The Escape | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

tell me uh your name and where we are okay I'm Marie Anglin wadner we're at Leesburg Georgia
how long have you lived here 50 years we had this house built in 67. 50 years right here right here I've
never had the One telephone number I still got it so you must know everyone in town oh
yeah people could find me they know where I'm at for the past 50 years Marie England
Weidner has been waiting for someone to find her she's 82 and lives on a small Road in a small town three hours south
of Atlanta I kept trying to find the main street in town but somehow even if I was on it
never figured out which one it was the first thing you see when you walk in the front door of Marie's house is
pictures of her brothers it's sort of a shrine the pictures are old her brothers look like two handsome
men in their Prime how often do you think of them all the time all the time every day
every time I walk by my display she hasn't seen her brothers in almost 60 years she's not the only one looking for them
growing up Marie says her family didn't have any money they lived most of the year in Florida
her father would pick tomatoes and then in the Summers the whole family traveled
North to pick cherries in Michigan and wherever they went her brothers John and Clarence were always getting into
trouble little Mischief things to begin with like what like the neighbors Pete Sal had some little pigs okay so
they were little and they wanted to play with the pigs like a toy to them so one
of the Little Pigs got through the fence and they chased a little pig and they thought trying to catch you to play with
it and the little pig got hot and it fell over dead [Music] that's the first trouble that you
remember them getting into my dad had to pay for the pig I read that they were good swimmers
growing up oh my goodness yeah they would swim across the lake and all the way back without a problem and I'm not
sure how far it was across there but it was a long ways thank you so they would swim often oh the damn we
go to Michigan to work big strawberries and cherries and stuff they break the ice and go swimming
in really cold water yes yes as John and Clarence got older they got Wilder stealing tires and tractor batteries
they'd break into cars hot wire them and go for a drive by the time Clarence was 14 he'd been
sentenced to one year in a very rough youth facility called the state industrial school for boys
when he got out he and John broke into a store Landing them both in the industrial school for another year
they kept breaking into places and doing a terrible job they were caught over and
over and sent to prisons in Alabama Florida and Georgia many times they escaped some Reports say
they escaped from every single prison they were sent to Marie says sometimes they just walk home
well some Mama's cooking want some two older sisters were good Cooks always when they would show up with your
mother your sister say oh no not again not again God 1958 John and Clarence along with their
older brother Alfred rented a cabin and came up with a plan to rob a bank John stayed in the getaway car while
Clarence and Alfred went in with a toy pistol well I thought it was awful and I thought well it's a miracle that didn't
get hurt because they did have a toy pistol but the people in the bank did not know
it was a toy pistol I mean you know it looked real to them and they were afraid I'm sure they were
afraid but one of the uh ladies in the bank she almost fainted and my oldest brother
Alfred he gets he stops everything he gets water for her to drink they never have hurt anybody
um do you remember were your parents alive when this happened do you remember what
your parents reaction was oh yeah they were alive and they were devastated you know about the bank robbery in fact
John always wanted Mama to have a electric washing machine okay so he went and bought Mama a
washing machine and put it on the porch in the back and when my mama saw it she said and she had
all then she had heard about the bank robbery she told John she says you take it away I don't want it it was bought
with bad money and John had to move it she want to have it all three brothers were arrested for
bank robbery and sent to prison in Atlanta but John and Clarence kept trying to escape and were eventually
transferred to Leavenworth Kansas in 1960 Clarence tried to help John smuggle himself out of Leavenworth in a
big bread box that was the last straw John was sent to Alcatraz Clarence joined him three months later
after a letter smuggling incident Alcatraz became a federal prison in 1934 1934 it was a military base in prison on
an island more than a mile off the coast of San Francisco the water in San Francisco Bay is very
cold and the currents are strong it was said to be escape proof the government was sending a message not only to high
profile inmates like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly but also to problem inmates people like John and Clarence
who were determined to escape the idea was you could not Escape from Alcatraz my sister had wrote to John and
asked John how was the ride out to Alcatraz he said well the ride was good but it was going the wrong way
John was only at Alcatraz for 20 months Clarence was there for 17. and I was ironing and I had the radio on and they
broke into the news channel you know there and told about the escape from Alcatraz and I said I know that was John
and Clarence before they ever told it I said that's them they got out of there foreign
I was teasing the Marshalls and I I said I know one that didn't like Alcatraz the beds were too hard
I just I wonder when you heard that two people had escaped if you thought oh no they they must be dead because no
one had you know because everyone who tried drowned did is that was that what your worry no not one bit I was not
worried about I know there were good swimmers it's been 55 years and Marie believes
her brothers made it to the shore and are still out there somewhere they would be 86 and 87 years old today
two old men paling around outsmarting everyone especially the one U.S Marshal who's
still on the case what did you think when you were told this was going to be your new assignment
um I didn't want it they were thinking why me yeah exactly Mike Dyke is a supervisory Deputy with
the U.S Marshals about 15 years ago he was handed thousands of files tissue thin pieces of paper fragments various
law enforcement agencies have been collecting since 1962. he says the U.S Marshal Service will
keep going after a fugitive no matter what until they turn 99 years old then the marshals back off if you've
made it that far I guess you gotta pass and Mike Dyke says he still gets tips about the whereabouts of John and
Clarence every year I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal thank you foreign [Music] and this big limousine I call it drove
up and this man got out with a big book and he said are you Marie angling Weidner and I said I am and I said who
are you and he said I'm the FBI and I said what do you want with me and this was after they got out
he said well I wanted to know if if you know where your brothers are and I said well if I did I wouldn't tell you
I would not tell you if I knew where they are and he said I said by the way how long will y'all be looking for my
brothers and he said 100 years from now and I said well good luck so he closed his book got in the car and left
were you waiting for your brothers to contact you oh yeah I'm still waiting sure I would love for him to contact me
have they ever tried they were spotted at Mama's funeral dress like women and then when my dad died they were
spotted at the funeral home two hours before the family was supposed to be there
and they went down to view the body hats beard long coats didn't say a word didn't sign a book
that stood there about 15 minutes this lady told us and then they left that's a wild story that they showed up
in women's clothing for your mother's funeral I believe it the lady that told us she would not lie
she spotted him she didn't tell anybody but she spotted him she told the family afterwards after the funeral
you know they like to take chances but they like I do think nobody else would do
I would assume for for a woman like you um of your age and your position in the community and
everything else your faith that you take lying pretty seriously oh yeah oh yes I do absolutely
and so you would have no reason to to believe that all these stories weren't true that you've been hearing oh they
were true they were true they come from reliable source they have a photo that was given to them
years ago which they say shows the two brothers in Brazil they're middle-aged and based on the open shirts and
sunglasses looks to me like it was the 70s Mike Dyke says the photo isn't at all
conclusive he had it analyzed and it didn't persuade him but if the brothers were smart enough to get out of the
escape proof prison maybe they were smart enough to hide out all this time they were discovered missing early in
the morning of June 12 1962. as The Story Goes prison guards tried to wake up John Anglin and he wouldn't wake
up they poked him and his head rolled off the bed guards went into clarence's cell and
again found a paper mache head on the pillow another one in the bed of a third man Frank Morris
the guards sounded the alarm but the men were already off the island the Escape triggered the greatest
Manhunt in San Francisco's history as agents of the FBI Coast Guardsmen Highway Patrol sheriff's deputies and
local police join in the search whatever their fate the three convicts have apparently accomplished a feat that many
have tried with no success I'm just gonna say it their escape was ingenious they've been planning it for months the
three men along with a fourth named Alan West sharpened spoons and started chipping away at the backs of their
cells they made a drill from the motor of a broken vacuum cleaner and loosened the grills over their cell air vents so
they were able to enlarge the holes in the back herself and they made what they did they out of cardboard they made
false grills that matched the existing vent in the back and it covered up the larger hole they made and since West was
on the you know the crew to do maintenance he had access to paint so you know they put the cardboard Grill
back in the hole put soap around it to fill in the crack and then they'd paint over it and you really couldn't tell
unless you went up and looked right at it that that was a larger hole than the the vent that was originally there the
holes and fake vent grills allowed them to leave their cells freely at night and
they set up shop Behind the Walls in an unused utility space guards seemed unaware exist it and uh you know once
they were out of the backs of their cells uh they were able to you know climb up and they collected raincoats uh
from various prisoners who would give them up and there was no count of raincoat so a prisoner could go get a
raincoat and then the next day he can go get another raincoat and another raincoat because nobody kept track of
him because you know who's gonna who's gonna worry about raincoats on an island so the um uh they were able to collect
uh 40 50 60 raincoats and mostly using the backs of the raincoats they were able to
make pontoons for a raft and life vests they created mouthpieces to inflate the life
jackets and to inflate the raft they used a concertina that type of accordion as a kind of bellows
from what I from what I understand this was a kind of a whole prison effort there were a lot of people
rooting for these guys and helping out uh yeah so basically most of the prisoners knew about it the the majority
of them knew about it and they were just able to keep their mouths shut once the men had figured out how to get
out of their cells they started focusing on how to get out of the building the ceiling was about 30 feet high FBI Files
show they created a periscope so they could keep watch and they were using like a steam line to help vulcanize you
know to provide heat to help help cure the the seals on the on the on the glue when they're when they're putting the
life vest together and you know as far as what the quality of what they made you know one of the life vests there
there's one life best left behind and uh when FBI took that as evidence they tested it and they filled it with air in
a lab and they put a weight on it and that held air indefinitely it didn't even leak so it was actually fairly well
made in order to make the guards think they were asleep in their cells the men put the paper mache heads on their
pillows Marie says Clarence worked in the barber shop and collected hair to make them as lifelike as possible even
giving them eyelashes she says the requested paint sets so they could make portraits of their
girlfriends back home they use that paint to give their dummy heads facial features but they also really did paint
their girlfriends Marie has the portraits in her house I saw them they're actually very very good
originally all four men were gonna leave together but on the night of the Escape
Alan West had trouble with the vent in his cell he couldn't go and when it came out that he was involved the FBI probed
him and they learned a lot this is how we know what we do know about the Escape West did describe the raft as like 14
feet each the two pontoons were 14 feet long and about 15 to 16 inches in diameter
uh and then the other pontoon was uh about six feet long so we figured it was like a triangle like an isosceles type
triangle uh shape raft and they supposedly put a piece of canvas across the bottom of it uh to help support
their weight and it also made some paddles uh to help paddle away at 10 30 pm on June 11th the guards
heard a loud noise Mike Dykes as it was described like a hand beating a 55-gallon drum and we assume that's the
time when they were actually able to dislodge the cover on the vent on top of the building and there's no real way
nothing else they could have done with it except push it up and push it over and it would have landed on the roof and
made some noise so that's sensible that that's what time they actually got out of the building the group most likely
went to the very North End of the building where there was a stove pipe that they could shimmy down and there's
some dislodged barbed wire on a fence right outside of there that shows you know they
they went up over the fence there and then up over another fence and then once they're after that fence there was
really nothing left that they had to defeat except the water believed that they didn't inflate their
raft until they were at the water's edge and that they set out not from Mainland
San Francisco but for Angel Island West said their plan was to steal a real boat then steal a car then head east
there's no way they could have known what the ties were going to do uh the Wrath they made
who knows how watertight that was and there was a paddle found near Angel Island so about 24 hours after they
would have escaped out of their cells and out of the building a a paddle was found and it was matching a paddle that
was left on top of the cell block for West uh so we know it's one of the panels for
them but it was found near Angel Island Days Later a packet of letters sealed in
rubber and thought to have belonged to the men was found and a homemade life jacket washed up not far from Golden
Gate Bridge you could drop 20 things floating things in the bay and all of them would end up in different locations
that's the whole you know that's the whole problem with trying to judge where things are going to end up
well I think they made it well good for you what do you think what makes everything
you think that well you've just told me about a wonderful plan that they were able to execute there I mean
I I don't know I mean why wouldn't they have made it it sounds fantastic the whole thing uh you know once they went
in the water obviously nobody knows what happened um no bodies were ever recovered
but also on the same note uh there's been no positive proof that any of them lived so
Marie says they do have proof a piece of leather with a horse on it it was delivered to Alfred Clarence and
John's oldest brother in prison after the brothers escaped from Alcatraz she showed it to me it's small the size
of a picture frame Marie says the stitching on the edges of the leather is unmistakably clearance is stitching and
perfectly matches the stitching on a leather wallet he made it Alcatraz but more importantly she pointed out a
small slit in the side of the leather where she says Clarence and John left a secret note for Alfred
when the three brothers were little they figured out how to use milk to write on
blank paper to pass messages back and forth without their father seeing he said when he took the note out
there was nothing on it struck a match to it held it over the commode and then you could read it as it burned
and it told him told him where the boys were Alfred died shortly after he received
that horse he was electrocuted trying to escape from a prison in Alabama officials said it was an accident his
body made contact with an electrified fence in an attempt to climb over it as for Frank Morris the third man who
escaped with John and Clarence we don't know anything in 2010 Mike Dyke started looking at
bones that had washed up in 1963 nine months after the escape a pelvis with two femurs attached
it was a male Mike Dyke contacted the Anglin family and got DNA it wasn't a match
Frank Morris has no living blood relatives that Mike Dyke could locate so he was stuck he describes it as a broken
chain what would happen if you caught the brothers today uh well just like any any
criminal any guy Fusion we catch they're going to go to court you know we'll we'll arrest them and then the U.S
attorneys would decide whether you know it's worth the trouble to prosecute them you know
because they are they would be very old men now if they're still alive and uh is
it worth the trouble to prosecute them because they obviously stayed out of trouble for the last 55 years as far as
we can tell uh and you'll you know as far as that's concerned as well I mean if if any of
them were still alive all three of those guys would have reoffended in some way shape
or form because they're all career criminals there's nothing there's no indication whatsoever that they would
have turned over a new Leaf right after that escape and because they've all escaped before and every time they've
reoffended ferment uh their sister Marie Marie uh yeah Marie with Marie Whitner yeah I met her
really believes that her brothers made it and I can I can understand her position on that because it's your
brother if my brother you know if my brother disappeared and um I didn't know whether he lived or died I'd still try
and I was I would feel the same way I would think my brothers might be still alive somewhere or try to anyway unless
there was some proof otherwise and she's in the England family is in the same boat I am they have no evidence either
way whether they made it or whether they died so and maybe if I can prove something one way or other you know it
might give closure to everybody what would you do if you saw them again oh my goodness
I probably couldn't get through hugging them okay I don't know how much I love them
how do you imagine their lives after the Escape where do you see them and what do
you think their life was like well I used to dream about them a lot and they were every time they were in a
big white house in the side of a mountain and a lot of clay around I they were happy
when I tell you I'm in my dream [Music] so I would always hope that that's probably what happened
[Music] criminal is produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Corey
schreeppel and Rob Byers our intern is matild erfilino Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode
of Criminal you can see them at thisiscriminal.com or on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show Criminal is
recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia from PRX a
collection of the best podcasts around radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight foundation and thanks to adserc
for providing their ad serving platform to radiotopia I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
foreign [Music] [Music]

In 1962, brothers John and Clarence Anglin, along with fellow incarcerated person Frank Morris, managed to escape the one prison in America that was supposed to be inescapable: Alcatraz. Alcatraz is surrounded by icy waters, so the men would’ve needed a raft in order to escape the island. When no evidence of the raft or the three men was found, the FBI concluded that the men had drowned and closed their case. But more than 50 years later, their 82-year-old sister, Marie Anglin Widner, and U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke believe that the brothers’ escape was actually a success.

Marie’s son, David Widner, has written about this escape in a book called Escaping Alcatraz: The Untold Story of the Greatest Prison Break in American History.

Music in the episode “Journeys” by Podington Bear “Shake It!” by Jahzzar “Blipper” by Podington Bear “Hidden Tiles” by Blue Dot Sessions “Tweetstorm Gathering” by Podington Bear “Relinquish” by Podington Bear “Feel Good (Instrumental)” by Broke For Free

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

Say hello on Twitter (@CriminalShow), Instagram (@criminal_podcast), and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsCriminal/.

Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice https://bit.ly/accomplicenewsletter.

We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

Check out our online shop https://store.dftba.com/collections/criminal.

Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 77 originally published 10/20/2017 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-77-the-escape-10-20-2017

Brief Summary

Marie Anglin Weidner shares her brothers' escape from Alcatraz and her belief they survived, despite decades of searching.

Key points

Marie Anglin Wadner's Life Story. Marie shares her life in Leesburg, Georgia, and her family's history.
The Brothers' Mischief. Marie recounts her brothers' childhood antics and trouble with the law.
The Unsolved Mystery. The ongoing search for John and Clarence Anglin continues decades later.
The Mysterious Sighting. Marie discusses a reported sighting of her brothers at family funerals.
The Ingenious Escape from Alcatraz. Details of the brothers' elaborate escape plan from the infamous prison.
Searching for Closure. A sibling reflects on the uncertainty of their brother's fate and the hope for closure.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I kept trying to find the main street in town...

Marie shares her struggles with navigating her small town.

0:42WatchDec 26, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Criminal | A Podcast About Crime

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.