Nephews of Alcatraz escapee slam authorities over letter

My name is John Anglin. I escape [sic] from Alcatraz in June 1962 with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris. I’m 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer. Yes we all made it that night but barely!

Frank passed away in October 2005. His grave is in Alexandria under another name. My brother died in 2011. 

If you announce on T.V. that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke this is for real and honest truth. 

I could tell you that for seven years I lived in Minot North Dakota – […] in Fargo – 1990 to 2005!

But too damn cold had to get the hell out. I lived in Seattle for most of my years after the escape.  

I’m in Southern California now.  

[Illegible] if response!

In total there were 14 attempts to escape from Alcatraz from 1936 to 1962, involving a total of 36 inmates.

Of that number, 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, and two drowned while two – Joseph Cretzer and Sam Shockley – tried twice.

Two of the men who were caught were later executed in the gas chamber at the San Quentin prison for their role in ‘Battle of Alcatraz’ escape attempt in which an officer was killed.

April 27, 1936 – Joe Bowers began climbing up and over the chain link fence at the island’s edge while working burning trash at the incinerator. He refused orders to climb down and was shot dead

December 16, 1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe took advantage of their job at the mat shop in the model industries building to file their way through the flat iron bars on a window.

The pair climbed through the window, made their way down to the water’s edge and disappeared into San Francisco Bay, during a storm when the currents were especially strong.

Officially, they are listed missing and presumed dead.

May 23, 1938 – Thomas Limerick, Jimmy Lucas, and Rufus Franklin killed unarmed correctional officer Royal Cline with a hammer while working at the in the model industries building.

They then climbed to the roof in an attempt to disarm the correctional officer Harold Stites in the roof tower but the Limerick and Franklin. Limerick died from his injuries. Lucas and Franklin received life sentences for the correctional officer’s murder.

January 13, 1939 – Arthur ‘Doc’ Barker, Dale Stamphill, William Martin, Henry Young, and Rufus McCain escaped from the isolation unit by sawing through the cell bars and bending bars on a window.

The inmates made their way to down to the water’s edge and correctional officers found the men at the shoreline on the west side of the island. Martin, Young, and McCain surrendered, while Barker and Stamphill were shot when they refused to surrender. Barker died from his injuries.

May 21, 1941 – Joe Cretzer, Sam Shockley, Arnold Kyle, and Lloyd Barkdoll took several correctional officers hostage while working in the industries area. The officers, including Paul Madigan, who later became Alcatraz’s third warden, were able to convince the four that they could not escape and they surrendered.

September 15, 1941 – John Bayless attempted to escape while on garbage detail but gave up shortly after entering the cold water of San Francisco Bay.

Later, while appearing in Federal court in San Francisco, Bayless tried, again unsuccessfully, to escape from the courtroom.

April 14, 1943 – James Boarman, Harold Brest, Floyd Hamilton, and Fred Hunter took two officers hostage, climbed out a window and made their way down to the water’s edge

One of the hostages was able to alert other officers and shots were fired at Boarman, Brest, and Hamilton, who were swimming away from the island. Hunter and Brest were both apprehended.

Boarman was hit by the gunfire, sinking below the water before officers were able to reach him and his body was never recovered.

Hamilton was initially presumed drowned but after hiding for two days in a small shoreline cave made his way back up to the prison, where he was discovered by correctional officers.

August 7, 1943 – Huron ‘Ted’ Walters disappeared from the prison laundry building but was caught at the shoreline, before he could even attempt to enter San Francisco Bay.

July 31, 1945 – John Giles was able to take advantage of his job unloading army laundry sent to the island to be cleaned and over time stole an entire uniform.

He walked aboard an army launch to what he thought was freedom but the launch was headed for Angel Island, where correctional officers met him and returned him to Alcatraz.

May 2-4, 1946 Bernard Coy, Joe Cretzer, Marvin Hubbard, Sam Shockley, Miran Thompson, and Clarence Carnes staged a break out known as the ‘Battle of Alcatraz’

They managed officers and gain access to weapons and cellhouse keys as well as take officers hostage but their plan began to fall apart when the inmates found they did not have the key to unlock the recreation yard door.

Soon after, prison officials discovered the escape attempt but instead of giving up, they decided to fight it out. Two officers were killed before U.S Marines helped to restore order.

In total 18 officers were injured and Shockley and Thompson were executed December 1948.

July 23, 1956 – Floyd Wilson disappeared from his job at the dock and after hiding for several hours among large rocks along the shoreline, he was discovered and surrendered.

September 29, 1958 – Aaron Burgett and Clyde Johnson overpowered a correctional officer and attempted to swim from the island while working on the garbage detail.

Johnson was caught in the water, but Burgett disappeared and his body was found floating in the Bay two weeks later.

June 11, 1962 – Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin vanished from their cells and were never seen again.

A fourth man, Allen West, believed by some people to have been the mastermind, was also involved but he was still in his cell the next morning when the escape was discovered.

The escape plot involved homemade drills to enlarge vent holes, false wall segments, and realistic dummy heads, complete with human hair, placed in the beds so the inmates would not be missed during night time counts.

After making their way through vent holes located in the rear wall of their cell, they made their way to the water.

They used prison-issued raincoats to make crude life vests and a pontoon-type raft to assist in their swim.

Several weeks later a man’s body dressed in blue clothing similar to the prison uniform was found a short distance up the coast but the body was too badly deteriorated to be identified.

Morris and the Anglins are officially listed as missing and presumed drowned.

December 16, 1962 – John Paul Scott and Darl Parker bent the bars of a kitchen window in the cellhouse basement, climbed out, and made their way down to the water.

Parker was discovered on a small outcropping of rock a short distance from the island and Scott attempted to swim towards San Francisco.

But the currents began pulling him out to sea and he was found by several teenagers on the rocks beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, then taken to the military hospital before being returned to Alcatraz.

Tide researchers have said the daring prisoners who broke out of Alcatraz jail in 1962 may have escaped, but only if they fled at the right time.

Computer models that consider the San Francisco Bay’s tides, winds and other factors reveal the inmates stood a small chance of paddling to freedom on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

According to the Dutch team of scientists that assembled the data, it all depends on the time inmates Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris set sail in their makeshift dingy made of raincoats.

‘Only in the time window between (11pm) and midnight do they get close enough to the shore to have a chance to survive,’ researcher Dr Rolf Hut wrote on his blog.

Otherwise, one of three disastrous things would have happened.

Had they launched in the hours before, the men would have been sucked out into the frigid Pacific and died of hypothermia.

Had they waited until after midnight, the tide would have shifted during their daring voyage and the current would have pushed them deeper into the San Francisco Bay.

There, they either would have perished from cold before they got close enough to the East Bay to make landfall or gotten picked up by authorities when the sun rose in the morning.

Assuming the men did launch sometime around 11.30pm and somehow knew to first paddle their makeshift boat hard to the north – towards Angel Island, where some of their belongings and a paddle would later be found – they could have become the only prisoners to ever escape the so-called inescapable prison.

‘If they hit it exactly at midnight, the beautiful thing is that we see that they would have been sucked out towards the Golden Gate Bridge,’ Dr Hut told BBC News .

As they neared the bridge, the shifting tides would have made paddling far easier.

‘In the best case, the escapees peddle northwards with a speed of almost 1km per hour, an almost Olympian effort. In that scenario, they most likely survive and make it to the north side of the Golden Gate bridge,’ Hut wrote.