After 37 years, it's time to free Joseph Kindler, genius inmate who descended 11 floors of bed sheets to escape Parthenais

       Joseph Kindler has been in prison since 1982 - save for a few months on the lam - and it's time to release him.
   Way back in 1982 Kindler, 22, was  robbing warehouses in Philadelphia with parther David Bernstein, 18.
   Cops nabbed him with over $100,000 worth of stolen electronics swag in his apartment.
   Police officers offered Bernstein immunity in return for testifying against his partner. 
   Bernstein accepted the deal.
   Kindler got word of his partner's betrayal and killed Bernstein before he could testify.
   ***
   Kindler was arrested and charged with murder but fled prison while awaiting sentencing in 1983 and came to the Laurentians, where he was eventually captured again after committing a burglary.
  Canada delayed Kindler's extradition because Kindler argued that a country that opposes the death penalty should not send someone to a place where he might face the death penalty.
  Justice Minister John Crosbie wanted Kindler gone and Canada's Supreme Court agreed in a landmark decision.
   So Kindler was stuck in Parthenais, a sort of vertical prison and all-purpose facility run by the province, as he awaited the outcome of extradition situation.
  Plenty of inmates have escaped prison but few have done it with the panache of Joseph Kindler, an American who climbed down 11 floors of the Parthenais prison gripping 33 bedsheets before settling up north for two years before being found.
**
   Fellow inmates lifted Kindler and fellow inmate Richard Chevrier through a skylight.
   The duo tossed a rope down. It was made of 33 bedsheets tied together and Kindler started descending.
   "It was pretty hard. My hands were bleeding. I started to get shaky at the sixth floor," Kindler later said.
  The rope wasn't long enough and Kindler was forced to jump about two floors up. He landed on his feet and was fine.
   Chevrier, followed Kindler down but lost control of the rope on the 12th floor.
   Kindler watched him die.
  "He was screaming all the way down." Kindler later noted.
   Kindler, then 27, was dressed in street clothes and walked four blocks when a Jehova's Witness offered him salvation. Kindler declined the religious instruction but asked him for bus fare and the man gave it.
   "I rode a bus to the end of the line, got another bus and rode it to the end too. I got as far as I could get on that buck. It pretty much saved me."
   Kindler found himself in St. Jovite where his electronics skills came in handy, as Serge Aubin got a job helping program the Mont Blanc ski lift.
**
   Kindler used the alias Mario Degre and even had a business card with the pseudonym.
   Kindler, prior to his first capture, had also learned to speak French well.
   Aubin allowed Kindler to stay at his two-storey wooden house in Lac Carre,but soon Kindler had struck up a love affair with Aubin's wife Diane.
   Kindler and Diane Aubin left with her daughter a few months later.
   The cuckolded Aubin grudgingly spoke highly of Kindler.
    "I don't believe he is capable of killing someone. He is a nice guy who keeps everything about himself inside but would give you anything or do anything for you. He's the most intelligent man I have ever met. He could do anything with his hands and he would charge nothing or very little for his work."
   Aubin even admitted his part in his wife leaving him. "I wasn't blameless. I guess a woman doesn't like it when her husband comes home when she's already asleep and lees in the morning before she gets up. Mario (Kindler) had more time for her."
**
   Kindler was featured on the television show America's Most Wanted and fled to New Brunswick, where somebody recognized him and reported him.
   He finally was extradited to Philadelphia in 1991 and has been in prison since.
   Bernstein's family has actively urged authorities keep Kindler behind bars.
   Kindler, meanwhile, has put his free time to good use. He developed and patented electronic devices, including a wireless smoke detector, from inside prison.
  Perhaps fittingly, he has also become a Jehova's Witness.
  It's time to set Kindler free. 

**

Leonard Saulnier

  Elsewhere on Coolopolis is a list of other inmates who also tried to escape Parthenais on bedsheets.  We can't find that post right now, we'll add the story of Leonard Saulnier, 25, who was being held for killing Montreal police officer Gilles Beauvais, a father of three, on 7 June at 6653 Lamont in Ville Emard.
  Saulnier tied 35 sheets together and started to descend but something didn't work too well and he fell 200 feet to his death on Saturday 2 August 1975.  Saulnier killed officer Beauvais after escaping a prison in Laval on 7 March of the same year.