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June 1962 Alcatraz escape
Prison break in San Francisco, California From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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On the night of June 11, 1962, inmates Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin escaped from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, the maximum-security prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California, United States.[2] Having spent six months preparing their breakout, the three men tucked papier-mâché model heads resembling their own likenesses into their beds, broke out of the main prison building via ventilation ducts and an unguarded utility corridor, and departed the island aboard an improvised inflatable raft to an uncertain fate.[3] A fourth inmate, Allen West, failed to escape with Morris and the Anglins and was left behind.
Hundreds of leads were pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local law enforcement officials in the ensuing years, but no conclusive evidence has ever surfaced regarding the fate of Morris and the Anglins.[4] In 1979, the FBI officially concluded, on the basis of circumstantial evidence and a preponderance of expert opinion, that the three inmates likely drowned in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay while attempting to reach the mainland.[5][6] The U.S. Marshals Service case file remains open and active, and Morris and the Anglin brothers will remain on its wanted list until between 2026 and 2031.[7] Numerous theories of widely varying plausibility on the fates of the three fugitives have been proposed by authorities, reporters, family members, and amateur enthusiasts, with circumstantial and material evidence continuing to surface, stoking debates as to whether the inmates may have survived their escape.[8]
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Notable previous escape attempts
Prior to the June 1962 escape, two inmates, Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe, had escaped Alcatraz in 1937; they vanished into the bay and were unaccounted for, though officials presumed them drowned.[9][10] Inmate Aaron Burgett had drowned during an escape attempt in 1958.[11]
Inmates
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Frank Morris
Frank Morris
Frank Lee Morris (born September 1, 1926 – disappeared June 11, 1962) was born in Washington, D.C.[12] He was born to a woman named Clara, a runaway that refused to remain home in her youth. His mother gave him the name Frank Lee Morris, bestowing on him the name of a civil engineer whom she claimed she had married, but who admittedly was not the father.[13] Morris was placed in a foster home, then an orphanage, where Clara visited him twice a week. Morris was not close with his mother, who had uncontrolled rages and never gave him proper attention. Morris was described as affable and quiet but by six years old, he would steal small change from a teacher's desk, and rifle children's lunch boxes. These actions occurred after visits from Clara. Morris would later say his parents died in 1937.[14]
Orphaned at age 11, Morris spent the rest of his childhood in foster homes.[15][16][17] He was convicted of his first criminal offense at 13, and by his late teens had been arrested for crimes ranging from narcotics possession to armed robbery.[16][17] He spent most of his early years in jail serving lunch to prisoners. Later, he was arrested for grand larceny in Miami Beach, car theft, and armed robbery.[16][17] Morris reportedly ranked in the top 2% of the general population in intelligence, as measured by IQ testing (133).[15] He served time in Florida and Georgia, then was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary to serve 10 years for robbery and possession of marijuana. In April 1955, he escaped Louisiana Prison with fellow inmate, William Martin; they hitchhiked and were picked up by an African American farmer and let out at an oil refinery on the outskirts of Baton Rouge. The two inmates spent a few months in New Orleans, cased the bank in the small town of Slidell across Lake Pontchartrain, then headed north to Kansas City where with a third partner, Earl Branci, Morris was recaptured a year later while committing a burglary. Morris was sent to Alcatraz on January 18, 1960, as inmate number AZ1441.[18][19]
John and Clarence Anglin
John William Anglin
Clarence Anglin
John William Anglin (born May 2, 1930 – disappeared June 11, 1962) and Clarence Anglin (born May 11, 1931 – disappeared June 11, 1962) were born into a family of 13 children in Donalsonville, Georgia. Their parents, George Robert Anglin and Rachael Van Miller Anglin, were seasonal farmworkers; in the early 1940s, they moved the family to Ruskin, Florida, 20 miles (32 km) south of Tampa, where the truck farms and tomato fields provided a more reliable source of income. Each June they migrated north as far as Michigan to pick cherries. Clarence and John were reportedly inseparable as youngsters; they became skilled swimmers, and amazed their siblings by swimming in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan as ice still floated on its surface.[20]
Clarence was first caught breaking into a service station when he was 14 years old.[21] The brothers began robbing banks and other establishments as a team in the early 1950s, usually targeting businesses that were closed, to ensure that no one got injured. They claimed that they used a weapon only once, during a bank heist – a toy gun.[21] On January 17, 1958, brothers John, Clarence, and Alfred Anglin robbed the Bank of Columbia in Columbia, Alabama and made off with £19,000.[22][23][24] The FBI captured them and all received 35-year sentences, which they served at Florida State Prison, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, and then Atlanta Penitentiary.[21] After repeated attempts to escape from the Atlanta facility, Clarance, assuming a prerogative of the warden, tried to ship John out of Leavenworth; he cut the top out of a big bread box and bottom out of another. John sat in one, and Clarence set the other on top, then packed in loaves of bread. A truck was ready to haul John and other boxes to a prison farm camp when a supervisor, suspicious of the size, discovered them.[25] John and Clarence were transferred to Alcatraz.[26] John arrived on October 24, 1960, as inmate AZ1476, and Clarence on January 16, 1961, as inmate AZ1485.[19][failed verification]
Allen West
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Allen West
Allen Clayton West (born March 25, 1929 – died December 21, 1978)[27] was born in New York City. He had picked up a slight southern accent during years in Georgia. West had stolen many cars and had served three prison-farm terms when he drove one across the Georgia line. West's violent and aggressive reputation made him unpopular with Alcatraz guards and he spend time imprisoned in isolation in D Block, and was a maintenance orderly as punishment for his behavior.[28] West was arrested over 20 times throughout his lifetime.[27] He was imprisoned for car theft in 1955, first at Atlanta Penitentiary, then at Florida State Prison. After an escape attempt from the Florida facility, he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1957 to serve 10 years for car theft and became inmate AZ1330. He arrived for a second term in 1958 as AZ1335.[19]
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Escape
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On January 30, 1960, Morris was moved into Cell No. 138 on outside B Block. West was his cellmate next door. West, who played with an accordion, was reportedly a compulsive chatterer and San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Campbell Bruce suggests Morris likely did "not cotton his neighbor right off". Morris lost West for an indefinite period in late summer 1960, when West helped stage a fracas at a noon meal to draw the guards and give robber Wagstaff a free hand to stab an inmate at another part of the mess hall; West and Wagstaff went off to D Block. Morris may have encountered John Anglin when John came to Alcatraz in October, the two having known each other at Atlanta. When Clarance came along in January, the brothers occupied adjoining cells. Some accounts suggest that Morris and the Anglins had never known West before Alcatraz.[29] Other suggests the four inmates all knew each other from previous incarcerations in Florida and Georgia.[30]
There are conflicting accounts as to who masterminded the escape. Campbell writes that the escape plan formulated under the leadership of Morris, saying that Morris had a conversation with a fellow prisoner in the brush shop, in which his fellow prisoner revealed that in 1957, Willard Winhoven (who was released in 1959 after serving twelve years for robbery), an inmate electrician, had removed a fan motor from a ventilation shaft to the roof on B Block and no replacement made. The inmate teased Morris, "ask the bull for the key", meaning ask the guard for the key. Morris waited until West got out of solitary confinement in early 1962 whereupon Morris ordered an accordion like West's, before telling the Anglins and West the escape plan.[31] West, when he was interrogated after he failed to escape with Morris and Anglins, claimed that the escape was his idea, saying he been painting the prison roof in spring 1961 when he realized the ventilation shafts might be a way out. West proposed the idea to the Anglins who then included Morris in the plan. Prison officials were skeptical of West's claims, due to his background, and believed Morris was the mastermind.[32] In his autobiography, Alcatraz: The True End of the Line, former inmate Darwin Coon claimed that John Anglin was the mastermind.[33]
Over the subsequent six months, the prisoners widened the ventilation ducts beneath their sinks using discarded saw blades found on the prison grounds, metal spoons from the mess hall, and an electric drill improvised from the motor of a vacuum cleaner.[9] The men concealed their work with painted cardboard, and masked the noise with Morris's accordion on top of the ambient din of music hour.[30][11] Once the holes were wide enough to pass through, the men accessed the unguarded utility corridor directly behind their cells' tier and climbed to the vacant top level of the cellblock, where they set up a clandestine workshop. Here, using over fifty raincoats among other stolen and donated materials, they constructed life preservers, based on a design Morris found in the March 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics, with the article, Your Life Preserver — How will it behave if you need it?.[34][35][36] Morris found other ideas in magazines; resin to make a lamp shade in the November 1960 issue of Popular Mechanics,[34] and Signposts of Water Safety about channel buoys indicating course and navigation hazards, in the May 21, 1962, issue of Sports Illustrated.[34] They also assembled a six-by-fourteen-foot (1.8 × 4.3 m) rubber raft, the seams carefully stitched by hand and sealed with liquid plastic available in the shops,[34] and heat from nearby steam pipes. Paddles were improvised from plywood[34] and screws. Finally, they climbed a ventilation shaft to the roof and removed the rivets holding a large fan in place.[30][11]
The men concealed their absence while working outside their cells, and after the escape itself, by sculpting dummy heads from a hand-made papier-mâché-like mixture of soap, toothpaste, concrete dust, and toilet paper, and giving them a realistic appearance with paint from the maintenance shop and hair from the barbershop floor. With towels and clothing piled under the blankets in their bunks and the dummy heads positioned on the pillows, they appeared to be sleeping.[37]
On the night of June 11, 1962, after lights out at 9:30 PM, with all preparations in place, the four men initiated their plan to escape.[11] As Morris and the Anglins set their dummy heads in place and left their cells for the last time, West discovered that the cement he had used to reinforce crumbling concrete around his vent had hardened, narrowing the opening and fixing the grille in place. From the service corridor, Morris and the Anglins, forced to leave West behind, climbed the ventilation shaft to the roof. Guards heard a loud crash as they broke out of the shaft, but nothing further was heard, and the source of the noise was not investigated. Hauling their gear with them, the three men descended 50 feet (15 m) to the ground by sliding down a kitchen vent pipe, then climbed two 12-foot (3.7 m) barbed-wire perimeter fences. At the northeast shoreline, near the power plant—a blind spot in the prison's network of searchlights and gun towers—they inflated their makeshift raft with a concertina stolen from another inmate and modified to serve as a bellows. At appoximately 10:00 p.m., investigators estimated, Morris and the Anglins launched the raft, and departed Alcatraz Island.[30][11] By the time West had managed to remove the grille and re-widen the hole, the others had gone. In the workshop, he found an unfinished pontoon, a plywood paddle, three life preservers, his own fake dummy head, and an extra raft, partially finished left behind for him. After poking his head out top of the shaft, startling seagulls on the roof, he froze for a terrified instant, before he climbed back down the shaft and returned to his cell exhausted.[30][38][39]
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Investigation
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The escape was not discovered until 7 A.M. the morning of June 12 due to the successful dummy head ruse.[40][41] Officers Lawrence Bartlett and Bill Long, when the wake up bell rang and the prisoners had to wake up, found Clarance Anglin was not moving. Long went to rouse the seemingly sleeping inmate, whereupon the dummy head which fell onto the floor, to their shock. Morris and John Anglin's dummy heads were discovered shortly after.[32] Multiple military and law-enforcement agencies conducted an extensive air, sea, and land search over the next ten days. On June 14, a Coast Guard cutter picked up a paddle floating about 200 yards (180 m) off the southern shore of Angel Island. On the same day and in the same general location, workers on another boat found a wallet wrapped in plastic complete with names, addresses, and photos of the Anglins' friends and relatives.[9] On June 21, a lifevest washed up on Cronkite beach nearly 3 miles outside the Golden Gate Bridge. The following day, a prison boat picked up another lifevest 50 yards (46 m) off Alcatraz Island, it strings still knotted at the back. Nothing else was recovered.[27]
Robert Checchi, a San Francisco police officer on the mainland, reported that on the night of the escape, he was standing at the St. Francis Yacht Harbor, on the Marina district waterfront, when he saw a fishing boat in the bay near Alcatraz. After 15 minutes, the boat left, heading for the Golden Gate Bridge. Although this fueled speculation that the prisoners might have enlisted outside accomplices to pick them up, as it was illegal for a non-authorized boat to get within several hundred yards of Alcatraz, the FBI dismissed Checchi's account without giving it serious consideration.[42][43]
FBI agents surmised early on that the raft must have sunk and the men had drowned.[44] They cited the fact that the individuals' personal effects were important belongings they had, and believed the men would have drowned before leaving them behind. However, as no bodies were found, the FBI operated on the assumption that the prisoners could have made it to land.[45]
On July 17, a month after the escape, a Norwegian ship, SS Norefjell, spotted a body floating in the ocean 15 nautical miles (28 km; 17 mi) from the Golden Gate Bridge. Although the crew knew of the escape, their ship did not have a large cold storage facility aboard and could not recover the body. They also had no radio contact with the coast guard.[46] San Francisco County Coroner Henry Turkel cast doubt on speculation that it could have been one of the escapees, emphasizing the improbability that a body would still be floating on the surface of the ocean after more than a month; instead, Turkel proposed that the corpse may have been that of Cecil Phillip Herrman, a 34-year-old unemployed baker who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge five days earlier.[47][48]
West told interrogators that the inmates had planned to paddle to Angel Island, two miles to the north of Alcatraz, then onto the mainland, where they had planned to steal clothes and a car. FBI investigators announced their official position that, while it was theoretically possible for the men to have reached Angel Island, the odds of them having survived the turbulent currents and frigid waters of the bay were negligible.[11] According to the final FBI report, the raft was never found, and no such thefts on the mainland were either reported or traced to the fugitives.[30][11][20] Various hoaxes occurred in the week after the escape. A day after the escape, a man claiming to be John Anglin called a lawyer, Eugenia MacGowan, in San Francisco to arrange a meeting with the U.S. Marshals office. When MacGowan refused, the caller terminated the phone call.[49][50] A postcard arrived at the San Francisco office of the FBI, written, "Ha, ha, ha! We made it. Frank, John, and Clarence." The FBI dismissed it is a hoax and fingerprints and handwriting on the card did not match Clarence's handwriting. A man claiming to be Morris phoned acting Warden Arthur Dollison, but when Dollison questioned him about personal details he was certain Morris would know, the man hung up.[51]
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Aftermath
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West, who fully cooperated with the investigation, was immediately put into isolation as an accessory to the escape. There, he boasted to others in isolation his role in the escape. FBI agents believed West's claim about not being able to go through the vent was an excuse and that he may have lost his nerve.[52][53] West's role in the escape was initially not mentioned by Warden Blackwell to newsmen but Charles Raudebaugh, a Chronicle reporter, studied the photos of the inmates' cell and detected a fourth cell with a gaping hole, mentioning West's name. After phoning Blackwell, who had blundered by giving West's cell photo to the press, West's involvement in the escape was publicized.[54]
West was transferred to McNeil Island, Washington after Alcatraz was closed in 1963, then back to Atlanta Penitentiary. After serving his sentence, followed by two additional sentences in Georgia and Florida, he was released in 1967, only to be arrested again in Florida the following year on charges of grand larceny. At Florida State Prison, he fatally stabbed another inmate over what may have been a racially motivated incident in October 1972. He was serving multiple sentences, including life imprisonment on the murder conviction, when he died of acute peritonitis in 1978.[27]
On December 16, 1962, Alcatraz inmate John Paul Scott made inflatable armbands from inflated rubber gloves[55] and successfully swam 2.7 nautical miles (5.0 km; 3.1 mi) from Alcatraz to Fort Point, at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. He was found there by teenagers, suffering from hypothermia and exhaustion.[10] After recovering in Letterman Army Hospital, he was returned to Alcatraz.[10] Scott, the only Alcatraz inmate known to have reached the shore by swimming, his escape made in worse conditions and using inferior gear than Morris and the Anglins, stoked the theory that Morris and the Anglins could have successfully navigated the bay. [56][57] Today, athletes swim the same Alcatraz-to-Fort Point route as part of two annual triathlon events.[58][59]
Because Alcatraz cost more to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta),[60] and because 50 years of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the facility to be closed on March 21, 1963.
The FBI closed its file on the escape on December 31, 1979, after a 17-year investigation.[9] Their official finding was that Morris and the Anglins most likely drowned in the cold waters of the bay while attempting to reach Angel Island. They cited the remnants found in the bay, as well as the personal effects of the men, as evidence that the raft broke up and sank after departing Alcatraz and the three convicts succumbed to hypothermia, and their bodies were swept out to sea by the rapid currents of the Bay.[2][5][6][11]
The FBI handed their evidence over to the United States Marshals Service, whose investigation remains open. As Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke told NPR, "There's an active warrant, and the Marshals Service doesn't give up looking for people." In 2009, Dyke said that he was still receiving leads on a regular basis.[61][62] The warrant will expire between September 1, 2026 and May 11, 2031, when the missing men would have reached the age of 100.[63][64]
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Reported sightings
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For years after the escape, many alleged sightings of the fugitives, as well as possible leads to their whereabouts were reported. In January 1965, the FBI investigated a rumor that Clarence Anglin was living in Brazil. Agents were dispatched to South America but found no direct evidence that he was there.[45]
A man called the Bureau in 1967 claiming to have been Morris's classmate and to have known him for 30 years, as well having served time in jail with him. He said he had bumped into him in Maryland and described him as having "a small beard and moustache", but refused to give further details.[65]
Family members of the Anglin brothers claimed to have occasionally received postcards and messages from unknown sources over the years. Most were unsigned, others were signed "Jerry and Joe".[66][67] The family also have a Christmas card, which they alleged was received in the family mailbox in 1962, saying, "To Mother, from John. Merry Christmas."[50] Another of the Anglins' 11 siblings, Robert, was quoted in a 1993 newspaper saying they had mysterious phone calls for years.[66] The mother of the Anglin brothers reportedly received flowers anonymously every Mother's Day until her death in 1973, and two very tall, unusual women in heavy makeup were reported to have attended her funeral.[66] The 1993 newspaper described Federal officials saying that in the mid-to-late 1960s and into the 1970s there were "six or seven" sightings reported of the Anglin brothers, all in north Florida or Georgia. Robert was also quoted as saying that in 1989, when the father of the Anglin brothers died, two bearded men attended the funeral.[66]
In 1989, a woman who identified herself only as "Cathy" called the tip line of the show Unsolved Mysteries, to report that a photo of Clarence Anglin matched the description of a man who lived on a farm near Marianna, Florida. Another woman also recognized a photo of Clarence Anglin, and said he lived near Marianna. She correctly identified his eye color, height, and other physical features. Another witness claimed that a sketch of Frank Morris bore a striking resemblance to a man she had seen in the same area.[68]
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Claims and developments
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In an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, author Don DeNevi related his interviews with inmate Clarence Carnes, who claimed that he had received a postcard from Morris and the Anglins after the escape, which read "Gone fishing", which was a code word that their escape had succeeded. Carnes expressed belief that Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, may have arranged for a boat to pick the three men up out of the bay, and that the boat then dropped the escapees off at Pier 13 in San Francisco's Hunters Point District. Carnes' claims were disavowed by officials.[69]
In 1993, a former Alcatraz inmate named Thomas Kent told the television program America's Most Wanted that he had helped plan the escape, and claimed to have provided "significant new leads" to investigators.[70] He said that Clarence Anglin's girlfriend had agreed to meet the men on shore and drive them to Mexico. He declined to participate in the actual escape, he said, because he could not swim. Officials were skeptical of Kent's account, because he was paid $2,000 for the interview.[30]
A man named John Leroy Kelly dictated an extended deathbed confession to his nurse in 1993. Kelly claimed that he and a partner picked up Morris and the Anglins in a boat and transported them to the Seattle, Washington area. Later, under the guise of transporting them to Canada, Kelly and his partner murdered the escapees to get the $40,000 their families had collected for them. At a location in Seattle where Kelly claimed the three escapees were buried, no human remains were found.[71]
A 2003 MythBusters episode[72] on the Discovery Channel tested the feasibility of an escape from the island aboard a raft constructed with the same materials and tools available to the inmates. Hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, along with a crew member, successfully made landfall on the Marin Headlands at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge.[73] The show's conclusion was that the escape was "possible".[30]
In a 2011 National Geographic Channel documentary entitled Vanished from Alcatraz Michael Dyke, the last Deputy Marshal assigned to the case, uncovered reports from the week of the escape, suggesting that contrary to the official assertions that the raft was never found or that no thefts were connected to the escape, a raft was reported to have been discovered on Angel Island the day after the escape, with footprints leading away from it. Furthermore, a 1955 blue Chevrolet (California license plate KPB076) was reported stolen in Marin County the same day—a claim corroborated by contemporaneous stories in the Humboldt Times and the San Francisco Examiner.[74] The following day, a motorist in Stockton, California, 80 miles (130 km) east of San Francisco, reported to the California Highway Patrol that he was forced off the road by three men in a blue Chevrolet.[67][75][76][77] This sparked conspiracy theories that officials may have engaged in a cover-up.[78] Other suggest that the supposed raft found on Angel Island was actually discounted as a fishing net by the press and that the car stolen may have been unconnected.[79]
The same year, an 89-year-old man named Bud Morris, who claimed he was a cousin of Frank Morris, said that on "eight or nine" occasions prior to the escape he delivered envelopes of money to Alcatraz guards, presumably as bribes. He further claimed to have met his cousin face to face in a San Diego park shortly after the escape. His daughter, who was "eight or nine" years old at the time, said she was present at the meeting with "Dad's friend, Frank", but "had no idea [about the escape]".[80]
A 2014 study of the ocean currents by scientists at Delft University concluded that if the prisoners left Alcatraz at 11:30 p.m. on June 11, they could have made it to Horseshoe Bay, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and that any debris would have floated in the direction of Angel Island, consistent with where the paddle and belongings were actually found. If they left before or after that time, they said, tides and currents were such that their chances of survival were slim.[81][82]
A 2015 History Channel documentary entitled Alcatraz: Search for the Truth presented further circumstantial evidence gathered over the years by the Anglin family.[83] Kenneth and David Widner displayed Christmas cards containing the Anglins' handwriting, and allegedly received by family members for three years after the escape. While the handwriting was verified as the Anglins', none of the envelopes contained a postmarked stamp, so experts could not determine when they had been delivered.[84] The family cited a story from family friend Fred Brizzi, who grew up with the brothers and claimed to have recognized them in Rio de Janeiro in 1975. They produced photographs purportedly taken by Brizzi, including one of two men, who according to Brizzi were John and Clarence Anglin, standing next to a large termite mound. Other photos showed a Brazilian farm that Brizzi claimed was owned by the men. Forensic experts working for the family confirmed that the photos were taken in 1975, and asserted that the two men were "more than likely" the Anglins, although the age and condition of the photo, and the fact that both men were wearing sunglasses, hindered efforts to make a definitive determination.[85][86] Brizzi also presented an alternative escape theory: rather than use the raft to cross the bay, he said, they paddled around the island to the boat dock, where they attached an electrical cord—which was reported missing from the dock on the night of the escape—to the rudder of a prison ferry that departed the island shortly after midnight, and were towed behind it to the mainland.[87]
Art Roderick, a retired Deputy U.S. Marshal who had once headed the investigation (and interviewed Brizzi himself years ago) and later worked with the Anglin family, called Brizzi's photograph of the two men "absolutely the best actionable lead we've had," but added, "it could still all be a nice story which isn't true"; or the photograph could be a misdirection, aimed at steering the investigation away from the Anglins' actual whereabouts. Michael Dyke said Brizzi was "a drug smuggler and a con man," and was suspicious of his account. Brizzi's widow said that she never heard him mention seeing the Anglin brothers in Rio, and that he was “a con man” who was prone to making up stories. An expert working for the U.S. Marshal's Service did not believe the photograph was legitimate. Dyke said measurements of the physical characteristics of the Anglin brothers indicate that they are not the men in the Brazil photo, but he acknowledged the difficulty in making a definitive determination and ruling it out as a valid lead.[88] In January 2020, an Irish creative agency and AI specialists at Identv used facial recognition techniques to conclude that the men in the photo were John and Clarence Anglin.[89][90]
Surviving family members also alleged that Robert Anglin had told them before his death in 2010 that he had been in contact with John and Clarence from 1963 until approximately 1987. Surviving family members announced plans to travel to Brazil to conduct a personal search; but Roderick cautioned that they could be arrested by Brazilian authorities because the Alcatraz escape remains an open Interpol case.[84]
In 2018, the FBI disclosed the existence of a letter, received by the San Francisco Police Department in 2013. The writer claimed to be John Anglin and asserted that Frank Morris died in 2008 and Clarence Anglin died in 2011.[91] His purpose in writing the letter, he said, was to negotiate his surrender in exchange for medical treatment of his cancer.[91] The letter's authenticity was deemed inconclusive.[92]
In a 2019 episode of the series Mission Declassified, investigative journalist Christof Putzel investigated FBI reports on the escape. Along with the initial claims that the raft found on Angel Island, he noted various reports mentioning a blue Chevrolet, of the same description as the one stolen after the escape, spotted in Oklahoma,[93] Indiana,[94] Ohio,[95] and South Carolina, where, three months after the escape, three men matching the escapees' description attempted to acquire a residence in the woods.[96]
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In popular culture
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J. Campbell Bruce's 1963 book Escape from Alcatraz documents the 1962 escape, along with other escape attempts over the 29 years that Alcatraz Island served as a prison.[34] The book was adapted into the film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), starring Clint Eastwood, Fred Ward, and Jack Thibeau as Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, respectively, while Larry Hankin played Charley Butts, a character based on West.[97]
A fictionalized version of the escape was depicted in the TV movie Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story (1980), based on Clarence Carnes' account, which depicts Morris and the Anglins, played by Ed Lauter, Louis Giambalvo and Antony Ponzini, respectively, being assisted by Bumpy Johnson and boarding a boat arranged in the bay.[98]
Terror on Alcatraz (1987) stars Aldo Ray as Morris, who was the sole survivor of the escape, returning years later to Alcatraz and scouring his old prison cell for a map to a safe deposit box key.[citation needed]
The film Dear Eleanor (2016) depicts a recently escaped Frank Morris, played by Josh Lucas, meeting the main characters, during their cross-country trip to meet Eleanor Roosevelt; they help him evade the police before he flees the country. They later get a post card from Morris living in Ireland.
In season 2 of Loki, it is revealed that recurring character Casey, played by Eugene Cordero, is a temporal variant of Frank Morris. While time slipping, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) travels back in time to the 1962 escape. John and Clarence Anglin are played by the episode's directors, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.[99]
David Hasteda's 2022 graphic novel Frank Lee, After Alcatraz offers a fictionalized account of what may have happened to Morris in the years following the escape, as after he separates from the Anglin Brothers after all three men survive their escape, Morris is taken in by a couple willing to hide him.[100]
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