He Built a Shank to Escape a Mental Hospital and Get Into Prison

Alone in the laundry room, Brian Bechtold, a patient at Clifton Perkins, the state's high-security hospital for defendants found not criminally responsible, broke a metal brace from an ironing board.

The bar measured roughly 14 inches. In his shower, he rubbed it against the grout to sharpen it, fashioned a cloth holder to hide it, and then kept the weapon concealed on his body until an opportunity arose.

Bechtold had been committed after psychiatrists for both sides found him not criminally responsible for killing his parents, so he never stood trial and received no fixed sentence. He had come to prefer a fixed prison term to an open-ended hospital stay. Other patients who had been in prison said life there was better because you were not judged all the time and you had a set sentence, and skipping breakfast, for example, would not be written in your file as a symptom.

On Dec. 5, 1999, around 3 p.m., he stood just inside the ward door and watched. The nurses were finishing a shift change, a time when guards were often distracted. As a nurse opened the ward door, Bechtold held up the shank and told her to turn around and walk him out.

Two security guards tried to stop him, and he warned them to stand back or he would kill them. The guards carried no weapons, and they let him go. He walked through the hospital lobby, out into the parking lot, and started running.

He did not get far before officers spotted him on foot by the roadside. One officer pulled out his gun and ordered him to get down. Bechtold faced him with his arms open. "Come on, shoot me. You're gonna have to shoot me. I'm not going back," he said. "You'd better shoot me in the head."

After more back and forth, he turned and ran down the street, with officers following. He went by a storage building toward a delivery area, repeating that he would not go back. Near a dark pickup with a driver sitting in it, he said, "I'm gonna count to three. Then I'm gonna stab this guy and take his truck, so you'd better get ready to shoot me." He started counting and moved toward the truck. One bullet struck his arm and two hit his belly.

Bechtold was flown by helicopter to Baltimore for an operation. After weeks healing elsewhere, officers took him to the station for questioning and asked whether he understood why he had been detained. "Sure. I escaped from Perkins Hospital. I took a hostage. I tried to steal a car. I threatened a citizen. I got shot by police," he said. Instead of being held in lockup before court, officials returned him to Perkins.