by Hugh Hunter
For almost 10 years I was the British consul for Florida, based in Orlando. During this time, that office was the busiest British consulate in the world in terms of the numbers of British citizens in prison: many hundreds arrested every year and almost 200 long-term inmates at any one time.
Once, during a visit to Florida’s Death Row at Union Correctional Institution, I was talking to a guard. He told me that the men on Death Row had killed people in all sorts of situations—robberies, gang fights, drug deals, contract killings—but that just about every woman on Death Row had killed either her husband or boyfriend.
I would estimate that less than 15 percent of the prisoners I dealt with were women. But in almost every case a woman had committed a serious crime, a man was a significant part of the equation.
Of the many interesting stories I heard, one remains firmly in my mind. Barbara Batt (names have been changed and conversations paraphrased) had been married to a British prison officer for almost 30 years when he left her for another woman. After the painful divorce, Batt, who was a grandmother in her late-50s, travelled to the United States to spend some time with an old friend. During this sojourn she began a pen-friend relationship with a man on Florida’s Death Row. Gary Bond, at the time in his 20s, was facing the electric chair for having killed his ex-girlfriend and her new lover. After only a couple of months’ correspondence, Bond proposed marriage to Batt. Shortly afterwards, they were married in prison.
In order to be closer to her new husband, Batt moved to a small caravan in a trailer park near the prison. After only a few weeks of marriage, Bond proposed an escape plan that involved another Death Row inmate and his young wife, a Spanish national. Bond wanted to know whether Batt was up for it. She was.
A few weeks later, the two women arrived at a heliport near Starke, Florida, in a rented car. They had booked a helicopter flight under the pretense of getting an aerial view of some property they were thinking of buying a few miles out of town. The large bag they were carrying, they explained to the pilot, was full of photographic equipment.
Within several minutes after take-off, the pilot felt a poke on the back of his head. When he looked round, he saw at close range the wrong end of a gun barrel.
“Keep flying north west!” shouted the Englishwoman.
“Okay, take it easy,” he replied. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” she hollered.
After a few more minutes the prison was in sight. Batt then explained the escape plan to the pilot.
“I want you to fly over the exercise yard of that prison over there,” she said. “We’re going to drop this bag down to a couple of prisoners who’ll be waiting for us. They’re going to give us some covering fire and chuck some grenades about the place. We’ll be shooting at the guards from up here. Once you get low enough, the two prisoners will be jumping into the helicopter, and we’ll return to the base at full speed. Do you understand me?”
It’s loud in a helicopter, and difficult to communicate without headphones. You have to shout a lot and wave your arms about. The essence of pilot’s response was: “You’re f*****g joking, right?” “Not in the slightest,” Batt shouted.
The pilot was a local man with knowledge of the area, and he explained the several fatal flaws in the women’s plan: “First of all, there are observation towers all around the prison. Before we even get close to the place, they are going to shoot us down, and we will all die. Secondly, there are wires across the exercise yard that will prevent us from getting anywhere near the ground—if the blades of this aircraft hit those wires, we will all die. Thirdly, the weight of two grown men climbing onto this aircraft will put us over our maximum payload—we will crash and we will all die. Besides, what if even more prisoners decide to take their chances and jump on board? We’ll be pulled to the ground and we will all die.”
His words had effect on women: They relented and told him to fly back to base. As soon as they landed, they jumped into their car and drove off at speed. The pilot called the police and the women were arrested a few miles away. Soon after her arrest, Batt made a full confession to the authorities.
I went to visit her a few days later. I’ve met a few unlikely criminals in my time, but she took the biscuit. She was nearly 60, quite short and totally unprepossessing. I listened in astonishment as she told me her story. By the end she was in tears, feeling extremely sorry for herself. She had grandchildren and was anxious that she might not see them again—at least, not as a free woman. I thought she was probably right, but this didn’t seem the best time to say so.
I asked her why she had done it and she simply shrugged. I firmly believe to this day that she has not the slightest idea. Before she decided to spring her husband from prison, I doubt that Barbara Batt had even had as much as a criminal thought in her whole life. She is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison for air piracy. Bond is still on Florida’s Death Row.
Hugh Hunter is an ex-London firefighter who subsequently became the British vice-consul for Florida. He currently lives in England and is the author of Our Man in Orlando, a memoir of his time working for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
