U.S. Man Who Broke Out of Bali Jail Caught With a Bible, Map and Cheese, Wanted to See His Mother in Thailand

Indonesian police have caught a U.S. citizen who escaped prison in Bali last week, after a five-day manhunt across the country's islands.

The man managed to travel from Bali to the adjacent island of Lombok after paying a fisherman to use a boat to cross the channel, and was eventually captured in west Lombok Friday.

Christian Beasley, whose name was spelled "Chrishan" on his mugshot, cut through the steel bars of the jail's roof with Paul Anthony Hoffman, another U.S. prisoner who was recaptured soon after the two climbed over the prison's 20-foot high wall on December 11.

Read more: After breaking out of prison in Bali, the first thing Christian Beasley did was to find his mother

Police said Beasley had shaved his head in a bid to fool officers and avoid capture, local media reported, but was identified through the accounts of witnesses who'd spotted the man.

The police seized the Honda Vario scooter Beasley had rented before returning it to its owner, and found it contained a Bible, a piece of leftover cheese, a torn map of Lombok island, clothes and toiletries, among other items.

Beasley wanted to escape to Thailand to meet his mother in Bangkok, a police official told local media. "But because he had difficulty, with no documents, he could not fly to his destination to escape from Indonesia," the official said.

Beasley was imprisoned on drug-related charges after he was caught carrying 5.7 grams of hashish in a post office. He escaped the overcrowded and understaffed Kerobokan prison, which is located less than 5 miles from Bali's popular Kuta area, the day before he was due to appear in court to receive his sentence.

Under Indonesia's strict drug laws, Beasley risks several years in prison. Punishment for drug-related charges depends on the quantity and the type of the substance. Those found in possession of hashish may be imprisoned for four to 12 years and fined from roughly $90,000 to $896,000. Those sentenced for drug trafficking could face life imprisonment or even a death sentence.

Police are still investigating the circumstances of the escape and the possible involvement of prison guards. "The fugitive was arrested and now under further investigation to find out if there was whether any involvement from the prison, or maybe it's due to procedural violation in the prison that we are seeing frequent escapes recently," Bali police chief Petrus Reinhard Golose said, quoted in Reuters.

Beasley isn't the only prisoner to have made a daring jailbreak from Kerobokan this year. In June, four other foreign prisoners dug a 13-yard tunnel under the prison walls. Two were recaptured—Indian citizen Sayed Mohammed Said and Bulgarian citizen Dimitar Nikolov Iliev—and Australian fugitive Shaun Edward Davidson and Malaysian Tee Kok King are still at large.