A plumber from Omagh, in the United Kingdom, shocked his local community and later, the internet, when it was discovered in court that he has dug a tunnel under his bed reaching 800 feet, and emerging in a local pub, over the course of 15 years.
Patsy Kerr was called to appear in court when it was determined that his tunnel was the cause of damage to a water pipe servicing a neighboring house.
In court, Kerr admitted:
“My wife has a bad snore on her and after watching The Shawshank Redemption on TV one night in 1994, I decided to do something about it – so I waited ’til she was in a deep sleep and then set about digging a hole under the bed in the direction of the pub.
I used all manner of tools from spoons to a heavy duty tunnel-boring machine. I managed to sneak down there when she was at the shops. It wasn’t until 2009 that I hit the jackpot and came up through the women’s toilet mop and bucket room.”
Kerr went on to detail how he had used the tunnel to sneak to the pub between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, unbeknownst to his sleeping wife.
“To be honest I was sort of glad I was caught,” he added. “She was always smelling drink off me in the morning and I was explaining it away as a natural odor”.
But, recently I was finding myself singing rebel songs and stuff coming back up the tunnel and it was only a matter of time before I was caught anyhow. The landlord was also wondering how I was just appearing out of nowhere at the same time every night and disappearing from the women’s toilets.”
Kerr’s underground-alcohol-railroad was finally discovered when municipal workers investigated a sewage problem, which turned out to be the result of Kerr’s poor digging, during which he hit a pipe and leaked sewage into the surrounding ground.
When the presiding judge questioned Kerr’s wife as how she didn’t notice the foul odors or missing husband for 15 years, she simply shrugged.
