The Alcatraz Escape

2020-11-18 10:35:04 Written by Irfan Umar

The Alcatraz Escape

 

Three Alcatraz prisoners disappear from Alcatraz: The Rock”. Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin. Did they make it or die attempting, that's the dilemma.

 

Alcatraz was among the most dreaded jails in America, a fortress perched on a rocky island in San Francisco Bay. The ice-cold, hazardous water of the bay was the promising warrant that nobody would successfully flee. And nobody did…until June 11, 1962.

 

That night, three men broke out of their cell house and disappeared into the bay in a homemade raft. Frank Morris, the stunning mastermind of the escape, as well as John Anglin and his brother Clarence were never seen again.

Administrations later found out chunks of the raft. It had disassembled at sea. The three criminals seemed to have swum for it. Did they make it? The dispute continues.

 

Philip Bergen, Captain of the Guards at Alcatraz from 1946 to 1955, acknowledges survival was impossible:

 

“If they went into the water they perished within thirty minutes. They perished to hypothermia and drowned.”

But Patrick Mahoney, who ran the launch that wandered between Alcatraz and the mainland, has some doubts:

“I felt that they didn’t make it, but I guessed we’d find a body. We didn’t find a body.”

 

In the numerous years that have passed since that June night in 1962, no one has announced seeing Frank Morris, John Anglin, or Clarence Anglin. They may have whipped the odds, and withstood their escape from Alcatraz.

Don DeNevi, a Professor at Merritt College in Oakland, co-wrote an article about the escape with Clarence Carnes, an Alcatraz inhabitant. Carnes come to the Rock when he was just eighteen years old and spent close to 20 years there. He was a near buddy of the three criminals who escaped. Don DeNevi put it this way:

 

“Carnes was the most crucial inhabitant on Alcatraz. He had earned the respect of almost all the other inhabitants because he knew how to keep his mouth shut. He was, in a sense, the godfather of Alcatraz.”

Carnes told DeNevi that the conspiracy to escape started with an inmate named Allen West, who was selected to paint the top tier and ceiling of the cellblock.

 

A dummy was used to cheat guards...

 

While working there, West found that with some tough work, he could get to the jail roof through the ceiling ventilation shaft.

The ventilation pipe was established with crossbars inside. It was unthinkable to cut the bars or to clasp past them. But West saw that if he cut the whole duct from its surrounding assistance and jabbed the whole thing out, he could handily get to the roof.

 

West persuaded the help of John and Clarence Anglin, both sentenced bank burglars, who had a narrative of escapes from other institutions. According to DeNevi, the Anglin brothers had some other valuable skills:

The prominent figure in the plan was an inmate named Frank Morris. The former Captain of the Guards at Alcatraz, Philip Bergen, defined him with some respect:

 

Carnes had told Morris about a utility hallway that ran the length and the height of the cellblock. Warming and water ducts inside the corridor shaped a makeshift ladder to the ventilation shaft. Morris acknowledged that he and the others could excavate through their cell walls to this covered corridor during “music hour.” Bergen remembers this part of the daily routine on Alcatraz and says how the escapees manipulated it:

 

“In the early part of the evening, there was what they named a “music hour.” And anybody who had a string tool could play. When that music is playing, it has a consequence of deafening the administrator who is making his inspections. The inhabitants that were digging were uh, just digging away.”

 

The Anglins, West, and Morris each excavated a hole in the back wall of their respective cells. West also utilized the time to craft inaccurate ventilation fronts to hide their work.

 

The criminals arranged another stunning tactic so that they wouldn’t be missed during headcounts. Don Eberle, who bossed the FBI investigation into the escape, defined the ingenious deception:

 

“They assumed that they would have to make dummy heads to be in their bunks, in case one of them was not in there when the warden would go by. This was at a time when the lights were turned low, and it would be hard to understand other than a face was in the bed.”

 

Inmate Leon “Whitey” Thompson was one of the many convicts who assisted the escapees:

 

“Morris asked me about how you mix flesh tone, ‘cause you see, I am an artist, I performed, I performed a lot of oil painting on Alcatraz. I started to wonder, why is he so eager in flesh tone, and then I start to put it all together because uh, they wanted a flesh tone color for the dummy heads.”

The dummies were made from soap, concrete powder, and stolen paint. One of the Anglins labored in the barbershop and filch some hair to paste on the dummies’ heads for an additional touch of realism.

For eight months, Morris and the Anglin brothers departed their cells at night to drill out the ventilation shaft and obtain the items they required for their escape. Clarence Carnes, who saw a lot during his 18 years on the Rock, was amazed by their effort:

 

In his article, Clarence Carnes wrote, “… many times through the years I‘d greeted men who had attempted to escape. But their weakness had been too little planning and being too immediate. They had not been comprehensive in their thinking, and that’s what won against them. But not this time.”

 

For the sentries on patrol during the Spring of 1962, the countdowns, the habits, the boredom, were no unusual than any other time. But many inmates understood differently. During the days, right under the eye of their guardians, they helped the four escapees in their practices. One of their most crucial jobs was privately passing them raincoats.

 

Working in their cells at night, the four captives used the raincoats to make life preservers, which they then accumulated in the escape tunnels. In a private workspace, hidden by blankets, the Anglins and Morris took turns compiling a raft, also out of the pilfered raincoats.

The time to escape eventually arrived...

 

Quietly, the convicts left their cells for the last time. Shortly, they confronted their first problem…Allen West was incapable to slip through the hole in his cell wall. The others were reluctant to wait. Allen West, the actual agitator of the plan, was left behind.

 

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers safely slipped their cells into the utility corridor. There, they climbed up the heating ducts to the ceiling, popped out the ventilation ducts they’d cut from the ceiling during the past eight months, and earned their way to the roof. Still hidden, they ran across the roof and climbed down outside the jail. They went toward the water.

One of the many challenges the escapees encountered was how to inflate their enormous raft. Frank Morris had come up with an ingenious idea. He had received a small accordion known as a concertina, for use during the daily music hour. Don Eberle, the FBI investigator, defined how the tool was used during the escape:

 

Ever so gradually, the raft started to fill. When it was prepared, the three men shoved it into the water at the edge of Alcatraz and climbed on. Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin had made it off the Rock.

Inside the jail, the dummy heads the convicts had left behind in their cells tricked any guards that went on to look in. When the escape was eventually discovered, it accelerated a substantial search, one of the hugest manhunts ever. Patrick Mahoney, a retired guard at Alcatraz, was among those who took part in the search:

 

During the first 24 hours, the search teams arrived up empty-handed. Then, they started to find sediments of the escapees’ raft. Also, a homemade oar was found floating between Alcatraz and Angel Island. This paddle approximated one that the criminals had left behind in the cellblock.

 

Two days after the escape, a rubber wrapped packet was also found floating near Angel Island. It included an address book, 80 family photographs, and a money order that related to one of the escapees. Some, such as FBI investigator Don Eberle, started to doubt that the escapees had survived:

 

Also, a Norwegian ship sighted a body floating 20 miles past the Golden Gate bridge on the day of the escape. Though incapable to retrieve it, their explanation of it matched that of Frank Morris.

 

However, there is also some clear evidence to indicate that at least one of the men survived. The day after the escape, a man alleging to be John Anglin called a San Francisco law firm known to represent Alcatraz inmates. Eugenia MacGowan was an attorney at the law firm. She took the call:

 

Alcatraz inmate Clarence Carnes contended that a few weeks after the escape, he received a postcard from the escapees. In it, they provided the pre-arranged code words that substantiated their escape. The card read, “Gone fishing.”

Carnes thought that Morris and the Anglin brothers had help from the outside, organized by a criminal on the inside. 

 

He contended that Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, the underworld king of Harlem, had organized for a boat to pick up the escapees. According to Carnes, the boat then took the criminals to Pier 13 in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point district. Philip Bergen, the former Alcatraz Captain of Guards, questions the story:

 

Allen West was investigated frequently about Bumpy Johnson. He was also clasped to disclose any other contacts who might have encouraged the convicts. He rejected that any existed. Fellow Alcatraz inmate Leon “Whitey” Thompson put it this way:

 

The tales told by prisoners at Alcatraz did not impress the FBI operatives like Philip Bergen. He still thinks that the men perished within minutes of hitting the water:

 

Even though Alcatraz discontinued prison operations many years ago, the famous escape of June 1962, continues to amaze investigators. In fact, over the years, thousands of guides have been investigated, but to no avail. Will this fictitious case ever be solved? For now, the arrest warrants for the three criminals stay active, and the search for answers goes on.