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Some of you might have heard about a little island that lies just 1.25 miles (2.01 km)
off San Francisco.
The only reason you’ve likely heard the name is because arguably the United States’
most infamous prison was located there.
The prison closed down, but tales keep being told.
That prison has been home to some of America’s most notorious criminals, and not for a second
did the authorities think any of them could ever escape.
That’s because even if a prisoner did make it to the edge of the island it was thought
there was no way anyone could make it to land through the frigid and choppy water.
The FBI believes that the only people that did ever get to the water died there.
Full stop.
Game Over.
It was impossible.
But, that might not be the case.
Before we tell you about the recent revelations that might have proved that the FBI were wrong
all along and indeed some men made it through the water and onto land, we think we should
tell you about the escape itself.
It’s worthy of a movie, and that’s why myriad movies have been made partly based
on this brazen escape.
The year is 1962.
There have been twelve escape attempts before this year and all of them failed.
Not only did prisoners with escape in mind have to break out of their cells, but they
had to scale high walls and get past armed guards, and then there was the dangerous waters
of the San Francisco Bay.
And as we said, the last hurdle was thought to be insurmountable.
But four men this year weren’t the type of guys to shy away from a challenge.
Their names were Clarence Anglin, John Anglin, Allen West, and Frank Morris, and on June
11 they made perhaps the most daring prison escape attempt ever.
You’d be right in thinking that two of these men were related.
They were actually brothers, and like the other two men they were career criminals.
We won’t go into their backgrounds much, but it’s important we give you a few details
as this might give you a clue as to how these men might have survived.
For instance the two Anglin brothers were said to be inseparable as kids, and from a
young age, as early as 14, they were both toughing it out as laborers.
After that the duo decided that robbing banks was easier and less strain on the back, and
their criminal career started.
But the important thing we should mention is that both these guys when just little kids
were said to enjoy swimming in Lake Michigan during winter.
It’s said they impressed people around them by their incredible swimming ability but also
the fact they could swim when there was still ice in the water.
Another thing we should mention is the fact that Frank Morris was said to have a very
high IQ.
We aren’t saying he was a genius, but an IQ of 133 isn’t bad at all.
So we have strength and we have brains, and it just so happened in 1961 these guys were
placed in cells adjacent to each other.
Now we see the plot thicken.
It was Morris who was the brains of the operation, and he enlisted the two brothers who no doubt
told him that surviving the water would be a cinch.
They did not wing their escape, however, and over six months devised and orchestrated their
plan.
What they knew they needed to do was widen the ventilation ducts in their respective
cells.
These ducts were two small for them to crawl into, and so with sharpened spoons and stolen
saw blades as well as a drill they had fashioned from a vacuum cleaner, they got to work.
That was a noisy business, making the hole bigger, but the guards didn’t hear a thing
as Morris spent most of the night playing his accordion.
The guards weren’t suspicious because they’d heard this sound before.
The thing was, as the holes widened it looked like a mess in the wall, so what the guys
did was paint a piece of cardboard the exact same color as the wall and stick it over the
hole in the daytime when they weren’t working.
You see, what these men knew is that when they got through the hole they would hit a
utility tunnel, a place far away from any guards.
After a while they could easily get to this tunnel, but that didn’t mean they could
just escape.
Even though two of the men were great swimmers, they knew swimming that distance at night
would be hard or impossible, so they devised to make a raft.
This took a few months and the raft was made out of at least 50 raincoats that the men
had stolen or other prisoners had given them.
They also made paddles out of wood and bolts and had life jackets.
Those life jackets were also made out of raincoats, with the men using a process called vulcanization,
a process to heat rubber, to make the seams stick so that they could be blown up.
It was the same for the raft, the men could make sure no air got out and they could in
time inflate it.
But what we like the most is what the guys did to evade suspicion when they were in the
tunnel working on the raft.
They of course couldn’t just go missing from their cells, so they made dummies.
We’ve seen pictures of the heads and they are unbelievably lifelike, considering what
they had to work with.
The heads were made with cement, skin-colored paint, and the best bit, human hair they’d
collected from the prison barbers.
It makes you wonder just how creative and industrious these men could have been had
they not chosen a life of crime.
It took about six months to get the raft finished.
Now we have the problem of actually getting to the water.
This got off to a bad start for West, because he had used a kind of cement to keep his grill
in place.
What he hadn’t reckoned on was the strength of this cement and he couldn’t even get
his grill off on June 11.
He was left behind, and his confession is why we know so much about the escape.
The other three men got into the tunnel, collected the raft and the rest of what they needed,
and then they made their way to the roof.
We are told from there they scaled down a kitchen vent pipe which was around 50 feet
(15 meters) high.
They then climbed two fences which were covered with barbed wire and were 12-foot (3.7 meters)
high.
It seems for that they just used their strength, and 12 feet isn’t too hard to climb.
Now they were in a blind spot from the guards, and this is where they could inflate the raft.
That’s a lot of blowing for a pair of human lungs, but the guys had the concertina from
Morris’ accordion.
That’s the thing you push and pull that acts a bit like a human lung.
The guards only realized the next day that the men were missing, and so the escapees
had plenty of time to make it to land.
The question is, did they make it?
An investigation led to a paddle being found, but also bits of raincoat being discovered
on the nearby Angel Island Beach.
Did this mean they got there, or just mean it had floated there?
The FBI said that night the currents were really strong, and after many years of trying
to find the men they closed the investigation in 1979.
The men had died, that was it.
The end.
But over the years siblings of the two brothers would come forward and say they had been contacted
by their brothers.
Countless other people would lead police on a wild goose chase, saying they were the escapees
or they had been contacted by the men.
It’s said at one point the Anglin brothers might have attended a funeral of one of their
other brothers, and there have even been sightings in Brazil.
It’s been called one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American crime, and to this day
U.S. marshals say they still get leads as to where these guys are.
But the fact is, there hasn’t really been any substantial proof that the guys made it,
well, not until a recent bombshell hit the media.
That’s because in January 2013 the FBI received a letter, a letter they didn’t tell the
media about for a while.
They decided to repress it, but they reopened the case.
This is how the letter started:
“My name is John Anglin.
I escape[d] from Alcatraz in June 1962 with 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!”
The problem was that any DNA analysis was inconclusive, but still, something just rang
true about the letter.
The writer states that the brains of the group, Morris, died back in 2008.
The writer was obviously one of the surviving brothers.
This is what he told police: “If you announce on TV 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…”
If the brothers did survive, now they would be in their late 80s.
Morris would be 91, but he might have died if that letter is real.
One thing to note, though, is that one FBI investigator who’d been with the agency
for over 20 years told the media when the letter was released that just saying the raft
failed and it was impossible to swim wasn’t exactly conclusive.
We know these men could swim well, and these days we know many athletes can swim through
that water and spend a long time in it.
It’s hardly an inhuman task to swim in San Francisco Bay.
Then there’s the fact that investigators say well, we would have found them, they’d
have committed other offenses.
That’s hardly convincing, too.
The writer of the letter added that he had lived around the USA after the escape and
if the letter is real it seems he did become a law-abiding citizen.
That or he just never got caught committing a crime.
There’s other stuff, too, such as what the nephew of the brothers said many years later,
“My grandmother received roses for several years after the escape,” he said to the
media.
That nephew added that the authorities should allow the writer of the letter to come in
and let him be treated, but it seems the authorities had no interest in doing that.
Well, this statement was released, so it seems there is some interest: “The US Marshals
Service has not completely given up.
It has publicly stated it will ‘continue to pursue the escapees until they are either
arrested, positively determined to be deceased or reach the age of 99.”
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This is where the story ends.
All we want to ask you is do you think these men survived and do you think that letter
is real?
From what we can see on forums and social media, it seems about 50 percent of people
think they died and 50 percent think they survived.
We even found people claiming to know they are alive.
Tell us in the comments what you think.
Also, be sure to check out our other video What Was It Like to be Jailed at Alcatraz?.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.