Hayes was arrested at the Istanbul airport in 1970 with two kilos of hashish taped to his body. The Turkish High Court sentenced him to life in prison. Five years later, Billy escaped from Imrali Island prison in the dead of night – rowing 17 miles across the Sea of Marmara in a raging storm.
On his return to the US, Hayes wrote Midnight Express.

Published in 18 languages, the book was an instant best-seller.
When the iconic film was released in 1978, Billy Hayes became a mythical figure – a modern-day Billy The Kid. 36 years later,
he remains a cultural anti-hero known throughout the world.
If you’ve seen the movie, you might think you know Billy’s story. But you probably don’t. Midnight Express didn’t win any
Oscars® for factual accuracy. While the film was about prison – a chilling exploration of the depths of incarceration in a
foreign land – Riding the Midnight Express with Billy Hayes is about the prisoner. It’s an intimate, gripping memoir that can only be told by the man who lived it.

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