The Night Three Men Vanished Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay — June 11, 1962

The water between Alcatraz Island and San Francisco is cold, fast and unforgiving. Dark bay, one and a quarter miles, the last, the most dependable wall, the prison authorities relied on. They never had to have a guard on the shoreline.” The water did that for them.
The water was worth the risk, three men decided on the night of June 11, 1962.

Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin had been scheming for months. After lights-out in their cells in B Block, they worked quietly, chipping away at the damp salt weakened concrete around their ventilation grates with sharpened spoon handles and a makeshift drill fashioned from a stolen vacuum motor. One of the men played an accordion to cover the sound, the others dug. Every night. Unseen, silent, patient.
They fashioned what they required from pilfered bits, a raft from the prison raincoats, life vests from the same, paddles carved from wood. They fashioned dummy heads of soap, concrete dust and real hair from the prison barbershop and stood them up in their bunks each night so the guards’ flashlights would see nothing unusual on their rounds.
They thought of it all.

On the night of June 11 the three men crawled through their cell holes, climbed up the plumbing pipes to the roof, crossed over the fence, slid down to the rocky northeastern shore of the island, laid their raft on the rocks, and pushed out into the black water of San Francisco Bay.
The following morning a guard came to Frank Morris’s cell and put his hand on his shoulder. The head rolled on to the floor.
The alarm went off. The Coast Guard scoured the bay. Aircraft droned overhead. Within the hour FBI agents were there. What they found was a paddle floating near Angel Island, a deflated piece of rubber on the Marin County shore and a waterproof bag with personal items belonging to the Anglins.
No corpses. No males. No responses.

The FBI spent 17 years investigating and concluded they probably drowned. The U.S. Marshals never closed the case because you do not close a case without bodies.
Years later a letter surfaced supposedly from John Anglin saying all three lived. In 2013 a photograph of two men in Brazil who looked uncannily like the Anglin brothers, older, tanned and free, surfaced. The Anglin family has always quietly insisted the brothers made it.
Nobody knows for sure. No one ever will.”

What is known is straightforward. Three men sat in the most escape-proof prison in America, picked up a spoon, and started digging. They built a raft of raincoats, disguised themselves with paper heads to fool the guards and slipped away into a freezing bay in the dead of night.
No one knows if the water claimed them or released them.
The case remains open.

June 11, 1962 · Not found. Frank Morris · John Anglin · Clarence Anglin