The Great Escape

Alcatraz Escape - June 11, 1962

If there was ever an inmate who was destined to escape from Alcatraz, it was Frank Lee Morris. In the movie entitled "Escape from Alcatraz" starring actor Clint Eastwood, Morris was accurately portrayed as the keen and brilliant mastermind of one of the most famous prison escapes in history. The escape plan took several months to design, and it would necessitate the fabrication of clever decoys and water survival gear.

Frank Lee Morris had spent a lifetime navigating the prison system before his arrival on Alcatraz. From his infant years until his teens Morris was shuffled from one foster home to another, and he was convicted of his first crime at the youthful age of only thirteen. By the time he reached his later teens, Morris's criminal record would include a multitude of crimes ranging from narcotics possession to armed robbery, and he had become a professional inhabitant of the correctional system. He spent his formative years in a boys' training school, and then graduated to a series of ever-larger penitentiaries.

Prison officials as possessing superior intelligence credited Morris, and he earned his ticket to Alcatraz by building an impressive resume of escapes. In 1960, Federal officials decided that his pattern of escape attempts, termed as "shotgun freedom" (although his escapes had never involved the use of a shotgun), would end at The Rock. On January 20, 1960, Morris disembarked from the prison launch and became inmate #AZ-1441.

Frank's accomplices in the "Great Escape" were equally well acquainted with the dark world of organized crime. Brothers John and Clarence Anglin were also serving sentences at Alcatraz for bank robbery, having been convicted along with their brother Alfred. All three had been incarcerated at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta when they first became acquainted with Morris, and John and Clarence were eventually sent to Alcatraz following a sequence of attempted escapes.

Alcatraz inmate Allen West, who occupied an adjacent cell, was also brought in on the scheme. He was serving his second term on The Rock and carried a reputation as an arrogant criminal, and he knew John Anglin from the State Penitentiary in Florida. The escape plan started to take shape in December of 1961; beginning with a collection of several old saw blades that West allegedly found in one of the utility corridors while cleaning. In later interviews, West would take credit for masterminding the clever escape.

The plan was extremely complex and involved the design and fabrication of ingenious lifelike dummies, water rafts, and life preservers, fashioned from over fifty rain coats that had been acquired from other inmates - some donated and some stolen. They would also require a variety of crudely made tools to dig with, and to construct the accessories necessary for the escape. By May of 1962, Morris and the Anglins and had already dug through the cell's six-by-nine-inch vent holes, and had started work on the vent on top of the cellblock.

The Anglins inhabited adjacent cells, as did West and Morris, who also resided nearby. The inmates alternated shifts, with one working and one on lookout. They would start work at 5:30 p.m. and continue till about 9:00 p.m., just prior to the lights-out count. Meanwhile John and Clarence started fabricating the dummy heads, and even gave them the pet names of "Oink" and "Oscar." The heads were crude but lifelike, and were constructed from a homemade cement-powder mixture that included such innocuous materials as soap and toilet paper. They were decorated with flesh-tone paint from prison art kits, and human hair from the barbershop.

Using glue stolen from the glove shop, the inmates also started working to cut and bond the raincoats into a makeshift raft and life preservers. Each evening following the completion of their self-imposed work detail, they would hide the materials on top of the cellblock to minimize any chance of being caught with the contraband materials. The inmates also acquired an elaborate array of handmade tools. West was able to lift an electric hair clipper while working on a paint detail in the barbershop, and he used the clippers, along with drill bits stolen from the Industries by another inmate, to fashion a makeshift motorized drill. However the motor proved is too small, and thus the project would require more effective equipment.

By a stroke of good luck, West had recently learned that the prison's vacuum had broken. He was permitted to attempt a repair, and while inspecting the machine, he found that it had two motors. He carefully removed one, and was able to get the other working, thus deflecting suspicion. Morris and the Anglins were then able to use the vacuum motor for their drill. They attempted to drill out the roof ventilator, but with only limited success. The motor proved too noisy, and it was not very effective.

After months of long preparation the inmates had completed fashioning all of the gear they needed for their escape, and they then continued working to loosen the ventilator grill on top of the cellhouse. John Anglin carefully completed the valve assembly on a large six-by-fourteen-foot raft, while Morris modified an accordion-like musical instrument called a concertina, which would be used to rapidly inflate the raft. But while the others had progressed well in their various preparations, West had fallen behind in digging out the ventilator grill at the rear of his cell. His primary role had been to construct the life preservers and special wooden paddles for the raft, tasks that didn't require him to leave his cell. On the night of June 11, 1962, Morris indicated that the top ventilator was loose enough, and that he felt that they were ready to attempt the escape.


At 9:30 p.m., immediately after lights-out, Morris brought down the dummies from the top of the cellblock and announced that the escape would be staged that very night. Clarence Anglin attempted to assist West in removing his ventilator grill by kicking at it from outside of the cell in the utility corridor, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Morris and the Anglins would have no choice but to leave him behind. The inmates made their final thirty-foot climb up the plumbing to the cellhouse roof, traversed 100 feet across the rooftop, and then carefully maneuvered down fifty feet of piping to the ground near the entrance to the shower area. This would be the last anyone ever saw of Morris and the Anglin Brothers.

In a later interview, West said that their plan had been to use their raft to make their way to Angel Island. After resting, they would then reenter the Bay on the opposite side of the island and swim through a waterway called Raccoon Straits, then on into Marin. They would steal a car, burglarize a clothing store, and then venture out in their own separate directions. West had finally been able to complete the removal of his grill and climb to the rooftop, but by then all of the other inmates had disappeared. With no raft or other means of escape, he was forced to return to his cell.

For decades speculated abounded as to whether this famous escape attempt had been successful. The FBI spent several years investigating, and later resolved that the inmates' plan had failed. The following are only a few of the key points resulting from the investigation which cast doubt on the success of the famous escape from Alcatraz by Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin:

· The formal plan was to steal a car and then perpetrate a burglary at a clothing store. No reports of any such crimes were filed in Marin County within a twelve-day period following the escape.

· Sources reported that these three men had neither friends nor relatives with the financial resources to come to San Francisco and assist in the escape. It would have cost thousands of dollars to put a boat in the Bay night after night, waiting for the one night when the escape actual took place. There would have been no way to communicate with outside contacts in order to confirm the date of the break and the progress of their preparations.

• Critics on the other side of the debate claimed that the fact that no bodies were found amounted to "proof" that the inmates had made it successfully to the mainland. The reality was that it was fairly common for people who perished in the Bay waters never to be found. In fact, on the very night of the escape, an African American gentleman named Seymour Webb, reportedly despondent over a failed relationship, abandoned his car mid-span on the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped to his death in front of numerous eyewitnesses. Despite a quick response from the Coast Guard, his body was never recovered. The significance of this event is that the suicide entered the water at about the same time as the escapees, and his body was never found or recovered.

• The Bay water temperatures ranged from fifty to fifty-four degrees. It was determined that exposure to the elements would have affected body functions after approximately twenty minutes. The showers at Alcatraz were always supplied with moderately hot water, in order to hinder inmates from becoming acclimated to the freezing Bay waters. Personal items carried by the inmates were found floating in the Bay the following day. Also found was a life preserver with heavy teeth marks on the valve. It was believed that the homemade clip to seal the valve had failed, making it difficult for the swimmer to stay afloat.

• On July 17, 1962 the Ship SS Norefjell, a Norwegian Freighter departing from Pier 38, reported seeing a body floating twenty miles northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. The ship was en route to Canada, and the crew failed to report the sighting until October. The sailors had noticed something bobbing in the water, and used binoculars to confirm that it was a body floating face down. The hands and feet were dangling down in the water, but the buttocks were clearly visible. Although bleached by the ocean and sun, the body was clothed in full-length denim trousers that appeared identical to prison issue uniforms. Coroners from San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, and Marin Counties all confirmed that a body could float for five weeks after drowning. The FBI determined this to be one of the most significant leads in the case. Their official report established that there were no other individuals missing or drowned at that time who had been wearing similar trousers.

The families of the Anglins stated that the escape had been a topic of family discussions for several years. The brothers had ever contacted none of them, and they felt that the men would have made contact in some form if they had survived. The Anglin family would soon suffer yet another tragedy. The third brother, Alfred, was electrocuted while attempting to escape from Kilby Prison in Montgomery Alabama in 1964.

The intriguing mystery of this escape is still being explored decades after the fact, and over a million visitors each year make the trip to Alcatraz to witness firsthand the scene of the crime.