How the Escape from Alcatraz Worked

In 1962, three ordinary criminals transcended into folk heroes when they crawled out of their cells in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary took to the water in a homemade raft and were never heard from again. Could they have possibly survived?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
you about get this our book. We have a Stuff
you Should Know book coming out this November and you're
going to love it and you can preorder it now.
That's right. It's called Stuff you Should Know Colon, an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, and it's been a
lot of fun to work on and we're really, i

(00:20):
mean genuinely excited about how this thing has come together.
It's twenties six chunky Harry chapters that are just going
to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we
are indeed proud of this book. It is truly, indubitably
the first Stuff you Should note book and it's coming
out this November and you can order it now, pre
order everywhere you get books, so do that, and we

(00:43):
thank you in advice. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of our Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Jerry's
out there and that ether somewhere. Um like that one

(01:03):
kid being transmitted from the camera to the TV in
Willy Wonka. Wow, I got that one eight kinds of wrong.
But anyway, this is stuff you should know which is appropriate?
Did I would get something eight kinds of wrong right
at the beginning. Did you ever hear the story from
Gene Wilder about the move at the beginning of that

(01:25):
movie where he walks out with a cane where he
did the spill the summersault. Yeah, he see sticks a
cane in the ground and does a summer salt. He
said that that was his idea. And this just shows
the brilliance of Gene Wilder, And he said he did
that because he knew from that moment on no one
would believe anything that that character said. Oh yes, I

(01:46):
have heard that before. That is that is brilliant. That
man was a brilliant man in a wonderful human being.
I loved him. He's got One of his last interviews
on Conan O'Brien was so great because Conan was just
gushing and Gene Wilder was very I think, kind of
taken back by how much he means to people. Um uh,
have you ever seen? Oh no, that wasn't the question

(02:08):
I had. Did you know? Did you know that? The
question was did you fart? Did you know that Conan
O'Brien and Dennis Leary are cousins. I don't think I
knew that. According to Conan O'Brien asking a question on Jeopardy,
that is his cousin did not know that. Uh. Speaking

(02:29):
of Jeopardy, Uh, we have a colleague named Ken Jennings
who was on Jeopardy. And we have another colleague, two
colleagues called Daniel and Jorge, and they have a um
A podcast called Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe. It's
pretty cool. But they also, Chuck, I just saw have

(02:49):
a PBS Kids animated program coming out September seven called
Eleanor Wonders Why and it looks adorable. Wow. That sounds
like right at my daughter, Alley. Yeah, so check it
out everybody. PBS Kids September seven, Eleanor Wonders Why And
congrats Daniel and Jorgey. Do you have any famous cousins,
famous or infamous? I think we are the famous cousins.

(03:13):
That's that's how sad our families are. Yeah, it feels
pretty great, though. I keep being like, hey, let's have
another family reunion this month. Speaking of infamous cousins, Chuck,
how about those Anglan brothers. Huh? Yeah, man, this is uh.
I could have thought I kind of thought, we did this,

(03:33):
I know we do, we do one on Alcatraz, and
maybe it just briefly touched on it. Absolutely because this
is uh, this movie, the nineteen what was it seventy
nine Escape from Alcatraz movie with Clint Eastwood was one
of my favorite movies as a kid. It's a good movie.
I went. I watched it just the other night as

(03:53):
part of this. Yeah, it was an HBO special, so
I must have been. I didn't see it in when
I was eight, and probably was like ten or eleven,
and it was one of those movies I probably watched
over a dozen times when I was twelve twelve years old,
followed by Krull and Outline. Oh man, those are great.
They always went together, though, didn't they? Yeah, in war games.

(04:15):
I mean that those are all HBO specials. But this
is a really good movie. And I'm a big, big
fan of prison escape movies. And I was thinking today
when I was looking over this stuff again that it's
so weird that like, these guys are hard and criminals,
and yet when you're researching this, all you can think
about is, oh man, I hope they got out of there,

(04:38):
and I hope they lived the fat life in Brazil.
Well that really speaks to like who they are, what
they became because of this escape, which is put most
simply their folk heroes, I guess. So, Yeah, that's definitely
a part of being a folk hero is that you
can transcend the kind of like judgments that society typically
levies against people like criminals. Like if you if you

(05:01):
are so good at your craft, are so good at
something to do with criminality that, um, you transcend being
judged for your crimes. That's you've become a folk hero
for sure. It's like dB Cooper. Yeah, and I think
it helps that. Uh you know, these guys were armed
robbers and thieves and I think Frank Morris and we'll
get into all these who these dudes are, but he

(05:22):
was a drug trafficker. But they weren't rapist and murderers
that I don't think you can transcend that, know, they
they were definitely non violent criminals from everything that I've seen.
They used to toy gun in one of these robberies. Yeah,
it's adorable. Well, let's talk about these guys like you
were saying, Um, we're talking about a group of people
who escaped from Alcatraz, and as far as anyone knows,

(05:44):
they are the only ones who really may have escaped
from Alcatraz. They vanished in nineteen sixty two, um, last
seen leaving their cells and were never heard from again.
And like you said, they were all hardened criminals, like
lifelong rear criminals. Frank Morris was thirty five when he
left Alcatraz, and he had been a criminal since he

(06:06):
was thirteen. Um, he was in and out of institutions,
and like he said, he wasn't a violent criminal. He
wasn't a rapist or murder or anything like that. He
was he was he liked to to to sell the drugs.
He had, like his forehead tattooed or a star tattooed
on his forehead for a while, which he very sensibly

(06:26):
had removed later on. Um, is that what that means
but that he was a drug trafficker? No, I think
that means that he did a few too many drugs
one night. Oh he really did have a star. Yeah,
I thought that was some like prison thing for like
the tear drop tattoo means you doesn't that mean you
killed somebody or something. That's what I've always heard. But

(06:47):
I don't know. It could just be or been legend,
but yes, what I've always heard he really did have
a star. Okay, yeah, I think he got super wasted,
had a star tattooed on his forehead. There was a
tattoo or just far too handy that yeah, yeah, which
I think the old saying don't ever make friends with
tattoo artists or at least drinking buddies. Sure, that's true.

(07:10):
But he was also super smart too. Yeah, And they
point this out in the movie, um and a lot
of the movie. I mean, it's pretty close to the
real story that they did a really good job, but
they do make a big deal in the movie about
how smart he was. I know i Q is sort
of taking or leave it as far as uh that
being a real measurement of one's intelligence. But he supposedly

(07:31):
had an i Q of one thirty and the b
o P which stands for the was it Bureau of Prisons.
I didn't know they had rankings, but they had rankings
of uh intellectual intellectuality? Is that a word? Uh? Yeah,
I think so it gets the point across ergo it is. Yeah,
And I'm curious what other rankings they have. But Um,

(07:53):
you know, best looking, best abs. But he was in
the top two percent supposedly in the American prison system
as far as his intellectual capabilities. Yeah, so you you
hit on a point there. I think we need to
at least at least bring up like the the movie
did follow the actual the truth of the matter fairly

(08:14):
closely in some cases. In other cases it veered wildly away,
Like there was a character based on one guy who
was very much involved, but they didn't even use his name,
and they made him seem less involved than he actually was. Um,
there's a lot that the movie gets wrong. But the
problem with covering this is that there's so many gaps

(08:36):
and holes that are so easily and casually filled in
that you can't help but wonder, like, wait, was this
was this detail provided by somebody who saw the movie
and took the movie as fact, Like where are we exactly?
And just how pure the knowledge and understanding is of
this escape. So you have to just kind of bear
that in mind that it's a it's kind of a

(08:57):
blur in the annals of crime as far as um
factuality goes. Yeah, but it's a good story, great story,
and most of this is pretty true. I think so.
Frank Morris was four years into a fourteen year stint
and this was for a bank robbery and he was
transferred to the rock in nine sixty. It's Alcatraz. It's

(09:22):
a prison island or an island prison, and so I
might say the island itself is a prison, which we'll
get to. And then his buddies you mentioned the England
brothers J W. John William and his younger brother Clarence.
We're thirty and twenty nine years old, and they were
from a very big family of migrant farm workers in

(09:44):
South Georgia. They traveled all over the country where wherever
the work was, basically as a big family, and they
got into stealing things from people. Yeah, and they were
the ones who used the toy gun. Later on, they
were I think visiting family in a small town called Columbia, Alabama,
which is in the southeast of the state, and they

(10:05):
found out that this bank had been around for a
hundred years in this town. It had never been robbed.
So they assumed, we're going to change that. It'll be
easy to knock over. And apparently it was pretty easy
to knock over. And they had a toy gun that
they used, and they still managed to get away with
at least I think like ten grand or twenty grand something,
a pretty substantial amount of money. And they were on

(10:25):
the run for a little while but got caught in
the Alabama AND's were not very happy with it, and
they threw the book at these brothers. They got twenty
five years sentences for robbing a bank with a toy gun,
and that actually was way better than the sentence they
initially faced, which was the potentially the death panel. That's yeah,

(10:45):
so so they were they were. They were caught and busted.
And they had a third brother named Alfred too, who
was also involved, but he was never sent to that
to the rock as you put it, I bet it
was not a bet. It was actually a lot easier
to rob banks back then. Yeah, it was way easier
to be a criminal, even just a few decades ago. Yeah,
just in general, I think now it's like I don't

(11:08):
even try, No, you got I mean, if it's not
the cops and their cameras, he got some dumb neighbor
with their cameras like me right, Oh man, I hate
to get off topics so quickly, and we should post
this on the Facebook page or something, or maybe I'll
put it on Instagram. What I got attacked by a
squirrel and it was captured by my front of the
house camera. Oh yeah, everyone wants to see that. This

(11:30):
is great. I just I was taking out some recycling
and I heard some rustling, and I went around the
corner and I was like, this squirrel was freaking out,
and then he literally leapt if you freeze fram it,
he leapt three feet in the air and hit my
leg and ran up my leg a little bit. And
then wow, and I react thustily. That's awesome. You know,
would be wonderful as to intercut close ups of your

(11:51):
face when you got that Charlie Horse on internet round up.
Oh my god, in this squirrel attack, it's a good thing.
I don't care about myself and looking dumb. Why did you?
Why did that squirrel attack you? What did you do
to it? I didn't do anything. It was freaking out.
And then I turned and looked after I dropped the
recycling off, and he and another squirrel we're going at
it in our oak tree. So I think he was

(12:12):
just he was all riled up. He might have been Yeah,
did he have a star tattooed on his forehead, did
right on his little tenty free forehead. Yes, please do
post that. Okay, So all right, these guys are all
in Alcatraz. And Alcatraz at the time was um. Like
I said, it was sort of the rock itself was

(12:34):
the prison. And that was the idea was that even
if you're even if you managed to get out of
the prison that they eventually built, which we'll talk about,
then you still can't get out of there because you
gotta swim over a mile to the nearest body of land,
about one point three miles. That water is really cold,
the currents are brutal, the winds are really strong. San
Francisco Bay is not you know, for people that haven't

(12:57):
been there, it's not just some lovely little chill body
of water that you hang out in. No, it's not
a very hospitable body of water. It's not so um.
The the idea was that, yeah, like when you got
sent to Alcatraz, you weren't getting off of that island
and you were either paroled or died. Um. And that

(13:18):
was actually the reason that the England's and Frank Morris
were sent there was because they had all met at
the Federal pen and at Atlanta, I guess the wind
down in Grant Park, right, Yeah, which that building is amazing.
It's one of the most forbidding buildings in the world.
I would say it looks like an old timey federal penitentiary.
Al Capone was there too for a little while. Yeah.

(13:38):
I actually drove by there not too long ago with
my daughter for the first time, and I was like,
check out that building. Look at that. It's like, that's
a prison to what's a prison? And I went, oh, well,
I guess I got to explain that. I'll tell you
when you're eighteen if you make it and don't go
to prison first. Right. So they all met at the
Federal pen and Atlanta, and I can't remember if they
actually made it out or if they were called escaping,

(14:00):
but they were known escape artists like the um Frank
Morris that escaped from places in Florida. Um. They didn't
stay put when you when you put them in prison,
and so that's why they were all sent to Alcatraz
and just crazily as they arrived between nineteen sixty and
nineteen sixty one, they were all put pretty close together,

(14:20):
and in fact, the Angland brothers had adjoining cells, which
is a very stupid thing to do, but that's what
they did in part, I believe because there is a
certain thread of arrogance that ran through the administration of
um Alcatraz that it was just basically inescapable. Yeah, and
I think you also sort of want happy prisoners, and

(14:44):
I've heard of request like that being made possible before,
like hope you put me near my brother, We're gonna
be a lot better behaved. Yeah, we're definitely not going
to to break out. Um. I don't think we mentioned either,
Like Alcatraz was so formidable as a just an island
that the very first time they used it was when
the Army put soldiers there who who cheered on President

(15:07):
Lincoln's death, And so they didn't even bother building a
prison though. They just built some barracks through them on
the island. It's like, well, you're in prison now, because
good luck getting out of here. Yeah, that's what I
saw too, um. And when the Bureau of Prisons took over,
they they really fortified it even more. Like you said,
there was a larger building that housed everything from like

(15:29):
the mess hall to the cell blocks. So when you
were in a cell in a cell block. You were
in you were in a little tiny prison inside a
larger prison, inside this island prison. UM. And the cell
blocks themselves had like three inch thick concrete walls, reinforced
iron bars. The building itself was made a very thick concrete.

(15:49):
It was it was just meant to to to basically
tell you there's there's no getting out here. But UM,
what's what's crazy is UM Frank Morris and the England Brothers.
They weren't the first people to ever try to bust
out UM. I believe they were part of a total
of thirty six people who tried to escape in the
history of the prison. UM. Everybody else, almost everybody else

(16:11):
was either UM killed, UH captured, or their bodies were
found except and I did not realize this, UM Morris
and the England Brothers were not the first people to
vanish without a trace from Alcatraz. Had you heard about UM,
Ted Cole and Ralph Roe. I hadn't heard about them
until this, But in the thirties, late thirties, they did escape,

(16:34):
and they did vanish, and you know, sort of like
where this story is going there, I don't think anyone
wants to admit that from the prison system that they
could have really made it. So they're like, nah, they die,
they drowned. But the thing is, the thing that really
differentiates um, the England Brothers and Frank Morris from guys
like Ted Cole and Ralph Roe. They all shared in

(16:54):
common that they escaped from Alcatraz and vanished without a trace.
The thing that differentiates Morris in the Englands is that
they're folk heroes because almost exclusively because of this plan
they devised and executed, and that the plan was so
good and so complex and well done that it actually

(17:16):
lends credence to the idea that they may have survived
and escaped from Alcatraz genuinely. And what they had in
common is that they were all top ten in best
abs in the prison system. And what everybody listening right
now has in common is that you're about to hear
an ad to Okay, we're back everybody, UM, and I

(18:03):
think it's high time we we talked about the plan,
the escape plan, don't you. Yeah, if you're gonna escape
from Alcatraz, Um, it's not the kind of thing where
you distract a guard and just run and jump over
a fence. You gotta start this thing. Uh, this plan
many months in advance, and by all accounts they and
by all accounts meaning from the one account that we

(18:24):
really have this, they started planning easily six months before
the escape. They start developing this plan. They start collecting
kind of anything they can get their hands on that
they think they can use. Um everything from just loose
nuts and bolts and screws to um things that I mean,

(18:44):
they actually ended up using a lot of this stuff,
but I got the impression that they were just kind
of like any time they saw something that they could
squirrel away and hide, they would do it because you
never know what you could use it for. Yeah, and
so like over the six month period, they amassed something
like a d tools that they either stole, had stolen

(19:04):
for them rebuild, or repurposed out of other stuff, or
just made completely out of like their own labor. Like,
they had a pretty extensive toolkit that they created. UM.
One of the ways that they got a lot of
the tools was from Alan West, who we haven't mentioned yet,
but a lot of people don't realize there was a

(19:25):
fourth conspirator in the Alcatraz escape UM who was a
major integral part of it. But who actually didn't go
along with the escape As we'll see that part of
the movie is so tough. It is, especially with that
poor guy. He he just looks came out of the
womb like down on my luck? Can you spare a dime's?

(19:49):
But he was, um, I think he was the guy
who played Kramer on Seinfeld in the in the pilot,
in the NBC pilot. Yeah, so like in the show
the I playing Framer on the show. In the show,
I think that was him that he stole the eminem's
I think, yeah, so he was an escape from Alcatraz
to Yeah, he just he's perfect for that part. But

(20:12):
this guy named Alan West, he he was on the
painting crew and he put that to use big time.
One of the first ways he did it was he
was in the prison barber shop and managed to steal
a pair of electric clippers while he was in their
painting and they were like, hey, this motor will come
in handy. Well, let's repurpose it into a power drill,
and they did, Yeah, that's pretty cool. He also, uh,

(20:33):
I mean just having a little motor so handy. So
he came across a vacuum cleaner that wasn't working, and
he said, hey, do you mind if I repair this? Uh,
I gotta shake the tree first, but after that, you
mind if I repair this? And that what they call
it the vacuuming. No, and he got a pee on
the on the chain gang that you call it shaking
the tree. Oh, I guess I think that's what it's called. Sure,

(20:58):
But I mean it wasn't have to do with fixing
a vacuum nothing. It's just prison humor. Oh. I got
to me a lot of prison jokes. So all the
inmates listening right now is busted out laughing. Like he said,
shake the tree. Well, it's a drinking game. How we'll explain.
If you're listening from prison, if someone says shake the tree,
you take a drink of pruno. Well that's another drink. Yeah,

(21:22):
that's the but that's what you would drink when somebody said,
shake the tree, the tree one more time, Shake the tree, guys.
I think everybody's got a pretty good buzzing prison right now.
So he says, let me fix this vacuum cleaner. They say,
that's fine. He saw that the vacuum cleaner had a
couple of different motors, and one of which he used
to repair and actually make, you know, pass it off

(21:42):
as a working vacuum cleaner. And then he just took
that other one, and that meant that they could make
a drill that was even more powerful than the other one. Yeah. Um,
so they had not one, but two electric drills um
at their disposal, which kind of gives you a pretty
good idea of just how dedicated and smart and crafty
these guys were, right Yes, um. They also very famously

(22:05):
ended up with fifty five zero different raincoats that were
made from rubber prison issue raincoats, so they got from
other inmates. And this really reveals something that I think
a lot of people don't necessarily realize. It seems like
basically all the inmates in prison with England and the
England's and Morris were well aware of their plans, not

(22:26):
necessarily every detail or even any of the details, just
that they were planning on breaking out, and so they
managed to get their hands on like fifty different raincoats
from other prisoners that they used to to build um
a life raft and life vests with pretty great I
think the idea was is that these guys didn't like
being on Alcatraz. So they kind of figured, Hey, if

(22:47):
these guys actually get out, they're going to close this
place down. We're going to get out of here. You know.
I don't I don't know if I would have gone
along with that rationale, I would have thought, it's going
to be even worse for us here. But we'll we'll
hang on to what happened until the end of the show.
How about that. I think everybody would have kept their
pruno from you had you raised that point. You know.

(23:08):
So they've got all this stuff. They got paint, they
got paper, they collect hair and uh from the from
the barbershop. They like sweep up this hair and keep that.
You might be thinking, why in the world would they
need that. We'll just wait, you'll see. And then they
had about three and a half hours each evening after dinner,
slop and before lights out where they had to work,

(23:31):
um and create, you know, a way out of their
prison cell. And then once they get out of their
prison cell, like you said, they're still in this larger building,
then a way out of there. But the first trick
is getting out of their individual cells. Yeah. Well, so
from what I understand, that took up like the lion's
share of the time between when they first hatched this
plan in the time when they finally escaped. Um, they

(23:54):
were like these little six by eight or nine or something,
very small ventilation chef cemented into the wall. Um. These
the grates were cemented into the wall, but really it
was just a little metal grade over a hole. So
they figured it they could start chipping away at that
hole and enlarge the hole into something they could crawl through.
And that's exactly what they did. UM. Eventually, over time,

(24:17):
Frank Morris and then both of the England brothers managed
to create these holes. UM. And they did so by
by serving his lookout for one another while the other
one chipped one night, and then they would trade off
that kind of thing. And then here's the question that
I have. I could not confirm one way or the
other if it was a movie thing or if it
was a real life thing. But in the movie they create,

(24:40):
um these kind of cardboard false walls that they're able
to fill the hole with that it looks like the
great is still there and the wall is still intact. UM.
So when they were out of their cells, they could
put this false wall in behind them and um, nobody
would be any the wiser when they just walked past
and casually glanced in there. I don't know if they

(25:01):
did that or not. I mean, it's a pretty great
detail of the movie, so I'm inclined to believe it.
Let's go with it. What I didn't see in or
I don't I haven't seen it in a long time.
Did they have those drills in the movie, because I
just remember a lot of digging with them. They kind
of just like used a sharpened spoon as a little
mini pick a sharpened spoon, uh, with a the warden's

(25:25):
fingernail clippers that he steals in like one of the
first scenes. But there was no drill in the movie,
was there? Not that I remember? So there definitely were
two drills. One of the one of the drills, that
one with the vacuum motor. They actually figured out it's
just too loud, it's too powerful um and too loud
that so they abandoned that one. But I don't know
what became of the um hair clipper drill. I didn't

(25:47):
hear anything about that one other than that they created
it and used it well. They managed to dig through
though where they could get their bodies out of the
cell uh, and that just must have felt like, you know,
we're we're halfway there, point guys. So they um from
there it led to a utility cord or it was
about a meter wide, and there were no guards in

(26:08):
here because this is sort of like the guts of
the prison, like why would you need to guard where
there are no people wink wink uh And in that
quarter or they could kind of move around freely. They
would climb up to the ceiling. This is like a
three story cell block still within a larger building though
of course, like we mentioned, and then they had a

(26:28):
full on workshop up there for a few weeks. They
could store their tools, they could hide their stuff, they
could build uh. We haven't really talked about the rafts,
but where they were much they would build their rafts
there and it just sort of sort of serves as
their staging area where they would eventually leave from to
go buy this big heavy iron grate to a ventilation chaft,

(26:50):
which actually finally led to the rooftop. Right. But that
big iron gray was a big iron problem because the
bars were reinforced. There was they were um I think
welded or maybe screwed I'm not sure into this um
iron ring that covered this ventilation shaft. So it was
a big problem. And then they figured out that the

(27:12):
bolts holding this whole thing together were actually not nearly
as strong as the bars that made up the great
and the ring that held the bars. So they started
working away at cutting these bolts. One way or another,
I think they created a wrench. They built themselves a wrench,
and they managed to use that to some pretty good effect.
But it went from digging out of their cells to

(27:33):
figuring out a way to get through this great um.
That was kind of like stage two um. And then
let's talk about the raft, because the raft is extremely
important part of this whole thing, and I think really
one of the things, if not the thing, that that
lends credence to the idea that they might have actually
made it. Yeah, so they got these raincoats, and back

(27:53):
then raincoats were just basically sheets of rubber. Yeah, they
didn't breathe very well, very hot things like Gordon's Fisherman
type of stuff. A sweaty Gordon's Fisherman. Oh yeah, that
guy was always sweaty. So they ended up creating a
six ft by fourteen foot life raft from these raincoats
from UH an article in Popular Mechanics which shows up

(28:15):
a couple of times, very useful magazine if you were
trying to escape prison. And it was an article about
a hunter who had gotten lost and survived hunting geese
that he attracted using rubber decoys that he'd made. So
they get this idea. They build these inflatable pontoons made
from these raincoat sleeves, so they were stuffed inside and

(28:36):
made air tight by gluing rubber cement contact cement over
the seams and then pressing them against steel pipes which
vulcanized that it just basically melted everything shut. And then
you have these floatable pontoons that you could use and
craft this larger raft. Yeah. So they had something that
was inflatable that because those seams were vulcanized, it would

(28:58):
hold the air. The air couldn't escape. Um. And they
used a concertina. Um oh, I can't remember, Handsome Pete.
There's like a little a little guy who plays the
accordion down on the docks that looks just like Krusty
the clown in one of the Simpsons episodes, and he's
playing a concertina it's like a squeeze box. It's like

(29:20):
an accordion without the keys in the buttons. Yeah, but
it acts as a bellows because it moves air. Essentially,
that's what they used it for. They modified it so
that they could use it to inflate their raft very
quickly with this concertina that I guess they stole from
the prison music room, which is pretty great. So they're
working on all this stuff and the raft in particular,
this this is like the the lynchpin of this whole

(29:41):
plan is this raft in these life preservers. That work
fell to Alan West. So while these dudes were chipped,
we're like chipping away at the ventilation holes. Um. Alan
West was standing lookout for most of them, and he
was creating this raft in these life fests, and so
he wasn't able to chip away at his ventilation hole
nearly as fast. So while they were out, you know,

(30:04):
working on the great event cover great, he still had
no way out of his cell. At that point. He
hadn't made it all the way through. Yeah, And you know,
we should point out something that earlier we mentioned. If
if they happened to walk by and they don't notice
a hole in the wall, because they may or may
not have made these false uh grates and walls. If

(30:26):
you're a listener and you don't know the story, you
might have said, like, yeah, but wouldn't they have noticed
there was no one in the cell? Good question. What
they did was they made paper mache recreations of themselves.
They made these busts. They use that prison hair so
cross and use that reversement again to glue this hair on.
And if you see the real things, it's not Madam

(30:49):
Tussu or anything. It's not like, boy, look at that
likeness photo realistic, but it's in the dark and you're
sort of, I think, as a human trained to see
what you're looking for. So if your guard that's just
walking by, you see a head turned the other way
with with prison hair on it and some pillows under

(31:09):
a blanket, and you you don't think it looks fake.
It just looks like it wouldn't like Ferris Bueller style
with um like a fake snore on the Hi fi
system or anything, right, But you just kind of walked
past it. It worked well enough, Like they did this
for weeks and weeks and weeks with these paper mache busts,
and it worked they never got noticed. No they didn't
because I mean remember like that that they were working

(31:31):
between the end of dinner and lights out, So they
just seemed to have made it like like they went
to bed early, um and put the paper mache busts
in there. Sure are sleepy. Yeah, there too much for you.
Frank got a lot. I got a lot of questions
about this, but I'm not gonna investigate any exactly. So
do you want to talk about the escape and then

(31:51):
go to a break? Yeah, I think that's the way
to do it. Okay. So finally they get to this
point where great is the bars are removed from this
great enough that they can slip through, and they realize
that they have, um, they have successfully penetrated to the

(32:13):
exterior of the building. That's right, okay, on the roof. Well,
they know they can get on the roof. Now they
know there's go night there at least once to be
like all right, I don't know, I haven't heard anything
like that. And there's a lot of questions about why
this particular night. Was this the very first night that
they were able to get out and there like let's
go um, which seems likely to me, or were they

(32:35):
waiting for a particular night, or like you said, they
tested it before they do any dry runs. We don't
really know that, um, But what we do know is
that on Monday, June eleven, UM, J. W. Angling, Clarence
Angling and Frank Moore's all left their cells and the
first thing Frank Morris did was go to help Alan

(32:55):
West finished um puncturing the hole through his cell wall.
Course all had not done this yet. He's like, come on,
we gotta go. But apparently part of the plan was
to help him um punch the hole out the rest
of the way and then he would escape with them. Um.
Frank Morris apparently tried in vain and uh went off
to get Clarence England to to come try, and they

(33:16):
traded off, and then Clarence tried. He couldn't do it either,
So I guess he had the very um, uh uncomfortable
I'll be right back. I gotta go, I gotta go
shake the tree or something like that. I'll be right back.
You stay here. And that was the last anybody ever
saw of Frank Morris, Clarence England or J. W. England

(33:38):
from from that moment until today. Yeah, so they get
to that corridor, they climb up to um the roof
of the cell block, and then through that ventilation shaft
that great is no longer a problem, and allan west
they can just barely hear him saying like, you guys
are coming back right any minute now, you said, Um,
so there's this rain cover on top. They pushed that

(34:00):
hang off and this this all makes some noise, and
and in the movie they they kind of accurately displayed
that to us, some clanking and clanging around. And I
don't think in the movie they did this, but in
real life, supposedly there was so much noise that they
did like a little forty five minute, um kind of
a search of the area. Didn't see anything going on. No,

(34:21):
they didn't go up on the roof, that's for sure,
and uh, they basically didn't find anything. So the guys
are out. They shimmy about fifty feet to the ground
via drain pipe, which is how you always do it,
go to that perimeter fence. And I'm sure the perimeter
fence was fine, but I think the idea was that
they're never getting out anyway. So I don't think it

(34:44):
had like fifteen feet of razor wire or anything. Like that.
I think it did have double barbed wire at least
for sure. That's nothing. It's not like concertina wire or anything. No,
nothing like that. Around one in the morning, Alan West,
Poor Alan West, he finally gets that cell great broken open.

(35:05):
I'm sure he just thinks, all right, I'm gonna catch
up to these guys and it's gonna be all good,
and I'm getting out of here. Followed that same route.
It's been a couple of hours. At this point, though,
he saw that these were genuinely good dudes, it seemed
like because they did leave him a paddle. I don't
think we mentioned they made paddles out of chair legs
and the screws and nuts and bolts and a pontoon

(35:27):
that was all inflated for him. And he got a
little snack, a little Bryce Crispy Treatrice Crispy treat, the
little Bruno, little shot of Pruno for his for his courage,
and then he looks over terrible timing, and there's a
guard in a new position that basically could see anything
that he tries to do. From that point forward, he's
visually pinned down on the root. If he can't do anything,

(35:49):
So this is around one am or something, and he figures, okay,
the guard will eventually move. Well, Alan West says, the
guard never moved for until dawn. That doesn't this guy
p right, doesn't he ever shake the tree? Um? And
he didn't. He did not shake the tree, stayed put.
And so eventually Alan West was forced to climb back
down the ventilation shift, back down from the roof of

(36:12):
the cell blocks three stories back to his cell that
he had just a few hours earlier. Finally, after months,
punched a hole through and he went and laid down
and just waited for the heat to come down on him.
And indeed it did because at the seven am bed check,
three dummy heads were discovered where three inmates real heads

(36:33):
should have been. Uh, and the prison just went berserk.
You know that feeling you get when you take a
wrong turn and go like three or four miles in
the wrong direction and have to go all the way
back the other way. Yeah, imagine being Alan West and
having to do that. That time's infinity, That time's infinity. Yeah,
you wanna take another break? I think? So? Man, all right,

(36:54):
we'll get to the well, we won't get to the
bottom of this, but we'll speculate all over the place
right after this. Kind Okay, so there are some things

(37:29):
that we know about this from watching the movie, but
the movie writers based the movie on a book, and
the book author a belief basis stuff on an interview
or interviews with Alan West that Alan West had with
the Bureau of Prisons in the FBI. Because basically everything
we know about the escape from Alcatraz came from the

(37:52):
mouth of Allen West. Yeah, so he made a deal.
He said, listen, I'll tell you all about it, but
you can't throw me in here for longer because I
tried to escape prison. You gotta give me immunity for
that attempted escape. And let's be honest, guys, it really
wasn't much of an attempt. Can you give me a
break here? Right? I had to make the sad walk
of shame back to l I have a feeling that

(38:14):
that definitely factored into their decision to give him immunity, Like, man, probably,
so you really you really got a hard luck case.
So he makes a deal and says, I'll tell you everything.
But again, this is just his account of it. Um.
One thing that kind of jumped out is maybe it's
not the most accurate account was that he was like, yeah,

(38:34):
I was the mastermind. I thought up the whole thing
from the start. And I don't know if that's quite true,
because it seems like Clint Eastwood did. Yeah. Certainly the
in the movie the movies, basically it should be called
colin the Frank Morris story. He's the main character. Everybody
else is a side character. It really kind of downplayed

(38:56):
a lot of the contributions by the England brothers, certainly
by Alan Wait doesn't even use Alan West's name. Um,
So I don't know how much of an influence is
from that movie or if that movie was just based
on the general idea that Frank Morris was, um the
mastermind and the leader, that he was a very intelligent
person and kind of a born leader from what I know.

(39:17):
So it's just not clear whether Alan West actually came
up with this plan or not. Was he the one
who sewed the raft all this time and he got
left behind, or maybe he had really weak arms and
this was just what he told the the Bureau of
Prisons investigators. It was the reason why he never was
able to chip out of the his cell. Who knows,

(39:38):
but just so, just bear in mind from this point forward,
just going to go on with the with this is gospel.
But all of this is coming from Alan Westmouth. He
was the one that was left behind. I feel like
in the movie he got to the point where he
could not jump up by himself and reach the great
Is that right? Uh? Yeah, So in the movie they
help each other up and then um, he would he
would have had to have done it himself, and he

(40:00):
couldn't jump. He just kept jumping and jumping and couldn't
make it. Yes, but from what I know, he made
it up to the roof and was pinned down on
the roof by that that guard in the watch to guard. No,
no, no no, no, you're right. In the movie it was
like that. So. Uh. The plan was, and this is
again from west account said, was to sail this raft

(40:20):
or I guess paddle this raft across the bay to
Angel Islands about a mile away a little over. And
he said from there they were going to rest for
a little bit, get their bearings, stash everything, and then
swim to the mainland across what's called the Raccoon Straights
to Marin County, and then once they got there they
would start doing crime again. Immediately. They could rob a

(40:44):
store for clothsing money, and steal a car and get
the heck out of there as quickly as possible before
the word gets out. Ostensibly, which is a pretty great
plan actually, except for the crime part. Like I would have,
I don't know. I guess the idea is just get
as far away as possible. But I don't know if
I would have. Yeah, but you need to call are.
It's not like somebody's gonna just give you one. I
can take a bart. Sure you could take the bart.

(41:06):
I guess I think it was a pretty good Maybe
they're just like one last heist to get away from here.
Maybe that's what it was. Maybe because they just want
I mean, I get that want the urge to get
as far away from there as possible. But also what
if all of a sudden cops are on you from
stealing a car immediately. I guess it gets a risk.

(41:26):
It is a big risk, and a lot of people
say that. Um, they were actually helped. On the other side,
there was a guy named um oh Man. I can't
remember his last name, but his his first name or
his nickname was Bumpy. He was a Harlem crime lord,
drug lord Um who was just a total b a
um and they think that he may have had something

(41:48):
to do with helping them escape with somebody who would
have shown up and pick them up and driven them off.
Other people say that one of the England's girlfriends was there,
but the FBI supposedly investigate it did and said Frank
Morris didn't have anybody. He was an orphan, He didn't
have anybody on the outside. He could have helped. The
England's had family that definitely would have helped if they could,
but they didn't have the means to actually to help

(42:12):
them out in San Francisco. So yeah, but they were
a tight family, and they were the kind of family
where I think if one of them had called him
been like I'm breaking out, I need you to pick
me up, they would have done it. That They're like that,
that that kind of tight family bond, not like my
family would be like, oh, well, I'll call you right
back and then hello, FBI. How much of a reward
do you have for giving up a prison Escapeee? Yes,

(42:35):
a federal prison all that much? Hunk? Great? Do you
have a pen? Can you do any better? So, yeah,
that's exactly what my family would follow up with uh,
they did find some evidence. So um, they did a
search for about a week and a half. Um, along
with the FBI, like you were saying, in the bureau
prisons and the Alcatraz people, they were all supermad, of course,

(42:56):
especially in the movie version. And they searched Angel Island,
They searched all the other islands in the bay, and
they did find one of those life preservers that had
teeth marks on the inflation valve. They found a wallet
wrapped in plastic that they figured was JW Anglands. They
found one of those oars and they found it looked

(43:17):
like most of one of the rafts or most of
the raft But no bodies, no stolen cars, no burglaries. Um.
No one had reported anything in the area unusual to
to according to their plan, which was you know, steal
closing money in a car. Yeah. And so the beer
of prisons, like right out of the gate was like
they drowned there. They were washed out to see that's it.

(43:39):
We'll never hear from them again. But they're dead. They
didn't actually escape. Um. And that this was in nineteen
sixty two. It wasn't until nineteen nine of the FBI
closed the book and said, yeah, that's probably what happened.
We we presumed that they were dead and their bodies
lost at sea. Um. But when they were building this case, uh,
they cited the story of a guy named Seymour Webb

(44:02):
who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and virtually
the same time the England's and Morris would have been
in San Francisco Bay and his body was never found,
despite their being witnesses who watched him jumps. Very flimsy yeah, um, yes,
but at the same time, it does kind of demonstrate like, look,
maybe this guy was never Yeah, he was never found.

(44:22):
He jumped at the same time the England's and Morris
were in the water, so maybe their bodies were never found.
There was a sighting of a body about five weeks
later in July of nineteen sixty two UM by a
group of Norwegian sailors who saw something kind of floating
off and they're like, is that a body? They won't
got binoculars, and they said, that's a body. It was

(44:43):
a body. It was um floating upside down, so all
they could see was the butt basically kind of bobbing
in the water, and the butt looked through their binoculars
at least to have on jeans, have on denim, and
they you know, that was part of the prison outfit,
was they were wearing denim. And this, this is the
part that kind of gets a little flims into me,

(45:03):
is the FBI said that there were no missing persons
in the area in that time frame that we're wearing jeans, right,
are you ready for this? So sitting down, who knows?
And it was reported many weeks later, so you know,
it was all it was kind of hearsay, I guess
at that point it was. And then by the time
they actually reported the sighting, it was October. So they're like, well,

(45:25):
that's kind of useless. But they they do point to
that and say, okay, this combined with Seymour web, we
think that their bodies were swept out to see Not
everybody agrees with that, UM, including the Angland family, who
very much maintained that their brothers survived this escape from Alcatraz.
And actually UM had a photograph that I don't know

(45:48):
where they got it, but they they have a photograph
that was supposedly taken of their brothers in Brazil in
l Then it does it certainly doesn't there's actually a
company you I can't remember the name of the company,
but they do like um, artificial intelligence facial recognition. So
they're just really leading the way to a dystopia. But

(46:08):
they were like, hey, everybody, we want to introduce you
to our software. So we're gonna analyze this picture and
um there a I said, yeah, definitely the Anglands. How
cool is that? Yeah? I mean I certainly looked at it,
and it could be it didn't look so unlike them
that it was like no way. Um, and again I
found myself being like, yeah, man, I hope these guys

(46:28):
made it to Brazil and they're should Robin Banks there
to this exactly right? I have them raising cattle in Brazil.
That's my that's my idea. Uh. In two thousand thirteen,
there was a letter sent to the San Francisco Police Department, UH,
supposedly from J. W. England saying, Hey, we made it, guys,
but just barely. Morris died in two thousand eight. We

(46:50):
kept in touch, great guy. Um Clarence died in two
thousand eleven, and I'm still alive, but I got cancer.
I need help and I'm gonna come for if you.
If you promise in pinky swear until the public that
you're not gonna send me to jail for more than
one year and you're gonna heal my cancer. Yeah, and
apparently they analyzed the letter and like, this is inconclusive.

(47:13):
But the FBI was like, we close this case in
nineteen seventy nine, We're not about to open it up.
But here's the thing. The the idea that they survived
is at least possible enough that for this whole time,
the U. S. Marshall's Office, who took over the case
from the FBI in nineteen seventy nine, um, they have
have kept it open. Like these guys are wanted outlaws

(47:34):
still to this day, even though they would be eight
nine five. I think by now they are considered wanted
fugitives in the cases open. Even though I believe the
Marshall Service typically believes that they're dead, they haven't closed
the case. Yeah. Here's my deal. If you do something
like this and you don't leave some rock solid deathbed evidence,

(47:55):
then you're just selfish, You really are. You owe it
to the world to to have this be a lead
story and be like Frank Morris died and you know,
here's the evidence. Here's that little flower from the movie. Yeah, exactly,
teach teach your smartest head of cattle to stamp out
a message in morse code. That's what I want you

(48:15):
spending your dying days doing, teaching that cow. The marshals
say that they don't think they survived and went on
to lead lives of solitude because they're like, these guys
are career criminals. They would have done something again, they
would have gotten caught again. It's a good point arguments
for is that. And they don't know if they planned
this that way or not. But when they went on

(48:37):
the day they went, and during the hours they went,
they actually had a few good hours of pretty calm
bay currents. Um the you know, it could be so
bad that they're going to pull you out to see
or so bad that they take you in the wrong direction,
completely away from land. And they said that, you know,
whether it was just providence or whether they planned it

(48:58):
this way. They had cloudy night, so there wasn't much
light from the moon, and they had a really calm bay.
So in theory they might could have done this. They
could have, but the winds were really terrible that night too. Um,
I think they were gusts up to like twenty one
sustained winds of like ten miles an hour. That's tough
to row. Um. Who knows. If if it was lucky,

(49:20):
then yeah, if it was blowing them towards Angel Island
and that was in their favor. It was blowing in
any other direction, that would make it very very and
then maybe maybe so they're like, well, that was fortunate.
I didn't even have to steal a car um. The
The other problem is the water. The water temperature is
like fifty degrees fahrenheit, which is very very cold, and

(49:41):
you get very um numb and eventually uh sent into
shock and an exhaustion pretty quickly after being in this
water for thirty minutes or last. But people swim in
that thing, and it's happened before. They had triathlons in
the in that water, and people do it. So it's
not to say that these guys could not have done it.

(50:03):
It wasn't so frigid that science would say, oh, no,
you would die inside five minutes in this water exactly.
I mean, especially if they were operating on the adrenaline
that they surely would have had from the escape. Shimmying
fifty ft down a drain pipe alone will pump you
full of some pretty decent adrenaline, So who knows what
they were capable of at the time. I have a
theory is that the Anglands killed Frank Morris out there

(50:27):
on that raft, and that was the body they saw floating,
and that's why they made it to Brazil and we
never heard from Frank Morris. Again. I don't like your theory.
You don't think turning on them at the last minute. No, No,
My theory is that that body was actually Seymour Web,
that he was wearing Denham jeans under pants that got

(50:49):
taken off of his other pants, and that he wasn't
actually dead, but he met a mermaid um or merman
who he fell in love with and spent the rest
of his life under the sea with. Well that's lovely
like that theory. But the cherry on top here is
that those prisoners who wanted to help them escape because
they thought the prison would close. We're right. The prison

(51:12):
was shut down the following March, and the Bureau prison said,
you know what, we were gonna shut this thing down anyway,
because Alcatraz is just too much to keep up. This
this big concrete block on a rocky island is too
expensive to keep up with very few guards. Uh so,
who knows, but in the movie they definitely sort of
portray it as is. That's the reason why, Yeah and

(51:33):
the Warden never had a happy day again. It's right,
pretty satisfying film, Pretty satisfying film. And Chuck, I guess
we said all this to say this. We have a
book coming out that we would love for you to preorder. Yeah,
that's right. Stuff you should know, an incomplete compendium of
mostly interesting thing and guys. One of our lifelong dreams

(51:55):
is to be on the New York Times bestseller list
and they give you a T shirt. We really want
to get on that list, and if that list came
out today, we wouldn't be on it. So we would
love for you to step up and help our dreams
come true. Sure, how's that for a plea? I think
that's a great plea, A plea and a plug all together.
It's a pleague. Was this in cost twenty bucks? I

(52:19):
think so? And it's worth every penny. I can tell
you because we wrote it. That's right. So, um, that's it.
If you want to go order our book, you can
pre order anywhere you get books, Thank you in advance.
And I think that's it for Escape from Alcatraz to right. Uh.
If you want to know more about escaping from Alcatraz,
there's some really great articles and books and all sorts

(52:41):
of stuff out there in the Internet for you to
dig into. So get digging. As I said, get digging.
It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Delaware response.
We kind of poked fund of Delaware a little bit.
We now, I guess it was me, but Delaware reends
Delawareans delawar in Delaware. They are lovely people, as it seems,

(53:05):
because we've gotten quite a few emails, and they'll have
good humor about their their lovely little state. Hey guys,
our Delaware family had to laugh at your pirate radio podcasts. Delawareans,
Oh yeah, it's right. There would be proud to be
known as the Luxembourg of the United States. Most people
drive through our state on nine five and less than
thirty minutes, but if you do stop by. Our state
is rich in history and agriculture, and we have a

(53:27):
few nice beaches. What you should know is the ark
on the top of our state. I guess it's an
arch is made by a twelve mile radius from Newcastle,
uh in historic town. What many people do not know
is the bottom of the arc formed a wedge betwixt Pennsylvania, Maryland,

(53:47):
and Delaware. The ownership of that land was in dispute
between Delaware and Pennsylvania for decades, only to be resolved
in Rumor has it that the disputed land was a
haven for unsavory types who capitalized on the uncertain jurisdiction.
Thanks for the show and informs and entertains my family
and we wish you well from Delaware, the first state
to ratify the constitution, That is from Doug Wazgat and family.

(54:13):
Nice Doug, thank you. I would have led with the
first state to ratify the constitution. Thing. I bet Dave
tout that a lot. That's it's a good thing to doubt.
H Well, if you want to be like Doug and
defend your state, whether it's Delaware or not, we want
to hear from you and you can send it in
an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.

(54:38):
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