In the predawn hours of December 18, 2012, two convicted bank robbers disappeared from a federal jail in downtown Chicago. They were being held on the 17th floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a high-rise building surrounded by the city, with no obvious route to freedom. Yet by the time employees arrived that morning, a long rope made from knotted bedsheets was hanging down the building’s exterior. Joseph “Jose” Banks and Kenneth Conley had slipped through a narrow cell window and climbed down the side of the jail, then disappeared into the streets below. Their escape looked almost impossible. The more investigators learned, the more disturbing the security failures became.
Two Bank Robbers Planned Their Way Out
Banks and Conley were both being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center while facing federal bank robbery cases. Conley had pleaded guilty to bank robbery in October 2012 and was awaiting sentencing, while Banks had been convicted in a separate bank robbery case after a turbulent trial.
The two men had become cellmates, and sometime before the escape they began preparing for a way out. According to investigators, they experimented with materials and worked out how they could get through the narrow opening in their cell window. Later reporting also indicated that they conducted trial runs in the days before the escape, apparently checking whether their improvised rope would be long and strong enough.
Their plan depended on something that seems almost absurdly ordinary: bedsheets. But the sheets were only one part of it.
Ever wonder how two bank robbers escaped a 17-story skyscraper prison using only dental floss and bedsheets? Discover the mind-blowing true story behind this audacious jailbreak, the massive FBI manhunt that followed, and the shocking security failures that made it all possible. Watch the full investigation on our channel now!
They Hid Their Escape Until It Was Too Late
The men knew that a nighttime bed check could expose them immediately. So they created a crude illusion inside the cell, placing clothes and sheets beneath the blankets so that the beds appeared occupied. When guards checked the cell, the arrangement was meant to make it look as though the two prisoners were asleep.
Authorities later said the men had been accounted for during a routine check at about 10 p.m. on December 17. The next confirmed discovery came around 7 a.m., when jail employees noticed the escape route and the rope hanging outside the building. That left a critical gap of roughly nine hours during which the prisoners could make their way out and disappear.
The escape was already underway before anyone realized the cell had been emptied.
They Squeezed Through A Tiny Window
The cell window was one of the strangest parts of the escape. Reports described it as only about five to six inches wide, far too narrow for a person to simply climb through. Investigators said the prisoners removed or broke away part of the surrounding masonry and widened the opening enough to get their bodies outside. They then relied on the improvised rope.
The bedsheets had been tied together into a long line, with dental floss reportedly used as part of the way the sheets were secured. The rope stretched hundreds of feet down the south side of the building. Photographs taken after the escape showed the makeshift line dangling dramatically against the concrete facade. Then the two men went over the edge.
They descended roughly 17 floors to a parking deck on West Van Buren Street. The federal appellate court later described Conley’s escape simply as scaling down seventeen floors on a rope made from bedsheets. For anyone looking up at the building afterward, the evidence was hanging in plain sight.
The Rope Was Only The Beginning
Banks and Conley did not simply hit the pavement and run.
They changed clothes and left the area by taxi. Surveillance footage later showed men matching their descriptions taking a cab from downtown Chicago at about 2:40 a.m. and traveling south.
The FBI immediately launched a manhunt and announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to their capture. Authorities warned that the men should be considered armed and dangerous, turning what had already been an extraordinary jail escape into a citywide search.
But their freedom lasted far less time than the escape itself might have suggested.
Joseph Banks was arrested the following Thursday night, less than three days after the breakout. He was found in Chicago and taken into custody without incident. Conley stayed out longer.
One Escapee Lasted 18 Days
Kenneth Conley remained on the run for approximately 18 days before authorities found him in Palos Hills, a suburb southwest of Chicago. He had been hiding in a boiler room beneath an apartment building, where he was discovered asleep and wearing clothing intended to disguise his appearance.
The spectacular rooftop escape had therefore produced a surprisingly ordinary ending. One man was caught within days. The other was found hiding in a basement.
Yet the capture of both men did not answer the more embarrassing question facing the Bureau of Prisons: How did two prisoners manage to escape from a federal high-rise jail in the first place?
The Security System Had More Than One Failure
The Metropolitan Correctional Center was not an ordinary county jail. It was a federal detention facility in the center of Chicago, designed to hold inmates in a heavily controlled environment. The fact that two prisoners could cut through a cell opening, construct a makeshift rope and descend the outside of the building raised obvious questions about how multiple security layers had failed simultaneously.
The former warden, Catherine Linaweaver, later described the episode as a case in which “several layers” of security had failed at once. A report obtained by the Chicago Tribune through public-records requests was heavily redacted, and the Bureau of Prisons never publicly provided a complete account of what went wrong or whether guards were disciplined.
There were also warnings that became part of the aftermath. An email obtained by ABC7 indicated that prison staff had received information about a possible escape plan before the breakout. Later reporting suggested the inmates had been testing parts of their plan in advance.
In other words, the escape did not depend on one miraculous trick. It depended on several small failures lining up at exactly the wrong time.
What Happened After The Escape
Conley was eventually sentenced to 20 years for the bank robbery that had brought him to the MCC. He then received an additional 41-month sentence for the escape, which was ordered to run consecutively to the robbery sentence.
The federal appellate court later upheld that sentence. In its opinion, the court noted that Conley had escaped from the 17th floor while awaiting sentencing and had used a rope made from bed sheets to climb down the building.
For Banks, the escape became another chapter in a much longer criminal case. For the jail itself, the episode became something else: a case study in how a high-security facility could look secure until several ordinary weaknesses were combined.
A sheet is harmless. Dental floss is harmless. A narrow window is harmless. A routine bed check is harmless. Together, in the hands of two determined prisoners, they became an escape route from the 17th floor.
The Jail Was Built To Keep People In
That may be the most memorable aspect of the story.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center was a massive concrete structure in the middle of Chicago, built to control people inside it. Banks and Conley did not tunnel underground, bribe a guard or overpower a cellblock. They exploited a series of physical and procedural weaknesses and turned everyday objects into tools.
The resulting image was almost surreal: a long white rope hanging down a downtown skyscraper where a federal jail had been operating for decades. Commuters could look up and see physical evidence that two prisoners had somehow turned a prison cell into the starting point of a descent into the city. Their escape was bold. Their getaway was short-lived. But the questions it raised lasted much longer.
In December 2012, convicted bank robbers Joseph Banks and Kenneth Conley escaped from Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center by squeezing through a widened cell window and descending roughly 17 floors on a rope made from bedsheets. They concealed their absence during a nighttime bed check, changed clothes after reaching the ground and fled by taxi. Banks was captured within days, while Conley remained at large for about 18 days before being found hiding in a suburban boiler room. The escape exposed multiple weaknesses in a federal high-rise jail’s security system and became one of Chicago’s most extraordinary prison-break stories.
P.S. This article draws primarily on the Chicago Tribune investigation republished by Corrections1, along with federal court records, the U.S. Department of Justice and contemporary CBS and ABC7 reporting. Those sources document the escape route, the improvised rope, the subsequent manhunt and the later court proceedings. Some details about exactly which security failures contributed to the escape remain undisclosed because the Bureau of Prisons never released a complete public account. Sources: https://www.corrections1.com/escapes/articles/10-years-later-high-rise-jail-escape-with-bedsheets-dental-floss-9HdeD8S7BHe1GCjc/
