Carlos Roberto Medina-Bailon was in the El Paso, Texas jail on drug trafficking charges. Detectives say he's tied to a Mexican drug cartel. But unfortunately for him, the El Paso jail isn't exactly on the cutting edge of law enforcement...
After spending a month in the slam, someone got the bright idea of making him a trustee, which allowed him to work in the kitchen. And workers in the kitchen had access to the garbage bin, a leading avenue of escape since 1962.
So early Friday morning, Medina-Bailon decided to hide in the dumpster, then wait for a garbage truck to haul him to freedom. It worked -- at least for a brief period.
Medina-Bailon did manage to escape, but he's from Delicias, Mexico, where the garbage trucks apparently don't come with compactors to increase their payloads as they make the rounds.
When jailers discovered he was missing, their keen investigative minds turned to the dumpster. They checked with the garbage contractor, only to find that the truck that services the jail had already dumped its load at a landfill in Sunland Park, N.M.
And that's precisely where police caught up with our hero -- or at least what remained of our hero. His body was found crushed to death by the garbage truck's compactor.