Did They Open the Case for the Escapees From Alcatraz Again

These are the facts that everyone agrees on.

On June 12, 1962, an Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary guard on his morning rounds noticed iii inmates had not woken from their slumber. When he pushed at the sleeping frame of one man, his head rolled off the bed. It was a dummy.

Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin — 3 career criminals with prior prison pause attempts to their names — had escaped one-time during the dark of June 11. Information technology was a plan months in the making.

Scheming began when the men were assigned next cells in December 1961, and took full reward of Alcatraz's aging facilities and lax security. Over six months, they congenital an inflatable raft and life vests out of pilfered raincoats. To seal the seams, they pressed the coats against hot steam pipes. They fabricated paddles to row with, dummy heads to buy them fourth dimension, and they dug and dug.

During the daily hour when inmates were immune to play instruments and sing, the men used the comprehend of that cacophony to scrape through the backs of their cells. Once through, they had admission to an unguarded utility corridor. From there, all they had to exercise was climb to the roof, remove the bolts from a ventilation shaft, and crawl to freedom.

About x p.m., authorities believe that the men disembarked from Alcatraz'south northeast shore. Together, they paddled out into the dark, cold dark.

From this bespeak, there are very few facts anyone agrees on. For about 60 years, it has remained Alcatraz's greatest mystery. No bodies surfaced, but neither did any sightings that led to arrests. To this twenty-four hour period, the U.S. Align Service keeps an open file on the escapees. It volition exist closed only when they each turn 99. If live today, Morris would be 93, John Anglin 90 and Clarence Anglin 89.

Two SFGATE writers with wildly dissimilar views on the infamous dark, requite their takes on what happened adjacent.

First, Andrew the romantic, followed by Katie the cynic ...

Mug shots of iii prisoners that made a rare escape from Alcatraz Island. From left to right: Clarence Anglin, John William Anglin, and Frank Lee Morris.

Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Hither's why the inmates absolutely survived their escape from Alcatraz and at present live in Brazil drinking pina coladas on a termite farm

I'1000 not challenge that I could swim from Alcatraz to dry country, but I definitely could.

A woman who sells warranties in a motorcar dealership in Burlingame has done it 1,000 times.

A 9-year-one-time swam to the island and dorsum again in 2016.

In fact, after our three escapees definitely did information technology in 1962, another inmate, John Paul Scott, successfully made the swim in December that twelvemonth, naked, without a raft, in much colder temperatures, only to be institute on the beach in San Francisco (earlier being returned to the island).

Even without the adrenaline boost of guard rifles aimed at your back, thousands of people have swum from Alcatraz safely to land.

And our inmates, all in their early 30s, could swim.

As kids, John and Clarence Anglin became stiff swimmers in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan, where they spent every summer picking cherries. Frank Morris was smart enough to physically ready himself for the one-mile swim over the six months or more he spent preparing for his bid for freedom.

The idea that the swim is impossible or that you lot'll get eaten past sharks was merely a myth concocted by the prison house officials to dissuade inmates from attempting it.

They may non have even needed to swim anyway — they had a fully inflated three-man raft to sheet away on. Built over months with fifty raincoats meticulously glued together in their clandestine workshop.

They too had oars, which they probably didn't even need, co-ordinate to this incredible modeling of the currents that dark from PBS, highlighting the likely trajectory of the raft. If they let the h2o take them, they would have ended up at the Marin Headlands (as it did when the Mythbusters guys successfully re-created the endeavor in 2003), or nether the bridge, where they could take jumped out for a short paddle to Horseshoe Bay. It too shows how the currents motion dorsum around toward Angel Isle, which explains why their raft did end up there (despite the FBI's initial claims, more on that afterward).

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers were probably cracking beers under the moonlight every bit they drifted toward freedom that nighttime, thinking — this would make a great film one day.

Then why do some people (ahem, in this newsroom) insist that they drowned, when there is aught proof of death?

Two in three bodies from suicides from the Golden Gate Span are recovered. In fact, that number is probably higher — the Span Rail Clan estimates that 1,600 people have jumped to their decease from the bridge over the years and ane,400 bodies take been recovered, even so none of our three inmates' corpses was ever establish.

From the prison cleaners to the guards to Warden Olin Thou. Blackwell (who was on vacation at Lake Berryessa at the fourth dimension), information technology was in everyone'due south involvement at Alcatraz to spread the discussion that the three men surely drowned. They couldn't possibly have escaped the "inescapable" maximum security island. If word spread that 3 men had successfully gotten abroad, information technology would almost certainly pb to closure of the expensive, controversial penitentiary.

As soon every bit the jail suspension was revealed in the media, stories circulated that this could spell the terminate for the prison island, and the FBI needed to quell that narrative.

"The brothers Anglin and Frank Morris are not the kind of chaps you'd desire your sisters to ally," San Francisco Examiner columnist Bob Considine wrote as the manhunt was underway, "But if their escape hastened the day when the cells and dungeons of Alcatraz are uprooted and transplanted somewhere else the bloodhounds should exist called off, and the men permitted to join Edward Chiliad. Gilbert in Brazil."

The journalist'southward words were uncannily prophetic. Non simply would the prison be airtight shortly later on the incident, two of the escapees would get in to Brazil (more than on that afterward).

Bear witness of a long-presumed FBI comprehend-upwards was confirmed in a National Geographic documentary in 2012. A U.S. Marshal reveals that, contrary to the original version of events, a previously unseen FBI written report stated that the escapees' raft was plant on Angel Island, and a car was stolen in Marin Canton — a bluish 1955 Chevy. Coincidentally, a police report revealed that a blue Chevy with three men in it ran another car off the route in Stockton later on that night.

Frank Morris was smart (with a tested IQ of 133), too smart to brag about the escape afterward.

The Anglin brothers, however, were possibly more liable to let their whereabouts skid.

In 2015, a photo emerged of the brothers standing next to a termite mound exterior Rio de Janeiro, taken by a family friend in 1975.

This photo allegedly depicts Clarence and John Anglin in Brazil, 1975, with their bodily mug shots inset.

History Aqueduct

A History Channel documentary revealed how the U.S. Marshals service hired an skillful to compare physical features and measurements shown in the photograph to what they knew well-nigh the Anglins in 1962. They concluded that the photograph was taken in 1975, and that there was a high likelihood that the men photographed were, in fact, Clarence and John Anglin.

Information technology doesn't accept an expert to see the likeness, especially in the features effectually John Anglin'south oral cavity on the right.

The FBI had long suspected Brazil as a destination for the escapees. As far back equally 1965, they investigated a rumor that Clarence Anglin was living at that place. Information technology was considered and so significant that agency agents went to South America to detect him.

The documentary also exhibited Christmas cards with handwriting matching that of the Anglin brothers sent to their family in 1965, and a deathbed confession from a sibling, stating that the brothers had remained in contact from 1963 until 1987.

And finally, just two years agone, KPIX got their hands on a letter originally sent to the SFPD in 2013. The letter, reportedly written by John Anglin (who was 83 at the time), stated that Morris and the brothers "barely" made it to shore on the nighttime of their escape. Information technology likewise went on to explain that Morris died in 2008 and Clarence in 2011. The letter read, in role:

"My name is John Anglin. I escaped from Alcatraz in June 1962 with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris. I'g 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer. Aye we all made it that dark simply barely!"

An FBI examination of the letter and handwriting led to an "inconclusive" event.

Even if the letter, the Christmas cards and the Brazil photo are all false (but really, look at that photograph people), to presume that the inmates drowned in the same mile of water a 9-year-old can swim, based on a false FBI embrace-up and non much else, would be foolish.

The inmates escaped Alcatraz, but you can't escape the facts, Katie.

— Andrew Chamings

Sorry, pal, the Alcatraz escapees didn't make information technology

It is a romantic notion: iii Alcatraz inmates, buoyed by their wits and determination, making a prison break against all odds. Although the popular imagination may side with their survival, the evidence does not.

Through the years, experts have studied the San Francisco Bay's tidal patterns for clues. The most complete written report in recent retentivity was done by scientists at Delft University who used computer modeling to replicate the currents the men would have experienced that night in 1962. They plant that there was but one window — between when the rushing tide would have sucked them toward the Golden Gate Bridge and the moment that tide started pushing back into the bay — that was viable for survival. That time was just effectually midnight. With all testify suggesting the men paddled off Alcatraz nearly 10 p.m., that pocket-size window gets even smaller.

Experts at the time too agreed. Edward Schultz, a hydraulic engineer who was so the managing director of the Bay Model, told newspapers the near likely possibility was that "they would have been carried out the Golden Gate." Struggling with a makeshift raft would have farther complicated their battle against rushing tides and icy h2o, all done in the disorienting pitch black of night.

The Delft model proposed that whatever debris from the escape would likely have washed up on Angel Island. This is exactly what happened. In the coming days, a paddle and a rubber packet were found off the isle'due south shores. Within the packet at that place were photographs of the Anglins and their friends and family unit, along with a list of names and addresses. It's difficult to believe that they would get out their only keepsakes — treasured enough to carefully seal into a waterproof bag — behind willingly.

Assuming the escapees did drown, there is then the question: Why did no bodies ever wash upwards? FBI files show the agency consulted with CHP and the Marin Canton coroner, who handled suicides at the Gold Gate Bridge. CHP statistics from 1960-62 recorded 30 suicide jumps from the bridge. Only 17 bodies were e'er located. An additional 12 suicides were suspected simply no bodies were ever found in those cases either. CHP told the FBI that with an outgoing tide, like on the night of the men's escape, suicide jumpers were "rarely recovered."

As grim as information technology is to consider, a shocking number of bodies are never relinquished by the bay. Some are merely swept out into the Pacific, a needle in a behemothic watery haystack. Others become entangled in debris and sink. Bay Area coroners told the FBI that the bay's common cold water sometimes prevented bodies from bloating and floating to the surface.

And so, there is the final, perhaps nigh compelling, reason to suggest the men died: They've never resurfaced.

These men were career criminals. Since their early teens, they'd been in and out of prison house. It seems unlikely they suddenly and seamlessly integrated into a world that had, for their entire lives, marginalized and incarcerated them. In club to pull off an escape at all, they would accept had to rob someone or something in one case they made it to land.

They left Alcatraz with little more than the highly conspicuous prison wearing apparel on their backs. An inmate accomplice told authorities they planned to break into a store in Marin to steal street wearing apparel; no such robbery was always reported. Although information technology's been suggested the men stole a blue Chevy in Marin, that evidence is circumstantial. Marin law weren't certain when the car was stolen — it could accept been days before the escape. A sighting that night of a bluish Chevy, occupied by 3 men, angrily driving a car off the road in Modesto was investigated, too. But the license plate was never confirmed to exist the same vehicle and, if you were iii of the virtually famous escaped convicts in America, would you start a road rage incident to depict attention to yourself?

The Anglins and Morris had their faces in every newspaper in America and possessed a relatively small-scale circle of known contacts. Their hometowns were watched for decades by law enforcement. They waited for phone calls on birthdays and interviewed family unit members repeatedly. Every proper name and address on the Anglins' listing was investigated. The Brazil photograph is hardly definitive, particularly because it came from an ex-con whose own family said they'd never heard of his connexion to the Alcatraz escapees.

Fifty-fifty if the men had gone dwelling, it doesn't sound similar they were particularly welcome. When the Examiner interviewed the Anglin parents after the escape, Mrs. Anglin said she hoped her sons were caught and pointed out that at to the lowest degree ten of her other children turned out "good."

In order to disappear, y'all must carelessness every vestige of your former life forever. Friends, families, hobbies, haunts. You must live every minute looking over your shoulder. Y'all can't let up for a moment. If John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris managed to pull off that for near five decades, then they truly earned their freedom.

— Katie Dowd

Andrew Chamings and Katie Dowd are editors at SFGATE. Contact them at andrew.chamings@sfgate.com and katie.dowd@sfgate.com.

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Source: https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/Did-Alcatraz-most-famous-escapees-survive-escape-15538020.php

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