List of Alcatraz escape attempts

In its 29 years of operation, there were 14 acknowledged attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison involving 34 inmates (two, Joseph Cretzer and Sam Shockley, tried twice). Officially, every escape attempt failed, and most participants were either killed or quickly re-captured. However, the participants in the December 1937 and June 1962 attempts, though presumed dead, disappeared without a trace, giving rise to popular theories that they were successful.

Attempted escapes

April 27, 1936

Joseph Bowers was working burning garbage at the island's incinerator when he suddenly ran and began to climb a chain link fence in an apparent attempt to make for the shore. Quickly spotted by a guard in a watch tower, he ignored orders to desist as well as a warning shot before being hit by rifle fire. He then fell 10–20 meters to the shore below and drowned.

December 16, 1937

Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe had gradually filed through iron bars in the prison's mat shop in the industries building and escaped on a very foggy day, preventing them from being spotted by guards in the watch towers. The two jumped into the water and were never seen again, but the severe weather conditions at the time have led to a consensus that they drowned in the bay and their bodies were swept out to sea by the strong current in San Francisco Bay. However, they were listed as #1 and #2 on the FBI Most Wanted List.

May 23, 1938

Rufus Franklin, Thomas R. Limerick, and James C. Lucas attacked and killed a guard^[1] with a claw hammer in the woodwork shop in the industries building and then proceeded to the roof, where an armed guard shot Franklin and Limerick. Other guards arrived at the scene. Lucas was cornered and surrendered to the guards.

January 13, 1939

Arthur 'Doc' Barker, William Martin, Rufus McCain, Henri Young, and Dale Stamphill were inmates of the prison's supposedly most-secure unit, D-Block, when they managed to escape the cell house and reach the Alcatraz shore on the night of January 13, 1939 (Friday). As they were putting a makeshift raft together they were spotted and fired on by a guard in a watch tower. Barker was killed, Stamphill was wounded, and the others were sent to Solitary confinement.

May 21, 1941

Joe Cretzer, Sam Shockley, Arnold Kyle, and Lloyd Barkdoll were working in the industries area when they jumped the guards on duty and attempted to saw through window bars to reach the shore. The tool-proof bars foiled the attempt and they surrendered when this became apparent. Both Cretzer and Shockley would try to escape again in the Battle of Alcatraz.

September 15, 1941

John Richard Bayless (May 16, 1915 – July 30, 1981) was working on the garbage detail and managed to elude the guards and reach the Alcatraz shore. He jumped into the water and tried swimming to San Francisco but quickly gave up the attempt.^[2]

April 14, 1943

James Boarman (January 1, 1919 – presumed dead April 14, 1943), Harold Martin Brest (January 2, 1914 – May 31, 1979), Floyd Garland Hamilton (June 13, 1908 – July 24, 1984), and Fred John Hunter (October 13, 1899 – November 30, 1982), managed to cut window bars in the industries building's mat shop without being noticed and assemble four cans that contained army uniforms and could serve as flotation devices. They then overpowered two guards and bound and gagged them then escaped out the window, leaving behind two of the four cans. However, one of the overpowered guards managed to get his whistle loose and the other managed to slip his gag and blow the first guard's whistle, alerting the tower guards who opened fire on the prisoners. Boarman was hit by gunfire and floated in the water unconscious, supported by Brest. As a prison launch picked up Brest, he let go of Boarman, who sank beneath the surface. Boarman's body was never recovered. Hunter, who had injured his back and hands in the escape attempt, gave up on swimming and sought refuge in a nearby cave, but was discovered by the guards two hours later and surrendered. Hamilton was wrongly assumed by the guards to have been hit by gunfire along with Boarman and his body to have similarly sunk, but had actually been hiding in the same cave as Hunter. Two days later, he climbed back up the cliff and through the same window from which he had jumped, then hid under a pile of material in the storeroom. He was found there the next morning.^[3][4][5][6]

August 7, 1943

Huron Ted Walters, who was doing 30 years for robbery, assault, and auto theft, noticed that on weekends, fewer guards were on duty. and their attention tended to be focused on the recreation yard. On Saturday, August 7, he took advantage of the situation to slip out of the New Industries building, where he was working in the laundry. His plan was to cut through the two security fences that separated him from freedom, make his way to the water, and swim the 1.4 miles to San Francisco. His plan went sideways early. The contraband wire cutters failed him, so he had to climb both fences, which cost him valuable time; then, he fell from the second fence onto the rocks and injured his back. Although he made it to the island's shoreline, he could go no farther, and was picked up by Captain of the Guards Henry Weinhold and Associate Warden E. J. Miller. He was returned to the cell house, where he spent some time in the prison hospital, then in solitary. ^[7]

July 31, 1945

John K. Giles, a prisoner working at the Alcatraz wharf, managed to assemble a U.S. Army technical sergeant's uniform (probably from pieces stolen from bags of army laundry sent to the island to be cleaned) and board a ferry that provided service between government facilities around San Francisco Bay. Shortly after the ferry's departure for Angel Island, headcounts on the Alcatraz wharf and aboard the ferry revealed the discrepancy, and Giles was apprehended at Angel Island and returned to Alcatraz.^[8]

May 2–4, 1946

Clarence Carnes, Bernard Coy, Joseph Paul Cretzer, Marvin Hubbard, Sam Shockley, Miran Edgar Thompson

Coy, a Kentucky bank-robber and a cell house orderly on Alcatraz managed to take the gun cage in the main cell house and seize the two firearms held there. However, due to a breach of regulations by a prison officer, the key to the yard door, from which the inmates planned to get access to the prison launch, was not in its place and inadvertently doomed the escape attempt. The prisoners refused to surrender and Coy, Cretzer, Hubbard, and two prison guards were killed in the fighting, which ended two days later, on May 4, 1946.

Carnes survived the "battle", and because of his youth and because he refused to kill the guards when ordered to do so by his colleagues, he was spared the death penalty; instead, he received a life sentence. Shockley and Thompson were sentenced to death and subsequently executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin in 1948.^[9]

July 23, 1956

Floyd Wilson disappeared from his job at the dock but was discovered after hiding for 12 hours among large rocks along the shoreline after giving up his plan to make a raft out of driftwood.

September 29, 1958

Aaron Burgett and Clyde Johnson were working on the garbage detail when they overpowered a guard. Both jumped into the water, trying to swim off the island. A police launch intercepted Johnson, but Burgett disappeared until his body washed up on San Francisco's shoreline, 2 weeks later.

June 11, 1962

Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin successfully carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised, on June 11, 1962. Behind the prisoners' cells in Cell Block B (where the escapees were interned) was an unguarded 3-foot (0.91 m) wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the moisture-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoons and forks soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions, played during music hour (about 1 hour and a half), and their progress was concealed by false walls, which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards. Some believe that guards were in on the escape plan, but this has not been verified.

The escape route then led up through an air vent, a shaft large enough for a man to climb through. Stealing a carborundum cord from the prison workshop, the prisoners had removed the rivets from the grille and substituted dummy rivets made of soap. The escapees were given over 50 rubber raincoats from other inmates to use as a raft for the trip to the mainland. Leaving papier-mâché heads in their cell bunks, they escaped.

The official investigation by the FBI was aided by another prisoner, Allen West, who also was part of the escapees' group but was left behind. West couldn't fit through his hole so had to keep chipping to break through. When Morris and the Anglin brothers (John & Clarence) accelerated the schedule, West desperately chipped away at the wall; however, by the time he made it through the wall, his companions were gone. Articles belonging to the prisoners (including plywood paddles and parts of the raincoat raft) were later found floating in the bay, and the official report on the escape states that the prisoners drowned in the cold waters of the bay while trying to reach the mainland. However, there were sightings of the men over the years. Friends and family members have received many unsigned postcards and messages. The mother of the Anglin brothers received flowers anonymously every Mother's Day and two very tall unusual women were reported to have attended her funeral before disappearing.^[10]

The Discovery TV show MythBusters investigated the escape, and concluded it is “plausible” that the prisoners may have survived their escape attempt.

The 1962 escape was examined in a 2011 National Geographic Channel program entitled Vanished from Alcatraz. According to the newly uncovered official records discussed on the program, a raft was discovered on Angel Island with footprints leading away. Furthermore, there was also a report of a stolen car in the area that night, which could have been used by Morris and the other escapees. However, while confirming these facts, which were hidden from the officials for quite some time, the findings of further investigations remain inconclusive. As a result, the U.S. Marshall’s office is still investigating this case, which will remain open on all three escapees until their 100th birthdays.^[11]

A 2015 History Channel documentary presented further circumstantial evidence gathered over the years by the Anglin brothers' family, including Christmas cards allegedly sent by the brothers for three years after their escape. It featured an interview with family friend Fred Brizzi, who claimed to have met the brothers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1975. To support his story, he offered a photograph of two men resembling John and Clarence Anglin, taken, he said, during the encounter. A facial recognition analyst who had examined the photo asserted that the two men were "more than likely" the Anglins.^[12][13] The film also presented an alternate escape theory, involving the use of an electrical cord, which was reported missing from the prison's dock, tied to a passenger ferry that left the island just after midnight on the night of the men's escape.^[14]

December 16, 1962

John Paul Scott and Darl Lee Parker were the last two prisoners to attempt to escape from Alcatraz. Scott and Parker used a makeshift saw to cut through the bars on a kitchen window in the cell house, then ran to the edge of the island and jumped into the water. Parker was found 100 yards from the main island on the rock formation known as Little Alcatraz, but Scott reached Fort Point on the mainland where he was found by teenagers, suffering from hypothermia. After recovering in the hospital, he was returned to Alcatraz. It is the only proven case of an Alcatraz inmate reaching the shore by swimming.^[15]

See also

• Escape from Alcatraz (book)
• The Rock (film)

References

1. "Correctional Officer Royal C. Cline". The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP).
2. Alcatraz.
3. "Escapes from Alcatraz Gallery: Escape No. 7".
4. "BOP: Alcatraz".
5. "Alcatraz - Escapes".
6. "Alcatraz Prison Escapes - Page 1".
7. Alcatraz Escape Files: From the Official Records. San Francisco: Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, 2014. pp. 93-99.
8. "The History of Alcatraz".
9. Two Alcatraz convicts die in gas chamber. Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1948.
10. "YouTube".
11. "Vanished from Alcatraz (2011)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
12. Amy Graff (October 12, 2015). "New claim: Alcatraz escapees might have survived. could still be alive". SF Gate. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
13. "50 years later, new evidence suggests 3 Alcatraz escapees may still be alive". WPIX-11. October 12, 2015. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
14. Staff Writer (October 12, 2015). "The picture that 'proves' two inmates DID escape from Alcatraz: Notorious escapees didn't drown, body-surfed behind a passenger ferry to freedom and started a farm in Brazil, claims family". Detroit Newstime. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
15. "Alcatraz Archive".

External links

• FBI file on Alcatraz escape attempts
• FBI files on Alcatraz escapees