Escaped Prisoner Left Trail on Facebook, Daring Cops to Catch Him

Jan. 2, 2009— -- Three months ago, Craig "Lazie" Lynch, 28, escaped from prison in eastern England.

He went on the lam -- and then he went online.

Soon after his escape, Lynch joined Facebook.

He used the site to taunt the police, daring them to catch him. He detailed his scrumptious steak dinners and debated plans for New Year's Eve parties. He posted a photo of himself holding a "wanted" sign with his own name on it.

In another photo, he posed shirtless and made a crude gesture directed at the authorities.

"I ain't handin' myself in," he posted, "Why am I going to do their job for them?"

Later, he wrote about evading the police and posted, "They think this is going to cripple me, the FOOLS!"

His brash, some say foolish defiance has won him at least 37,000 fans on his Facebook fan page. Someone wrote a song in his honor and posted it on YouTube.

As his notoriety grew he only became bolder, even calling in to a British television station to grant an interview on his Facebook fame.

"They can triangulate this call," he told Channel 5 News. "But it is no good because I am always on the move."

He said he spent as much as 20 hours a day on Facebook, mainly to accommodate his fans in different time zones around the world.

He said that it all started for the same reason most people join Facebook.

"I started to get in contact with people that are from home," he said. "I'm taunting them now, and I've turned it around, but it wasn't genuinely like that from the beginning."

Lynch was serving the last of a seven-year sentence for aggravated burglary at Hollesley Bay Prison.

The facility is an open prison that is designed to help inmates prepare for re-entering the real world. They are allowed to check in and out daily, but must report back each night.

Authorities said there was nothing spectacular about his escape. He simply walked out. At least four others did the same thing last year. It is so easy to leave the facility it has earned the nickname, "Holiday Bay."