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Just a month ago, Boyce tried to get out of prison by writing a letter to U.S. District Judge Robert Kelleher. Pleading for a reduction in sentence, Boyce claimed that he was a changed man and that prison violence appalled him. "I am now finished with angry gestures," Boyce wrote. "They are self-destructive, they tear hearts, they accomplish nothing. The difference between Christopher Boyce who at 21 took matters into his own hands and the Christopher Boyce who composes this letter is that I have discovered a powerful, constructive vehicle to convey my criticisms." His stated ambition: to emigrate to Ireland and support himself as a writer. According to Boyce's lawyer, he was working on a book about prison conditions.
Judge Kelleher denied Boyce's plea, and the prisoner decided to take matters into his own hands once again. He had kept himself in excellent condition—a regimen of ten miles a day on the track, weight training and yoga—to be fit enough to flee through the rough, hilly terrain outside the prison. In addition, he must have been aware that Lompoc was in the process of converting to its new maximum security status. Within two months officials will install a sophisticated $67,000 alarm system along the inner fence that will sense the slightest pressure and would have detected his escape effort last week. Boyce made his move just in time. Says Chief U.S. Deputy Marshal James Propotnick: "All he had to do was be stealthy, secretive and gutsy." Like any good spy.