Alcatraz escape mystery remains after 60 years. June 12, 2022 Updated: June 13, 2022 6:48 a.m. Alcatraz escapees Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin and John Anglin are still listed on the U.S. Marshals Most Wanted list.
Alcatraz officials have suggested they drowned or died of hypothermia. Read more Alcatraz stories here. But now, more than 50 years later, the Anglin family has provided evidence that the men might have survived.
Frank Morris, John Anglin, and his brother, Clarence Anglin have never been located since escaping the facility — which was at some point home to criminals like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Robert Stroud.
Assuming any of them survived the currents in the San Francisco Bay while fleeing the Rock (and that they also survived the intervening 60 years), all the men would be into their 90s.
It's a living site that continues to tell stories," said National Park ranger Christian Davis. Bill Baker is part of that living history. He was Alcatraz prisoner number 1259. He is now 89 years old and one of the last surviving former inmates of Alcatraz.
John Anglin, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris had escaped. On their pillows were papier-mâché replicas of their own heads, meant to mask their absence and throw guards off their scent. What happened to them remains a mystery to this day.
While awaiting the results of appeals, Capone was confined to the Cook County Jail. Upon denial of appeals, he entered the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, serving his sentence there and at Alcatraz.
Clarence Victor Carnes (January 14, 1927 – October 3, 1988), known as The Choctaw Kid, was a Choctaw man best known as the youngest inmate incarcerated at Alcatraz and for his participation in the bloody escape attempt known as the "Battle of Alcatraz".
Alvin Karpis
He was the last of the depression-era criminals to be caught and served the longest sentence, 26 years, of any Alcatraz prisoner. Alvin and Arthur Barker, another member of the gang, were at Alcatraz and a part of the infamous breakout, during which Alvin was shot and killed.
What is this? The biography of Al Capone continues in January of 1939, when he was transferred out of Alcatraz. He was moved to another facility and then paroled at the end of the year.
More than 50 years after one of the most famous prison breaks in history, three Dutch scientists reenacted the escape from Alcatraz.
On June 12, 1962, the routine early morning bed check turned out to be anything but. Three convicts were not in their cells: John Anglin, his brother Clarence, and Frank Morris. In their beds were cleverly built dummy heads made of plaster, flesh-tone paint, and real human hair that apparently fooled the night guards.
Evidence is now piling up that the three men survived and one even lived in Fargo. John Anglin escaped from Alcatraz Prison in 1962 by making a plaster head of his likeness and putting it in his bed to fool the guards. Evidence in the last few years suggests he fled to North Dakota in the years after the escape.
Perhaps the most famous of all Alcatraz inmates is Robert Stroud, often remembered for his portrayal in the 1962 movie "Birdman of Alcatraz". He was convicted of murder in 1909 after shooting a man at point-blank range. The victim was reportedly a client of a prostitute Stroud was pimping and had refused to pay her.
This was one of the most thought out and sophisticated attempts in the prison's history. Frank Lee Morris was the mastermind behind the plan. For seven months, the four inmates worked together to plan their escape.
In 1979 the FBI officially concluded, on the basis of circumstantial evidence and a preponderance of expert opinion, that the men drowned in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay without reaching the mainland.
And for 29 years, it was the most secure federal prison in the country -- surrounded by the cold, rough waters of the Pacific. But brothers John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris disappeared into the night and have never been found.
After six months of meticulous preparation, three inmates managed to break out, though it is uncertain if they reached the mainland. The escape is thought by some to have factored into the decision to close Alcatraz prison less than a year later.
Eventually, they killed the three remaining men, Cretzer, Hubbard and Coy, the ringleader. Two prison guards were killed in the battle, with 14 more wounded. Two of the prisoners who gave up after the lock to the yard door was broken, Shockley and Thompson, were executed in a gas chamber for their role in the attempt.
Frank Lucas Bolt
Then, in June 1934, Lucas was shipped to the newly established Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, two months before the prison's official opening on August 11th. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, perhaps Alcatraz's staunchest proponent, signed Bolt's official admission papers as Alcatraz Inmate #1.
Two Federal Bureau of Prisons officers—William A. Miller and Harold Stites—were killed (Miller by one of the inmates who attempted escape, Joseph Cretzer, and Stites by friendly fire) along with three of the perpetrators. Fourteen other officers and one uninvolved convict were also injured.
Al Capone died of cardiac arrest in 1947, but his decline began earlier.
The sexually transmitted infection had caused neurosyphilis, an infection of the central nervous system, which eventually led to dementia. Since there was no cure for syphilis in the 1930s, Capone's illness worsened and led to his death at the age of just 48.
Prior to Alcatraz Reappearance. Warden Edwin James was chief warden of The Rock up to 1963, after which his fate is unknown. According to Diego Soto he died many years before the present day, but Hauser asks Officer Donovan about whether James is back, which may mean his death was also fabricated.