US President Donald Trump declared “no one ever escaped from Alcatraz,” outlining plans to reopen the island jail. It was shut down greater than six many years in the past. So far as Trump’s claims are involved, historical past says in any other case.
1937: The First Nice Escape
On December 16, 1937, inmates Theodore Cole, 25, and Ralph Roe, 32, broke out of the island jail in a “miraculous feat.” Cole, a convicted kidnapper, and Roe, a financial institution robber, spent months sawing by means of iron bars within the jail’s mat store.
Profiting from heavy fog, the pair slipped by means of a window and vanished into the bay on a makeshift raft customary from two massive hermetic oil cans tied collectively. In response to experiences from the San Francisco Chronicle, that they had even packed civilian garments sealed inside one of many cans, planning to vary as soon as they reached land.
Whereas officers believed they drowned, a San Francisco Chronicle story revealed 4 years later urged Cole and Roe have been “dwelling comfortably” in South American hideouts.
The 1962 Escape
Essentially the most well-known Alcatraz breakout got here on June 11, 1962, when Frank Morris, together with brothers John and Clarence Anglin, vanished from the jail in a brilliantly executed escape.
Frank Morris was despatched to Alcatraz for his repeated jail breaks. Identified for his intelligence (he reportedly had an IQ of 133), Morris was thought of the mastermind behind the 1962 escape plan.
Brothers Clarence and John Anglin, initially from rural Georgia, have been convicted financial institution robbers with lengthy rap sheets.
On the night time of June 11, 1962, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers pulled off what stays essentially the most well-known breakout in US jail historical past.
The trio spent six months making ready. They used sharpened spoons, cardboard, and glue to tunnel by means of cell partitions, protecting their work with painted cardboard panels. Their escape raft was stitched from over 50 rubber raincoats, sealed utilizing steam pipes. Dummy heads product of papier-mache and actual hair have been positioned of their beds to deceive guards throughout nightly checks.
A transformed vacuum cleaner motor helped them create a makeshift drill. A concertina, a musical instrument, was reworked right into a bellows to inflate the raft.
On the night time of the escape, the boys crawled by means of the air flow ducts, climbed to the roof, descended down a pipe, scaled a barbed-wire fence, and launched their selfmade raft into the freezing waters of the San Francisco Bay.
They have been by no means seen once more.
The next morning, jail guards found the lifelike dummy heads nonetheless on the beds. An enormous manhunt started, involving the FBI, Coast Guard, and navy police.
Although a few of their gadgets, together with oars, life jacket remnants, and sealed packets containing images and get in touch with particulars, have been later recovered, no our bodies have been ever discovered.
“Ha Ha, We Made It”
Per week after the escape, Alcatraz’s warden obtained a postcard, “HA HA, WE MADE IT.” It was signed “Frank, Jim, Clarence.” The FBI dismissed the cardboard as a hoax.
Nonetheless, ideas poured in for years. Some claimed sightings of the escapees in South America. Others mentioned the Anglins made contact with their household.
The FBI closed the case in 1979, declaring the boys “presumed to be lifeless.” However the US Marshals Service by no means gave up. Their case file stays open to today.
Alcatraz was formally shut down in 1963 as a result of excessive working prices and infrastructure decay.