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Alcatraz is surrounded by treacherous waters. During it's prison
days, it was outfitted with the latest security technology, and was
strictly managed. It was presumed to be “escape-proof.” There has
never been confirmed a successful escape. There were 14 separate escape
attempts involving 36 inmates. Twenty-three were recaptured, 7 were shot
and killed as they fled, and at least 3 drowned.
Service corridor used in 1962 escape |
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According the the National Park Service website, "The only three inmates
not accounted for after trying to escape were John Anglin, Clarence Anglin,
and Frank Morris, who broke out together in June 1962. They, with Allen
Clayton West, spent several months fashioning crude electric drills and
other tools from objects stolen from the kitchen, workshops, and other
parts of the prison. They bored holes into the utility corridors behind
their cell walls. They built rubber rafts out of raincoats, and used
toilet paper, cardboard, cement chips, and human hair from the floor of
the barbershop to create fake human heads. On the night of June 11, they
placed the dummy heads in their cots to make it appear as if they were
present and sleeping. West never made it out of his cell in time. The
Angwins and Morris crawled through the holes in their cell walls, climbed
up the pipes of the utility corridor to the ceiling, and, carrying their
rafts and homemade paddles with them, escaped through a ventilator shaft
to the roof. Then they made their way down the wall of the cell house to
the beach, and plunged into the water."
"No trace of the men was ever found. The next morning, sailors on a
merchant freighter reported seeing a body floating in the bay, but the
body slipped beneath the waves before it could be recovered. Their fate
remains a mystery. Their remains were never found, and there is also no
evidence they survived. Surveillance never detected them in their
hometowns or at any family gatherings." |
