MAY-2017-GQ-113The men patted the driver down and
placed him in the backseat, where Tieu
trained the gun on Ma’s stomach. Nayeri
jumped behind the wheel, and they set out
for a nearby motel.
By the time they arrived, Ma was con-
vinced he was going to die—he just didn’t
know how, or when. Inside a cramped room,
he watched as his captors pulled clothes and
cell phones from their shopping bags. The
men were growing tired now, it was clear.
He watched as Nayeri, who he suspected
was the group’s ringleader, splayed out on
one of the two beds. Ma was ordered to
double up with Duong on the other as Tieu
curled up on the floor near the door, resting
the gun carefully under his pillow. For Ma,
there was no escape and, with all the dread
he felt, no easy way to fall asleep.
In the morning, as the sun broke through
the curtains, the old man felt Duong roll over
and grab for the remote. He clicked it and
the TV came alive with breaking news of a
daring prison escape.
“Hey,” Duong shouted, “that’s us!”Mug shots filled the screen. A massive
manhunt, Ma now learned, was under way
for the three guys he was watching sit up in
bed. They were riveted as the broadcasters
ran through the litany of alleged crimes that
had put them in jail—murder, attempted
murder, kidnapping, and torture. They
hooted and marveled at their own images
on TV, their instant fame.
The scheme that had won them their free-
dom had clicked into motion a day earlier,
in the last moments before dawn. That was
when Duong—sprawled on a bunk in the
open-floor dormitory of the Orange County
Jail’s Module F—had watched the guard
finish his 5 a.m. head count. In the months
that the three men had been formulating a
plan to escape, a series of factors inside the
jail had been tilting the odds of success in
their favor. According to a lawsuit later
filed on behalf of jail guards, the facility
had grown overburdened and insu∞ciently
sta≠ed. Duong had allegedly exploited this,
tapping criminal contacts on the outside
to help him acquire contraband tools that
could be useful in an escape.
Gathering intel had been easier than it
should have been, too. Months earlier, Nayeri
had met a college instructor, a woman named
Nooshafarin Ravaghi, who visited the jail to
teach English. She spoke four languages and
had authored a series of children’s books
about a girl discovering her Persian roots.
When the Iranian-born Nayeri began attend-
ing her class, the two grew friendly. She
seemed to respond to his persuasive charm,
because one day she’d passed to him some-
thing he’d needed: a printout from GoogleEarth that showed a satellite image of the
jail’s roof, one floor above Module F.
On the day of their escape, Duong watched
as the guard finished his count. He gathered
the knives and other sharp tools that he’d
been hoarding and shu±ed to the rear of
the housing block where Nayeri and Tieu
waited for him. There, behind a bunk bed,
was the metal grate that the men knew
could lead to freedom.
In no time, the three used their tools
to work loose the grate. The trio quickly bel-
lied through the hole to reach the jail’s
innards. Surrounded by pipes and wiring,
they crouched low and inched along a
metal walkway until it dead-ended against
a wall. There, they looked up. In the gloom,
they could see—suspended 12 feet above
them—their salvation: a ventilation shaft
that ran to the jail’s roof.
Using pipes, they shinnied skyward. After
sawing o≠ the bars that sealed the shaft,
they shouldered their way into the cramped
ductwork. They moved upward on hands and
knees toward a trap door. With a hard push,
they got the thing open and felt on their faces
the rush of cold, fresh air.
They were on the roof now and made a
quick dash to the building’s northeast cor-
ner. There, they cut through concertina wire
and unfurled a makeshift rope that they’d
fashioned from bedsheets. Fastening oneend of the line to the building, they tested
its strength and peered over the edge of the
roof, four stories to the ground.
When the last of their feet touched the
dewy grass outside the jail, the men still had
more than a half hour before the sun rose. No
alarms sounded; no lights swept the exterior.
They’d done it. They were out.
The fugitives allegedly first visited a friend
of Duong’s, hoping he would give them
enough cash to leave the country. Nayeri had
thought he could somehow spirit the group
to Tehran. But Duong’s pal could give them
only $900. So, Tieu contacted what police
later surmised were members of his Little
Saigon gang. A security camera outside a deli
recorded what appeared to be a hasty mid-
morning rendezvous. But whatever money
Tieu may have received wasn’t enough to get
them far. At 9 p.m. the escapees were still in
Santa Ana, eating at a Vietnamese restau-
rant a few miles from the jail.
They needed to put distance between
themselves and their predicament, which
meant they needed a car. Stealing one would
be risky and probably require expertise they
didn’t have. But what if they took a driver hos-
tage? The only trick would be quietly luring
someone close. Duong dialed a cab service
that advertised in the local Vietnamese
newspaper. Long Ma answered the call.As the men inthe motel studied the tele-
vision, Ma was introduced to his captors by
their rap sheets. Tieu had allegedly taken
part in a drive-by shooting that left one col-
lege-age kid dead; Duong had allegedly shot
a man in the chest after an argument. And
Nayeri, well, Nayeri was plenty notorious.
Four years earlier, acting on a hunch that the
owner of a marijuana dispensary had buried
$1 million in the Mojave Desert, Nayeri had
allegedly snatched the guy and his girlfriend
and driven them to the spot where the loot
was thought to be hidden. There, he and his
crew shocked the man with a Taser, burned
him with a butane torch, poured bleach on
his wounds, and severed his penis in a failed
attempt to locate the cash. After the man
assured Nayeri there was no buried money,
he was left out there to die. (His girlfriend
found help and saved his life.)
In the motel room, the escapees seemed
to realize that the media attention was prob-
lematic. Spooked, perhaps, by the prospect
that Ma’s disappearance had been noticed,
they decided they3.And with a hand
on the inside, they
got hold of a crucial
map of the jail.4.Using pilfered
bedsheets, the men
were able to fashion
a rappelling rope.- Authorities inspect the hole in the
concertina wire on roof of the jail.
RECIPE FOR
ABREAKOUT
The perfect conditions for escapeTHE ESCAPEES
2.From the outside,
criminal contacts
helped the men get
tools into the facility.1.Staffing changes
had allegedly
hampered security
within the busy jail.From left: Bac Duong, Hossein Nayeri,
and Jonathan TieuPHOTOGRAPHS, FROM LEFT: ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT VIA AP IMAGES (3); NICK UT/AP IMAGES. SIDEBAR ILLUSTRATIONS: WARD SUTTON (4). (continued on page 135 )