The convicted satellite spy who vanished through a prison drainage hole

On January 21, 1980, Christopher Boyce hid in a drainage hole at California’s Lompoc prison, then used a makeshift ladder and tin snips to escape through the perimeter. He was serving 40 years for espionage. The U.S. Marshals Service says his flight became its first major fugitive test after taking over primary responsibility for escaped federal prisoners from the FBI. The pursuit would last nineteen months and spread through almost every federal district, with leads overseas as well.

Boyce’s original access had been unusually direct. A federal appeals court described his work at contractor TRW’s classified communications center, operating an encrypted teletype link with CIA headquarters. With his friend Andrew Daulton Lee, he conspired to sell information to the Soviet Union. During 1975 and 1976, Lee sold thousands of documents or photographs that Boyce provided. The Soviet payments totaled $70,000, the court said, with $15,000 going to Boyce. An industrial communications job had become the opening for a Soviet collection operation.

The first case broke when Mexican police arrested Lee outside the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City on January 6, 1977. He had film of documents from Pyramider, a CIA-commissioned study of communications satellites for agents working in denied areas. Lee implicated Boyce, and physical evidence supported an arrest warrant. Boyce confessed after his arrest. The appeals court rejected his challenge to the confession’s admission and affirmed the judgment; his concurrent sentences included two forty-year terms.

The fugitive hunt narrowed to northwest Washington in August 1981. Marshals and FBI agents worked undercover as fishermen, loggers and waitresses while checking leads. Witnesses at a supermarket identified Boyce from photographs. On August 21, a surveillance team returned to the Pit Stop restaurant in Port Angeles and recognized him sitting alone in a parked car. Officers surrounded the vehicle and arrested him without incident. A Coast Guard helicopter then carried him toward Seattle, ending an escape that had turned an imprisoned intelligence source into a nationwide fugitive.