MONTGOMERY: After 20 years of running, he's asking the parole board not to let him go.

PAT: Which made me think, I don't know, maybe?

JAD: And Ben, what do you think?

BEN MONTGOMERY: I don't think there's any way that Chris changes. I think he's, you know, unfortunately, doomed to stay in this cycle. Which sucks, you know? I'm sort of ashamed that I have that opinion.

PAT: Why? I mean, why do you think you feel that way?

BEN MONTGOMERY: I mean, my dad was pretty similar to Chris in many ways.

PAT: Really?

BEN MONTGOMERY: My father abandoned me when I was a young boy, and I got reacquainted with him when I was a teenager. At that point, he was a very sad alcoholic who often made big mistakes. And I played high school football, and near the end of the year, my senior year, they put out this highlight tape. So I took that highlight tape to his trailer in Slick, Oklahoma. And after shooting a lot of tequila, we sat down on the couch together and I put the tape in, and we were watching—you know, watching me play football. And not long into it my dad starts sobbing, just bawling. Tears running down his face. And I look over at him and he says, "I wish I could've been there." And I wanted nothing more in that moment—and today—than to ask him, "Why weren't you?" And I think in some way, I get that opportunity in this job to ask my dad that question.

PAT: Ben says his dad never answered that question. And after that day where they watched that football tape, nothing changed—Ben got older, graduated from college, got married, had kids. And his dad never showed up for any of it. So he says when he's talking to a guy like Chris ...

BEN MONTGOMERY: In some ways, you know, I'm sitting across the table from my own father.

PAT: Which doesn't give him a lot of hope.

BEN MONTGOMERY: The only ounce of encouragement that I have, honestly, is if we find out that Chris has indeed, when given the chance to get out of jail, said, "No thank you." Maybe that gives me an ounce of hope.

PAT: And a couple weeks ago, Ben got a letter from Chris. Can you just—can you read it for me?

BEN MONTGOMERY: Yeah. He says, "Dear Mr. Montgomery, thank you for your letter. I'm doing well. I went up for parole and yes, I did ask them to let me go through the program. The final decision was to parole me upon completion of the program. I'll complete it on October 4, 2012."

JAD: So he's staying.

BEN MONTGOMERY: "Well, I better get this in the mail. Thank you again for writing. I hope to hear from you again. Your friend, Christopher Daniel Gay."

ROBERT: Thanks to our producer Pat Walters.

JAD: And to Ben Montgomery. His story on Christopher Daniel Gay is in the Tampa Bay Times, which you can find online. We've got a link to it from our website, Radiolab.org.

ROBERT: We will return to Escape in just a moment, but first ...

[BEN MONTGOMERY: Hi there. This is Ben Montgomery. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

 

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