First published June 14, 2018.
In 2013 the San Francisco Police Department received a handwritten letter from someone claiming to be John Anglin, one of three men who vanished from Alcatraz in June 1962. The writer said all three had survived the escape, that he was now elderly and had cancer, and that he would give himself up in exchange for medical treatment. The FBI examined the letter and found the results inconclusive; it became public only in January 2018. So, did the Alcatraz escapees survive? Nobody has proved it either way, and that uncertainty is why the case still fascinates people more than sixty years later.
Below is what is firmly known about the escape, what the letter claimed, how investigators judged it and the other clues that keep the mystery alive.
The men and the prison
Alcatraz, on a small rocky island in San Francisco Bay, operated as a federal penitentiary from 1934 until March 1963. Cold water, strong currents and constant surveillance made it the most feared posting in the US prison system, reserved for inmates considered dangerous or likely to escape elsewhere.
Frank Morris and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin fitted that description. The Anglins, from a large family in the American South, had robbed the Bank of Columbia in Alabama in January 1958 with a third brother, Alfred, and each received a 35-year sentence. Morris, who had a long criminal record, was serving time for robbery and other offences. All three had histories of escape attempts before they were sent to the island. A fourth inmate, Allen West, helped plan the breakout but was left behind when he could not get out of his cell in time.
How the 1962 escape worked
Over several months the men loosened the ventilation grilles at the backs of their cells, chipping at the damp concrete with discarded saw blades, spoons from the mess hall and a drill improvised from a vacuum cleaner motor. They covered their progress with painted cardboard, and Morris's accordion practice reportedly helped mask the noise.
The vents led to an unguarded utility corridor. From there the men climbed to an empty upper level of the cellblock and set up a hidden workshop. Using more than fifty stolen raincoats, they built life vests and a rubber raft roughly six by fourteen feet, sealing the seams with heat from nearby steam pipes. Paddles were cut from plywood, and a concertina was adapted into a bellows to inflate the raft.
To fool the night guards, they made dummy heads from a paste of soap, toilet paper and concrete dust, painted them and added real hair collected from the prison barbershop. On the night of 11 June 1962 they left the heads in their beds, climbed a ventilation shaft to the roof, slid about 50 feet down a kitchen vent pipe and crossed two fences to the island's northeast shore, a blind spot for the searchlights. The empty cells were not discovered until the morning count the next day.
What investigators found and concluded
The search that followed turned up only fragments. A paddle was recovered off Angel Island on 14 June, along with a waterproofed wallet holding Anglin family photos and contacts. Two life vests surfaced over the following week, one near a beach outside the Golden Gate. No bodies were ever found.
The FBI concluded that the men had most likely drowned in the cold, fast water while trying to reach Angel Island, and it closed its file at the end of 1979. The US Marshals Service never closed its case. As Deputy US Marshal Michael Dyke told reporters, "There's an active warrant, and the Marshals Service doesn't give up looking for people."
Science has added a twist. In 2014, researchers at Delft University of Technology modelled the bay's currents for that night and found that, if the men had launched around 11:30 p.m., they could plausibly have reached land near Horseshoe Bay, north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Launch earlier or later, and the odds fell sharply.
The escape was not the only reason Alcatraz closed the following year. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the prison shut on 21 March 1963, chiefly because of its high running costs and the damage salt water had done to the buildings.
The 2013 letter
The letter that surfaced in 2018 is short and direct. Its author introduces himself as John Anglin, says he is 83 and seriously ill with cancer, and claims all three men survived the crossing. In one widely quoted line he writes: "Yes, we all made it that night but barely!" He says Frank Morris died in October 2008 and that his brother Clarence died in 2011, and he offers to reveal his location if authorities announce on television that he will receive medical care first. Copies circulated online give slightly different readings of some details, including the year of Morris's death.
The FBI's laboratory checked it for fingerprints and DNA and compared the handwriting with samples Anglin left in prison. The results were inconclusive. That means the tests could neither confirm nor rule out Anglin as the writer; it is not evidence that the letter is genuine. No one claiming to be Anglin has publicly come forward since.
The letter was reported in January 2018 by the San Francisco CBS station KPIX 5 and then by national outlets. Its timing, more than fifty years after the escape and when any of the men would have been in their eighties, is one reason many investigators treat it with caution.
The Brazil photo and other clues
The other major lead came from the Anglin family. In a 2015 History Channel documentary, Alcatraz: Search for the Truth, relatives produced a photograph said to show John and Clarence on a farm in Brazil in 1975. It was reportedly taken by Fred Brizzi, a family friend who said he had recognised the brothers in Rio de Janeiro.
A forensic analyst working for the family said the men were "more than likely" the Anglins, though sunglasses and the photo's condition limited any certainty. Retired Deputy US Marshal Art Roderick called it the best lead in years but warned it could still be untrue. Dyke was blunter, describing Brizzi as a drug smuggler and con man, and a Marshals Service expert doubted the photo was genuine. Relatives have also said that a brother, on his deathbed, claimed to have been in touch with John and Clarence from 1963 until 1987. None of these accounts has been independently confirmed.
Did they survive? Weighing the evidence
The case for drowning is straightforward: the water in the bay is cold, the currents are strong, the raft was homemade, and the men left behind personal items that turned up in the bay. Neither the bodies nor solid proof of a new life elsewhere has ever surfaced, despite decades of searching.
The case for survival rests on the Delft current modelling, the family's photograph, the letter and the fact that no remains were found. Each of these is suggestive, but none is decisive, and the letter and photo both come with serious questions about their sources.
What can be said is that the planning was extraordinary, the men certainly left the island, and the official answer is still "unknown." The Marshals' warrants will only lapse once the fugitives would have reached the age of 100.
Today Alcatraz is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is one of San Francisco's most visited sites. The cells of Morris and the Anglins, complete with replica dummy heads, are among the most photographed spots on the tour.
Sources: Wikipedia, June 1962 Alcatraz escape attempt (citing FBI, US Marshals Service, CBS News and the Washington Post); video and images via Viral Thread.
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