Joel David Kaplan, Photographer convicted for murder Portraits of Bonnie Sharie, actresses, reportages New York, 1955-1957 Épreuves argentiques d’époque, formats divers, de 18x24 à 30x40 cm, tampon du photographe au verso Joel David Kaplan, was a New York photographer then businessman and nephew of Molasses Tycoon Jacob M. Kaplan, whose J.M. Kaplan Fund was named in a 1964 congressional investigation as a conduit for CIA money for Latin America. Joel David Kaplan was convicted in 1962 for the Mexico City murder of his New York business partner, Louis Vidal Jr. Kaplan claimed at the trial that Vidal, who had been involved in narcotics and gunrunning, had constructed an elaborate plot to disappear. The murder victim, Kaplan maintained, was not even Vidal, and indeed, serious doubts were raised about the body’s identity. Kaplan escaped from his Mexican Jail in August 1971, accompanied by Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro, a Venezuelan counterfeiter. Most of the 136 guards at Mexico City’s Santa Maria Acatitla prison were watching a movie with the prisoners when a Bell helicopter, similar in color to the Mexican attorney general’s, suddenly clattered into the prison yard. Some of the guards on duty presented arms, supposing that the helicopter had brought an unexpected official visitor. The final escape plans - Kaplan had prepared many plans which all failed during the years - had apparently been completed the day before when an American man visited Cell No. 10 and looked over the prison yard. He was accompanied by both men’s wives. (Kaplan had married a Mexican woman—the only way he could have visitors, he said—without bothering to divorce New York Model Bonnie Sharie.) After the escape, Kaplan and Castro switched to a small Cessna at a nearby airfield and were flown to La Pesca airport near the Texas border, where two more planes awaited them. One flew Castro to Guatemala; the other flew Kaplan to Texas and then on to California. Kaplan used his own name when he passed U.S. customs at Brownsville. Both the helicopter, which was later found abandoned, and the Cessna had been bought in the U.S., at an estimated cost of $100,000. At week’s end neither man had been caught. Kaplan’s Mexican attorney declared that his client was a CIA agent and that the rescue had been engineered by the agency. The jail break was so notorious it was even featured in the Charles Bronson film Breakout and became the subject of examinations of conspiracy theories. Kaplan died in Miami in 1988.