Escape from Alcatraz - A Real Life Prison Break

 

On the Eleventh of June 1962, three inmates broke out of a maximum-security prison and made it to shore on a raft.

 The escape was planned for years and should have involved four inmates in total, including brothers Clarence and John Anglin, Frank Morris and Allen West, but in the end only three made it out of their cells. The trio managed to scale a 9-metre wall and crossed a rooftop before manoeuvring down a 50ft pipe. They climbed 12ft barbed wire fences and all the while carrying a makeshift raft which they inflated and then launched onto the icy waters. Only one other inmate before them: John Scott was ever able to make it off the island alive. 

 In December 1961 the Anglins, Morris and West were in adjacent cells and fast became friends. West found some discarded saw blades and took them, he wanted to try and find weak points in his cell. He eventually found that the ventilation ducts were vulnerable and they each took it in turns to chisel away at them. 

 The resourceful inmates also managed to cobble together a make-shift periscope to spy on the guards and used crude tools, sharpened spoons, to make an improvised drill made from an old vacuum cleaner motor and this was vital in helping to remove entire sections of their cell walls. For the noise problem they took advantage of "music time" which lasted one hour and this successfully hid their digging noises. 

 The tunnel opened up into an unguarded utility corridor. They used this to make their way through some pipes and up onto the roof, hacking through a ceiling fan. Back in the cells they had placed paper mache heads of themselves in their beds to fool the guards into thinking them asleep. Rubber raincoats and life jackets were recycled to form a make-shift raft and they sealed the seams with steam from the pipes. To inflate the raft they used a stolen accordion, making crude wooden paddles using bits and pieces they found around the prison. 

 They all chose to escape on June 11th but West's tunnel had begun to show and he had patched his with cement, not wanting to get caught and this delayed him getting out on time, and he never caught up to the others who left without him. They officially left Alcatraz completely around 10pm that night. 

 The next ten days a manhunt was launched by law enforcement. No human remains or any other remains except fragments of the raincoats, a wallet and a paddle were found, which hinted at the men's potential tragic ends. The FBI were fairly certain that the temperature that day along with the wind-chill would make it too difficult to survive out on the icy waters. 

 West co-operated to avoid punishment, he told them that their plan was to steal clothing and a car as soon as they got back onto the land. The fact that no clothes or cars had been reported stolen in the area strengthened the FBI's case that none of them had survived to shore. 

 On the 31st of December 1979 after a lengthy seventeen-year investigation the FBI officially closed the case.

 Shockingly in October 2015 the Anglin family produced the FBI with Christmas cards that their brothers had sent to their mother in the three years following their escape. The handwriting matched and was approved by experts. Even more surprisingly they also produced a photo of the Anglin brothers on a farm years after their escape. Another FBI expert was called in to assess the photo and again the official concluded that the fugitives were highly likely to have been alive and well in 1975. 

 Declassified documents also showed in October 2015 that an informant told J. Edgar Hoover that the fugitives were indeed alive and healthy living in Brazil. He led a search there, but nothing was ever discovered. 

 To this day there is much speculation over whether or not they managed to escape alive, but one thing is for certain that their plan was ingenious and potentially perfect...