How could Andy Dufresne do so much after his escape without being caught?

I believe there was enough time for Andy to have completed his tasks.

Consider this:

• Andy misses roll call and the guard discovers his cell is empty.


• At the same time the Warden discovers Andy left his old shoes in the shoe box.


• The warden travels down and discovers Andy is the one missing. He orders everyone on the cell block questioned, starting with Red.


• The warden orders Hadley to find him. Because Andy was in his cell the previous night they probably think he should be close by.


• A few minutes later they discover the hole in the wall.


• They had to take time to send someone in the hole to the sewer line, and then to either go through the sewer line (which Andy may still be in) or discover its outlet.

Considering the interviewing of the other prisoners, going through the escape route and the initial search of the surrounding area, I think it would be hours before they verified he wasn't in the area and they had to broaden their search. By the early afternoon Andy was likely leaving the state. Manhunts are slow. You establish some perceived parameter and then get people in lines walking all through it with dogs hoping to stumble upon the perp. It takes forever.

Additionally the warden didn't have any reason to think Andy would head to a bank, because he didn't discover Andy had stolen his ledgers until after Andy's story hit the papers.

Andy on the other hand had the following tasks that day.

• Sometime through the middle of the night he had to get cleaned up and walk to town.


• He had to go to a bank (presumably the closest one) to get cash.


• Then he would have likely bought the car, thus making it faster for him to hit all the other banks.


• Red says he visited nearly a dozen banks that morning. I guess either these banks were very close to each other and/or closing the accounts took less than 20 minutes on average per bank. That is pretty fast, but Andy was a banker, and probably knew just what to say to expedite the process.


• Buxton, Maine is only 15 miles from Portland, Maine. It would have only taken Andy 30 minutes to drive there and maybe 30-60 minutes to plant the box for Red.

From there Andy had to drive to Texas, which Google Maps estimates taking 36 hours on modern roads. In the 1960s it would have taken longer. Maybe 3-4 days. Because the police had no reason to suspect Andy had such vast resources, their initial search wouldn't have warranted a nationwide APB (if such a thing existed back then).

By the time they figured out what had happened Andy was probably several states away, and was able to cross the border a couple of days later.