O n 5 January 1988, Tanya Smith – then two years into a 13-year prison sentence in West Virginia – walked out of her cell and kept on walking. Smith, who had been convicted of bank and wire fraud, wanted a shot at an appeal. Having grown increasingly desperate, she hatched an unorthodox plan to try to win her freedom from the outside.
With the help of an accomplice, she disguised herself as a lawyer and floated confidently past the security guards who observed her every move. Like many elements of Smith’s life story, it sounds as if it was ripped straight from the pages of a pulpy thriller. “When I reached the gate, I turned to the guard standing in the doorway and waved,” writes Smith in her action-packed memoir, Never Saw Me Coming .
“He squinted as if he was seeing someone he knew ...
I smiled and waved again. A heavy lump formed in my throat ..
. At any moment, someone could realise I was missing, and the alarm would sound.” Despite her nerves, Smith says she knew her plan would work – and it did.
Sitting now in the immaculate sage-green kitchen of her home just outside Los Angeles, the 64-year-old appears content and humble, in keeping with the book blurb that declares she is “enjoying the peace of suburban motherhood”. She tears up a few times during our call – when she thinks about the strained relationship she has with two of her three children, for example. But there are frequent flashes of the brilliance and confidence that helped her pull off a.