Minisode 09 - Guess What I Heard: How My Family Escaped Alcatraz

Welcome back, Strangers! In this minisode...hello...Jeremy is related to the ONLY GUYS TO EVER ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ! Holy crap! Yeah. Strap in for this one!

STOP! INSIDE JOKES AHEAD!

If you haven’t gotten to listen to the episode yet, spoiler alert! This post contains lots of stuff that will make waaay more sense if you listen to the episode before or while reading. So if you haven’t already, pump the brakes and listen to the episode or just click above to play so that you can be in on all the shenanigans to follow!

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Produced by Peter Woodward

ALCATRAZ PRISON

History

So let’s learn a little about this crazy place. Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary is located on an offshore island 1.25 miles from the shore of San Francisco, CA in the San Franscisco Bay. It’s a 22 acre island developed in mid-19th century for a lighthouse, military fortification, and military prison.

The first brick jailhouse was built in 1867 and was used during Spanish-American war for military prisoners. The site was converted to a federal prison in 1934 and named Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. This facility was especially intended for federal prisoners that were problematic at other facilities, often bank robbers and murderers.

Alcatraz featured incredibly high security. In addition to its natural location, this was not a place that was escapable, even with the best of plans. Staff in this prison were trained in securement, not rehabilitation. When you went into Alcatraz, you were not coming out unless they let you out.

Due to the excessive cost to run prison as well as erosion of the island, Alcatraz ceased being an active penitentiary in 1963. Currently, the National Park Service manages it as a public museum. Alcatraz plays host to around 1.5 million visitors a year.

Notorious Residents

Alcatraz’s roster of prisoners reads like a true crime greatest hits list! It housed such names as:
– Al Capone, the notorious mob boss, leader of the Chicago Outfit.
–George “Machine Gun” Kelly, the Memphis, TN gangster known for his love of a good ol’ Tommy gun
–Robert Stroud, the violent murderer know as “The Birdman of Alcatraz”
-Puerto Rican political prisoner and activist Rafael Cancel Miranda

A futile effort...or is it?

According to official records, Alcatraz claims no one successfully escaped in its history, and reports a total of 14 escape attempts involving 36 prisoners.

Of these attempted escapees, a total of 23 were captured alive, 6 were shot and killed during their attempts, 2 drowned, and 5 were listed as “missing and presumed drowned”.

So what makes escape from Alcatraz so difficult?

Several factors make Alcatraz virtually inescapable. Among them:
– Isolation: no surrounding islands.
– Distance from solid land:1.25 miles from shore to swim or attempt to boat/raft across.
– Strong currents around the island.
– Icy water temperatures: usually mid-50s to mid-60s.

So enter these three:

From the left Clarence Anglin, his brother John Anglin, and Frank Morris. The three knew each other from other previous prison stints.

Frank Morris arrived first to Alcatraz in 1960 as a bank robber, burglar, and repeated attempted escaper. John Anglin arrived first in 1961, followed shortly by his brother Clarence. They were also bank robbers and serial attempted escapees. The three were given adjoining cells.

With the assistance of another inmate, Allen West, they began planning to escape from Alcatraz together. And they hatched a genius plan…

Over six months, they used found objects fashioned into makeshift tools to widen the ventilation ducts under their respective sinks. They worked during music hour while Frank Morris played his accordion to mask the noise.

Once the vents ducts were wide enough to pass through, they had access to an unguarded corridor behind their cells which gave them access to the vacant top level of the cell block, where they continued their work.

In the meantime, the group used soap, toothpaste, concrete dust, toilet paper, paint, and human hair to create realistic-looking heads, which they would place in their beds to hide that they were not present during bed checks.

They used more than 50 raincoats along with other materials to construct life preservers. Morris got the idea from a Popular Mechanics article!

They also built a hand-stitched rubber raft…with paddles! On June 11, 1962, they waited for nightfall and went for it! West got left behind, but the other climbed the ventilation shaft to the roof, slid down a kitchen vent pipe to the ground, and climbed two 12-foot barbed wire fences. Staying in a blind spot they’d located on the northeast shoreline, they inflated their raft and got into the water. When the escape was discovered in the morning, a massive air, land, and sea search was conducted for the next 10 days. Remnants of their boat, life preservers, and wallets were located, and authorities concluded that the men had drowned during their attempted escape.

But did they? Not according to our very own Jeremy!

Jeremy, it turns out, is a relative of the Anglin brothers! He is the grandson of their first cousin!

Jeremy talked to us about his grandfather, who was himself a bank robber who did some time. He told us grandpa was even questioned by the FBI at the time to determine whether he was involved in their escape!

We also heard Jeremy’s theory that his grandfather, though never charged or arrested, was potentially part of the escape plan, specifically the getaway!

However things went down, Jeremy said his grandfather endorsed three things: the Anglin brothers did not drown, they made it to the Florida Keys, and “the guy who was not family didn’t make it.”

Wow.