Surviving Alcatraz: Escaping the Rock

[astr0144]

Surviving Alcatraz: Escaping the Rock.

Anyone who may have been interested or curious about the 1962 Escape from Alcatraz Prison story...

I have seen the movie and a few documentaries about it... where some experts have tried to work out if they thought that it had been possible that they made it and survived...

If I recall two I watched seemed to suggest that it was unlikely that they could have achieved it or survived..

But it was known that either prior or not long after to the 1962 escape.. that one inmate did manage to swim and make it to land...but was later found but in a very bad way and later caught.

In the 1962 escape it had been suggested that the escapees may have attempted to go to Angel Island...that was the nearest other land to Alcatraz.

This is a new documentary that uses some new technology that may suggest otherwise...that I found very interesting....except the end result was not what I thought it may have been....but it did still leave it as having been possible..

There is a link to a video of it below .. but it may only be viewable to those in the U.K..


Documentary taking a closer look at one of the most debated prison breaks in history. In June 1962, bank robbers Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin and John Anglin launched a raft made from patched-up raincoats into the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay that surrounded Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The men disappeared, leaving behind a cold case that has mystified law enforcement for over half a century. Some argue that the men must have drowned, but others contend that the three survived and may still be living secret lives. A team of Dutch scientists takes on the story to get to the bottom of the 50-year-old mystery. Oliver Hoes, Rolf Hut and Fedor Baart employ 3D technology to prove that it was possible that Morris and the Anglin brothers survived their daring escape.

http://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/shows/surviving-alcatraz-escaping-the-rock/watch-online/?video=4733903709001

[astr0144]

Over the 29 years (1934-1963) that Alcatraz was in operation, 36 men (including two who tried to escape twice) were involved in 14 separate escape attempts.

[astr0144]

I just watched another Unsolved mysteries that I have not seen before, that showed some new things / facts , updates and maybe some other views  on the "Escape From Alcatraz" story that I was not aware about, and I have seen quite a few documentaries and versions of it.   

There was actual ref that suggested that a Fishing boat seen a dead body floating about 20 miles out into sea outside the San Francisco bay / Golden Gate bridge area the day after the escape.

Another story suggested that they had someone help pick them up by boat soon after they escaped with their raft.

If I can find a copy of it on video I will post it

                           -----------------------------

In 1960, Frank Morris was a former foster child who had committed his first crime at the age of thirteen, later graduating to possession of narcotics and armed robbery. He was believed to have been of superior intelligence with an I.Q. of 133 when he was finally arrested and sent to Alcatraz. While there, he met John and Clarence Anglin, brothers arrested for a string of robberies in 1956, who were transferred to Alcatraz after a failed escape from another prison.

Anglin brothers
Anglin Brothers

While in Alcatraz, inmate Clarence Carnes, a participant in the infamous Alcatraz Uprising 14 years earlier, befriended Morris and informed him of the access tunnel behind their cells, and Morris used the information to develop a means of escape. With inmate Allen West's help, Morris discovered ventilation shafts giving access to the roof and freedom. Morris and his collaborators studiously planned the escape for eight months, using spoons to dig access into the corridor, leaving hair and plaster heads in their beds to cover their activities, cutting access to the roof with a stolen saw, fashioning a raft made of rain coats and altering a concertina to act as a pump to inflate their raft. It is also believed that the trio was aided academically with an issue of Sports Illustrated which had been in the prison library, which had contained a section low-cost ways to enjoy watersports.

On June 11th 1962, they made their way up to the roof, down into the yard, over the perimeter fence and out onto the San Francisco Bay. There they pumped up their raft, put it in the water, jumped in and disappeared. It was quite possibly the most thoroughly researched and complex successful escape in criminal justice history. When the plaster heads were discovered in the morning, authorities had no way to tell how much of a head start they had. They were aided by a fourth man Allen West, who helped them carve the tunnels, noting sea spray had weakened the cement compound through the years. Morris and the Anglins had originally intended to escape as a quartet with West, but they were forced to rethink their plans when it was discovered West's tunnel was too small for him to fit through.

According to West, one of the Anglins argued that it was an "all or none" deal, but the other two said going back for West could foil the entire flight to freedom.



ClarenceCarnes
Clarence Carnes
The escape sparked the largest full scale search at the time. Police found remains of the broken up raft in San Francisco Bay and one of their handmade oars at nearby Angel Island along with a personal packet from one of the men. Although the authorities never found any bodies, they were certain the men must have drowned, but sightings of the three men after the escape suggested that Frank Morris and the Anglin Brothers had managed to escape. Indeed, someone claiming to be John Anglin called a local attorney before the escape became public. Clarence Carnes even received a postcard with the message "Gone Fishing", which he had been told he would get from the Anglin brothers and Morris as a code word signaling their success. A paddle was also found on Angel Island leaning against a rock, providing evidence that the men may have survived. Allen West was moved to a lighter security prison and granted an eventual reduction in sentence in exchange for his cooperation with the U.S. Marshals, detailing his participation in the escape plot.

As the search went on, Harlem crime boss, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, claimed he had arranged a boat to pick up the men from the bay, whereupon Johnson claimed his boat then deposited the three men at Hunter's Point. However "Bumpy's" claim had no credibility given his prior background of lying to gain favor, plan deals or to look important in the underworld. Nor can it be accurately pieced together what help Morris and the Anglins expected to get from Johnson, or vice versa.

To date, the FBI believe all three men drowned in the bay. There were no crimes committed in the area after the escape unless they had truly been helped by Johnson. Given the circumstantial evidence surrounding their escape off the "Rock," no one is quite sure if they truly made it to shore.



AllenWest
Allen West

Extra Notes: This case first aired on the February 8, 1989 episode which devoted the entire episode to Alcatraz, including history of the failed escape attempts and the 1946 Alcatraz prisoner revolt before getting into the specifics on the 1962 escape. Two theories were tested, one by having a triathlete swim from Alcatraz to the mainland and the other hiring three experienced kayaks paddle the same route in a replica of the makeshift raft used by the Anglins and Morris. While the rafters failed due to their raft being unseaworthy and had to be rescued by a motorboat that was shadowing their progress, the swimmer succeeded at making it to shore. Unsolved Mysteries speculated that the odds were likely the three fugitives survived.

This case was also examined in the Discovery Channel series Mythbusters and re-investigated on America's Most Wanted. The Mythbusters proved it was certainly possible they used the currents to reach the Marin Headlands instead of Angel Island where the oar was found, AMW revealed reported sightings of Morris and the Anglin Brothers after the escape.

Other TV-series have focused more on the ghosts of Alcatraz. The escape inspired the 1979 movie Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris.

The TV-Series America Declassified revealed a few more details on this case not revealed in other programs, such as evidence of the raft on Angel Island, footprints leading away from the raft and reports of a car stolen by three men after the escape.

On October 12, 2015, interest in the case was renewed when History Channel premiered a documentary about the 1962 escape, focusing on John and Clarence Anglin and the possibility that their escape was successful. Evidence produced by relatives including photos and Christmas cards seem to suggest the Anglins might have escaped to Brazil. No evidence has been produced to disclose the whereabouts of Frank Morris.

Results: Wanted. Despite public belief that Morris and the Anglins drowned in San Francisco bay, all three men still have open arrest warrants on them. The U.S. Marshals Office has continued the search going for each man individually until the date of each man's 100th birthday.

http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_Morris_and_the_Anglin_Brothers

[astr0144]

Three Alcatraz prisoners escape from "The Rock"

It was often said that the escapes all drowned and that it was unlikely the raft that they made would have been very good.

but there has been a Professor Don DeNevi, who has studied the details of the story who claimed that the Anglin brothers had been
expert raft builders.

The Anglins were expert raftsmen because they've grown up in the Florida swamps. They knew how to construct rafts, they knew how to negotiate currents, and they were expert swimmers as well."

The Professor also indicates that one of the inmates who had come up with the initial idea but was unable to escape had received a postcard after the escape that said on it "Gone Fishing" !

This was what the escapes had said that they would write on a post card should they have managed to survive the escape.

As said earlier in the prior post they also said that they had help with a boat pickup.

Alcatraz inmate Clarence Carnes claimed that a few weeks after the break, he received a post card from the escapees.  In it, they gave the pre-arranged code words that confirmed their escape.  The card read, "Gone fishing."

Carnes believed that Morris and the Anglin brothers had help from the outside, arranged by a convict on the inside.  He claimed that Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the underworld king of Harlem, had arranged for a boat to pick up the escapees.

One thing that puzzled me was that one of the Inmates "Alan West" who was the person who initially came up with the plan to escape..(in which later Frank Morris (played by Clint East wood in the movie)was then said to have added in a lot of the brain power to work it all out..) Alan West was unable to fit thru the Hole he made in his cell on the day of the actual escape.. that all the other escapees had also had to have made holes to get out of their cells...So I wonder why he had not previously proven he was able to fit through his cell hole ?


Alcatraz was among the most dreaded prisons in America, a fortress  perched on a rocky Island in San Francisco Bay.  The ice-cold, treacherous water of the bay was the best guarantee that nobody would successfully escape.  And nobody did...until June 11, 1962.

That night, three men broke out of their cell house and vanished into the bay in a homemade raft.  Frank Morris, the brilliant mastermind of the escape, as well as John Anglin and his brother Clarence were never seen again.

Authorities later discovered pieces of the raft.  It had broken up at sea.  The three convicts appeared to have swum for it.  Did they make it?  The debate continues.

Philip Bergen, Captain of the Guards at Alcatraz from 1946 to 1955, believes survival was impossible:
"If they went into the water they were drowned within thirty minutes.  They succumbed to hypothermia and drowned."
But Patrick Mahoney, who ran the launch that traveled between Alcatraz and the mainland, has some doubts:

"I felt that they didn't make it, but I thought we'd find a body. We didn't find a body."

In the many years that have passed since that June night in 1962, no one has reported seeing Frank Morris, John Anglin, or Clarence Anglin.  They may have beaten the odds, and survived their escape from Alcatraz.

Don DeNevi, a Professor at Merritt College in Oakland, co-wrote a manuscript about the escape with Clarence Carnes, an Alcatraz inmate.  Carnes arrived on the Rock when he was just eighteen years old and spent close to 20 years there.  He was a close confidante of the three convicts who escaped.  Don DeNevi put it this way:

"Carnes was the most important inmate on Alcatraz.  He had gained the respect of virtually all the other inmates, because he knew how to keep his mouth shut.  He was, in a sense, the godfather of Alcatraz."

Carnes told DeNevi that the plot to escape began with an inmate named Allen West, who was assigned to paint the top tier and ceiling of the cellblock.

While working there, West discovered that with some hard work, he could probably get to the prison roof through the ceiling ventilation shaft.

The ventilation duct was constructed with crossbars inside. It was impossible to cut the bars or to squeeze past them.  But West saw that if he cut the entire duct from its surrounding support and shoved the whole thing out, he could easily get to the roof.
West enlisted the help of John and Clarence Anglin, both convicted bank robbers, who had a history of escapes from other institutions.

.According to DeNevi, the Anglin brothers had some other useful skills:

"The Anglins were expert raftsmen because they've grown up in the Florida swamps. They knew how to construct rafts, they knew how to negotiate currents, and they were expert swimmers as well."

The central figure in the plot was an inmate named Frank Morris. The former Captain of the Guards at Alcatraz, Philip Bergen, described him with some respect:

"He was the thinker.  Anything connected with this escape, that had any real brains behind it, can be credited to Morris."
Carnes had told Morris about a utility corridor that ran the length and the height of the cellblock. Heating and water pipes inside the corridor formed a makeshift ladder to the ventilation shaft. Morris believed that he and the others could dig through their cell walls to this hidden corridor during "music hour."  Bergen recalls this part of the daily routine on Alcatraz and explains how the escapees exploited it:

"In the early part of the evening, there was what they called a "music hour."  And anybody who had a string instrument could play.  When that music is playing, it has an effect of deafening the officer who is making his inspections.  The inmates that were digging were uh, just digging away."

The Anglins, West, and Morris each carved a hole in the rear wall of their respective cells. West also used the time to craft false ventilation fronts to hide their work.

The convicts devised another brilliant ploy so that they wouldn't be missed during head counts.  Don Eberle, who headed the FBI investigation into the escape, described the ingenious deception:
"They decided that they would have to make dummy heads to be in their bunks, in case one of them was not in there when the guard would go by.  This was at a time when the lights were turned low, and it would be difficult to recognize other than a face was in the bed."

Inmate Leon "Whitey" Thompson was one of the many prisoners who helped the escapees:
"Morris asked me about how you mix flesh tone, 'cause you see, I am an artist, I did, I did a lot of oil painting on Alcatraz. I begin to wonder, why is he so interested in flesh tone and then I begin to put it all together because uh, they needed a flesh tone color for the dummy heads."

The dummies were made from soap, concrete powder, and stolen paint. One of the Anglins worked in the barbershop and swiped some hair to paste on the dummies' heads for an extra touch of realism.?

For eight months, Morris and the Anglin brothers left their cells at night to drill out the ventilation shaft and collect the items they needed for their escape.  Clarence Carnes, who saw a lot during his 18 years on the Rock, was impressed by their effort:

In his manuscript, Clarence Carnes wrote, "... many times through the years I'd met men who had tried to escape.  But their flaw had been too little planning and being too hasty.  They had not been thorough in their thinking, and that's what defeated them. But not this time."

For the guards on patrol during the Spring of 1962, the countdowns, the routines, the boredom, were no different than any other time. But many inmates knew differently. During the days, right under the gaze of their keepers, they helped the four escapees in their preparations. One of their most important jobs was secretly passing them raincoats.

Working in their cells at night, the four prisoners used the raincoats to make life preservers, which they then stashed in the escape tunnels. In a secret workspace, hidden by blankets, the Anglins and Morris took turns assembling a raft, also out of the pilfered raincoats.

The time to escape finally arrived.
Quietly, the prisoners left their cells for the last time. Immediately, they encountered their first problem...Allen West was unable to slip through the hole in his cell wall. The others were unwilling to wait. Allen West, the original instigator of the plan, was left behind.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers safely slipped their cells into the utility corridor. There, they climbed up the heating  pipes to the ceiling, popped out the ventilation ducts they'd cut from the ceiling during the past eight months and made their way to the roof. Still undetected, they ran across the roof, and climbed down outside the prison. They headed toward the water.

One of the many challenges the escapees faced was how to inflate their huge raft.  Frank Morris had come up with an ingenious idea.  He had received a small accordion known as a concertina, for use during the daily music hour.  Don Eberle, the FBI investigator, described how the instrument was used during the escape:

"They had taken the keys out of the concertina, and therefore you could put your hand on one strap of the concertina and push it up and down, it would operate just like a bellows."

Ever so slowly, the raft began to fill.  When it was ready, the three men pushed it into the water at the edge of Alcatraz and climbed on.  Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin had made it off the Rock.

Inside the prison, the dummy heads the prisoners had left behind in their cells fooled any guards that happened to look in.  When the breakout was finally discovered, it triggered an extensive search, one of the largest manhunts ever.  Patrick Mahoney, a former guard at Alcatraz, was among those who took part in the search:

"We were ordered to go out on the bay and of course, start looking around the island.  And then over at Angel Island, scanning the beaches to see if anything that pertained to them might have washed up.  It became evident that we weren't going to find them.  Whether they had made it or not, no one knew for sure."
During the first 24 hours, the search teams came up empty-handed.  Then, they began to find remnants of the escapees' raft.  In addition, a homemade oar was discovered floating between Alcatraz and Angel Island.  This paddle matched one that the convicts had left behind in the cellblock.?

Two days after the breakout, a rubber wrapped packet was also discovered floating near Angel Island.  It contained an address book, 80 family photographs, and a money order that belonged to one of the escapees.  Some, such as FBI investigator Don Eberle, began to doubt that the escapees had survived:

"Probably the earliest they could have gotten into the water would be 10:30.  The outgoing tide started that night at ten o'clock.  And that outgoing tide is very strong.  And I firmly believe that they were taken by the currents into the Pacific Ocean."

In addition, a Norwegian ship spotted a body floating 20 miles past the Golden Gate bridge on the day of the escape.  Though unable to retrieve it, their description of it matched that of Frank Morris.
However, there is also some compelling evidence to suggest that at least one of the men survived.  The day after the escape, a man claiming to be John Anglin called a San Francisco law firm known to represent Alcatraz inmates.   Eugenia MacGowan was an attorney at the law firm.  She took the call:

"And he said, 'I'm John Anglin.  And I want you to contact the U.S. Marshall's office.'  I said, 'Well I'm not going to do that unless I know why.'  And he said, 'Do you know who I am?'  And I said, 'No'.  He said, 'Read the newspaper and he hung up.'"

Alcatraz inmate Clarence Carnes claimed that a few weeks after the break, he received a post card from the escapees.  In it, they gave the pre-arranged code words that confirmed their escape.  The card read, "Gone fishing."

Carnes believed that Morris and the Anglin brothers had help from the outside, arranged by a convict on the inside.  He claimed that Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the underworld king of Harlem, had arranged for a boat to pick up the escapees.  According to Carnes, the boat then took the convicts to Pier 13 in San Francisco's Hunter's Point district.  Philip Bergen, the former Alcatraz Captain of Guards, doubts the story:

"My feeling is that's just something that Carnes dreamed up and that there is not the slightest possibility there's any truth in it."
Allen West was interrogated repeatedly about Bumpy Johnson.  He was also pressed to reveal any other contacts who might have helped the convicts.  He denied that any existed.  Fellow Alcatraz inmate Leon "Whitey" Thompson put it this way:

"West wouldn't have copped out. West was people.  He was solid people.  To this day I don't believe he ever told 'em nothing.
The stories told by prisoners at Alcatraz did not impress the FBI investigators like Philip Bergen.  He  still believes that the men drowned within minutes of hitting the water:

"Now, of course, we never are cocksure enough to say, well, we know they're dead, but we're pretty sure that they're dead, because there was no trace of them whatsoever.  However, they're still on the 'missing' list and not the 'dead' list.

Even though Alcatraz ceased prison operations many years ago, the infamous escape of June 1962, continues to puzzle investigators.  In fact, over the years, thousands of leads have been investigated, but to no avail. Will this legendary case ever be solved?  For now, the arrest warrants for the three fugitives remain active, and the search for answers goes on.

External Link: National Park Service, the official site for Alcatraz

http://www.unsolved-mystery.com/813/