August 8, 2025 • 30 mins
They called it the most inescapable prison in the United States — a cold, isolated fortress surrounded by frigid waters and razor currents. Alcatraz.
But in 1962, that reputation was obliterated in one of the most audacious prison breaks of all time. Or was it...
Written by Emma Dibdin and produced by Richard MacLean Smith
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four Nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, Meet and greets,
Creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan
coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see
you on board. It was a freezing cold morning in
(00:53):
January of nineteen sixty off the coast of San Francisco.
The bay was engulfed in a lair of thick fog,
so dense that the passengers of the boat couldn't see
the water around them, nor the lights of the city
a mile away. But that didn't stop Frank Morris trying.
As he sat in chains alongside nine other prisoners, he
(01:16):
turned his head and squinted as hard as he could
into the darkness until he could just make out the
distant shape of the city. Even though his wrists and
ankles were shackled, he refused to let himself feel like
a prisoner. This was all temporary, he said to himself,
and he'd be back on the mainland soon enough. At
(01:38):
thirty eight, Frank had been fending for himself his entire life,
and often by eleven. He committed his first crime at thirteen.
Since then, he'd been in and out of prison ever
since for various nonviolent offenses, most recently bank robbery. You
must really like the big house, one of the cops
(01:59):
had said to him during his most recent arrest. But
that was just it. Frank didn't like prison. He hated
feeling trapped more than anything in the world, and he
had a long history of escape attempts, which is how
he'd found himself here on this boat heading to the
most infamous prison in America. During his trial for the
(02:20):
bank robbery, the judge had labeled him an escape artist,
and then, with a sneer in his voice, he sentenced
him to fourteen years at Alcatraz. As the boat began
to slow down, Frank looked up at the imposing concrete
form of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. It loomed over him through
(02:43):
the fog like it was trying to intimidate him. He
knew that life on Alcatraz was no picnic. He'd heard
the stories prisoners dying by suicide or maiming themselves, unable
to cope with the brutal conditions and the isolation. But
that wasn't going to be him, because Frank had a plan.
(03:06):
You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith.
Alcatraz was a prison within a prison, formerly a military fort.
The building itself was highly secure, made out of reinforced
(03:27):
concrete and surrounded by strategically placed watch towers staffed by
guards twenty four seven. But the most effective security measure
was the island itself. Even if a prisoner did somehow
make it out of the building, they'd find themselves on
a rugged, unforgiving strip of land, surrounded by freezing cold
(03:50):
water with vicious currents that could effortlessly drag you out
to sea. With the mainland more than a mile away,
it would be suicide even at et it That double
layer of security made Alcatraz ideal for housing the most
hardened and slippery criminals. It was a fortress known ominously
(04:12):
as the Rock. Day to day life on the Rock
was tough. The building was cold, beset by constant wind
that howled and echoed around the windows, and prisoners had
very few privileges. With visits limited to one per month,
their contact with the world beyond the island was minimal,
(04:34):
so despite the impossibility of escape, some prisoners got desperate
enough to try. There had been more than ten escape attempts.
In almost every case, the prisoners had been caught or
had died as they tried to flee. But Frank Morris
wasn't just any prisoner. With the reported IQ of one
(04:57):
hundred and thirty three, he was intelligent, had the self
confidence to match. Sure, he'd tried and failed to break
out of other prisons in the past, but he'd learned
a lot from those failures. He wasn't going to rush
into anything. He would bide his time years if necessary,
and more importantly, he would have help. In the autumn
(05:20):
of nineteen sixty nine, months after Frank began his sentence,
thirty year old John Anglin arrived on the island. Frank
and John knew each other from a previous stint behind
bars in Louisiana. Now Here they were again both in
prison for bank robbery, and the two men had more
(05:41):
in common than their crimes. Like Frank, John had also
made attempts to escape in the past, and the two
men still shared a deep belief in their own ability
to beat the odds. As luck would have it, John
was assigned to a cell adjoining Frank's, making it easy
for the pair to catch up and compare notes on
(06:02):
their previous prison break attempts. And then a few weeks later,
John's brother, Clarence, arrived at Alcatraz two. The two brothers
were both in prison for the same crime, a nineteen
fifty eight bank robbery in Alabama. Clarence's transfer to Alcatraz
had just taken longer to be processed. Clarence made a
(06:25):
request to the prison authorities to be placed in an
adjoining cell with its brother, despite their criminal history together.
It was granted. After all, given the facilities tight security protocols,
what harm could it do. This was the first of
several mistakes made by the powers that be at Alcatraz.
(06:48):
During the day, the prisoner's movements and communications were closely
monitored but at night, once the cell doors were locked, Frank,
John and Clarence were free to plot to their heart's content.
(07:11):
Throughout the winter of nineteen sixty one into sixty two,
the trio's plan began to take shape. The first thing
they needed was tools. Since there was no hope of
getting hold of real ones, they'd have to improvise. They
also had to avoid drawing any attention to themselves as
(07:32):
new arrivals. Frank, John and Clarence were being watched closely
by the guards. Enter their fourth co conspirator, Alan West,
who'd been at Alcatraz for five years. Although he'd never
made a break for it himself, he'd witnessed more than
one failed attempt during that time. Of course, the details
(07:55):
of attempts were always kept under wraps by the guards,
but were traveled far asked among the inmates. So Frank
and the Angling brothers welcomed Allan into the group, not
least because his time spent at the prison made him useful.
Unlike the others, Allan had been there for long enough
that the guards trusted him. Although prisoner's movements were heavily restricted,
(08:20):
good behavior would eventually be rewarded with a plumb work assignment,
which in turn came with more freedom of movement. Allan
worked on the prison painting crew, which meant that he
could be posted just about anywhere within the building on
a given day, and one day, when he was assigned
to repaint the prison barber shop, he noticed a pair
(08:43):
of electric clippers had been left unattended. After checking that
nobody was watching, he grabbed the clippers and slipped them
into the sleeve of his uniform. During another shift, Allan
saw a broken vacuum cleaner lying in the corner of
the barber shop, waiting to be taken out to the trash.
(09:04):
He crouched down beside it and examined its dusty form.
When a guard asked him what he was doing, Alan replied,
I'm pretty sure I could fix this. Do you mind
if I give it a try. The guard shrugged and
told him to do whatever he wanted with it. Back
in his cell. That evening, Alan dismantled the vacuum cleaner
(09:27):
and took out the motor from inside, and after a
little tingering, he was able to get it working again. Excited,
he told the others about his hall the following day
they could use the motors from the vacuum cleaner and
the electric clippers. He told them to make two electric drills,
and armed with these tools, they could finally put into
(09:50):
motion Frank's ambitious escape plan. The evenings at Alcatrats followed
a predictable rhythm. After completing their work assignments for the day,
the inmates would sit down in the dining hall for
an early dinner. They would then return to their cells
(10:12):
at four fifty p m. With the doors closed and locked.
At five, They then had four and a half hours
until lights out at nine thirty. For most inmates, those
hours were pretty uneventful. They could read books, listen to
approved broadcasts on the radio, or write letters back home.
(10:34):
But for Frank, Morris, John and Clarence Anglin, and Alan West,
those evening hours were precious. Each night, in the privacy
of their cells, they began to chisel away at the
concrete wall. They focused their efforts on the air vent
underneath their sinks, where the concrete was already in poor condition.
(10:56):
By drilling holes in the concrete surrounding the vent, they
were eventually able to remove the grill covering it. Then
they each began gradually widening the holes they worked slowly,
monitoring the levels of noise around them to know what
tools to use. One hour out of each day was
(11:16):
designated as Music Hour, during which classical music was played
to the inmates through a loudspeaker. During this time, the
men could use their homemade electric drills, using the music
to mask the noise. Inmates were also permitted to play
their own music, and since Frank had an accordion with him,
(11:38):
he'd play it as John and Clarence drilled. When they
couldn't risk the noise of the drill, they switched to
more basic tools, metal spoons from the dining hall or
the discarded saw blades that Allan had managed to steal
from the woodwork shop. Over a period of several months,
the men widened the holes just enough to be able
(12:00):
to climb through them. On the other side, they discovered
a barely used utility corridor where no guards were stationed.
The first night they found the corridor, they didn't actually
cross into it, not wanting to push their luck too far.
The guards at Alcatrats also patrolled the hallways after lights
(12:22):
out and periodically glanced into the cells to check on
the prisoners. So they needed to find a way to
cover the gaps in their cell walls. They made sheets
of fake concrete using papier mache, then using a mixture
of toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap, they also made papier
(12:42):
mache heads. Onto those, they stuck handfuls of hair that
Allan had collected from the barber shop. In broad daylight,
they wouldn't fool anyone, but they weren't operating in daylight.
Tucked against the pillow, half buried underneath the blankets, they
were sure they were good enough to pass muster with
(13:03):
the guards. At least they hoped they were. Throughout the
spring of nineteen sixty two, Frank, John, Clarence, and Alan
began venturing out of their cells almost every night, leaving
(13:23):
their dummy heads behind in their beds. At first, they
were nervous, but as the nights passed, they soon realized
that nobody suspected a thing. The decoys were working perfectly.
They followed the utility corridor behind their cells to a
stairway which led up to an empty top level of
(13:44):
their cell block. Covered in dust. The area had clearly
never been used, the perfect location to set up a
secret workshop. So far, they'd got away with constructing their
makeshift tools in their own but the final stage of
preparation required a lot more space. The part of the
(14:06):
escape that worried Frank the most was the water. If
they were caught before they left the island, he thought,
so be it. But once they actually cast off from
the rocky shores of Alcatraz, that's when things would get
truly dangerous. Since he'd been worrying over this part of
the plan from the start, he'd also come up with
(14:29):
a solution. Over the past few months. The four men
had been systematically stealing prison issue raincoats. It was easy
to do. The raincoats were issued to inmates during yard
time on rainy days, then cast aside and forgotten. Nobody
kept track of them, so nobody noticed that more than
(14:51):
fifty had gone missing since the beginning of nineteen sixty two,
and so armed with their piles of raincoats, the men
began constructing a huge life raft that would be large
and sturdy enough to carry all four of them across
the dangerous waters of San Francisco Bay. Using hot steam
(15:14):
from the prisons pipes, they melted the edges of the coats,
then fused them together into a six by fourteen foot raft.
Frank's accordion came in handy once again. Having taken it apart,
they converted the concertina inside it into a pump, which
they could then use to inflate the raft. By the
(15:36):
early summer, they dissembled everything they needed to make their getaway,
but they still had to find a way out of
the building. Their secret passageway onto the top floor had
remained completely undetected, and they knew getting out onto the
roof was their best shot at freedom. The only problem
was that the ceiling was more than thirty feet high. Eventually,
(16:01):
using the network of pipes that lined the walls of
the room, they were able to climb up to the
ceiling and prize off the cover of a ventilation shaft.
From there, they crawled through on to the prison roof.
Frank Morris felt the cold night air on his face
and could almost taste freedom. After six long months of
(16:23):
careful planning and preparation, they'd quite literally dug their way
out of the most impenetrable prison in the United States.
Now they just had to summon the courage to pull
it off for real. The night of June eleventh, nineteen
(16:49):
sixty two was just like any other At Alcatratz. The
lights went out at nine thirty p m on the dot,
and silence descended over the cell block. Half an hour later,
the guards completed their first round of cell checks. Not
a single one of them noticed that four of the
inmate's beds were occupied by flimsy dummy heads made out
(17:13):
of soap, toothpaste and discarded hair. By that time, Frank
Morris and John and Clarence Angling had already made it
safely into the utility corridor behind their cells, but Alan
West wasn't so lucky. The men had used various methods
to disguise the holes in the back of their cells.
(17:36):
Allan had used a small amount of cement to reattach
the grille covering the vent. He thought it would be
easy enough to prise it back off when the time came,
but the cement had hardened and all of the group's
tools were hidden inside the workshop on the top floor.
Using only his bare hands, Allan frantically tried to chip
(17:57):
away at the cement that had now sealed him back
into his cell. Meanwhile, Allan's co conspirators had made it
all the way to the roof. They had no idea
why he hadn't showed up at the agreed time, and
they felt bad for him, but none of them were
about to put their own freedom at risk. They'd worked
(18:18):
too hard for this moment, and they had more pressing
worries to deal with, namely making it down onto the
ground without being spotted. The rooftop was in clear sight
of the guard tower, and there was nothing they could
do to avoid it. Carrying the heavy, folded up raft
between them, Frank, John and Clarence took a deep breath
(18:41):
and sprinted as fast as they could across the roof.
They shimmered down a drain pipe that ran the whole
length of the building, then continued sprinting across the prison yard,
keeping to the shadows as much as they could. Having
reached the barbed wire fence, the trio took a moment
pause for breath. Frank glanced back at the hulking form
(19:04):
of the prison behind them, bracing himself for the sound
of an alarm, but there was nothing. They scaled the
twelve foot barbed wire fence, taking great care not to
snag their life raft. Just one hole would render it
completely useless. Having made it down to the ground on
(19:25):
the other side, they scrambled down a steep embankment toward
the water. After finally making it to the northeast shore
of the island, they inflated the raft using Frank's repurposed accordion.
They placed the raft in the calm, black waters and
took a moment to make sure it wasn't taking on
water before jumping on board and pushing off into the night.
(19:50):
Unlike the morning Frank had arrived at Alcatraz, that night
was a clear one with perfect visibility. As he looked
out across the black water, the lights of San Francisco
beckoned them forward. They were almost free. Shortly after sunrise
(20:15):
on June twelfth, nineteen sixty two, the morning whistle sounded
at Alcatraz. As the inmates sleepily filed out of their
cells and towards the dining hall for breakfast, one of
the guards noticed that Frank, John, and Clarence were missing.
He went to investigate and saw that the doors to
(20:35):
the men's adjoining cells were still closed. Frowning, he rapped
hard on one of the doors with his night stick,
then swung it open, but first it looked like the
three men were all still in bed, but no matter
how loudly he yelled their names, none of them moved.
That's when the guards stepped further into the cell and
(20:58):
walked right up to Frank Morris's bedside. As he reached
out to shake his shoulder, he jerked his hand back.
The color of Morris's skin was deathly pale, too pale
to be alive. But once the initial shock had faded,
the guard realized that, in fact, whatever he was looking
(21:19):
at was actually too pale to be human at all.
He yanked back the blankets, and the crude dummy head
rolled out of the bed, onto the floor and broke
in half at his feet. The guard frantically radioed for help,
and within a minute the prison central alert system had
(21:40):
been activated, triggering a deafening alarm that echoed throughout all
the cells. Acting warden of Alcatraz, Art Dollison, had been
in his role for less than a year. It was
supposed to be a temporary assignment, but nonetheless, once it
became clear that three inmates had escaped, it was up
(22:01):
to him to lead the response. Under Art's direction, the
entire prison went into lockdown, with inmates confined to their
cells until further notice. He called in extra prison staff
and mounted a huge search, combing every inch of the island. Meanwhile,
Alan West was doing everything he could to lay low.
(22:24):
Around one a m. He'd finally managed to prize away
the vent cover in his cell and escape on to
the roof, but just as he'd feared, the others were
long gone. In shock and sadness, he'd clambered back down
the ventilation shaft and lain awake in his cell until daybreak.
(22:45):
Even worse, he'd been too exhausted and dejected to put
much effort into disguising the whole in his cell wall,
although he did what he could to make up for it.
Once the alarm sounded, it didn't take long for the
guards noticed that the shaft had been tampered with. Outside Alcatratz,
(23:05):
the search was rapidly expanding. The FBI and the Coastguard
began a manhunt to cross San Francisco Bay and the
surrounding area. When they brought Alan in for questioning, he
confessed without much hesitation. Since his co conspirators hadn't showed
him much loyalty when they left him behind, he had
(23:27):
little problem sharing what information he had in exchange for immunity.
Thanks to the extensive details that Alan West provided, the
authorities were able to form a solid picture of the
escapees plan. The main idea was to make it to
(23:50):
the mainland, steel clothes and a car, and then head east.
It was two days after the escape when a member
of the coast Guard spotted unusual looking piece of plywood
floating in the bay. It had been fashioned into the
shape of a paddle. A week later, what was left
of the raft washed up close to the Golden Gate Bridge.
(24:14):
The authorities also found John Anglin's wallet wrapped in plastic
floating nearby, but there was no trace of the men themselves,
despite months upon months of further searching. According to the authorities, however,
there was no mystery. Based on their assessment of the
(24:35):
raft and the strength of the currents on the night
of June eleventh, they concluded that the men hadn't stood
a chance. The diy raft had likely broken apart at
some point during the crossing, and they'd simply drowned too
far from the shore for their bodies to ever be found.
And yet, as many have pointed out, the remnants of
(24:59):
the raft were found close enough to San Francisco that
it's certainly not impossible that the escapees did survive the journey,
and the FBI was certainly not convinced that the men
were dead. In fact, their case remained officially open for
seventeen years before finally being closed at the end of
(25:21):
nineteen seventy nine. The Anglin family, for one, claimed they
received multiple unsigned postcards over the years, along with phone
calls from a line where the other party was silent.
This led them to believe that either John, Clarence or
both was still out there, desperate to make contact but
(25:42):
too afraid to blow their cover. Then, in twenty thirteen,
the San Francisco Police received a strange and haunting letter.
It appeared to have been written by John Anglin. The
letter claimed that all three men had survived the escape gape,
but only just. They'd gone on to live the rest
(26:04):
of their lives on the run, constantly afraid of being caught.
Frank and Clarence had died in two thousand and five
and two thousand and eight, and John himself was now
sick with cancer. He wanted to negotiate his surrender in
exchange for medical treatment. The FBI tested the letter for
(26:26):
finger prints and DNA evidence, but the results were inconclusive
and they were unable to make contact with the letter's author.
To this day, the fate of the escape ease remains
an unsolved mystery, but the fate of Alcatraz itself was
sealed by the escape. The prison closed less than a
(26:49):
year later, Although the official reason was high operating costs,
the high profile humiliation of the prison break had been
the final nail in the coffin. Nobody would ever take
Alcatraz seriously as a maximum security facility. Again. Shortly before
the prison closed, the new acting Warden Richard Willard, gave
(27:13):
an interview to the BBC, during which he was asked
why he was so sure that the men hadn't survived.
Standing on the shores of Alcatraz at the time, Willard
gazed out toward the bay and replied, you hear the wind,
don't you? And you see the water do you think
(27:34):
you could make it? This episode was written by Emma
Dibden and produced by Richard mclin smith. Thank you as
ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast
created by Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
(27:57):
including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained.
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
(28:17):
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod
and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash, Unexplained Podcast,
(30:01):
assass
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four Nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, Meet and greets,
Creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan
coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see
you on board. It was a freezing cold morning in
(00:53):
January of nineteen sixty off the coast of San Francisco.
The bay was engulfed in a lair of thick fog,
so dense that the passengers of the boat couldn't see
the water around them, nor the lights of the city
a mile away. But that didn't stop Frank Morris trying.
As he sat in chains alongside nine other prisoners, he
(01:16):
turned his head and squinted as hard as he could
into the darkness until he could just make out the
distant shape of the city. Even though his wrists and
ankles were shackled, he refused to let himself feel like
a prisoner. This was all temporary, he said to himself,
and he'd be back on the mainland soon enough. At
(01:38):
thirty eight, Frank had been fending for himself his entire life,
and often by eleven. He committed his first crime at thirteen.
Since then, he'd been in and out of prison ever
since for various nonviolent offenses, most recently bank robbery. You
must really like the big house, one of the cops
(01:59):
had said to him during his most recent arrest. But
that was just it. Frank didn't like prison. He hated
feeling trapped more than anything in the world, and he
had a long history of escape attempts, which is how
he'd found himself here on this boat heading to the
most infamous prison in America. During his trial for the
(02:20):
bank robbery, the judge had labeled him an escape artist,
and then, with a sneer in his voice, he sentenced
him to fourteen years at Alcatraz. As the boat began
to slow down, Frank looked up at the imposing concrete
form of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. It loomed over him through
(02:43):
the fog like it was trying to intimidate him. He
knew that life on Alcatraz was no picnic. He'd heard
the stories prisoners dying by suicide or maiming themselves, unable
to cope with the brutal conditions and the isolation. But
that wasn't going to be him, because Frank had a plan.
(03:06):
You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith.
Alcatraz was a prison within a prison, formerly a military fort.
The building itself was highly secure, made out of reinforced
(03:27):
concrete and surrounded by strategically placed watch towers staffed by
guards twenty four seven. But the most effective security measure
was the island itself. Even if a prisoner did somehow
make it out of the building, they'd find themselves on
a rugged, unforgiving strip of land, surrounded by freezing cold
(03:50):
water with vicious currents that could effortlessly drag you out
to sea. With the mainland more than a mile away,
it would be suicide even at et it That double
layer of security made Alcatraz ideal for housing the most
hardened and slippery criminals. It was a fortress known ominously
(04:12):
as the Rock. Day to day life on the Rock
was tough. The building was cold, beset by constant wind
that howled and echoed around the windows, and prisoners had
very few privileges. With visits limited to one per month,
their contact with the world beyond the island was minimal,
(04:34):
so despite the impossibility of escape, some prisoners got desperate
enough to try. There had been more than ten escape attempts.
In almost every case, the prisoners had been caught or
had died as they tried to flee. But Frank Morris
wasn't just any prisoner. With the reported IQ of one
(04:57):
hundred and thirty three, he was intelligent, had the self
confidence to match. Sure, he'd tried and failed to break
out of other prisons in the past, but he'd learned
a lot from those failures. He wasn't going to rush
into anything. He would bide his time years if necessary,
and more importantly, he would have help. In the autumn
(05:20):
of nineteen sixty nine, months after Frank began his sentence,
thirty year old John Anglin arrived on the island. Frank
and John knew each other from a previous stint behind
bars in Louisiana. Now Here they were again both in
prison for bank robbery, and the two men had more
(05:41):
in common than their crimes. Like Frank, John had also
made attempts to escape in the past, and the two
men still shared a deep belief in their own ability
to beat the odds. As luck would have it, John
was assigned to a cell adjoining Frank's, making it easy
for the pair to catch up and compare notes on
(06:02):
their previous prison break attempts. And then a few weeks later,
John's brother, Clarence, arrived at Alcatraz two. The two brothers
were both in prison for the same crime, a nineteen
fifty eight bank robbery in Alabama. Clarence's transfer to Alcatraz
had just taken longer to be processed. Clarence made a
(06:25):
request to the prison authorities to be placed in an
adjoining cell with its brother, despite their criminal history together.
It was granted. After all, given the facilities tight security protocols,
what harm could it do. This was the first of
several mistakes made by the powers that be at Alcatraz.
(06:48):
During the day, the prisoner's movements and communications were closely
monitored but at night, once the cell doors were locked, Frank,
John and Clarence were free to plot to their heart's content.
(07:11):
Throughout the winter of nineteen sixty one into sixty two,
the trio's plan began to take shape. The first thing
they needed was tools. Since there was no hope of
getting hold of real ones, they'd have to improvise. They
also had to avoid drawing any attention to themselves as
(07:32):
new arrivals. Frank, John and Clarence were being watched closely
by the guards. Enter their fourth co conspirator, Alan West,
who'd been at Alcatraz for five years. Although he'd never
made a break for it himself, he'd witnessed more than
one failed attempt during that time. Of course, the details
(07:55):
of attempts were always kept under wraps by the guards,
but were traveled far asked among the inmates. So Frank
and the Angling brothers welcomed Allan into the group, not
least because his time spent at the prison made him useful.
Unlike the others, Allan had been there for long enough
that the guards trusted him. Although prisoner's movements were heavily restricted,
(08:20):
good behavior would eventually be rewarded with a plumb work assignment,
which in turn came with more freedom of movement. Allan
worked on the prison painting crew, which meant that he
could be posted just about anywhere within the building on
a given day, and one day, when he was assigned
to repaint the prison barber shop, he noticed a pair
(08:43):
of electric clippers had been left unattended. After checking that
nobody was watching, he grabbed the clippers and slipped them
into the sleeve of his uniform. During another shift, Allan
saw a broken vacuum cleaner lying in the corner of
the barber shop, waiting to be taken out to the trash.
(09:04):
He crouched down beside it and examined its dusty form.
When a guard asked him what he was doing, Alan replied,
I'm pretty sure I could fix this. Do you mind
if I give it a try. The guard shrugged and
told him to do whatever he wanted with it. Back
in his cell. That evening, Alan dismantled the vacuum cleaner
(09:27):
and took out the motor from inside, and after a
little tingering, he was able to get it working again. Excited,
he told the others about his hall the following day
they could use the motors from the vacuum cleaner and
the electric clippers. He told them to make two electric drills,
and armed with these tools, they could finally put into
(09:50):
motion Frank's ambitious escape plan. The evenings at Alcatrats followed
a predictable rhythm. After completing their work assignments for the day,
the inmates would sit down in the dining hall for
an early dinner. They would then return to their cells
(10:12):
at four fifty p m. With the doors closed and locked.
At five, They then had four and a half hours
until lights out at nine thirty. For most inmates, those
hours were pretty uneventful. They could read books, listen to
approved broadcasts on the radio, or write letters back home.
(10:34):
But for Frank, Morris, John and Clarence Anglin, and Alan West,
those evening hours were precious. Each night, in the privacy
of their cells, they began to chisel away at the
concrete wall. They focused their efforts on the air vent
underneath their sinks, where the concrete was already in poor condition.
(10:56):
By drilling holes in the concrete surrounding the vent, they
were eventually able to remove the grill covering it. Then
they each began gradually widening the holes they worked slowly,
monitoring the levels of noise around them to know what
tools to use. One hour out of each day was
(11:16):
designated as Music Hour, during which classical music was played
to the inmates through a loudspeaker. During this time, the
men could use their homemade electric drills, using the music
to mask the noise. Inmates were also permitted to play
their own music, and since Frank had an accordion with him,
(11:38):
he'd play it as John and Clarence drilled. When they
couldn't risk the noise of the drill, they switched to
more basic tools, metal spoons from the dining hall or
the discarded saw blades that Allan had managed to steal
from the woodwork shop. Over a period of several months,
the men widened the holes just enough to be able
(12:00):
to climb through them. On the other side, they discovered
a barely used utility corridor where no guards were stationed.
The first night they found the corridor, they didn't actually
cross into it, not wanting to push their luck too far.
The guards at Alcatrats also patrolled the hallways after lights
(12:22):
out and periodically glanced into the cells to check on
the prisoners. So they needed to find a way to
cover the gaps in their cell walls. They made sheets
of fake concrete using papier mache, then using a mixture
of toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap, they also made papier
(12:42):
mache heads. Onto those, they stuck handfuls of hair that
Allan had collected from the barber shop. In broad daylight,
they wouldn't fool anyone, but they weren't operating in daylight.
Tucked against the pillow, half buried underneath the blankets, they
were sure they were good enough to pass muster with
(13:03):
the guards. At least they hoped they were. Throughout the
spring of nineteen sixty two, Frank, John, Clarence, and Alan
began venturing out of their cells almost every night, leaving
(13:23):
their dummy heads behind in their beds. At first, they
were nervous, but as the nights passed, they soon realized
that nobody suspected a thing. The decoys were working perfectly.
They followed the utility corridor behind their cells to a
stairway which led up to an empty top level of
(13:44):
their cell block. Covered in dust. The area had clearly
never been used, the perfect location to set up a
secret workshop. So far, they'd got away with constructing their
makeshift tools in their own but the final stage of
preparation required a lot more space. The part of the
(14:06):
escape that worried Frank the most was the water. If
they were caught before they left the island, he thought,
so be it. But once they actually cast off from
the rocky shores of Alcatraz, that's when things would get
truly dangerous. Since he'd been worrying over this part of
the plan from the start, he'd also come up with
(14:29):
a solution. Over the past few months. The four men
had been systematically stealing prison issue raincoats. It was easy
to do. The raincoats were issued to inmates during yard
time on rainy days, then cast aside and forgotten. Nobody
kept track of them, so nobody noticed that more than
(14:51):
fifty had gone missing since the beginning of nineteen sixty two,
and so armed with their piles of raincoats, the men
began constructing a huge life raft that would be large
and sturdy enough to carry all four of them across
the dangerous waters of San Francisco Bay. Using hot steam
(15:14):
from the prisons pipes, they melted the edges of the coats,
then fused them together into a six by fourteen foot raft.
Frank's accordion came in handy once again. Having taken it apart,
they converted the concertina inside it into a pump, which
they could then use to inflate the raft. By the
(15:36):
early summer, they dissembled everything they needed to make their getaway,
but they still had to find a way out of
the building. Their secret passageway onto the top floor had
remained completely undetected, and they knew getting out onto the
roof was their best shot at freedom. The only problem
was that the ceiling was more than thirty feet high. Eventually,
(16:01):
using the network of pipes that lined the walls of
the room, they were able to climb up to the
ceiling and prize off the cover of a ventilation shaft.
From there, they crawled through on to the prison roof.
Frank Morris felt the cold night air on his face
and could almost taste freedom. After six long months of
(16:23):
careful planning and preparation, they'd quite literally dug their way
out of the most impenetrable prison in the United States.
Now they just had to summon the courage to pull
it off for real. The night of June eleventh, nineteen
(16:49):
sixty two was just like any other At Alcatratz. The
lights went out at nine thirty p m on the dot,
and silence descended over the cell block. Half an hour later,
the guards completed their first round of cell checks. Not
a single one of them noticed that four of the
inmate's beds were occupied by flimsy dummy heads made out
(17:13):
of soap, toothpaste and discarded hair. By that time, Frank
Morris and John and Clarence Angling had already made it
safely into the utility corridor behind their cells, but Alan
West wasn't so lucky. The men had used various methods
to disguise the holes in the back of their cells.
(17:36):
Allan had used a small amount of cement to reattach
the grille covering the vent. He thought it would be
easy enough to prise it back off when the time came,
but the cement had hardened and all of the group's
tools were hidden inside the workshop on the top floor.
Using only his bare hands, Allan frantically tried to chip
(17:57):
away at the cement that had now sealed him back
into his cell. Meanwhile, Allan's co conspirators had made it
all the way to the roof. They had no idea
why he hadn't showed up at the agreed time, and
they felt bad for him, but none of them were
about to put their own freedom at risk. They'd worked
(18:18):
too hard for this moment, and they had more pressing
worries to deal with, namely making it down onto the
ground without being spotted. The rooftop was in clear sight
of the guard tower, and there was nothing they could
do to avoid it. Carrying the heavy, folded up raft
between them, Frank, John and Clarence took a deep breath
(18:41):
and sprinted as fast as they could across the roof.
They shimmered down a drain pipe that ran the whole
length of the building, then continued sprinting across the prison yard,
keeping to the shadows as much as they could. Having
reached the barbed wire fence, the trio took a moment
pause for breath. Frank glanced back at the hulking form
(19:04):
of the prison behind them, bracing himself for the sound
of an alarm, but there was nothing. They scaled the
twelve foot barbed wire fence, taking great care not to
snag their life raft. Just one hole would render it
completely useless. Having made it down to the ground on
(19:25):
the other side, they scrambled down a steep embankment toward
the water. After finally making it to the northeast shore
of the island, they inflated the raft using Frank's repurposed accordion.
They placed the raft in the calm, black waters and
took a moment to make sure it wasn't taking on
water before jumping on board and pushing off into the night.
(19:50):
Unlike the morning Frank had arrived at Alcatraz, that night
was a clear one with perfect visibility. As he looked
out across the black water, the lights of San Francisco
beckoned them forward. They were almost free. Shortly after sunrise
(20:15):
on June twelfth, nineteen sixty two, the morning whistle sounded
at Alcatraz. As the inmates sleepily filed out of their
cells and towards the dining hall for breakfast, one of
the guards noticed that Frank, John, and Clarence were missing.
He went to investigate and saw that the doors to
(20:35):
the men's adjoining cells were still closed. Frowning, he rapped
hard on one of the doors with his night stick,
then swung it open, but first it looked like the
three men were all still in bed, but no matter
how loudly he yelled their names, none of them moved.
That's when the guards stepped further into the cell and
(20:58):
walked right up to Frank Morris's bedside. As he reached
out to shake his shoulder, he jerked his hand back.
The color of Morris's skin was deathly pale, too pale
to be alive. But once the initial shock had faded,
the guard realized that, in fact, whatever he was looking
(21:19):
at was actually too pale to be human at all.
He yanked back the blankets, and the crude dummy head
rolled out of the bed, onto the floor and broke
in half at his feet. The guard frantically radioed for help,
and within a minute the prison central alert system had
(21:40):
been activated, triggering a deafening alarm that echoed throughout all
the cells. Acting warden of Alcatraz, Art Dollison, had been
in his role for less than a year. It was
supposed to be a temporary assignment, but nonetheless, once it
became clear that three inmates had escaped, it was up
(22:01):
to him to lead the response. Under Art's direction, the
entire prison went into lockdown, with inmates confined to their
cells until further notice. He called in extra prison staff
and mounted a huge search, combing every inch of the island. Meanwhile,
Alan West was doing everything he could to lay low.
(22:24):
Around one a m. He'd finally managed to prize away
the vent cover in his cell and escape on to
the roof, but just as he'd feared, the others were
long gone. In shock and sadness, he'd clambered back down
the ventilation shaft and lain awake in his cell until daybreak.
(22:45):
Even worse, he'd been too exhausted and dejected to put
much effort into disguising the whole in his cell wall,
although he did what he could to make up for it.
Once the alarm sounded, it didn't take long for the
guards noticed that the shaft had been tampered with. Outside Alcatratz,
(23:05):
the search was rapidly expanding. The FBI and the Coastguard
began a manhunt to cross San Francisco Bay and the
surrounding area. When they brought Alan in for questioning, he
confessed without much hesitation. Since his co conspirators hadn't showed
him much loyalty when they left him behind, he had
(23:27):
little problem sharing what information he had in exchange for immunity.
Thanks to the extensive details that Alan West provided, the
authorities were able to form a solid picture of the
escapees plan. The main idea was to make it to
(23:50):
the mainland, steel clothes and a car, and then head east.
It was two days after the escape when a member
of the coast Guard spotted unusual looking piece of plywood
floating in the bay. It had been fashioned into the
shape of a paddle. A week later, what was left
of the raft washed up close to the Golden Gate Bridge.
(24:14):
The authorities also found John Anglin's wallet wrapped in plastic
floating nearby, but there was no trace of the men themselves,
despite months upon months of further searching. According to the authorities, however,
there was no mystery. Based on their assessment of the
(24:35):
raft and the strength of the currents on the night
of June eleventh, they concluded that the men hadn't stood
a chance. The diy raft had likely broken apart at
some point during the crossing, and they'd simply drowned too
far from the shore for their bodies to ever be found.
And yet, as many have pointed out, the remnants of
(24:59):
the raft were found close enough to San Francisco that
it's certainly not impossible that the escapees did survive the journey,
and the FBI was certainly not convinced that the men
were dead. In fact, their case remained officially open for
seventeen years before finally being closed at the end of
(25:21):
nineteen seventy nine. The Anglin family, for one, claimed they
received multiple unsigned postcards over the years, along with phone
calls from a line where the other party was silent.
This led them to believe that either John, Clarence or
both was still out there, desperate to make contact but
(25:42):
too afraid to blow their cover. Then, in twenty thirteen,
the San Francisco Police received a strange and haunting letter.
It appeared to have been written by John Anglin. The
letter claimed that all three men had survived the escape gape,
but only just. They'd gone on to live the rest
(26:04):
of their lives on the run, constantly afraid of being caught.
Frank and Clarence had died in two thousand and five
and two thousand and eight, and John himself was now
sick with cancer. He wanted to negotiate his surrender in
exchange for medical treatment. The FBI tested the letter for
(26:26):
finger prints and DNA evidence, but the results were inconclusive
and they were unable to make contact with the letter's author.
To this day, the fate of the escape ease remains
an unsolved mystery, but the fate of Alcatraz itself was
sealed by the escape. The prison closed less than a
(26:49):
year later, Although the official reason was high operating costs,
the high profile humiliation of the prison break had been
the final nail in the coffin. Nobody would ever take
Alcatraz seriously as a maximum security facility. Again. Shortly before
the prison closed, the new acting Warden Richard Willard, gave
(27:13):
an interview to the BBC, during which he was asked
why he was so sure that the men hadn't survived.
Standing on the shores of Alcatraz at the time, Willard
gazed out toward the bay and replied, you hear the wind,
don't you? And you see the water do you think
(27:34):
you could make it? This episode was written by Emma
Dibden and produced by Richard mclin smith. Thank you as
ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast
created by Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
(27:57):
including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained.
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
(28:17):
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod
and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash, Unexplained Podcast,
(30:01):
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