The Peculiar Truth about Timothy Leary’s Prison Break

• September 1970: Officials at a minimum security facility outside San Luis Obispo, CA alerted the press that Timothy Leary, the counterculture guru, had escaped from their prison. He had been incarcerated six months earlier on charges of marijuana possession. Authorities were on the lookout for him.

• Within hours, Leary’s prison-issued clothing - blue jeans pants and shirt plus one sock - were discovered at a gas station restroom just a few miles away.

• Timothy Leary was a fugitive.

• During the 1960s, Timothy Leary’s experiments with psychedelics made him a household name. The Harvard professor encouraged the use of mind-expanding drugs. He also famously told a generation to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

• The day after Christmas, 1968: Leary and his wife Rosemary and a stepson (age 20) were arrested for drug possession in Southern California. Rosemary got probation and the stepson served a few months.

• But Timothy Leary was already wanted on a Federal possession charge elsewhere. At age 48, he was incarcerated with a sentence of 10 years plus an additional ten years from another charge. He was looking at most of the rest of his life in prison.

• Leary was given a standardized psychological exam to determine which prison work assignments would suit him best. It was called the Interpersonal Circle Model of Personality. He manipulated his answers so he’d be assigned to gardening. He knew how because Leary had created the test himself in 1957.

• The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a radical group living communally in Orange County, CA. They sold LSD and envisioned a world of peace created by the drug’s widespread use. Leary had heavily influenced the Brotherhood’s founder, John Griggs.

• The Brotherhood contacted the Weather Underground and offered them $25,000 to help Timothy Leary escape prison.

• The Weather Underground was a loose organization of leftist militants - mostly suburban-raised white college students - who had perpetrated bombings across the US including police stations and halls of justice. They believed Leary’s incarceration for drug possession should not have been a crime.

• A prison break was carefully planned.

• On a September night, Leary scaled the prison wall, climbed over barbed wire, and ran a quarter mile to an awaiting truck. Two Weather Underground members then transported him north to San Francisco.

• Investigators found in his prison cell a newspaper clipping in which then-Governor Ronald Reagan declared Leary no threat to escape and therefore should be placed in minimum security. Leary left the clipping for authorities to find as a taunt.

• From San Francisco, Leary traveled to Algeria where other far-left radicals like Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party were hiding in exile.

• But Leary was unwelcome there and spent the next two years hopscotching to various international locales, including Egypt and Switzerland. It was in Afghanistan that authorities arrested him and extradited Leary back to the US.

• He snitched on everyone who helped him escape prison, naming each member of the Weather Underground.

• Timothy Leary was returned to the minimum security prison in San Luis Obispo and received an additional 5 years. He never made another escape attempt.

• The Weather Underground disbanded as members were arrested. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love dissolved.

• 1976: Governor Jerry Brown commuted Leary’s sentence. He was free. He lived the remainder of his life in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon.

ALSO:

• Leary was godfather to actress Winona Ryder.