by Paul Simpson
Despite an intensive search, there was no sign of Burgett. Most believed he had perished – even a friendly priest in his hometown of St Louis, Missouri, noted, “I don’t think he had either the physique or the mental drive” to swim across the bay. The prisoners were kept locked in the cells while the search continued, let out only for mealtimes, for a week until Warden Madigan was satisfied that Burgett wasn’t on the island.
He wasn’t. Burgett’s body, partially decomposed from thirteen days immersed in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay, was spotted about a hundred yards from the east side of the island on 12 October. Identified by his clothing and a thumbprint, Madigan was satisfied that they had found their missing man.
Perhaps the greatest escape to take place from Alcatraz happened on 11 June 1962: it warrants the superlative not just for the ingenuity of the escapees, but also because it seems quite possible that, government protestations to the contrary, the three men may well have got away.
The basis of the 1979 Clint Eastwood/Don Siegel film Escape from Alcatraz, the plan saw professional villain and armed robber Frank Lee Morris, and robber brothers John and Clarence Anglin dig through the concrete walls of their cells, head over the roof, and off the island by a raft that they had stitched together from raincoats. It took months of planning and preparation but Morris, who boasted an IQ of 133, within the top three per cent or so of the population, had a long history of escaping from prisons, and regarded Alcatraz as the last challenge.
The press reports at the time concentrated on the way in which the men escaped from their cells: “Out of Alcatraz – By A Spoon” noted the San Francisco Chronicle on the day after their departure. That story featured this wonderful statement of the obvious from Paul Madigan’s replacement as warden, Olin G. Blackwell, “With spoons it takes more time than if you had a jackhammer.”
The first that the prison staff knew of the escape was at 7.15 on the morning of 12 June. During the night, prison guards patrolled the floors of the cell blocks, confirming that each prisoner was sleeping in his cell by the simple method of looking through the bars at him. However, the first roll call of the day required the prisoners to stand up at the front of the cell for a full visual inspection. Morris and the two Anglin brothers failed to get up, and when the prison guards entered their cells to find out why they were being so blatantly disobedient, they received a shock: in all three cots, beneath the blankets, were bodies made from pillows, topped by heads made from plaster, with painted faces and some form of hair. Somehow three men had managed to get out of the cells, apparently under the noses of the guards.
In fact, they had exited from the back of their cells, via the mesh-covered air vent at the base of the cell. The vents were about six inches by ten inches, and using teaspoons that they had taken from the kitchen, the three men had chipped away at the concrete around the vent until they were able to remove it. They then replaced the real vents with cardboard replicas which they had made and smuggled into their cells, and continued to remove the concrete from around the vent to allow sufficient room for them to be able to squeeze through into the utility corridor that ran behind the cells. It was from there that they could reach their ultimate goal: a vent in the ceiling of Block B, which, for some reason, hadn’t been concreted over. It was an exit route onto the roof.
Although only three men escaped this way, a fourth – car thief Allen Clayton West – was part of the preparations and was meant to accompany them. He may even have been the mastermind behind the plot. However, fearful that they would get caught, West had apparently re-cemented some of the hole around his vent. When Morris and the Anglins moved their plans forward by a few days, West didn’t have time to complete his work. He did try to follow them, but when he realized that they had gone without him, he returned to his cell. The information that he provided later would prove invaluable to the authorities when piecing together how the escape had been planned.
The preparation for the escape had begun as early as December 1961, more than eighteen months before the trio would eventually break out. Not only did they have to make their way through the concrete vents, but they needed to prepare the fake heads and the false ventilator grilles, create a life raft and get all the tools together that they’d require to open the vent.
The Anglin brothers were in adjacent cells; West and Morris were also nextdoor neighbours. One of each pair would work on the holes around the vents in their cells each evening for about three and a half hours before lights out while the other kept watch. The Anglins also worked on the dummy heads, which they nicknamed “Oink” and “Oscar”! They were made from a homemade cement mixture formed from soap and toilet paper, and then painted with flesh-tone paint taken from the art kits provided for the prisoners. The hair was actual human hair, swept up from the prison barbershop.
Men serving life imprisonment understand the meaning of patience. If they were going to get away successfully from the Rock, everything had to be done carefully, methodically and properly. By May 1962, over a year before they would make their getaway, the men had removed the vents, made their way into the access corridor, and were working on the vent at the top of the cell block. They also created a workshop and storeroom in the area around the vent, where their contraband could be stored, above the cells, and out of reach of the guards.
Although the Alcatraz authorities would initially deny that the men had been able to use rubber raincoats to create lifejackets or a raft, prisoners on the Rock confirmed that Morris and the Anglins would borrow or steal them – a prisoner might wear his raincoat outside during recreation. One of the escapees would be in shirtsleeves at the start of the break, but by the time the prisoners went inside, he was the one with the coat.
The team stole glue from the prison glove shop to stick the raincoats together, while West was able to get hold of an electric hair clipper and drill bits to use as a makeshift drill. This wasn’t powerful enough for the men’s needs, so West sought permission to repair the prison vacuum, which had recently broken. To his pleasant surprise, he discovered that it contained two motors, but would work effectively with just one. The other became the motor for the drill, although in the end, the gang weren’t able to use it to drill through the roof ventilator, since it was simply too noisy.
To inflate the raft once they got outside, Anglin created a valve assembly, and Morris altered a concertina to form bellows. West created the lifejackets and wooden paddles for the raft, but didn’t anticipate that the others would be ready to go as quickly as they were.
On 11 June 1962, Morris decided that it was time to leave. The top ventilator was loose enough to be pushed from beneath, so there was no time to waste. He brought the dummies from their hiding place above the cell block, and he, the Anglins and West placed them in their beds. The Anglins joined Morris in the utility corridor, but West couldn’t get through the hole. Clarence Anglin tried to kick the ventilator from the corridor side, but it wouldn’t budge. Morris and the others left him behind.
From there, they climbed the drainpipes to the top of the cell block and they knocked the ventilator from inside, and it fell to the ground (the sound was apparently heard by a guard, but nobody thought anything of it). They had already pried off the bar, so all they had to do was squeeze through the twelve-inch-wide hole onto the roof.
They were lucky. They were in view of the Number 1 gun tower, and they had to slide down a kitchen vent near the recreation area, in a part of the prison that was brightly illuminated by a searchlight. The guard was looking in a different direction, and didn’t spot them. From there they scaled the fences – both twelve-feet high, topped with barbed wire – and headed for the north-east section of the island. From there, officially, the trail runs cold.
When their disappearance was noted the next morning, the prison went into its usual lockdown mode. The prisoners were fed but otherwise kept in their cells while all the guards and officers searched the island, with sniffer dogs and helicopters all playing a part. It was at
this point that West started to talk, breaking the usual prisoners’ code of silence. He told the FBI that the plan had been to head to Angel Island, and from there swim across Raccoon Straits to Marin County on the mainland, steal a car and some clothing and then head their separate ways.
Based on this information, Bureau agents, working with the prison authorities and the coastguard, stepped up their searches, looking on Angel Island. According to most contemporary reports, they found nothing, nor were there any cars stolen in the part of the Bay area at a time that would correlate with the prisoners reaching there. When two makeshift lifejackets were found in the water – one in the bay, the other outside the Golden Gate – as well as oars, and a plastic wallet with letters and photographs belonging to the Anglins wrapped up tight inside (including contacts that would have been helpful if they had made it to the mainland), it seemed certain that, like so many before them, Morris and the Anglins had succumbed to the water. The final evidence seemed to come when a Norwegian freighter spotted a body in the water a few weeks later, dressed in what looked like prison clothes. Although they didn’t retrieve it, it seemed likely that it was one of the three men. Officially, therefore, the three were declared missing, believed drowned.
Officially, but perhaps not accurately. The responsibility for the search for the men was passed to the US Federal Marshals office, who will continue to look for them until their hundredth birthday – in Morris’ case, 2026. In the course of their re-assessment of the case files, they noticed something very unusual. Although it was “accepted” that no evidence was found on Angel Island, and no cars were stolen, paperwork from the time suggests that that wasn’t strictly true.
On 12 June 1962 at 11.10 a.m. an APB (all-points bulletin) was issued for the three fugitives. After giving detailed descriptions of the trio, it states:
Fugitives believed attempting to effect escape through Marin County. All subjects are convicted bank robbers.
Should be considered extremely dangerous.
Last known to be clothed in blue denim trousers and shirts. Raft believed used be (sic) escapees located on Angel Island.
On its own that wasn’t too odd: there were contemporary reports of a raft being found on Angel Island, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s article on 13 June: “What appeared from the air to be a raft turned out to be an old fish net.”
But what caught US Marshal Michael Dyke’s eye was a second report, dated 13 June. The previous day, the California Highway Patrol had placed an All-Points Message to local police in the area to lookout for a blue 1955 Chevrolet. The message continued:
According to information received by the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office, a raft had been found on Angel Island; foot prints were found leading from the raft, and it was (sic) being assumed that the escapees had come ashore at that point on Angel Island. In addition, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office had furnished information that the car, described above, had been stolen in Marin County, date and time of theft unknown to the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office. At approximately 11:30am, 6/12/62, according to [name redacted], an unnamed complainant had called the California Highway Patrol, Stockton, California, advising that agency that he had been forced off the road by three men in a blue 1955 Chevrolet.
So much for the “no cars were reported missing” evidence used to counter claims that Morris and his colleagues had survived. It’s not the first time that important evidence regarding crimes has become buried in FBI files: a report on the state of his car that would have destroyed James Earl Ray’s alibi for the time of the murder of Dr Martin Luther King in 1968 only resurfaced in 2002 when the files were re-examined. Is it possible that the three men beat the system, and then somehow managed to keep themselves out of trouble?
The body spotted by the Norwegian freighter may well not have been any of the three men. A corpse, which may well have been the same one spotted by the crew, was washed up at Point Reyes a few months later; it was buried under the name “John Bones Doe”, and exhumed by Marshal Dyke. Although the pathology report on the corpse indicated that it was of a man of Morris’ height and approximate age, DNA testing on the remains against a member of his family proved negative.
There are reports that the Anglins masqueraded as women to attend a family funeral; there was another claim that they had been picked up, but then shot for their possessions. Neither of these can be substantiated.
Whatever the truth, the Marshal service will continue to hunt them – albeit not with the same urgency that they track sex offenders and current murderers. “I think there’s still a decent chance they made it,” Dyke told the San Francisco Chronicle around the fiftieth anniversary of the escape in June 2012. “I can’t prove it. Well, nothing I can tell you anyway.” And as US Marshal Don O’Keefe added, “The ongoing U.S. Marshals investigation of the 1962 escape from Alcatraz federal prison serves as a warning to fugitives that regardless of time, we will continue to look for you and bring you to justice.”
The final breakout from Alcatraz took place on Sunday 16 December 1962, twenty-five years to the day after Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe took their – probably fatal – swim and proved that, no matter what successive wardens and officials in the Justice Department had maintained during the Federal Penitentiary’s time on the Rock, it was possible to swim from Alcatraz to the mainland and live to tell the tale.
Bank robbers Darl Lee Parker and John Paul Scott took advantage of a long-brewing escape scheme that was centred around a storage room below the prison kitchens in which a twenty-eight-man detail worked. Although Scott would claim later that they had used a piece of string dipped in abrasive kitchen cleaner to saw through the bars of the window, Federal Director of Prisons James V. Bennett told reporters that prison officials found a spatula, suitably knicked to produce a sawtooth effect, hidden in a drainpipe inside the room after the escape.
The cutting had been started by a prisoner over a year earlier. The man surreptitiously began sawing at the double bars over the high window, and the project had been continued by at least four other prisoners, who would climb on a table, then clamber up the inner bars to reach the sawing point. If a guard was heard approaching, then they jumped back down: prisoners were often locked in the storeroom for periods to get on with their work, giving them ample time to work on the bars, and ensure that they would pass a cursory examination.
Bennett believed that Scott decided to make a break for it, because he knew the bars they were sawing through were due for inspection, and if he didn’t go at that point, then all the work would be wasted. He completed the work, then called out to Parker to join him. They then went up an outside drainpipe to the roof of the main cell block, crossed it, then used a fifty-foot length of electrical cable to lower themselves to the ground, fleeing to the cliffs at the island’s west side. Using stolen surgical gloves, inflated to act as flotation devices, the two hit the water. (The original theory was that they had simply climbed the cyclone fence, and slid down to the water.)
Their absence was spotted at 5.47 p.m., seventeen minutes after they had last been checked in a routine prisoner count. Parker only made it as far as Little Alcatraz, a hundred yards west of the prison island. The coastguard was notified and at 7.40 p.m. teenagers found what they thought was a body on the rocks at Fort Point. It was Scott, who had successfully swum to the mainland. “His condition is not too serious,” Colonel James Mackin of the Letterman Hospital Staff told the San Francisco Chronicle. “You might just say that he’s damn cold.” At 10.45 p.m., Scott was on his way back to Alcatraz. If he had only managed to go a few more feet, he would have reached a sandy beach – and quite possibly become the first absolutely certified escaper from the Federal Penitentiary.
Scott and Parker’s unorthodox departure from their workplace was the last time anyone fled from the Rock. By the time that they made their move, plans were already in action to close the prison down. Morris and the Anglins’ escape had highlighted the dreadful state of the buildings
– figures of $5million were bandied around at the time to bring it up to a high standard of security – and the people of San Francisco were becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to the Rock being used this way. In December 1962, only 206 remained of the prison’s 336 capacity, the others having been “phased out”, leading Warden Blackwell to comment ironically, “Apparently we weren’t phasing out fast enough.” With the completion of the maximum-security prison at Marion, Illinois, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was closed down, its inhabitants shackled hand and foot and moved to other prisons (no matter what fanciful TV series might like to believe!).
Unlike many of the other former prisons that are featured in this book, you can still go to visit Alcatraz (a tour is shown at the start of the feature film The Rock). “Come experience the beauty, history and infamy of Alcatraz on the San Francisco Bay” says the cruise website. It may not have been escape-proof, but Alcatraz tested the mettle of all those who were there.
Fact vs. Fiction
The visual attraction of a bleak prison stuck on a rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay has pulled film-makers over the last century. Burt Lancaster’s Birdman of Alcatraz was based on the life of Robert Stroud, although he was not the model of sweetness and light that the film makes him out to be. His role in the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz is considerably overplayed, according to those who knew Stroud.
The most famous escape film, of course, is Clint Eastwood’s 1979 movie Escape from Alcatraz, based on events in 1962. Eastwood plays Frank Morris, with Fred Ward and Jack Thibeau as the Anglin brothers. Veering away from the facts, Patrick McGoohan plays a (sensibly) unnamed warden, and the real Allen West became the fictional, cowardly Charlie Butts, played by Larry Hankin.