True Crime: Autistic Man’s 34-Year Prison Nightmare

True crime stories captivate audiences, and many times, viewers agree that people need to be behind bars. However, a documentary over a decade old now might still rank as one of the saddest prison sentences ever. Read on to find out more.

The Screening Of A Sad Tale

In 1980, a teen was imprisoned for theft. Thirty-four years later, a documentary about him premiered at the LA Film Festival. Later, Showtime ran the story, and eventually, the tale of the injustice won an award. You might have seen it, but if you haven’t, and you’re into true crime, then it might be worth checking out.

This weekend on Instagram, @maythesciencebewithyou reminded followers about Mark DeFriest and the footage that aired in The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest. They focused on his terribly unfair prison sentence. In the caption, the admin wrote:

Mark DeFriest was supposed to serve 4 years in prison. Instead, he spent 34. Not for violence. But for taking a toolbox his father had left him in a will.

The Saddest Ever Story?

The tale of Mark involved the fact that he did take a toolbox, but the documentary revealed so much more. As the will hadn’t yet been finalized, it was considered a theft. If you don’t know, Mark became known as the “Prison Houdini.”

Autistic, he was originally sentenced to four years behind bars for taking the tools. However, he ended up serving many more years. And 27 of those years were spent locked up in solitary confinement. Those years were added because he escaped from prison more than half a dozen times.

On Instagram, the admin cited PBS Independent Lens from 2015, saying, “Mark was a mechanical savant with an exceptional memory. He could reproduce keys after seeing them once.”

Additionally, “four out of five doctors said he was mentally unfit for prison… Mark was autistic, and his actions were misunderstood as manipulative. But, the courts ignored the advice of those professionals.”

Released And Re-Arrested

Record Net recalled that eventually, Mark DeFriest was released and sent to “Perkins’ [mental health] facility in Corvallis, Oregon.” However, he ended up arrested again in 2019 after allegedly failing a drug test. Because of that, he’d broken his parole, so he awaited extradition to his home state of Florida.

Many filmmakers and mental health experts believed that he should never have been placed in prison. When he was awaiting extradition, he was 58 years old and had been locked up since he was just 19.

Reactions By Readers

Those people who saw the reminder on Instagram were shocked and saddened at the terrible injustice in the true crime story. One of them wrote, “What an UNFAIR world this is. We allow monsters free but not an intelligent harmless creative man. May that court receive full karmic justice.”

Here are a fee more reactions:

• The judges who put him there should face prison time…
• How ridicilous and unfair and so sad. That poor man! What a waste of his life! No wonder he kept trying to escape, he shouldn’t have been in [jail] in the first place.
• IDK what to say. Nothing is fair.
• Ridiculous. A ruined life. Very sad.

What are your thoughts about Mark? Do you agree that his prison sentence might be the saddest prison story ever? Let us know in the comments below, and come back here often for more true crime news and updates.