PRINTPreviously scripted
Brothers wronged by Fox are making it right
April 5, 2007 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Brothers Bob, left, and Don Hughes began running from the law in 1964 and didn’t stop until cleared in 1968.In 1964 Bob Hughes was just a sincere straight-A student trying to get good grades and please his parents. At 16, the boy was eager to move to Florida to live with his brother, Don. Don’s letters detailing the gorgeous women, sultry beaches and surplus of alcohol were temptations even Bob’s religious upbringing couldn’t curtail. The testosterone-fueled, rambunctious boy never imagined the slammer would be in his future. But one phone call from his troubled mother to the police, and Bob’s new home was far from Florida.
That one phone call ignited what would become a roaring injustice against the Hughes brothers. Now 43 years later, they say the Fox television network is adding fuel to the fire — a flourishing TV series called Prison Break. The brothers say it’s based on their lives with a plot too unreal to dream up.
Both brothers say the real plot began the morning of March 17, 1964, when injustice squashed normalcy out of their humble adolescent lives.
It’s slammer time
Growing up in Clay County, Bob wanted one thing — to escape. He dreamed of joining Don in Florida and pressured his parents daily into letting him go. After one argument, Bob decided sleeping was the best way to rid his frustration.
But when the boy went to bed, Mrs. Hughes believed her son had threatened her with an ice pick. She had been receiving professional treatment for 12 years for paranoid delusions that she believed were true. She called the police to take her delinquent son away.
Raised in a family of ministers, Bob never thought he’d be sentenced to prison.“She did indeed have some tremendous mental and emotional problems, which she developed when I was in the eighth grade,” says Don. “To our mother, it was totally real. She actually felt it had happened. They didn’t have the medication they have now.”
She recanted the statement the following day and admitted to having delusions, but this information never made it to juvenile court. Bob was sentenced to imprisonment in the Missouri State Training School for Boys in Boonville for four years until he turned 21. “One morning, March 17, 1964,” says Bob. “That one morning changed our entire lives forever.”
After two and a half months, Bob told his parents he couldn’t survive until the end of his sentence. “There were people that were attacked constantly,” Bob says. “You were in constant fear.”
Once a prisoner threw Bob down a flight of concrete steps, unprovoked. When a guard questioned a bloodied Bob as he lay at the base of the stairs, he said he fell for fear of displeasing his bully. Bob drew a map of the state training school on a napkin and told his parents to send Don to break him out.
Don hitchhiked from Florida and developed a plan to transform a rented car into a police car and simply drive his innocent sibling out. Don says he still remembers July 8, 1964, when he began his plan. It was a hot, sunny afternoon. Bob was delivering bread to the warden’s house as he did every Wednesday between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. During this time he was left unguarded, so Don took this opportunity to pull his car up beside Bob and yell “Jump in!” As Bob dived through the back window, newspaper boys watched from afar while some employees screamed. Don heard gravel crunching as the tires bit for traction. At 60 mph, he sped down the straight road out of the prison.
At that time if somebody escaped from the state training school, a loud siren went off, and the local sheriff’s department, police department and highway patrol were notified. Then together they converged on the training school.
As the Hughes drove away, they passed a highway patrol car coming toward them. They looked identical, clad in police uniforms, down to the straw hats on their heads. The cops and the fugitives waved at one another, and the brothers kept going. Then they hit a roadblock but again were waved through thanks to their disguise.
The getaway set the tone for the brothers’ futures. “My brother risked everything,” says Bob. “He had everything to lose by helping me escape. He risked not only his freedom but also his life.” They had to stick together.
Hughes of hazard
Determined to make the most of their perilous predicament and with little real income, the brothers’ resources were limited to utilizing their charm, audacity and intellect when evading their pursuers. Bob says they led straight lives during high school. “Our IQs are in the high 130s,” he says. Coupled with a solid dose of fearlessness, that’s the recipe for a 1960s police officer’s most elusive, slippery crook. “We traveled all over the country with them just hot and heavy on our heels,” says Bob.
Back row, Wallace and Lolita Hughes are with their sons, front row, Bob and Don Hughes. The horrors of Boonville always remained in the back of Bob’s mind, taunting him. Although he escaped the gates with relative ease, to this day his body, physically, cannot escape its conditioning from the prison environment. “At Boonville they kept the lights on in the prison dorms 24 hours a day,” says Bob. “Forty-three years later to this day, even in a darkened room, I can’t sleep unless I hold my arm over my eyes.”
Bob continually wrote to President Johnson while on the run. He detailed the atrocities at the Missouri State Training School for Boys and hoped his letters would lead to some action that would help the friends he made at Boonville who were still trapped there. But he didn’t think much would come of it. “Maybe it was just some sort of a release for myself, getting it off my chest,” he says.
But within a year of Bob’s escape, something did come of it. He points out a small yellowed photo of a square building on his dinner table and says, “That’s where I met Jim Graham, the FBI agent, when I was a fugitive. I was 18 at the time. It was a Friday afternoon. He assured me he wouldn’t hold me if I came in to talk about the brutality at Boonville, but that Monday he would come after me. Well, that Friday night I caught a plane to L.A.” In Time magazine Superintendent John C. Tindall said that the reformatory created more criminals from 1918 to 1948 than any other institution in the U.S. Eventually it was closed in 1983.
During the late 1960s the Vietnam War was raging. Bob signed up for the draft to prevent angering the federal government. Technology was limited, which prevented various government branches from sharing databases. This meant the Army never knew Bob was a fugitive.
In 1966 Bob was drafted to Fort Leonard Wood. He received high scores and trained hard; the Army even asked him to be an officer. After two years on the run, he decided it was safe to visit his family on weekend leave.
But when he returned, the Army said they knew his secret. The brothers speculate a neighbor with prior grievances busted his cover. “This one neighbor used to leave her porch light on all night when we were kids, and we used to shoot it out with a BB gun because it would keep us awake,” says Bob.
He was ordered to wait to be arrested. But an hour later somebody called and said, “You have the wrong Hughes there. He’s not the one we want.”
Bob knew they would soon uncover the truth, so he called Don immediately. With Don at his side, the fugitive went AWOL. They drove from Fort Leonard Wood to Jacksonville, Fla. “Then we were wanted by the state authorities, the federal authorities, the Army and just everybody and their brother,” says Bob.
The show’s over
After another year of cat-and-mouse with the law, the brothers ended up in Long Beach, Calif. There, the police asked Don for ID regarding an unrelated investigation. Don knew it was a matter of time before the police realized who he was. He returned to his hotel room and waited. “I didn’t want to run anymore.” The following day the police came and cuffed him in his barren room, and Don says all he felt was relief. His days of running were over.
Bob worked in the training school’s bakery in addition to other bakeries while on the run.But Bob was not ready for the cells again. “I figure I had too much time facing me,” says Bob. He moved in with a high school friend in Independence for a few months. One morning, when Bob was taking a bath, he heard faint footsteps outside the bathroom door. Immediately he knew who it was. He quickly surveyed his options. Two policemen were outside the window. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard the pitter-patter of footsteps continue. He made his decision.
“This is Bob Hughes. I’m coming out, and I’m unarmed.”
Home free
Two FBI agents cuffed Bob and transferred him to an Army stockade in Kansas. Kansas City Star reporter Charles Hammer initially questioned the validity of the astonishing story but then researched and wrote an article, “His Life Hangs on One Bad Day,” published Sunday, March 10, 1968, the day before Bob’s extradition hearing.
Before the hearing, the judge and prosecuting attorney read the article. After reading it, the two collaborated to stop Bob from being extradited back to Missouri and freed him from his cell in Kansas.
In 1966, Bob was drafted into the Army.Four months later in Missouri, the same article was used to persuade the Attorney General to clear them of their charges. Then the men say nothing happened for years. Well, that’s not counting Don’s seven marriages and their career touring the country photographing strippers and church members for their directories. They became interested in photography after playing pool with a fellow fugitive who worked as a photographer. Don says they made their best money at gentlemen’s clubs, up to $8,000 a shoot. “They were really vain,” says Don. “It was easy to sell pictures to those girls.”
Their party-boy mentalities didn’t waver until their 40s. Daily they drank, partied and chased women. “After we were cleared, we had this adrenaline, of course from being fugitives, and so to lead a tame life at that time was kind of a downer,” Bob says.
It wasn’t until 1989 when Don gained custody of his youngest daughter, Michelle (now Michelle Williams), when she was 9 that he made real changes. He and Michelle moved from Arizona to Missouri. Don chose the town of Versailles because his oldest daughter lived there and for the impressive school district, plus it was quiet, simple and had few temptations. Williams says Don is a remarkable father: “He raised me to have really good morals. I wasn’t one of the kids who was crazy and did drugs and ran around drinking. He was absolutely my best friend.”
In true Hughes-brother style, Bob moved to Versailles shortly after Don. Now they live in the same apartment complex; Don is in C10, Bob just below in C5. “My life now consists of babysitting four of my grandkids,” says Don. “I also take pictures of people who can’t really afford to have their pictures taken.” He spends time cooking and cleaning the house.
Don had wanted this type of life in his early 20s before the breakout. He says he’s satisfied but speaks with the tone of a man who has thought about a life-altering decision for 40 years. “I think it probably cost me normal relationships,” says Don. “I’ve been married seven times. I have six daughters, two sons, 19 grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. All different women. And now I’m single … but looking.”
Copy wronged
It only took one Kansas City Star front-page feature profiling the Hughes in 1998 to stir up their settled lives. After this, friends and family pushed the brothers to write their story. Bob and Don retired and spent two years at a worn typewriter in Don’s kitchen. They admit that sometimes they added to the manuscript by incorporating characters such as D.B. Cooper.
They signed an agent and copyrighted their script, and the agent submitted the manuscript to Fox in 2001. The network rejected the manuscript.
In August 2005, the brothers say they had a rendezvous with injustice. Williams saw a promo for a new TV series called Prison Break. She quickly called Don and said, “Dad, this really sounds like your story.” That night Don and Bob watched the first episode. When they saw the character of D.B. Cooper minutes into the show, they knew it had been stolen.
For a second time, the Hughes brothers would not sit back and watch as people in power shaped their lives. This time they would not run. This time they would not hide. This time they hired a lawyer.
Last October, the Hughes filed a copyright infringement case in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City. The suit seeks unspecified damages and other costs from Fox and the show’s executive producer and creator, Paul Scheuring.
Every Monday at 7 p.m., the brothers watch Prison Break. “I sit there with a notebook, with the date and the episode, and I just mark similarities down in my book as we go,” says Bob. There are a total of 64 similarities.
The brothers say Prison Break is their lives spread over eight characters. “When the prisoners first escape, there is a roadblock on Highway 6 and 53. Don and I live at 5 and 52. Also, one of the inmates as soon as he goes through a roadblock, you see a highway sign saying ‘St. Louis, Missouri 236 miles.’ We live approximately 230 miles from St. Louis.” The brothers say they find fewer similarities these days.
The lawsuit has been in action for five months, and the Hughes have been inundated with media requests. They have been on three radio programs, four TV shows and in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. The brothers lean over Don’s coffee table and flick through some newspaper articles. Bob proudly says, “Yeah, we’ve made the front page with President Ford and Saddam Hussein.” Bob finds his favorite title, “‘Con Artists Outfoxed by Fox.’ That’s us!”
Don thinks it’s only fair that they should get retribution. But the Hughes want more than money; they want attribution. “What hurts us now if we were to approach a movie studio, television studio or book publisher about our true story they would look at it and say ‘Hey, this is Prison Break,’” says Don. “It was our story to start with.”
Their attorney, Jim Schottel, says the Hughes have a good chance regardless of the tough legal standard of proving substantial similarity. The attorney is in the early stages of the process of discovery in his preparation for the trial that will begin February 25, 2008.
Sitting on Don’s couch, the brothers embark on a dialogue of resentment for 10 minutes. “If the decision does go against Don and me, I feel it will definitely be another injustice carried out against the Hughes brothers,” says Bob. “Just like in 1964, in 2007 we will have another tremendous miscarriage of justice.”
For two boys who eagerly attended two church services, Bible study and Sunday school every week for the first 16 years of their lives, they’re pleased to have survived in such an immoral world. That one morning shaped the Hughes’ entire lives, a ripple that led to a tsunami of injustice. This lawsuit, their breaking point.
Today, Don, left, and Bob, right, live in Versailles in the same apartment complex. Together they watch Prison Break every Monday in preparation for the trial on February 25, 2008. 
Twitter
Facebook
