Jailbreaks have always caught the fancy and imagination of people. Unfortunately, most of the times the stories deal with inmates, who really deserved to land there in the first place. However, the courage and intelligence displayed have made the stories of these outlaws, quite famous in many cases. One of such greatest Jailbreak stories comes from the United States, which takes its prison security very seriously. The Escape from Alcatraz Story is the audacious true story of escape from, what once was one of the highest security prisons of the United States and perhaps also in the entire world.
This maximum-security federal prison was based on Alcatraz Island, which is located in San Francisco Bay, around 2 km from the shoreline of San Francisco, California, United States. The island had initially started off as a military fort and military prison but was changed to a federal prison in August 1934.
Most of the prisoners lodged here were notorious criminals, who were considered too dangerous to be placed elsewhere or had attempted to escape from other prisons. The Alcatraz prison had multiple rings of security. To escape a convict had to break out of their cells, scale high boundary walls, evade the armed guards on patrol and finally cross the dangerous waters of the San Francisco Bay. This was indeed a maximum-security prison. The prison functioned for 29 years until 21 March 1963, when it was closed due to the high cost of its operation.
In the 29 years of its use, some of the most notorious names in American criminal history were held here. These were – Al Capone, George Machine Gun Kelly, the Birdman of Alcatraz and Micky Cohen, to name just a few. During the 29 years that the prison was functional, 14 prison escapes were made by 36 prisoners. All were either killed, captured or drowned in the surrounding sea. However, the fate of 3 people was never determined, because even the authorities believed with a high possibility, that they may have escaped successfully. This is their true story.
This unbelievable true story revolves around 4 convicts, who pulled off the impossible. Many convicts had already tried to escape from the prison previously. In total 12 escape attempts had already been made, before the one being discussed & all had ended in failure. The most violent unsuccessful attempt was during “The Battle of Alcatraz” in 1946, which had caused the death of 3 inmates and 2 jail officers. 2 convicts were later also executed for their role. However, the 4 convicts of our story had remarkably decided to avoid such futile bloodshed and instead depended only on their clever plan and courage for success. Before we go into the details of the story of escape from Alcatraz Island, a brief introduction of the notorious but brave criminals would be prudent.
The mastermind behind the whole operation, it was he who enlisted the others into the most audacious but well-planned escape ever attempted. Born in September 1926, he was abandoned by his parents during his childhood. Unfortunately, the upbringing he acquired growing up in foster homes, did not work in favor of him and he was convicted for his first crime at the age of 13.
As he grew older, he also grew bolder. Soon he graduated to smuggling narcotics, committing burglary and armed robbery. He had served jail sentence already in Florida & Georgia, before landing in Louisiana State Penitentiary for bank robbery. He managed to escape from the last prison, before being caught again while committing a burglary and sent to Alcatraz on January 20, 1960. All the previous time spent in prison along with personal experience of jailbreak along with a high IQ of 133, certainly made him the capable mastermind of the escape from Alcatraz in 1962.
John Anglin (born on May 1930) and Clarence Anglin (born on May 1931) were not just brothers, but also were partners in crime. Born to farm workers with 13 children, their parents moved around a lot searching for work. The siblings had formed a very strong bond and picked up incredible swimming skills, which they displayed by swimming easily in very cold waters of Lake Michigan, with ice floating on the surface.
Although the brothers had started off as laborers and farmers, they soon graduated to robbing banks and other establishments. They used toy guns and robbed closed establishments to ensure that no innocent person ever got hurt. This may have later helped them to execute a plan that was nonviolent, during escaping from Alcatraz. Unfortunately for them, it was the habit of robbing banks that landed them in prison. Repeated attempts to escape from Atlanta Penitentiary, finally landed them in Alcatraz. John arrived on October 1960 & his brother Clarence soon followed him to Alcatraz on January 1961.
Allen West was born in New York City on March 1929. He had landed in prison for car theft, spending time first in Atlanta Penitentiary & then in Florida State Prison. It was an unsuccessful prison escape attempt from Florida State Prison, which got him transferred to Alcatraz in 1957 at the age of 28 years. He had studied only up to 8th grade.
The 4 inmates of the Alcatraz prison somehow ended up in adjacent cells of the prison in December 1961. They had previously served together in Atlanta prison and therefore the development of mutual trust occurred in a very short span. Frank Morris soon emerged as the mastermind and the leader of the group. The whole plan of the escape from Alcatraz was devised by him. In spite of the plan being in its place, the 4 criminal masterminds would work for the next 6 months to prepare the infrastructure needed for the escape.
The next 6 months would be spent very diligently working on their escape plan. To get out of their locked cells, they knew they had to use the ventilation duct below their sink. However, these ventilation ducts were too narrow for them to crawl into and had to be enlarged first. To widen the duct for escape they used sharpened spoons, stolen saw blades, and a drill fashioned from a vacuum cleaner. Obviously, the gradually enlarging hole in the wall had to be hidden and this was done by sticking painted cardboard over the hole, with the exact same color as the wall. The noise produced from all the work was also was dimmed by the louder musical sounds of Morris playing his accordion.
Once the holes were widened sufficiently the convicts reached a utility corridor, directly behind their cells, which was left unguarded. Here they would set up their workshop, to produce other tools necessary for their escape. Here the team would go on to make a raft from 50 raincoats and other accessories, that they could steal, or get from other prisoners. This was used to create a 6x14 foot rubber raft. This was made by carefully stitching the seams by hand and later sealing them by steam pipe’s heat. To make sure that no air got out, they inflated it with a free-reed musical instrument – a concertina. They also designed life jackets, something they learned from a popular science and technology magazine, which they luckily found in the prison. They also made paddles out of scrap wood and stolen screws.
All these maneuvers would have been easily detected by the security guards if the convicts were found to be absent from their bed at night while working in their workshop. To avoid being detected, the group came up with an ingenious plan. They made dummy heads from a mixture of toilet paper, concrete dust, soap, and toothpaste. To make this dummy head more realistic they used skin colored paint from the maintenance shop and real human hairs from the barbershop. With towels and clothing items on the beds and under the blankets, & with a dummy head on the pillow, the convicts would appear to be sleeping, for a guard looking from outside the cell.
All these preparations needed meticulous planning and risky execution. However, after 6 months they were ready to attempt the escape that they had been working on for so long.
The night of June 11, 1962, would become famous in the history of Alcatraz prison, as on this day the group of convicts began their now famous escape. All except Allen West were able to reach the utility corridor at the designated time. Allen West had used cement to keep the grill in his vent in its place, which unfortunately was very strongly fixed. By the time he was able to remove the grill and get out of his cell, the others had already left without him.
The rest of the trio, from the utility corridor, reached the roof via the ventilation shaft. Breaking the shaft did create a loud noise, which however in absence of any other visible activity, was ignored by the guards on duty. From the roof, the trio descended 15 meters to the ground by sliding down a kitchen vent pipe. Then they climbed and crossed two, 12-foot-high barbed wire fences. They did all of this while carrying the escape tools that they had created in their workshop.
At the northeastern part of the island, they reached a place which was a blind spot for the guards. This area was not covered by the prison’s searchlights and gun towers, the trio inflated their raft by using the Concertina from Morris’s accordion (musical instrument mentioned before). At some time after 10’o clock at night, they boarded their raft and departed towards Angel Island in San Francisco Bay and were never seen again by the authorities.
On the morning of June 12, 1962, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers were nowhere to be found. On a search of their cells, the dummy heads were found. It dawned upon the authorities that the unthinkable had happened, and the prisoners had escaped. The escaped convicts had plenty of time before their escape had been detected and could be easily miles away.
It quickly became known that Allen West was part of the escape plan, but couldn’t escape due to bad luck. When confronted Allen West quickly accepted his role in the escape plan and cooperated fully with the authorities giving them the detailed description of the escape plan and other necessary information. For his cooperation, he was not given any further punishment for the escape attempt.
The next morning a massive manhunt was launched by multiple law enforcement agencies working together. News about the escapees began to come in bits and pieces from different sources. On June 14, a coast guard vessel found a paddle floating near the southern coast of Angel Island, the supposed destination of the escaped convicts. In the same location (and on the same day), another team discovered a purse wrapped in plastic containing the contact details of the of friends and relatives of Anglin brothers. On June 21 parts of the raft used for escape (consisting of raincoats) was found near Golden Gate Bridge area. A life jacket made by the convicts of the same material was also found near Alcatraz island, the next day.
FBI investigated the case for many years but could not find any further information regarding the escapees. Their final conclusion was that the water currents were very strong on the night the convicts escaped and in all likelihood, the convicts had drowned in the sea. Believing the men dead, they closed the investigations in the year 1979. However, there was one problem with this theory and which was also voiced by a US Marshall. This was the fact that “bodies of 2 out of every 3 people, who go missing in the San Francisco Bay are eventually recovered.” In this case, not even a single dead body of the 3 escaped convicts was ever recovered.
As mentioned previously after a futile investigation carried out for 17 years, the FBI closed down the investigations on 31 December 1979, as the convicts were declared to have drowned in the sea, while trying to escape. However, the investigations were turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service, who strangely have not closed their case yet, even after the passage of so many decades since the incidence.
One of the reasons that may have prompted the authorities to still pursue the case may have been the fact, that there were many rumors or reported sightings of the escaped prisoners both before FBI closed the case and afterward too. Most of the sightings were reported by strangers, which were not given much credibility by the authorities. However, some were taken seriously and the hunt for the escape convicts carried out even outside the national borders.
The family members of the Anglin brothers did report getting messages, which may have been from the outlaw brothers. A Christmas card was reportedly dropped in the mailbox of the family in 1962, which was addressed to the mother of the brothers, with a message “To Mother, from John. Merry Christmas.” She also received flowers on each Mother’s Day, from anonymous sources, till the day of her death. Her funeral was attended by 2 tall unknown strange looking women with high makeup, who came and disappeared without any notice. Similarly, at the funeral of the father too, 2 strangers with beards came uninvited, stood for a little while in front of the body & wept, before going away. Were these really the Anglin brothers, who could not stop themselves from seeing their parents for the last time at the funeral? The answer would be never known.
According to Federal authorities, from the mid-1960s to 1970s they received many leads which gave the impression that the Anglin brothers were somewhere in north Florida and Georgia. In all the cases these wild goose chase led nowhere. However, after many decades a letter sent to FBI, in January 2013 again rekindled interest in the matter. Interestingly the letter was withheld till 2018 from the media, but the case was reopened much before.
The letter was reportedly written by John Anglin, and he confessed how he had escaped from Alcatraz in June 1962 along with his brother Clarence and Frank Morris. He further added that as an 83-year-old he was suffering from Cancer and was in a bad shape. According to the writer of the letter, Morris who was the brains of the group had died in 2008 and Clarence Anglin died in 2011. He further added that if the authorities publicly announce in the TV, that in case he surrendered, he would be sent to jail for a year only and given medical attention, he would write back to let the authorities know his current address. However, nothing further came of the incident.
The office of U.S. Marshalls is still investigating the case, as per their policy. Their policy is to keep pursuing the escapees, until they are either arrested, positively confirmed to have died or have reached their 100th birthday. The case remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the history of crime in the United States.
Many investigations undertaken by authorities & journalist, proved that a raft was indeed discovered, the day after escape (on 12th June 1962) in Angel Island, with footprints leading away from the raft. On the same day, in the nearby Marin County, there were reports of a blue Chevrolet car being stolen. If these acts were done by the escapee trio from Alcatraz, then there would be very good chances that they may have been able to go far away without any detection.
The escape from Alcatraz story is a story of conflicting emotions consisting of a mix of intrigue, intelligence and finally exceptional courage. Many movies, documentaries and TV shows have been made on the subject, highlighting facets of the story which had been overlooked before. The fact that 3 convicts broke out of a prison, which supposedly was impossible to break out from and finally resulted in a manhunt extending from the USA to Brazil without any fruitful result, is good enough a reason to go through this story once again before it fades into pages of history.