How Three Inmates Escaped Alcatraz _ _ History's Greatest Mysteries (S5)

It's the morning of June 12th, 1962, on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. So we've got three prisoners, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and his brother Clarence. A 7 a.m. roll call one day, they don't respond. So a guard goes to check on all three of them. He sees all three of them lying in their beds, so he walks over to Frank's cell, and he taps him on the head with his nightstick, and Frank's head falls off. This guard had the shock of his life. He probably thought he had just decapitated the man. All three prisoners have vanished from their cells, with three lifelike papier-mâché heads left behind. Immediately, this creates chaos. These prisoners are gone. How could these prisoners have escaped this super-security prison? They discover that another prisoner, Allen West, also is in possession of a fake head made out of papier-mâché. West admits he was part of an escape, but failed to get out of his cell in time. In exchange for leniency, he agrees to tell investigators exactly how his fellow inmates did the impossible. It's amazing that these three men were even able to get out of the prison complex itself. Alcatraz had the reputation of being the most secure prison in the country. Even if you do get out of Alcatraz, you still have to contend with six watchtowers, as well as a 20-foot fence with barbed wire. And if, by some miracle, you make it over that as well, you still are dealing with the dark and turbulent waters of the San Francisco Bay. Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers came to Alcatraz with a long history of escapes. Frank Morris is a career criminal, a very good one, too. He'd been in and out of the system since the age of 13, mostly for robbery charges. He was such an accomplished escape artist that some people referred to him as the Houdini of the prison system because he had successfully escaped from so many facilities before being sent to Alcatraz. John and Clarence Anglin, they were from the Florida, Georgia area. They were career criminals. They had robbed a bank in Ohio with a toy gun. But they get sent to Alcatraz because they were trying to escape Leavenworth Prison. But according to the testimony Allen West gives, West is the mastermind behind this plot. As West tells investigators, they first needed a way out of their cells and into the maintenance corridor behind. Looking inside of a cell on Alcatraz, there's only a few features. And one of them, right below the sink, is an air vent. Because of the deterioration of the facility and salt water wreaks havoc on concrete, they were able to fashion spoons and be able to just basically scrape away the concrete around this vent. They work at night standing guard for each other and devise a way to cover up their handiwork. Because these men would be widening their vents, they couldn't just leave holes in the back of their cells. West secures green paint from his prison job and he shows the other prisoners that there's a way to kind of repaint around the vent as they remove it. It requires a lot of patience because the guards go around and do hourly checks. Later on, what they do is they start to create paper mache vents as sort of a cover for the holes that they're creating. If you looked at it from the cell, you're only a good nine feet away. You just look at it, it looks like the regular vent that was there in the first place. Morris and the Anglins finally make their way through the hole for the first time and they make their way to the top of the cell block through that maintenance hallway by climbing up pipes to take a look at the vent that West has picked out for the escape. But when they get to that vent, they realize that they have a problem. The vent is bolted into place. The escapees will need time out of their cells over weeks and even months to file down the bolts securing the roof vent. But they face regular nightly checks by the guards. So to convince the guards they're still in their cells, the escapees design fake heads for their prison beds. The dummy heads have been fashioned out of anything that these three men could have gotten their hands on. They're paper mache, but they're also soap. They're also cement. For the finishing touch on those paper mache heads, Clarence Anglin takes real live human hair clippings from the barber shop and pastes them to the top of the heads. The fake heads give the escapees the time they need out of their cells to file down the bolt and gain access to the roof. But getting out of the building is only half the plan. They also have to figure out a way to the shore. The escapees come up with an ingenious plan to turn prison rain jackets into an inflatable raft and several life preservers. Looking at a popular mechanics magazine, they were able to not only figure out how to make them, but also come up with waterproof glue that would keep it together in the water. They also fashioned paddles out of wood scraps and plywood that they find around the prison. They steal a concertina and use it as a kind of bellows to inflate this makeshift raft. Sometime around 10 p.m., Frank Morris, John Anglin, and his brother Clarence launch their makeshift raft into the treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay, never to be seen again. The next morning, once it's discovered these prisoners are missing, the big question among the prisoners, the guards, and eventually the public is, did they make it? So the FBI is called in to launch a search. Investigators' best source is still sitting in a cell on Alcatraz Island. Alan West is already identified as the fourth escapee or the would-be escapee. He has the paper mache head and the false front on his vent to prove it. After describing his clever plan for getting out of the cell block, West divulges the convict's planned escape route. Instead of traveling one mile south to San Francisco, they'll head two miles north to Angel Island. It may seem a little strange why the inmates would have wanted to go two miles north to another island, but it kind of makes sense because they could have been recognized or spotted in their prison garb if they were in a heavily populated area. At the time, Angel Island is home to a missile base that's being decommissioned and therefore could hold advantages for the three wanted men. It's being taken offline and there are very few people there at any given time. There also might be actual boats there that the men can use to make it to the mainland. The mainland in this instance isn't San Francisco, but Marin County, which is only a quarter of a mile north. Once they landed in Marin, Alan West says the plan was to steal a car. While searching the waters around Angel Island a few days after the escape, investigators discover a crucial clue that could line up with the testimony of Alan West. There was a sealed packet made out of the rubber raincoats. So obviously none of the water would get in. They were able to confirm that they belonged to the Anglins because they had many Anglin family members, some pictures of the family members. Investigators also find another clue off of Angel Island, a makeshift wooden paddle just like the one Alan West described. December 31st, 1979, more than 17 years after the escape, the FBI officially closes the case. The file is handed over to the U.S. Marshals in the event any new leads come up. The case remains dormant until 2003. U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke decides to just poke around and see if this famous story, if he might be able to add something to it. It isn't long before Dyke finds compelling evidence in the government documents. Michael Dyke goes back into the Marin County police records and he finds that there is a stolen car report, that there was a 1955 blue Chevy, which was reported stolen on the night of the men's escape. The eyewitness that saw it first said there were three men inside of the vehicle. At the time, that didn't mean anything because the escape wasn't yet public knowledge. Then, Dyke finds another police report from Stockton, California, almost 100 miles east of Marin County. Within just a few hours of the reported auto theft, a man in Stockton says that he's forced off the road by a blue Chevy being driven by three men. Later on, when that blue car is seen again, closer to Stockton with three people inside of it, that raises some eyebrows. If this evidence is to be trusted, the men may have very well survived the frigid waters and fled to Angel Island according to plan. Frank Morse and the Anglin brothers really could have gotten away with it. This is a fun story to think about, right? I mean, here you have this inescapable fortress, this supermax prison, and here you have these three guys who figured a way out. They've bounced in and out of prisons their whole life, institutions, but they use what they've got, their smarts, whatever they can pick up around the prison. They fight the law and maybe they won. No bodies have ever been produced. No evidence of their death has ever been produced. It's still one of the great mysteries of the 20th century and everybody gloms onto it because they love when an underdog wins.