The Truth About the Escape from Alcatraz
In 1962 three prisoners disappeared from Alcatraz, and the mystery remained as to how they had escaped, and if they had survived the cold, shark infested waters to gain their freedom.
Alcatraz Prison AKA The Rock was a max security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, located a little more than a mile off of San Francisco, California.
It started as a fort in the 1860s, and the main building was built between 1910 to 1912 as an Army military prison.
In 1934, the buildings were modernized and used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It was believed the cold water and strong currents between the island and the coast made it escape-proof.
Alcatraz was considered a “last resort prison” for inmates who caused trouble in other federal prisons.
The accommodations at Alcatraz were stark, and D-Block housed the worst inmates, and there were six cells known as “The Hole”. This is where problem prisoners were sent for punishment.
The prison held counterfeiters, bank robbers and murderers. Robert Stroud the “Birdman of Alcatraz” arrived in 1942. Before this, he was at Leavenworth Prison where he reared and sold birds. In 1909, when he was 19 years old he went into the prison system after killing a bartender, and he was sentenced to 12 years. In 1916, he killed a guard, which earned him a commuted murder conviction, to where he was to spend the rest of his life in prison, which he did until he died in 1963. He had spent 42 of 54 years in prison in solitary confinement.
The prison closed in 1963, and was eventually reopened as a public museum.
During the time it was open, 36 inmates made 14 escape attempts, of these, 23 were recaptured, six were killed, two drowned and five (Morris, the Anglin brothers, Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe) are referenced as “missing and presumed drowned.”
The first escape attempt was made by Joseph Bowers on April 27, 1936. He was out in the yard since he was assigned to burn trash at the incinerator. Guards ordered him to get down from chain link fence he was trying to scale. He refused and was shot, and died later after falling 50 feet.
Seven months later, Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe cut the flat iron bars from a window, and jumped into the bay. They had picked a bad day for an escape since the seas were rough due to a storm. They were never found and presumed to have drowned and their bodies were swept out to sea.
In 1946, nine years after the last attempt six prisoner staged an escape that became known as the “Alcatraz Blast Out”. Bernard Coy, Joseph Cretzer, Sam Shockley, Clarence Carnes, Marvin Hubbard and Miran Thompson took over the cell house, and got into the weapons room. They demanded the keys to the recreation door which led outside. They planned to escape by a boat at the dock.
Correction officer, William Miller gave them all but the key to the outer door. Once they realized they couldn’t open the outside door, they started a gunfight with the guards. They held Miller and another guard as hostages. Cretzer shot the hostages at close range after prompting from Shockley and Thompson, which resulted in their death.
Shockley, Thompson and Carnes returned to their cells, but Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard decided to keep fighting.
U.S. Marines intervened and killed the three prisoners. At the end of the confrontation 17 other guards and one prisoner were injured.
Shockley and Thompson were executed at the gas chamber in San Quentin in 1948, and Carnes who was only 19 years old, was given a second life sentence.
On June 11, 1962 Frank Morris, John Anglin and his brother Clarence Anglin executed a careful escape plan. All three knew each other from previous stints in prison. They were housed in Cell Block B, and they had discovered a 3-foot utility corridor that was not guarded. They were also aided since the concrete was damaged from the salt air coming in from the ocean. They chiseled around an air vent that led to the corridor. They used soldered metal spoons. Work was done during music hour when an accordion dimmed the noise of their work. They used false walls and the darkness of the cells to fool the guards. This took them months of work to complete.
For 6 months, after bed check at 9 p.m., the prisoners used a homemade drill to widen the vents, and would place the grates back in place before daybreak. During this time they also constructed dummy heads made from paper-mache, paint and real hair. They also stole raincoats and life vests.
On the day of the jailbreak, they left the well-made heads on their beds, and squeezed through pipes and plumbing until they reached the roof. They had already left the stolen vests and raincoats. They inflated the vests and cast off from the island. A forth prisoner, named Allen West did not finish his tasks for the escape and was left behind.
The guards didn’t realize the men had escaped until the morning head-count.
An intense search was carried out for 10 days. Remnants of a raft were found at Angel Island, but since there were no reports of stolen cloths or vehicles the FBI believed the men had drowned.
The FBI's investigation was eventually closed in December 1979.
In 2013, a handwritten letter was mailed to San Francisco Police Department's Richmond station, however it was not made public until 2018. The author was allegedly John Anglin who was in his 80s.
My name is John Anglin. I escape [sic] from Alcatraz in June 1962with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris. I’m 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer. Yes, we all made it that night but barely!
Frank passed away in October 2008. His grave is in Alexandria under another name. My brother died in 2011.
If you announce on T.V. that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke this is for real and honest truth.
I could tell you that for seven years I lived in Minot North Dakota - [...] in Fargo - 1990 to 2005!
But too damn cold had to get the hell out. I lived in Seattle for most of my years after the escape.
I'm in Southern California now.
[Illegible] if response!"
The letter reawakened interest in what had become known as Escape from Alcatraz. In 1979, a film by the same name starring Clint Eastwood, as escape ringleader Frank Morris was released. It was the highest grossing film of 1979.
For the years after their escape, Mrs. Anglin, the prisoners’ mother would receive flower bouquets on her birthday from an anonymous sender. There’s also a belief they attended their mother’s funeral wearing a disguise.
DNA, fingerprint and handwriting analysis failed to conclusively determine if the letter was truly from Anglin, but it could not conclude it was a hoax either.
It turned out the authorities engaged in a cover-up when they failed to report there were footprints leading away from the shore on Angel Island, and a 1955 blue Chevrolet had been stolen on the night of the escape by three men.
The Anglin family presented a photograph from 1975 with two men resembling John and Clarence Anglin, which was confirmed by facial recognition analysis. In 1992, Fred Brizzi who grew up with the Anglin brothers, handed over the pictures he took of the pair after bumping into them in Rio De Janeiro.
The US Marshal Service keeps it as an open case, which would be ridiculous since John Anglin would be celebrating his 94th birthday on May 2, 2024, and no other letters were received since 2013.