‐in front of nail‐biting crowds. ‐(crowd gasping)
A miraculous survival
in a mile‐high death trap.
And a jail break that defies impossible odds.
What is it about the act of escaping captivity
that fascinates us?
Is it because we have an innate fear
of being trapped against our will?
Or could it be that we all possess a collective desire
to run away and change our lives?
Well...
that is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
SHATNER: A little‐known 25‐year‐old Hungarian magician
and escape artist by the name of Harry Houdini
makes an astonishing debut at the Orpheum Opera House,
one of the country's premier vaudeville theaters.
(excited murmuring)
(cheering)
ANNOUNCER: The great Harry Houdini!
(applause)
Houdini's father was a rabbi
and when he lost his job in Appleton, Wisconsin,
the family moved to Milwaukee and later to New York.
And it was there he met a friend who had a mutual interest
in magic and they formed an act and they took the name Houdin
and they added an "I" to the end: Houdini.
And that was really the beginning of his magic career.
Houdini would come to town
and he would challenge police officers and locksmiths
to bring their best locks.
He would put himself in these locks and he would escape them
onstage in front of a live audience.
Houdini's real power and his gift was his‐his showmanship,
his presentation, his ability to mesmerize an audience,
to connect with them.
Because here was this small immigrant man
that conquered all his fears,
that could do things that nobody else could do.
And so, he would have this power over his audiences
in a way that's never been achieved since.
SHATNER: Over the course of his career,
Houdini performed thousands of death‐defying escapes.
But of all his astounding feats,
one was considered more dangerous and more impossible
than the rest.
Houdini depended on publicity stunts to draw people
to the vaudeville theater to see him.
The greatest of those publicity stunts
was "the overboard box escape."
He started it in 1912 in New York.
COX: He announced that he would be doing this escape from a pier
and a massive crowd assembled to watch this.
And Houdini showed up with his assistants,
with the reporters, with his packing crate.
And the police also showed up and they said,
"You can't do that. There's laws against that."
Houdini decided to rent a tugboat on his own
out to the middle of the East River.
There they started the process
of locking him up in the handcuffs,
locking him up in the leg irons,
tying him up with the heavy rope,
putting him inside this escape‐proof wooden crate.
Nailing the lid on so it couldn't be opened.
And even that wasn't enough.
Then they tied the packing crate up with this heavy, strong rope.
Because the box had a number of air holes all around it
and because it was weighted on the outside
with 180 pounds of iron,
it would quickly sink into the water.
The water would go inside of the box
and, of course, Houdini with it.
Everyone who worked with him knew
that it was a dangerous feat.
The story was that they used to hold their breath with him
because they used to anticipate
how long he would be under the water.
And about a minute later...
♪ ♪
...suddenly Houdini would bob to the surface free,
completely free of the box and the handcuffs.
And what's amazing about the overboard box escape
is that when the box was hauled up, it was still locked.
It was still nailed shut.
And when it was opened up, the handcuffs were found inside,
also closed.
How did he escape from this wooden packing crate
into the river
and nothing was touched, nothing was damaged?
All in less than 60 seconds.
That is beyond belief.
SHATNER: It was indeed beyond belief.
Over the next several years,
Houdini would repeat this incredible escape
countless times, and for audiences all over the world.
How did he do it?
It was such a great escape
and it mystified audiences everywhere.
But Houdini had his skeptics.
They wanted to expose him.
They wanted to explain how he did it.
They figured Houdini would sneak in
during the middle of the night and‐and cut a little trap door,
or have an escape panel that he could get out of it some way
that nobody knew about.
Let's just say for the sake of argument
that he did use short nails or trick knots
to escape his contraption.
How is it possible that he got out of his handcuffs,
out of his leg irons,
put the box back together again, tied it all back up,
all within 57 seconds while holding his breath?
Houdini would invite anyone on stage to examine the nails,
to handle the nails, to put in your own nails.
And you might also suggest,
was Houdini ever in the packing crate in the first place?
He was in that these had holes in them,
and he would poke his finger out and they would see
and even as he would be raised,
he would poke a little American flag or something out.
So you could see from the time that it went under the waves,
that there was someone inside that‐that packing crate.
SHATNER: While there are many theories,
no one knows for certain
how Houdini pulled off his overboard box escape.
Even master escape artists‐‐ many of whom spent decades
studying Houdini's tricks and techniques‐‐
are still trying to figure it out.
Often with deadly results.
GUNNARSON: Many people have died doing this escape.
I mean, I was one of them.
I'm‐I'm living proof of how dangerous this escape is.
In 1983, I decided to do
my variation of the Houdini packing crate.
(crowd cheering)
I got all chained up and locked,
I got put into a wooden coffin,
the lid was nailed on,
it was wrapped and chained,
and then the coffin was lowered into an icy river in Canada.
(crowd cheering)
And I didn't escape.
I couldn't get out.
I was underwater for nearly four minutes.
They pulled the coffin out and my cold lifeless body
was still inside that coffin.
(crowd clamoring)
It was only the dedicated paramedics that were on standby
that saved my life.
I was a very lucky young escape artist on that day.
SHATNER: For nearly a century since his death,
magicians have tried and failed
to figure out just how Harry Houdini
managed this incredible escape.
But there are some who believe that the reason
for their failure is simple:
they never considered that Houdini
was capable of performing "real magic."
One of Houdini's great friends was Arthur Conan Doyle,
the author of Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle believed very strongly in spiritualism
and he saw a number of things
that he considered evidence that Houdini was actually a psychic
and was dematerializing out of his escapes.
He always chided Houdini that he should
be honest with his audience and tell them
not only that he has these powers,
but that these powers exist for everyone to share.
Sir Arthur firmly believed that Houdini was supernatural
and he could not be talked out of this by Houdini.
But Houdini went out of his way to say,
"There was nothing supernatural about my feats.
My brain is the key that sets me free."
That was what Houdini would say over and over again.
SHATNER: "My brain is the key that sets me free."
Could the secret to Houdini's incredible feats
really have been revealed in that simple phrase?
Did the magician have such an incredible control over his mind
that he could command his body to perform the impossible?
We may never know.
On October 31, 1926,
Harry Houdini died of a ruptured appendix at the age of 52,
taking many of his secrets to his grave.
But whether his astounding escapes were made possible
by clever devices,
impressive physical skill,
or what some might call "real magic,"
Harry Houdini remains the most mysterious,
and unexplained, magician in history.
After ten years of Fidel Castro'sSHATN:
tightfisted Communist rule,
the island nation's economy is in chaos.
Food shortages,
and a government‐mandated seven‐day workweek,
only serve to heighten the Cuban people's
sense of desperation and despair.
Many attempt to flee Castro's oppressive regime,
only to be caught, imprisoned or killed.
But for 17‐year‐old Armando Socarras,
the chance for freedom and a better life
are worth the risk.
The political climate in Cuba, 1969,
was at the peak of the oppression.
SHATNER: The plan was indeed dangerous.
If they were caught, it meant prison or worse.
If they weren't, they might die trying.
But after some careful reconnaissance,
Armando believed that he and his friend could pull it off.
And on the morning of June 4, 1969,
their bold plan would be put into action.
Iberia Flight 904 was scheduled to depart Havana at 6:30 p. m.,
arriving in Madrid, Spain nine hours later.
The DC‐8 airplane was already taxiing to the end of the runway
when Armando and his friend crawled through the tall grass
bordering the runway, ready to make a break for it.
SHATNER: Lodged inside the wheel well,
and dangerously outside
the pressurized sections of the airplane,
Armando began falling out of consciousness
as the air outside screamed by at nearly 600 miles an hour.
JOHN NANCE: Normally the cruising altitude
on a trip as far as Havana to Madrid,
you'd probably be up around 37 to 39,000 feet.
At 37,000 feet, for somebody who has just experienced
a rapid decompression, your time of useful consciousness
is as little as eight seconds.
At that altitude, you're going to be around temperatures
that are in ‐45 to ‐50 degrees Fahrenheit.
SHATNER: Nine hours after taking off in Havana,
Iberia Flight 904 landed in Madrid.
And as the captain stood on the tarmac
saying goodbye to his passengers,
Armando's unconscious body fell from the wheel well
onto the ground with a sickening thud.
SHATNER: Incredible as it seems, for Armando,
surviving in a mile‐high death trap was, indeed, possible.
But how?
Medically, you're not dead until you're warm and dead.
Armando was found without vital signs, he was hypothermic.
I think what happened is because of the severe hypothermia,
his cardiac function decreased.
The blood flow to the brain and organs decreased.
There are reports and cases of people being found
in the snow and ice,
frozen without any vital signs, that have made a full recovery.
TAYLOR: There's a thing called the mammalian response.
If we reach certain cold temperatures,
our bodies shut down instead of degrading and dying.
It just goes into hibernation.
Well, this is what happened to Armando.
When he gets up to the 30,000‐foot atmosphere
and he has no air to breathe,
or just a tiny amount of air, he goes into hypothermia
and then when the plane lands,
his body starts to warm up and then he comes back to.
SHATNER: Could Armando's amazing story of survival really be attributed
to the act of being frozen and then defrosted back to life?
Or might there be another even more profound explanation?
SHATNER: Was Armando's life saved by the simple act of falling asleep?
There are many who will tell you that it's the very lack of fear
and panic that can help us to survive
even in the most life‐threatening situations.
In any case, Armando successfully cheated death
and lived to tell his story.
Not unlike the story of a man who escaped
not high above the Earth in an airplane,
but from deep underwater in a submarine.
SHATNER: As World War II rages throughout Europe, GEORGE MALCOLMSON: When it struck the mine,
British Royal Navy submarine HMS Perseus
is patrolling the waters off the coast of Greece.
With both German and Italian forces occupying Greece,
and the threat of underwater mines lurking,
it is a dangerous mission.
HMS Perseus is a 260‐foot submarine.
Uh, she's on a mission, sailing from Malta to Alexandria.
HMS Perseus carried 58 crew and two passengers.
SHATNER: One of those two passengers
is a sailor by the name of John Capes.
He had hitched a ride aboard the submarine
so that he could return to his home base in Alexandria,
where the Perseus was scheduled to dock
after its mission was complete.
During the night, the submarine comes up
to charge its batteries,
so that it can operate underwater during the day.
And they go along very slowly,
keeping a very, very sharp lookout.
SHATNER: At approximately 10:00 p. m.,
the crew of the Perseus was awakened by a violent explosion.
And everyone on board scrambled for their lives.
CLAYTON: She hits a mine, which made
a big hole in the bowels of the vessel,
so that it sank very, very fast
towards the bottom.
John Capes happened to be in the safest place on the boat,
the place that was furthest away from the explosion.
Capes is suddenly jolted awake.
He kind of gets himself together,
realizes what's happened.
And he goes forward to see what he can find.
SHATNER: With only moments to spare, Capes has to act fast.
Fortunately, he finds a potential lifeline
in the form of an emergency escape suit,
which is designed to protect sailors
against the effects of water pressure.
Exiting the submarine at a depth of some 170 feet,
Capes and one of the crew's sailors
desperately attempt to make their way to the surface.
As if surviving both the explosion
and death by drowning weren't enough,
the tremendous weight of the water leaves them vulnerable
to a potentially fatal condition dreaded by deep‐sea divers
known as the bends.
The bends is similar to opening up a can of soda.
When you open up a can of soda, the gas that's in the liquid,
which is carbon dioxide, all of a sudden starts releasing,
bubbling to the top of the can of soda.
So, the nitrogen that's in the body does the same thing.
So when you ascend too fast, the nitrogen that's built up
in the body tries to escape,
and this can bubble out into any of the organs,
including the heart, the brain, the lungs.
It can cause malfunction.
It can also kill you.
SHATNER: Even though his escape suit was not rated
to handle water pressure deeper than a hundred feet,
John Capes's will to survive was formidable.
In spite of everything,
including the bends...
...he made it to the surface alive.
MALCOLMSON: Capes made quite a swim.
I think it was about six miles or so swimming.
He reaches a rocky beach,
manages to drag himself ashore,
and collapses.
It's amazing that
John Capes' lungs did not explode,
or at least hemorrhage badly, as he was surfacing.
Maybe this guy was just lucky enough
that he was resilient enough to survive.
SHATNER: Against all odds,
John Capes escaped what should have been a death sentence.
He defied everything we know about both human physiology
and the laws of physics.
But how?
So, in the British Navy, for a long, long time,
there had been an alcohol ration every day.
And the rum was 95% proof.
And in order to settle his nerves,
John Capes took a big swig out of his rum bottle.
So I guess by the time that John Capes was actually leaving
the submarine, he was more than a little bit drunk.
TAYLOR: Actually, drinking alcohol
might have helped him out‐‐ it could have lowered
his blood pressure a little bit,
and it could have actually kept him calm.
Both of those are things that you may need
in this type of situation.
You need to remain calm in an emergency,
and your blood pressure was gonna get really high
at some point, and so if you have a way
to artificially bring it down some,
I suspect that helped.
SHATNER: Unfortunately, John Capes's story
was so remarkable, so inexplicable,
that many people didn't believe it was true.
They even went so far as to question
whether or not he'd ever been on the submarine
in the first place.
CLAYTON: People didn't believe that
you could survive that...
that escape from 170 feet,
so there were all sorts of people
cast doubts on John Capes.
And it wasn't until nearly 50 years later,
when divers discovered the wreck of HMS Perseus, that...
there was the hatch, opened...
and John Capes's story was at last validated,
and his... his behavior and his courage was rewarded.
SHATNER: Whether it was a swig of alcohol
or sheer willpower,
something enabled John Capes to escape the fate that befell
the HMS Perseus and its crew.
We may never know exactly what saved him.
Not unlike the case
of another man who was able to escape
an even more perilous situation,
one that claimed the lives of thousands of people...
on 9/11.
(distant screams)
SHATNER: Brian Clark begins his workday
like any other.
He's an executive at Euro Brokers,
located in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
But little does Brian know
that a hellish nightmare is about to unfold.
BRIAN CLARK: That particular morning,
at 8:46, I was typing away at my keyboard...
...when I heard this loud...
boom‐boom explosion.
‐(explosion) ‐As I looked up,
my peripheral vision caught something behind me.
Right against the glass were swirling flames.
And suddenly, all those flames dissipated,
and out in the airspace, lots of newspapers
and other computer papers were floating in the air.
It was sort of a strange sight
that I‐I couldn't quite understand.
SHATNER: Before he could even realize
that an American Airlines 767 airplane
had been deliberately flown
into the World Trade Center's North Tower,
Brian immediately sensed that this was no ordinary emergency.
I knew in an instant it was terrorism.
I walked to our trading floor,
and all the brokers had gathered at the north windows
and were looking up nine floors
at the 93rd floor next door,
and flames all around the building.
Didn't know what it was, 'cause nobody had seen
the plane approach the North Tower.
And I immediately called my wife and said,
"Turn on the television.
"Something's happened next door in the North Tower.
I just want you to know that we are okay."
‐(alarm blaring) ‐The strobe lights
in our entire floor flashed,
and the siren gave a little whoop‐whoop,
and a familiar voice came over the public address system.
MAN (over P. A.): Building two is secure.
There is no need to evacuate building two.
Repeat: Building two is secure.
SHATNER: At 9:03 a. m.,
United Airlines Flight 175
crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center,
between the 77th and 85th floors.
Which meant that Brian Clark's office,
which was located on the 84th floor,
was right in the impact zone.
(screams)
Everything fell apart‐‐
ceiling tiles, the grid,
air conditioning ducts, lighting, speakers,
everything rained down.
The air was immediately filled with gritty, horrible stuff.
Our building moved, and I could hear the steel
kind of "creak, creak."
I was afraid.
"Terrified" is perhaps a better word.
(siren wailing)
SHATNER: Amidst the chaos and confusion
in the moments after impact,
Brian was sure he was going to die.
But as the building finally stopped trembling and swaying,
he suddenly heard a strange,
and oddly calming, voice in his head.
(voice whispering indistinctly)
Not my voice and not somebody else's voice.
Just a feeling: "Brian, you're going to be fine."
(man coughing)
And I kind of sobered up and entered the hallway.
My intention was to turn to the right, to Stairway C.
As I got to that intersection, however‐‐
and I can't explain this‐‐ there was a push
on my right shoulder.
There was nobody there,
but there was this feeling of somebody
pushing me to the left.
Stairway C was to my right,
Stairway B was ahead of me, and Stairway A to my left.
But with this push,
I just went with it, and I went to Stairway A.
‐(alarm blaring) ‐SHATNER: Following the urging
of this uncanny push, Brian chose Stairway A,
and proceeded to try and escape by walking down the stairs.
It was the most fateful decision of his life.
CLARK: As I stepped off the stair
onto the landing of the 81st floor,
‐I heard a banging noise. ‐(clanking nearby)
As I strained a bit, I then heard this strange voice
yelling, "Help! Help! I'm buried!"
As I got closer to the voice, he was like,
"Can you see my hand? Can you see my hand?"
And suddenly, down near the floor,
my light picked up this waving hand,
and that person said, "Hallelujah!
I've been saved!" And I put my hand out
in front of him and said, "I'm Brian."
He said, "I'm Stanley.
We'll be brothers for life."
I put my arm around Stanley and said, "Come on, let's go home."
As I shone the light down the stairs,
I only saw smoke sort of rolling up the stairs‐‐
there was no flame‐‐
and I took the first step down.
And we continued on down.
Down, down, down.
We got all the way down to the Plaza Level.
It was ashen gray, like a... an archeological site
that had been abandoned for hundreds of years.
Not a pleasant sight.
GARRETT GRAFF: Brian Clark's story
is one of the most remarkable of 9/11.
He was one of just four people who survived that day
from above the impact zone in the South Tower.
And what is all the more remarkable about his story
is the way that, of the three stairwells
that he had to choose from, two were blocked and impassable
and would have resulted in his death,
and he ended up picking the one staircase
that was free and open and led to safety.
♪ ♪
SHATNER: Ever since that day,
a single question has seared itself into Brian's mind.
Why him?
The way the two airplanes came into the building,
uh, had a lot to do with the pattern of survival
or lack of survival.
In the South Tower, the airplane came in
at a bit of an angle and was adjusting up to the last second,
and that meant that the structural pieces
that were disintegrating as they came through
did not do a complete job of scything off all the stairways.
♪ ♪
SHATNER: What was it that compelled Brian Clark
to choose the right stairwell,
and to take it down instead of up?
Was it his survival instinct?
Blind luck?
Or could it have been that mysterious "push"?
CLARK: Years later, when I think back on it,
I say, "Thank you very much," to whatever it was.
It got me out of the building safely.
Had I turned right to go to Stairway C,
who knows what I would have found?
So was Brian Clark's survival
merely because of luck,
a twist of fate?
Or was it some kind of spiritual force
that guided him to escape certain death?
Well, this much is certain:
in spite of impossible odds, Brian lived.
And while some might be reluctant to call it a miracle,
nobody could argue that what Brian Clark experienced
was anything short...
of miraculous.
ESHATNER:: A little over one mile offshore
stands what was at one time
the most secure penitentiary in the United States.
Alcatraz.
Or, as it is more famously known,
The Rock.
Formerly a military stockade,
it was converted to a maximum security prison in 1934
by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover,
who wanted to house the nation's most dangerous criminals
in a place from which there was no escape.
DYKE: Alcatraz was Hoover's baby.
And he wanted it for his public enemy number ones
and supposedly nobody could escape from it.
The island is out in the middle of the water,
the water's 52 degrees on average
throughout the whole year,
and there's sharks in the bay.
SHATNER: Since it first began operations in 1934, until 1962,
a total of 31 prisoners attempted to escape Alcatraz.
23 were caught.
Six were shot and killed.
Two drowned in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay.
ESSLINGER: With Alcatraz, you had America's
most security safe prison in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.
When it first opened, they had what was called
the silence rule.
They couldn't talk to each other.
There was no news coming in.
But they had the sights,
even the smells of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory
across the bay.
They could hear the tour boats in the bay kind of going around
and the laughs and the parties going on.
So it was more of a psychological torture for them
than it was actually physical torture.
SHATNER: In 1960,
an inmate named Frank Morris was admitted to Alcatraz,
followed by three others‐‐
Allen West,
and brothers John and Clarence Anglin.
ESSLINGER: Allen West, Frank Morris
and the Anglins had all served time in Atlanta Penitentiary.
I think that at least, you know, by sight,
they would have known each other,
probably met for certain.
DYKE: Frank Morris was known to be of a fairly high IQ.
You could call him hyperactive.
He was always looking for something to do
and his‐his mind would get very bored quickly so he would
escape or try to escape.
He had numerous, numerous escape attempts.
So they determined it was best to move him to Alcatraz
to keep him from escaping.
SHATNER: Together, the four men
hatched an elaborate plan to succeed
where other potential escapees had failed.
Allen West was on the cleaning detail.
He was up on top of those cell blocks sweeping up
when he saw that there was a vent in the roof
that didn't work.
And West, the Anglin brothers and Morris noticed
that the cement inside the backs of the cells was crumbling
because of the salt air.
ESSLINGER: So, what they would do is they would take
the ends of these steel spoons
and use them to route out these holes through the cement.
And they recreated the grates using cardboard,
cutting out the exact pattern.
When you actually compare the grill itself,
the fake ones that they made, to the real grill, uh,
they're pretty convincing, actually.
SHATNER: The men now had access to the roof of the prison,
but in order to hide the fact that they were working there
every night, they needed to fool the guards into thinking
they were still asleep in their bunks.
So they devised an ingenious solution.
They created dummy heads in their likenesses
and placed them in their beds while they worked.
DAVID WIDNER: Each one of them had a part.
They knew that they needed to make dummy heads.
So they took up painting
to paint these two portraits of their girlfriends.
That gave them access to the flesh‐colored paint
that they needed for the dummy heads.
Clarence took up haircutting. He was a barber.
And so while he was cutting hair,
he would walk it back to the cells and that's where they got
the real hair that's on the dummy heads.
SHATNER: After 18 months of digging and planning,
the men were finally ready to make their escape.
There was just one more problem:
surviving the more than one mile of treacherous waters
between the island and the mainland.
They were able to go to all these other convicts at the time
and acquire all these different raincoats.
And then Clarence actually stitched a raft together.
And then they created this valve, kind of like an air stem,
where they would blow it up.
They were creating things that they would be able to use
in the success of their escape.
SHATNER: On the night of June 11, 1962,
at approximately 9:45 p. m.,
the men put their plan into action.
As they crawled from their cells and headed up to the roof,
Allen West elected to stay behind, fearing capture.
It was the last verified time anyone would see Frank Morris
and the Anglin brothers again,
because their elaborate escape plan worked.
ESSLINGER: This massive manhunt is initiated.
You've got the FBI, uh, the U. S. Marshals Service,
the Coast Guard, everybody is searching for these three men.
The warden of the prison comes out and says
that the water conditions were too extreme.
He didn't feel that they could have made it.
J. Edgar Hoover comes out,
he indicates that, you know, they certainly drowned.
It was a big embarrassment to them.
Alcatraz was supposed to be escape‐proof.
DYKE: I still, to this day,
will never 100% say whether they lived or died
because there's no bodies recovered.
Once they left the island, nobody knows
what happened except them.
WIDNER: Digging through the FBI files,
there's no doubt in my mind
that John and Clarence survived that escape.
Every year on Mother's Day, my grandmother received roses.
And the card would always say "Joe and Jerry."
Well, she didn't know anybody named Joe and Jerry,
but she did know who those flowers came from.
SHATNER: Did Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers survive
their treacherous journey across San Francisco Bay?
Or, did they fall prey to the rough, shark‐infested waters?
One thing is certain: they made it off The Rock.
And there are many who believe
that not only did they make it to the mainland,
they did so with the help of mysterious
and unexplained forces.
Frank Morris, John Anglin and his brother Clarence
pulled off what is arguably the most daring
and difficult prison break in history.
And if the rumors are true, it's because they knew
the precise moment to attempt to get off Alcatraz Island.
Long before Alcatraz became a prison,
it was actually used by local indigenous tribes
who used the island for the same purpose.
They sent their own undesirables there,
their own criminals there,
and they essentially left them there to die.
Most did die, and many of them were buried on the island.
And that led to speculation that their spirits
still inhabit the island right up to this day.
ESSLINGER: Certainly, there were Native American inmates
who were on the island.
Some of the Native Americans believed that if‐‐
you know, they could actually tell,
that if the birds were circling the island
and they refused to land,
that there was some type of negative energy.
Clarence Carnes was a Native American who was on the island.
He was very close friends with Frank Morris
and with the Anglins.
Maybe it's something that he brought up to them,
but certainly it could've been one of the stories out there.
SHATNER: On the day of the escape, while out in the prison yard,
Frank Morris reportedly noticed
the birds were particularly calm.
According to local legend, Morris believed
that this was the island's spirits sending him
and his accomplices an omen that it was safe
to put their escape plan into motion on that day.
But not everyone believes the tale to be true.
I've heard that rumor, but I've‐I've never seen any proof
that Frank Morris actually knew about premonitions
or anything to that effect.
I don't think, when the birds were flying or their activities
or anything like that had any bearing
on what day they were gonna make the escape.
They'd worked on their escape for months
and they hadn't been caught up to that point,
and I think they were starting to get worried.
They left when it was their opportunity to leave
and they thought they had the best chance.
WIDNER: When my grandmother passed away, I was about ten years old.
At the funeral, there were several FBI agents there.
And they were very noticeable.
I mean, you could tell that that's who they were.
After the funeral, there was a lot of talk
about the two women that showed up.
They sat up front, they didn't talk to anybody.
And they were very tall women.
And from what we understand, the FBI actually noticed that
and they was wanting to question these two individuals
that actually were men dressed up as women.
But they disappeared before they had a chance.
There's no doubt that it was John and Clarence.
But my question to them was, well, if y'all really believed
that these guys died in that water,
why are y'all still looking for them?
Close the case.
So, what do you think?
Did Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers
really live through a perilous swim
in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay?
And, assuming they did, could they have lived out their lives
without being found out and recaptured?
Perhaps that's why these stories of great escapes fascinate us.
They satisfy our curiosity to find out
how the impossible can be accomplished.
And that's the same curiosity
that compels us to seek out the answers to...
...the unexplained.
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