The Alcatraz Escape of 1962

Alcatraz held federal prisoners from 1934 to 1963. It was built for men who had escaped or caused trouble elsewhere, and its best defence was not its walls but the bay around it: cold water and strong tidal currents between the island and the shore.

Frank Lee Morris arrived in January 1960. He had a long record of robbery and prison escapes, and tests had put his IQ at 133. John Anglin arrived in October 1960 and his brother Clarence in January 1961. With a fourth prisoner, Allen West, they began to plan.

At the back of each cell, under the sink, was a small ventilation grille. Over many months the men chipped away the damp concrete around these openings with saw blades, spoons taken from the mess hall and a homemade drill driven by a vacuum-cleaner motor. Painted cardboard hid the holes, and Morris played his accordion during the evening music hour to cover the noise.

Through the vents they reached an unguarded utility corridor running behind the cells. From there they climbed to the empty top level of the cellblock and set up a hidden workshop.

In the workshop they made life vests and a raft of roughly 6 by 14 feet from more than fifty raincoats, stitched and sealed with heat. They followed ideas from a March 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics. Plywood paddles and a concertina converted into a bellows completed the kit.

In their cells they built dummy heads from soap, toothpaste, concrete dust and toilet paper, painted them in skin tones and finished them with hair swept from the prison barbershop floor. Lying in bed under a blanket, the heads would pass a guard's torch at night.

Lights went out at 9:30 p.m. Morris and the Anglins slipped through their vents. Allen West could not follow: cement he had used to hold his loosened grille in place had hardened, and by the time he broke through, the others had gone.

The three men climbed a ventilation shaft, forced off a large fan cover on the roof whose rivets they had already removed, and crossed the roof of the cellhouse. They slid about 50 feet down a kitchen vent pipe, climbed two barbed-wire fences and reached the north-east shore near the power plant, a blind spot for the searchlights. They are thought to have launched the raft at about 10 p.m.

The dummy heads were discovered at the 7 a.m. count. A huge search followed by sea, air and land. On 14 June a Coast Guard cutter picked up a paddle near Angel Island, and searchers found a waterproofed wallet holding names, addresses and photographs of the Anglins' relatives. A life vest washed up beyond the Golden Gate Bridge on 21 June, and another was found near Alcatraz the next day. No bodies were ever identified.

In 1979 the FBI closed its investigation, concluding that the men most likely drowned trying to reach Angel Island. The US Marshals Service never closed its case and still accepts tips. Alcatraz itself closed on 21 March 1963.