How much evidence could Dufresne have put in that envelope he sent to the paper? He didn’t actually witness the greaser’s murder, and the allegations against the warden are made by an escaped murderer with an ax to grind.
I thought it was incriminating financial information.
They arrested the captain of the guards and he cried like a baby (according to Red).
A tad complicated by the fact that all the money was gone. I suppose some bank employees might be shown a picture of Dufresne and recognize him as the “Randall Stephens” who briefly showed up to close his accounts. Without Dufresne’s testimony (and even with it, truth be told), I’m not sure how much of a case could be made against Norton. You’d have to get some of the local businesses to admit that they’d bribed Norton, and I’m not sure Hadley was privy to any of those details, since that would require him getting a cut.
Like the feasibility of crawling through a 500-foot sewer pipe and not suffocating, this is the kind of detail best left unanalyzed.
Why he chose enchilada night I’ll never understand.
Ahem…it was 500 yards. “That’s the length of five football fields…”
If memory serves, he sent the entire ledger to the papers, and it wasn’t just bribes, it was money laundering and tax evasion, too.
I’m not sure why you think it would be hard to make a case, it wasn’t a bank robbery and a shadowy figure running away with a physical bag of cash, it was years of dodgy financial fraud and the guy who knew all the details basically handed the authorities a road map for every part of it.
Remember:
Its like doing Capone for tax evasion, its all in the numbers so why do you think they need Dufresne to testify when they already have all the evidence they need right there in bank records, transaction records, etc etc?
Andy would never have found enough breathable air in the pipe to crawl that far. Regardless of his tolerance for icky shit. Methane, ammonia, and other sewer gasses, there is a reason why we have OSHA regulations for confined spaces.
Was just talking about this with friends the other day. So there’s no treatment on the end? The sewage is just dumped into that ditch?
In 1965, in rural Maine? Not at all surprising. Heck, treating it might be more unlikely at that point.
You could maybe retcon the story so the pipe is a combined sewage and drainage culvert, large enough to carry all the rainwater from the yard and roofs as well as the sewage. Seems possible to survive crawling through a 36" pipe that’s mostly air with a couple inches of sewage on the bottom.
Though in the movie wasn’t it a giant pouring thunderstorm that night? Hrmm…
Well, if you’re going to quote-mine, there’s also:
I could buy that in the months before his prison break, Andy would leave enough bread crumbs to incriminate Norton without disrupting the flow of cash. It’s not explicitly described, of course, which would weaken the ending, so it’s left to our imagination how exactly this would destroy Norton and not just have everybody looking for the fictitious Randall Stephens.
“Just shy of half a mile.” If you consider 500 to be ‘just shy’ of 880.
Great movie, but one thing that always bothered me about the movie was that it was set in Maine, but it was always summer. I don’t remember any cold days, or even the mention of snow or cold. Sorry for the hijack, but I didn’t want to start a thread for just that, so was waiting for another SR thread.
There is one scene during Andy’s ordeal with the Sisters where he’s walking the yard wearing a jacket and cap, hands in pockets, looking chilled–but not that cold–but yeah, a balmy 40-year stretch of weather in The Pine Tree State. Who’da thunk?
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco . . . err, Maine . . . err, wrong prison break.
<'Cause, ya know, it’s cold.
I know, “Back to the hole!”
CMC fnord!
The books contained all the info needed. Bank account numbers, amounts, dates, who was paying kickbacks…more than enough to get search warrants for his financial info and documents on every prison program and subpoenas for everyone who paid kickbacks. I’m sure that by the time the police came to get the warden, all the people who paid kickbacks had gladly ratted on the warden.
The murder? Not so much. They were probably counting on guard rolling on the warden, but he didn’t get the chance. But I’m sure he was seeing some cash from the warden’s scams, so he would be prosecuted for that.
Man, I’ve read the story and seen the movie, and I have to say I think the movie is better than the story. The film’s villains like Captain Hadley and Bogs Diamond are so menacing and brilliantly acted, and the same terror is impossible to convey in a story. I’m not saying the story is bad, Stephen King is great at world-building and immersion in his stories, but the movie was truly outstanding.
Even if they could only get the warden on some minor tax evasion charges - he’s going to wind up in Shawshank on the wrong side of the wire. Even if he only was facing a couple of months, he probably thought he’d better off taking the quick way out.