(dramatic music)
- Tonight, one of the most brazen prison breaks
in American history.
- Alcatraz is considered the highest security prison.
It's on a rock in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.
- The cold water, the currents,
all that make it inescapable in the eyes
of the federal government.
- A perfectly masterminded plot with only a handful
of clues left behind.
- These three inmates were able to outsmart the guards
and the FBI with some paper mache heads,
a spoon, and some raincoats.
- And evidence suggests that they made it
off the rock and got away.
- Now, we explore the top theories
surrounding the notorious escape from Alcatraz.
- I don't think any case I've ever worked on has been
scientifically tested as much as this escape case.
- It's one of the biggest manhunts ever launched
and it's still going on today.
- What happened to these infamous Alcatraz escapees?
Is it really possible they survived
and if so, where did they go?
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] It's the morning of June 12th, 1962,
on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
- So we've got three prisoners, Frank Morris,
John Anglin,
and his brother, Clarence.
7:00 AM roll call one day, they don't respond,
so a guard goes to check on all three of them.
He sees all three of them lying in their beds.
So he walks over to Frank's cell
and he taps him on the head with his nightstick
and Frank's head falls off.
- This guard had the shock of his life.
He probably thought he had just decapitated the man.
- [Laurence] All three prisoners have vanished from their cells
with three lifelike paper mache heads left behind.
- Immediately, this creates chaos.
These prisoners are gone.
How could these prisoners have escaped this
super security prison?
- [Laurence] Alarms sound as pandemonium takes hold.
- The inmates are celebrating, they're cheering and hollering.
Meanwhile, the guards are just trying
to figure out what's going on and they immediately
start checking everyone's cell.
They discover that another prisoner, Allen West,
also is in possession
of a fake head made out of paper mache.
- [Laurence] West admits he was part of an escape,
but failed to get out of his cell in time.
In exchange for leniency, he agrees
to tell investigators exactly
how his fellow inmates did the impossible.
- It's amazing that these three men were even able
to get out of the prison complex itself.
Alcatraz had the reputation
of being the most secure prison in the country.
- There had been 36 recorded escape attempts from Alcatraz.
None of them succeeded.
Prisoners were either shot on site caught or drowned.
- [Laurence] Alcatraz opened in August, 1934,
and quickly became known
as the most fortified prison in America.
- Alcatraz is celebrated
as the crown jewel of the prison system at this time.
All of the bars on the windows are said
to be tool safe.
- There are remote control gas canisters
that can be deployed in the event of an escape
or in the event of a riot.
There are guard overlooks at each end
so that guards can fire into the cell blocks if needed.
Even if you do get outta Alcatraz,
you still have to contend with
six watch towers as well as a 20 foot fence
with barbed wire.
And if by some miracle you make it over that as well,
you still are dealing with the dark
and turbulent waters of the San Francisco Bay.
(dramatic music)
- I like to think of the water surrounding Alcatraz
as a kind of moat.
We've got this impenetrable fortress,
the castle on the island.
- Guys like Al Capone, guys like Whitey Bulger,
they get sent to Alcatraz.
You've gotta be somebody special to make it
inside the walls of this prison.
- Frank Morris and the Anglin Brothers came to Alcatraz
with a long history of escapes.
- Frank Morris is a career criminal, a very good one too.
He'd been in and out of the system since the age of 13,
mostly for robbery charges.
He was such an accomplished escape artist
that some people referred to him as the Houdini
of the prison system because he had successfully escaped
from so many facilities before being sent to Alcatraz.
- John and Clarence Anglin,
they were from the Florida, Georgia area.
They were career criminals.
They had robbed a bank in Ohio with a toy gun.
- But they get sent to Alcatraz
because they were trying to escape Leavenworth Prison.
- [Laurence] But according to the testimony Allen West gives,
West is the mastermind behind this plot.
- Allen West is housed in the same cell block
and starts plotting out the escape several months prior.
- [Laurence] Allen West's prison job is to repaint the top
of the cell blocks, but he soon sees an opportunity.
Behind each of the cells is a narrow utility
and maintenance corridor that runs three stories up
to the top of the cell block.
- Now, before you get to the roof of the building,
there's about a seven foot gap above the cells,
and in this gap, West sees a vent
that seems to lead up to the roof.
He thinks that if he can somehow remove this vent,
he can crawl through it up to the roof
and then slide down this stove pipe
from the prison bakery on the northwest side
of the building.
But in order to pull this escape plan off,
West is gonna need some help.
And to do this, he recruits the guys from his cell block,
guys that had already escaped from other facilities.
- [Laurence] But as West tells investigators,
they first needed a way out of their cells
and into the maintenance corridor behind.
- Looking inside of a cell on Alcatraz,
there's only a few features,
and one of them right below the sink is an air vent.
- Because of the deterioration of the facility
and salt water wreaks havoc on concrete,
they were able to fashion spoons
and be able to just basically scrape away
the concrete around this vent.
- [Laurence] They work at night, standing guard for each other
and devise a way to cover up their handiwork
- Because these men would be widening their vents,
they couldn't just leave holes in the back of their cells.
- West secures green paint from his prison job
and he shows the other prisoners that there's a way to kind
of repaint around the vent as they remove it.
It requires a lot of patience because the guards go around
and do hourly checks.
- Later on, what they do is they start to create
paper mache vents
as sort of a cover for the holes that they're creating.
- If you looked at it from the cell, you're only
a good nine feet away.
You just look at it, it looks like the regular vent
that was there in the first place.
- Morris and the Anglins finally make their way
through the hole for the first time
and they make their way to the top
of the cell block through that maintenance hallway
by climbing up pipes to take a look at the vent
that West has picked out for the escape.
But when they get to that vent,
they realize that they have a problem.
The vent is bolted into place.
- [Laurence] The escapees will need time
out of their cells over weeks and even months
to file down the bolt securing the roof vent.
But they face regular nightly checks by the guards.
So to convince the guards they're still in their cells.
the escapees design fake heads for their prison beds.
- The dummy heads have been fashioned out of anything
that these three men could have gotten their hands on.
They're paper mache, but they're also soap.
They're also cement.
- For the finishing touch on those paper mache heads.
Clarence Anglin takes real live human hair clippings
from the barbershop and pastes them to the top of the heads.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] The fake heads give the escapees
the time they need out of their cells to file down the bolt
and gain access to the roof.
But getting outta the building is only half the plan.
They also have to figure out a way to the shore.
- Look at Alcatraz Island
where it sits in San Francisco Bay.
It's only about a mile from San Francisco proper.
That mile of water is pretty treacherous,
so I know they do a triathlon there every year.
Even the triathletes that do it
find it a pretty treacherous swim.
- So these aspiring escapists come up with a plan.
They need a raft or some kind of floatation device.
- [Laurence] The escapees come up with an ingenious plan
to turn prison rain jackets into an inflatable raft
and several life preservers.
- Looking at a "Popular Mechanics" magazine,
they were able to not only figure out how to make 'em,
but also come up with waterproof glue
that would keep it together in the water.
- They also fashioned paddles out of wood scraps
and plywood that they find around the prison.
They steal a concertina and use it as a kind of bellows
to inflate this makeshift raft.
- Even if the prisoners were successful with the raft,
this is by no means a proper boat.
This is basically a floating mattress.
- [Laurence] Finally, on June 11th, 1962,
West says the plans are complete.
When the cell block lights are turned off
at 9:00 PM, the men make their move,
but almost immediately, there's a problem.
- Allen West has done too good a job at fashioning his fake
vent cover and he's affixed it so tightly
that he can't remove it.
So the other three meet at the top of this wall
and West isn't there, so they leave him behind.
- [Laurence] Investigators piece together what happens next.
- You could actually see their footprints on the roof
the next morning and they got over to the kitchen area
and there was a stovepipe that came up that went
above the top of the roof of the facility
and they shimmied down.
That stovepipe got onto the ground.
- They scramble away from the building toward this massive
chain link fence, and when they get there,
they throw this huge blanket over the barbed wire
so that they can climb over it without incident.
- [Laurence] Sometime around 10:00 PM,
Frank Morris, John Anglin, and his brother Clarence
launch their makeshift raft
into the treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay,
never to be seen again.
- The next morning, once it's discovered
these prisoners are missing,
the big question among the prisoners, the guards,
and eventually the public, is did they make it?
So the FBI is called in to launch a search.
(dramatic music)
- There are incredible perils that face you if you try
to dip even one toe in the waters of the San Francisco Bay.
- It's 40 to 60 degrees.
The human body is not accustomed to that.
- Hypothermia can set in well within one hour,
sometimes within minutes, and the fog can be so dense
that you cannot see more than a few dozen feet
in front of you.
Being on a raft, mostly subject to the moving currents,
it would've been completely disorienting.
- Also, the current is very strong.
It's almost twice as strong as any human,
even an accomplished swimmer, can paddle.
There is a massive manhunt that is launched.
Air, land, sea, the FBI, local authorities.
Their faces are in every newspaper in America.
Their hometowns are watched very closely.
The manhunt quickly deduces that there's no question
that these men made it out of their cells
and outta the prison complex and into the water.
But after that, there's a lot of mystery.
(boat horn blares)
- [Laurence] Five weeks after the escape,
a sailor aboard a Norwegian freighter
makes a grim discovery.
- One of the deckhands saw a body in the water.
It seemed to fit the description of the clothes
that would be worn by an Alcatraz inmate.
- [Laurence] The alleged corpse is never recovered,
but authorities are certain it could not be
one of the escaped convicts.
- Five weeks is just too long.
It is a point at which the body has gone
into such an advanced stage of decay
that it's almost unrecognizable as a human body.
- San Francisco Bay is home
to about a dozen different shark species.
One of these species is the infamous great white.
Given how many different kinds
of animals are in San Francisco Bay
and in the surrounding ocean, it's very unlikely
that anybody in the water would have remained
intact for five weeks.
Most likely, all of the tissue would've been picked clean.
- [Laurence] But despite the FBI's analysis,
some believe the convicts somehow made it to land.
- They had a really great plan in place
and there is some evidence that suggests
that they might have made it after all.
- [Laurence] June 1962.
Although the three convicts successfully escaped
Alcatraz prison, their trail seems to go cold
in the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay.
Most people following the case presume
the men never made it to freedom.
- The FBI concludes that these three men have drowned.
Others are quick to say, maybe something else happened.
(tense music)
- You can certainly see how embarrassing this would be
for the prison and for the FBI,
this maximum security prison
and yet these three inmates were able to outsmart the guards
and the FBI with some paper mache heads,
a spoon, and some raincoats.
- While no bodies are found, there is evidence
that pops up in the first few days
that raises a lot of questions.
- [Laurence] Investigator's best source
is still sitting in a cell on Alcatraz Island.
- Allen West is already identified as
the fourth escapee, or the would-be escapee.
He has the paper mache head
and the false front on his vent to prove it.
- [Laurence] After describing his clever plan for getting out
of the cell block, West divulges
the convicts' planned escape route.
Instead of traveling one mile south to San Francisco,
they'll head two miles north to Angel Island.
- It may seem a little strange why the inmates
would've wanted to go two miles north to another island,
but it kind of makes sense
because they could have been recognized
or spotted in their prison garb if they were
in a heavily populated area.
- [Laurence] At the time, Angel Island is home
to a missile base that's being decommissioned
and therefore could hold advantages
for the three wanted men.
- It's being taken offline and there are
very few people there at any given time.
There also might be actual boats there that the men can use
to make it to the mainland.
The mainland in this instance isn't San Francisco,
but Marin County, which is only a quarter of a mile north.
- Once they landed in Marin, Allen West says
the plan was to steal a car.
- Allen West gave many interviews,
some of them good, some of them bad.
Did West tell the truth?
You really had to take him, anything he said
with a grain of salt.
- The FBI has all of this information the morning
after the escape, and sure enough, there is some evidence
that suggests that West's theory is correct.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] While searching the waters around Angel Island
a few days after the escape,
investigators discover a crucial clue that could line up
with the testimony of Allen West.
- There was a sealed packet made out
of the rubber raincoats,
so obviously none of the water would get in.
They were able to confirm that they belonged to the Anglins
because they had many Anglin family members,
some pictures of the family members.
- [Laurence] Investigators also find another clue
off of Angel Island, a makeshift wooden paddle,
just like the one Allen West described.
- All the stuff they found in San Francisco Bay led them
to believe that they drowned in San Francisco Bay.
- The FBI states that there are no bodies,
there's no life raft on Angel Island,
and the trip would've been too difficult to make at night.
So they stand by their original conclusion
that these men had drowned.
- [Laurence] December 31st, 1979.
More than 17 years after the escape,
the FBI officially closes the case.
The file is handed over to the US Marshals
in the event any new leads come up.
The case remains dormant until 2003.
- US Marshal Michael Dyke decides to just poke around
and see if this famous story, if he might be able
to add something to it.
- [Laurence] It isn't long before Dyke
finds compelling evidence in the government documents.
- Michael Dyke goes back into the Marin County police
records and he finds that there is a stolen car report
that there was a 1955 blue Chevy,
which was reported stolen on the night of the men's escape.
- The eyewitness that saw it first said there were three men
inside of the vehicle.
At the time, that didn't mean anything
because the escape wasn't yet public knowledge.
- [Laurence] Then, Dyke finds another police report
from Stockton, California,
almost 100 miles east of Marin County.
(tense music)
- Within just a few hours of the reported auto theft,
a man in Stockton says that he's forced off the road
by a blue Chevy being driven by three men.
- Later on, when that blue car is seen again,
closer to Stockton with three people inside of it,
that raises some eyebrows.
- It also does provide fodder for the idea
that maybe the FBI closed the case a little bit too quickly.
What's sure is that it does stoke even more alternative
theories about what might have happened.
- [Laurence] If this evidence is to be trusted,
the men may have very well survived the frigid waters
and fled to Angel Island according to plan.
- Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers
really could have gotten away with it.
(tense music)
- [Laurence] There's never been any hard proof behind
the FBI's long-held belief that the Alcatraz escapees
died in the San Francisco Bay.
What evidence does exist
points to several other possible outcomes.
- There are mysteries that are still surrounding
Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers
after they reached the water.
- One of the statements Allen West gave to the FBI was
that the escapees were gonna head to Angel Island
and sure enough,
they turned up some evidence on Angel Island.
- [Laurence] But even this theory has been
called into question in recent years,
thanks to a sophisticated new model of San Francisco Bay.
(dramatic music)
- It's certainly possible that Allen West was correct
that the original plan was for the inmates to go
to Angel Island just north of Alcatraz.
But the truth is that given the currents,
what they were doing in the Bay that night,
the inmates might not have had a choice.
The Army Corps of Engineers has developed a large scale
hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay
to study the tides and the currents of this system.
A team of Dutch scientists was then allowed
to use this model to predict
where the inmates might have been taken
if they were successful in getting off the island.
- [Laurence] The model reveals that any attempt
to reach Angel Island directly from Alcatraz
means paddling against the current.
- It would've been almost impossible for them
to fight their way against that current.
It would've been like trying to swim in a treadmill.
- And with the speed of the current,
it would be very difficult for you
to fight your way back to the shore.
- [Laurence] The scientists' model shows that
as the tide is going out that night,
the current travels west, toward the one mile wide,
Golden Gate Strait that leads out to the Pacific.
- And the closer they got to the Golden Gate,
the faster the currents would've gotten
because all of that water is being funneled out
through that very narrow opening.
- It happens pretty fast too,
and there are plenty of examples of small vessels
that either lose power or become disabled
and end up getting swept out to sea.
- [Laurence] As the tide turns between 11:00 and 12:00 AM,
the current slows and a window of opportunity opens up.
- There is this small moment called slack tide
where there is an uncommon calm
and there's almost no current at all.
- [Laurence] The scientists simulate
what would happen if the inmates entered
the water during this window.
- So as part of this simulation,
these scientists run a bunch of different scenarios
to see what would've happened.
In the first one with basically no paddling,
the raft just carries them out to sea.
- The second simulation was with the raft,
with the inmates paddling, and what was found
is that even though the raft is being swept
toward the Golden Gate, with enough effort,
the inmates could have deflected the raft away
from the mouth of San Francisco Bay
and continued their journey.
- [Laurence] Just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge
sits Fort Cronkite, a military post during World War II.
By 1962, many of its buildings were being torn down
by the army.
It's here that the FBI finds another important piece
of evidence from the escape.
- So one of the life vests turns up on Fort Cronkite.
They were able to test it and they figured out, hey,
this thing is functioning very well.
(dramatic music)
- Allen West makes the claim
that they're heading toward Angel Island
and we find objects at Angel Island.
At the same time, we also have the life vest
that was found at Fort Cronkite.
So now, we can connect objects to two separate locations.
- [Laurence] The model shows that
after the window of opportunity at slack tide,
the tide turns and the current reverses.
It's feasible the escapees' items
could have been carried back into the bay hours later.
- That could explain why a packet of items that belonged to
one of the Anglin brothers, as well as one of their paddles,
ended up at Angel Island.
Even if they didn't intend to go there.
We know that if Morris and the Anglins left
when the tides went out, the current would've swept
them under the Golden Gate Bridge.
What would be harder to explain is why this life vest
would end up at Fort Cronkite
when the current wasn't taking it
in that particular direction.
- [Laurence] Fort Cronkite sits just
inside Marin County, not far from the location
where the blue Chevrolet was reported stolen,
according to the reports US Marshal Michael Dyke uncovered.
- It's possible that Allen West's story was true
as he understood it,
but after they'd left him behind, the current takes them
to a totally different spot than any of them had planned
and of course, than Allen West would've known about.
- In any of these plans, you have to think on the fly.
If they couldn't get to their objective A,
they gotta have plan B.
Plan B could have been just going with a current.
(waves crashing) (tense music)
- It's also possible, of course, that even
with all these effects that were found,
the life jacket at Fort Cronkite, the photos
and the list of family contacts floating
around near Angel Island, all of those items could
of course have been found,
but the men still could have drowned.
(seagulls calling)
(tense music)
- In 1979, the FBI concludes
that the three Alcatraz escapees never made it to shore
and died in the frigid, shark infested waters
of the San Francisco Bay.
But maybe that's exactly what the men wanted everyone
to believe, when in fact they devised a much more
sophisticated getaway with the help
of some very important friends.
- When you look at who came through Alcatraz,
some of the biggest gangsters we've had in this country,
Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly.
- It is true that when these men were at Alcatraz
that they rubbed shoulders
with famous mobsters, including Whitey Bulger.
One story is that Whitey Bulger was helping these men
in their escape by a certain workaround
of these hot showers.
- It's said that one other security measure at Alcatraz
was to maintain the showers at a very hot temperature.
This was so the prisoners could not acclimate their bodies
to cold water and then have a greater chance
of being successful in swimming away.
- [Laurence] Allegedly, Bulger helps the men find a workaround.
- Supposedly, Whitey Bulger advises these inmates
to take buckets of hot water from the showers
and allow it to cool down
and then use that to acclimate their bodies.
But even so, to really acclimate your body, you would have
to be submerged in the water for a period of time,
not just pouring a bucket
of cold water on your body momentarily.
The coldest the water could get would be air temperature,
room temperature, which is likely not
as cold as what the Bay actually is.
- [Laurence] Another influential crime boss,
Harlem's Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, is rumored to have
provided the men a much easier way to get to the mainland.
(dramatic music)
- So in 1993, another confession
and possibly explanation comes to light.
On his deathbed, a man named John Leroy Kelly
says that he was an associate of another mobster
Harlem's Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson.
Kelly said that he had been hired in the 1960s
to abet in this escape.
- Bumpy Johnson kind of ran
the African American mob in Harlem at the time.
He was in a block that was one block over
and they were segregated.
And there are stories out there that Bumpy was very familiar
with the escape process.
- Kelly said that Johnson told him
that he had helped in the escape.
He says that Johnson had hired somebody to wait in the Bay
for them in a small boat that was unlit,
but painted a very bright color of white so that it was
as visible as possible, even in the fog and the darkness.
- [Laurence] A San Francisco police officer named
Robert Checchi corroborates at least part of the story.
- What Officer Checchi had seen when he went out
for a smoke break in the Presidio area,
he's standing right there at the San Francisco Bay,
right at the edge there in the city,
and he sees what he thinks is a pristine, newer boat,
come into San Francisco Bay.
Running lights, everything's going.
He sees it shut the running lights off, shut the engine off
for a period of time, 15, 20 minutes,
something in that area.
Then the lights go back on, the engine starts up,
and the boat goes back outta San Francisco Bay.
- [Laurence] Checchi senses something's not quite right,
but ignores his intuition.
It's not until the next morning
that he'll realize his mistake.
- The next morning when it hits the fan that,
hey, we got three escapees outta Alcatraz,
he goes to his supervisor, they get in touch with the FBI.
Officer Checchi tells him exactly what he saw.
- The FBI claims to follow up on this tip
and to go right out to that exact spot.
But of course, even if the boat had been there,
it's no longer there.
They don't follow up any further.
- [Laurence] Nor can anyone corroborate
the last, ironic chapter of Kelly's deathbed confession.
- In a strange and cruel twist of fate for the inmates,
Kelly suggests that the fugitive's mob connections
were what led to their deaths.
(dramatic music)
- These two guys, John Leroy Kelly
and this other associate, they picked up
these three escapees, took 'em back to Seattle,
got in a pickup truck and drove to Yakima, Washington,
which is just a couple hours' ride,
to a location where they met
with an old bank robber associate of Frank Morris
and were each given 50,000 bucks in cash
to go to Canada and disappear.
- [Laurence] The plan, as far as Morris and the Anglins know,
is for Kelly to help them cross the border into Canada.
But as the saying goes, there's no honor among thieves.
- These two guys, John Leroy Kelly
and this other associate are driving
through the Snoqualmie Pass area in Washington state.
They pull over, they reach under the seats
into a toolkit, pull out two .38s, go in the back,
shoot all the guys, shoot the three escapees,
steal the money, and then bury 'em in a hole
that they had already dug there.
- Kelly provides a very detailed description
of where the bodies can be found in the Seattle, Washington area.
- [Laurence] US Marshals comb the area.
- If you kind of follow his description,
it loosely brings you to that area
that I've been at three or four times already
and found the trees they were talking about.
- [Laurence] But no bodies are ever found.
- They go back to Kelly, but he's already died.
But the fact that authorities listened to him
and followed up on his tips does suggest
that authorities are still open to the idea
that maybe these guys did make it,
and maybe at least in 1993, they're still alive.
- [Laurence] There is little doubt
the 1962 escape from Alcatraz was well thought out
and executed to near perfection.
And if these three men did successfully cross the water,
they'd have to disappear for the rest of their lives,
and that might be the most difficult part of all.
- I always call Frank Morris the kind
of neglected Alcatraz escapee
because he really didn't have any close family
that knew him.
- So it kind of makes sense that he may have been just able
to slip away and never be heard from again.
- [Laurence] That may not be so easy for the Anglin brothers.
- John and Clarence Anglin, however,
are born into a big, loving family.
Lots of siblings, lots of extended family.
- They used to get in trouble a lot and on occasion,
they'd robb convenience stores or grocery stores.
- They end up in jail in 1958 on a bank robbery charge,
but they don't wanna be there
and then they're smart guys, so they devise a way to escape.
- Whenever they got arrested, they'd always tried
to figure out how to escape.
- [Laurence] But in 1961, after one escape attempt too many,
the Anglins earned themselves a ticket to the rock.
- Even as John and Clarence are bouncing their way
through the prison system and eventually ending up
at Alcatraz, they never forget where they came from.
- When you look at every single escape case,
not just this one, investigators go to family first.
Escapees, it's very hard for them not to get in contact
with their previous family.
- [Laurence] And that's exactly what happened,
according to a childhood friend of the Anglin brothers.
- According to Fred Brizzi, he grew up with the Anglins
as a kid, and they used to play together
and they would tow themselves
behind boats on the river down in Georgia and Florida.
He was a pilot and he used to run loads of marijuana
outta South America, central America, Mexico, up to the US.
- To a lot of his friends,
Brizzi always talks about flying to different parts
of the globe, but one of his favorite places
that he enjoys visiting the most is the country of Brazil,
where his buddies, John and Clarence Anglin are hiding out.
- [Laurence] Supposedly, the brother's first indirect contact
with the rest of the family comes in 1992, 30 years
after the escape, with Brizzi acting as the go-between.
- Brizzi contacts the Anglins' mother
and says that her sons came to him
and that he was the one who told them,
go to Brazil, you can make a life there,
and that he can confirm that they indeed
did make it out of Alcatraz alive.
(dramatic music)
- Imagine the emotions of the mother knowing
that her two boys, who are part of one
of the most infamous prison scapes in all
of American history, are in Brazil,
while the FBI is telling her that they're both actually dead.
- As proof for Mrs. Anglin to say
that he's not just making this up,
he brings along a photograph of her sons.
It's not the best quality photo.
It's grainy, and the men have facial hair,
and they look a little unfamiliar.
But for a woman who is desperate to see proof
of life of her children, it's pretty good.
- [Laurence] Brizzi supposedly tells Mrs. Anglin
that John and Clarence are now running a farm in Brazil.
In the last few years, family members have even gone down
to Rio to follow the trail
and locate the long lost brothers.
- Even though the picture's several decades old,
you could still match kind of the geographical area
and they pretty much found the area
that they believed the photos was were taken in,
and there is a large farm there.
- The family hires a local guide to help them through town
and as they're going through the town,
they start asking locals whether or not
they'd seen guys like John and Clarence
come through that area.
- What they do find is stories.
They find that people who live in this region say,
"Oh yeah, there were these three American guys
who showed up in the early 1960s.
They kind of kept to themselves, but they were friendly
and they started living in this cave."
- It's rumored that some of the locals
in the town are curious as to what the men's intentions are.
So the local town sheriff heads up
to the cave formation to meet with the men.
The men put him at ease and they actually
end up becoming friends with the sheriff
and he goes out of his way to provide them
with some food and allows 'em to stay.
- [Laurence] It's a tantalizing clue,
but that's where the trail goes cold.
Several weeks later, the men apparently move on,
leaving behind a single photograph as possible proof
of their new life in Brazil.
- They never find them.
In 2020, however, the family takes this photograph
that they've been holding onto to a facility
where they do a kind of analysis.
- [Laurence] The facial structure of the men
in the photograph is analyzed,
comparing it with verified photos of the Anglins.
- This software confirms that, yes,
the men in the photo are indeed John and Clarence Anglin.
However, authorities are much less convinced
that this photograph actually is the Anglins.
- Unfortunately, it wasn't the best.
That Polaroid picture,
one of the guys' head is turned slightly and sunglasses are on.
So we're dealing with something
that's not a hundred percent science.
It's not like DNA,
but at least it gives us enough information
to proceed on the particular lead.
- Let's remember that this story originates
with Fred Brizzi.
- He's a conman, he's a convict.
You have to take everything he says with a grain of salt.
- [Laurence] Without more conclusive proof,
the FBI refuses to revise their original assessment
that the escapees died in the water.
- It's still an active case because they're still calling me
and asking me for some historical information
on the case.
- There's no doubt that the FBI
and the US Marshals have received numerous reports
over the years, and they're going to follow them all.
- [Laurence] Decades after the escape from Alcatraz,
the US Marshals continue to follow up on leads.
In 2013, they get a call
from the San Francisco Police Department
with a new development.
- The San Francisco Police Department gets a letter
and the person who opens it
cannot believe what they're reading.
It is a long, handwritten letter
signed by none other than John Anglin.
- [Laurence] The letter begins, "My name is John Anglin.
I escaped from Alcatraz in June 1962
with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris.
I am 83 years old and in bad shape."
- He indicates that he's the only one alive still,
but that all three made it.
- It says that since that night,
they've been living out their lives pretty quietly
in Minot, North Dakota.
(dramatic music)
If the letter is real, it's an incredible look
into what these men had been up to since 1962.
It also includes the information
that Frank Morris died in 2008.
- [Laurence] The letter also says Clarence Anglin died
in 2011, making John the sole survivor.
- This letter, however, is not a confession or a check-in.
- The purpose of this letter is John wants
to trade medical care for a confession.
- It's not that unusual when I'm reading that letter.
We have had people turn themselves in for medical help.
It's happened in the past quite a bit.
- He's not kidding about these terms.
He says that he wants the SFPD to announce on TV
that he'll get just a year's sentence and medical care,
and if they do that, he'll write back
and disclose his whereabouts.
- [Laurence] If authentic, the letter
is the first public contact
from any of the three men since the escape.
But when US Marshals investigate the letter further,
they have misgivings.
- Whether the letter's legitimate or not,
we've done all the criminal analysis we can on it.
The letter was inconclusive from the DNA perspective.
- The letter is written by a very shaky hand
and some parts are impossible to read.
Handwriting analysis of this text against letters
that they had from their time at Alcatraz is inconclusive.
- Not to say that John couldn't have had somebody else
write it for him, and we've come up with the fact
that we can't corroborate any of that information in the letter.
So to me, it's just another great mystery
of this particular case that we've come across
so many times in this investigation.
- [Laurence] Strongly suspecting a hoax,
US Marshals choose not to take the author
of the letter up on his offer.
- Whether or not this letter was actually written
by John Anglin,
even if these men still were alive,
they'd right now be in their nineties.
- [Laurence] But besides this letter,
there have always been rumors dating back many years
that could support the theory that the Anglins
have been living in the US the entire time.
- There are members of the Anglin family, including some
of their sisters who suspect that John
and Clarence had been reaching out
to the family for some time.
- There's lore that John
and Clarence may have even made a personal
appearance at their mother's funeral.
- There are two odd looking characters
who show up at the Florida funeral.
It's two men dressed as women.
- Supposedly could have been the Anglin
brothers dressed as women.
That's never been able to be corroborated.
- Later on, when the Anglin brothers' father
George passed away,
the same situation happens when two strangers show up,
but this time with long beards and slip into the viewing.
They spend just a few moments at the casket,
shed a few tears, and then leave
without acknowledging anyone there.
- I can tell you from the Marshal Service perspective,
we might have done some spot surveillance on 'em
for whatever reason, whether an anniversary date,
family member passing away.
Hours of surveillance, nothing ever turned up.
- [Laurence] Without further evidence,
it's impossible to say conclusively
whether the Anglins really did live out the rest
of their lives in the United States or anywhere else.
- This is a fun story to think about, right?
I mean, here you have this inescapable fortress,
this supermax prison,
and here you have these three guys who figured a way out.
- They've bounced in and out of prisons their whole life,
institutions, but they used what they've got.
Their smarts, whatever they can pick up around the prison,
they fight the law and maybe they won.
- No bodies have ever been produced.
No evidence of their death has ever been produced.
- It's still one of the great mysteries of the 20th century
and everybody gloms onto it
because they love when an underdog wins.
- The US Marshal Service plans to keep the case open
until they can definitively say the escapees
are dead or in custody.
It's their way of warning
anyone else thinking of escaping prison
that the marshals will never give up.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries".
(dramatic music)