Michael Bay is a film director with a few action films under his belt. He is responsible for meme about what anything can explodebut it is undeniable that he has a hand for blockbusters. One of them was ‘The Rock’, a film in which an already veteran Sean Connery escaped from the impregnable Alcatraz prison to later re-enter as a government employee. It’s fiction, of course, but this prison was the scene of an almost more spectacular story:

The story of three men who escaped from Alcatraz using spoons, mannequins and a ton of ingenuity.

Alcatraz. There are few better scenarios to make a prison. Right now it is not used as a prison, but as a tourist place, but it is still an islet of less than nine hectares in the center of San Francisco Bay. The closest continental point is about two kilometers away, which is not too far, but it has strong currents, the possible presence of sharks and, above all, low temperature waters.

Come on, if you managed to escape, then you had to swim and not only survive in the water, but also not be gunned down by the guards. Several famous prisoners lived in its cells, such as George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Mickey Cohen and Al Capone, and during its 31 years of operation as a prison, they claimed that no one had successfully escaped. Although, of course, that is the version they wanted to sell.

Prison Break. Many tried, but those who were not captured drowned or, as we say, were shot. All except three people: Frank Morris and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin. Here Morris is the prominent name. He began committing crimes at an early age and spent his youth in and out of prisons. Also escaping from them, as he escaped from the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

As fate would have it, in 1960 he ended up in ‘La Roca’, but as soon as he entered, he began plotting his escape. In the same cell were the Anglin brothers – they were dedicated to robbing banks – and Allen Westwho had been on Alcatraz since 1957. It was not a good idea to put them together, since escape plans immediately began.

Frank, Clarence and John

Art Attack. As we say, Morris was the brain of the entire operation and what they began to do was hatch a plan in which they would use everyday supplies to escape. The idea was to use the ventilation duct under the cell sink as a guide, but they had to widen it to be able to enter and, to do this, they used everything they had at their disposal such as saw blades from the prison grounds, an electric drill built with a vacuum cleaner motor and metal spoons from the dining room.

They could not escape directly from that tunnel, but when it was large enough to reach the hallway, they went up to the upper floor to, on a closed level, create a kind of workshop in which they could leave excess materials and elements. And how did they mask the noise? Well, with Morris playing the accordion during the daily hour in which music was played for the prisoners.

Simulation of the tools for a television program about the escape

The raft. Beyond the tools for digging, the prisoners created elements so that, during inspections, everything seemed completely normal. For example, they removed the fan motor from that duct, at the entrance to the vent, they created rivets using soap to imitate the originals. They also made dolls of themselves out of paper mache and hair they had stolen from the prison hair salon. These mannequins were left on the beds to pretend that they were sleeping when, in reality, they were in the secret workshop.

They were outside and it was time to cross the sea stretch. They did not do it by swimming, but with a boat improvised thanks to 50 stolen raincoats whose rubber they melted using the prison’s steam pipes to create the joints. Everything was ready for the big moment.

The masks

He gave the hit

No trace. On the night of June 11, 1962, two years after starting the whole plan, Morris, the Anglins and West set off outside. West was unable to leave his cell, but the other three prisoners made their way outside, scaled two wire fences almost four meters high, crossed the steep embankment to the northeastern shore of the island and… took to the sea.

The alarm did not sound until the next morning, when the guards discovered the entire racket. The prison went into total lockdown, with officials checking every corner and the Coast Guard helping in the search for the three escapees. They found nothing more than some remains of the raft and the Anglins’ personal effects. Neither Morris nor John… nor Clarence was seen again.

open case. As we read in BBCalthough the prison authorities commented that the easiest thing was for the fugitives to drown in the bay, since none of the bodies had been found, the case was open for a few years. The FBI closed it in 1979, but the U.S. Marshals Service has kept it open, even publishing portraits showing what the fugitives would look like today.

And some clue has appeared. It may be false, but in 2018, San Francisco police claimed to have found a letter in 2013 in which John Anglin confirmed that Morris died in 2005, Clarence in 2008, and that he would turn himself in in exchange for cancer treatment. “I am 83 years old and I am in bad condition. I have cancer” one could read. The FBI got back on the case, but could not verify if it was authentic. It is also not known if Clarence and Morris were actually dead.

Robot portraits of Frank, Clarence and John in 2022

And what happened to West? We have already said that he could not escape, so that night, he returned to his bed and went to sleep. The next morning, when the operation was uncovered, the scene was found in West’s cell, but since he collaborated with the FBI in the investigation, no charges were filed. He told all the details of the operation and the man served his sentence in other prisons after the closure of Alcatraz in 1963.

He was released in 1967, but two years later he returned to Florida State Prison with a life sentence for burglary, robbery and attempted escape. In 1978, due to complications due to peritonitis, he died. His cronies, as we say, were never heard from again.

A movie prison. After the escape, numerous police and television investigations took place. Even the MythBusters program showed that a leak in a boat with the same specifications as the original was possible. There were also those who claimed to have killed the escapees, but no remains were ever found at the supposed burial site.

The case was so famous that, in 1979, ‘Alcatraz Escapea film based on the book of the same name by Campbell Bruce in which the real events are narrated and which stars Clint Eastwood himself. And it is a tremendous movie that I recommend seeing, even though we have already made a tremendous spoiler.

Images | Joely19, Superchilum, HarshLight from San Jose