In 1947, Andy Dufresne is charged with the murder of his wife and her lover. The Portland, Maine, banker maintains his innocence but circumstantial evidence leads to his conviction. He receives two life sentences, to be served at the Shawshank State Penitentiary. There, he befriends Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding, another “lifer” known for smuggling things into the prison. Andy is assigned work in the prison laundry, where he is raped multiple times by “The Sisters,” a gang of inmates led by Bogs Diamond. Andy eventually offers his banking know-how to a guard named Byron Hadley, who wishes to avoid taxes on an inheritance. Hadley steps in when the Sisters nearly murder Andy, providing protection by moving Bogs to another prison. The warden, Samuel Norton, gives Andy a new job at the prison library. Andy is soon punished with solitary confinement for playing an opera recording over the public announcement system. Norton begins a money-making scheme that centers around underpaid prison labor and bribes, and enlists Andy to launder the money. In 1965, Andy and Red befriend a new inmate named Tommy, whose former cellmate at a different prison professed guilt for the murder of Andy Dufresne’s wife and her lover. Andy brings the information to Warden Norton, who refuses to help, out of fear that Andy will implicate him in the money laundering scheme. Andy is sent back to solitary confinement, and Norton orders Hadley to murder Tommy. After two months in solitary, Andy is released. He tells Red of his dream to escape to Zihuatanejo on the coast of Mexico. Knowing that Andy has procured a length of rope from another inmate, Red frets that he is mentally unstable and might commit suicide. To his surprise, Andy escapes from Shawshank via a hole in the wall of his cell, which he began digging back in 1947, with a rock hammer Red procured for him. Using his money-laundering alias, “Randall Stephens,” Andy withdraws funds that he had stashed away for Norton, and informs a local newspaper about the corruption at Shawshank. Hadley is arrested by police, but Norton kills himself to avoid capture. After serving forty years, Red is paroled. As instructed by Andy some time ago, Red goes to a hayfield in Buxton, Maine, where Andy buried money. There, Red finds a letter from Andy, directing him to Zihuatanejo. Uncharacteristically hopeful, Red breaks parole and successfully crosses the border into Mexico, where he joyously reunites with Andy on a beach in Zihuatanejo.