Jailbreak: Inmates Crawl Through Ceiling, Head Out Front Door, Walk Five Miles Shoeless

Rodney Joe Green

Officials say that on Monday night, three Missouri inmates managed to escape from Butler County Jail through the ceiling and out a main entrance.

Then they traveled five miles without real shoes, before they were caught and sent back to jail.

"They found a void up in the [ceiling] and were able to slither or crawl along until they got to the front lobby," Missouri Highway Patrol Trooper Clark Parrott tells Daily RFT. "Then they dropped down and ran out the front door."

How'd the authorities find them?

Parrott says that around 11:30 p.m. Monday evening, the three suspects -- Matthew Brandon Cook, Kade Reaves Stringfellow and Rodney Joe -- discovered some sort of "void" in the shower area where there are apparently no cameras.

They climbed up there and crawled through all the way to a front lobby area where they then fell through to make their escape.

"They dropped through a sheetrock ceiling into the lobby of the jail and ran out," he says.

Matthew Brandon Cook

Just as officials were holding a press conference spreading the word about the manhunt for the escaped inmates yesterday afternoon, they got word that the suspects had been found around 3:30 p.m, Parrott says.

They were found in a scrap yard in a cab of a tractor trailer unit about five miles away.

Parrott says they had lost their shoes or were wearing shower shoes, which "are not ideal for navigating cross country at night."

Continue for more details on the escape and footage of their arrest.