NEED TO KNOW
- In 1986, Nadine Vaujour secretly learned to fly to free her bank robber husband.
- She rescued Michel by helicopter from a Paris prison roof.
- The couple spent months on the run after the escape.
- Both were eventually jailed, but the story became legendary…
Nadine Vaujour was overcome by love and loyalty when, in May 1986, she carried out one of the most audacious jailbreaks in modern history – by helicopter.
Her husband, Michel Vaujour, was serving time in the high-security section of La Santé Prison in Paris, one of France’s most notorious and heavily guarded institutions, used to house serious offenders.
A career criminal, Michel had been in trouble with the law since his youth.
By adulthood he had built a reputation across France not just as a bank robber, but as one of the country’s most daring and inventive escape artists.
He had already escaped from custody several times and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s movingin and out of prison for armed robbery and other serious offences.
Despite his violent past, Nadine, then in her early 30s, remained fiercely devoted to him.
“Michel was the love of my life,” she later said.
The couple also had children together, and Nadine was determined to see her beloved husband freed from a lengthy sentence.
So she did something extraordinary.
Under a false name, Nadine began taking flying lessons, training over several months to learn how to pilot a helicopter.
She kept a low profile, reportedly paying in cash and revealing little about herself.
Meanwhile, inside the forbidding walls of La Santé, Michel and another inmate studied the prison layout carefully, searching for weaknesses.
A helicopter landing inside the prison was impossible – there simply wasn’t space – but they realised a pickup from the roof might work.
On the morning of May 26, 1986, Nadine put the plan into action.
At around 10.30am, a white hired helicopter approached the prison, flying low over the city.
Inside the prison, guards were already dealing with what appeared to be a serious internal threat.
Reports were coming through that inmates were armed with grenades and threatening violence.
Later, it emerged the supposed grenades were actually pieces of fruit painted green – a crude but effective bluff that created confusion and hesitation among officers.
As alarms sounded, Michel made his move.
Reaching the roof, he climbed up a line lowered from the hovering helicopter and managed to haul himself aboard.
Another inmate involved in the plan reportedly lost his nerve at the last moment and surrendered.
With the thunder of rotor blades echoing across Paris, Nadine lifted the helicopter away and flew to a nearby sports field, where a car was waiting.
Within minutes, the couple had vanished.
The extraordinary escape made headlines aroundthe world.
Photographs of the helicopter hovering above the prison walls appeared in newspapers internationally, turning Michel and Nadine into instant legends – or villains, depending on who was telling the story.
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Police launched a nationwide manhunt, setting up roadblocks and tracking known associates, but the couple managed to evade capture for several months, moving between safe locations.
To survive, they reportedly committed robberies and relied on help from contacts.
At one point, according to contemporary reports, they even managed to retrieve their children while evading surveillance, an audacious move that further embarrassed authorities.
Public opinion was sharply divided.
To some, Nadine wasa romantic heroine who risked everything for love.
To others, she was reckless – a woman who had thrown her life away for a dangerous man.
But their freedom did not last.
Later that year, Michel was arrested again after a series of bank robberies.
During one confrontation with police, he was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head but survived after extensive medical treatment anda prolonged recovery.
He was tried, convicted and returned to prison to serve a long sentence.
Nadine was also arrested and prosecuted for her role in the helicopter escape.
She was sentenced to around two years in prison.
Asked later if she regretted her actions, she reportedly said she would do it all again.
In the years that followed, Michel continued to attempt escapes, sometimes with help from associates or romantic partners, though none matched the success – or daring – of the 1986 breakout.
By the 1990s, Michel and Nadine had separated and eventually divorced.
Nadine largely disappeared from public life after serving her sentence, choosing to live privately, far from the headlines that had once followed her everywhere.
Michel, however, remained a figure of fascination in France.
After spending many years behind bars, he was finally released in 2003.
In later life, he reinvented himself, working as a photographer and writing about his past.
He spoke publicly about reflection, regret and spirituality, saying prison had forced him to reconsider the wild life he had lived.
He eventually published a memoir describing his experiences and relationships, offering a glimpse into the mind ofa man who had once risked everything for freedom – and inspired others to do the same.
While their relationship did not last, the helicopter escape remains one of the most sensational prison breaks in French criminal history – a story where devotion, recklessness and crime collided high above the rooftops of Paris.
