Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack - Season 1, Episode 17 - Full Episode | Forensic Files

this program is about unsolved mysteries whenever possible the actual family members and police officials have
participated in recreating the events what you are about to see is not a news broadcast
Alcatraz Barack for over 29 years a nation's most notorious prison a home for such master criminals as Al Capone
Machine Gun Kelly and it's Birdman Robert Stroud Alcatraz stands in the middle of San Francisco's icy cold Bay a
treacherous moat that was a best guarantee that nobody would successfully escape and nobody did until June the
11th 1962 on that night three men broke out of their cell house and vanished into the waves of the homemade raft John
Anglin his brother Clarence Frank Morris bring it masterminded the escape were never seen again ten days later
authorities discovered pieces of the raft it had broken up at see the three convicts appeared to have swum before it
did they make it 8 continues if they went into the water were the primitive flotation equipment that they had they
were drowned within 30 minutes they succumbed to hypothermia and drown I'd stake my life on it that they're out
there not me right now but their bones are out there I felt that they didn't make it but I thought we'd find a body
and we didn't find a body I think they made it if you call a Bureau of Prisons today they will tell you no one escaped
from Alcatraz they made it in the 25 years that have passed since that June night no trace of Frank Morris John
Anglin and Clarence Anglin has ever been found they may still be at large and perhaps
are still in hiding tonight and a special 90-minute edition of unsolved mysteries we will see
exactly how the anime is conceived and executed their ingenious escape we all follow the exact route they took as they
broke through the walls of Alcatraz and just as they face the icy waters of the San Francisco Bay
we have asked triathlon swimmer Dave Horning to attempt to duplicate their dangerous swim to freedom we've also
done a replica of the convicts makeshift raft to see if it could possibly survive
the one and a half mile trip across the bay renowned endurance swimmer Diana Nyad
will closely track Dave and the rest progress from our camera boat just a few feet away they'll also take you inside
the walls of Alcatraz for society's most incorrigible criminals including Al Capone or finally tamed so join me for
this 90-minute special edition of the unsolved mysteries from Alcatraz [Music] in August of 1934 Alcatraz opened its
doors its inmates the most troublesome escape pro and cons on the system were gathered from prisons around the country
Alcatraz is first convicts were loaded on special armored trains shackled to their benches they made the
slow journey to Tiburon on San Francisco Bay the guards were so concerned about an
escape that once there the railroad cars themselves were loaded onto barges and taken across to the rock the men were
not allowed out of these train cars until they stepped on the dock of Alcatraz an outer trans inmates who
behave themselves were given the privilege of working a few hours a day in the industries building here in the
laundry aisle component once made $100,000 a week ruling Chicago's underworld earned seven cents an hour
pressing and folding the clothes of military personnel in the inmates it is possibly the first honest job he ever
held an Alcatraz was the first institution to truly tame the cunning gangland boss Capone was convicted of
income tax evasion in 1931 initially he was jailed in Chicago and then Atlanta it was able to bribe authorities for
special privileges he had a carpeted cell a smoking jacket and was even offered a ticker tape machine to keep
track of his investments at Alcatraz however he adored the same Spartan conditions as everyone else
Al Capone was a very good inmate on Alcatraz unfortunately some of the inmates were very jealous ohm because of
his millions of dollars and he was treated very badly by the inmates one inmate stabbed him one time in the
barber shop during Capone's first two years at Alcatraz the warden established a policy forbidding the inmates to speak
to one another this strict rule of silence was impossible for the boisterous Capone at least three
occasions he was caught talking to other inmates and it was here that he paid the
penalty confinement an isolation room these 200-pound doors of Steel blocked out all the lights they forced the
inmate to sit in a tiny cell in pitch-black dark with no human contact for 24 hours a day if a convict was
particularly troublesome his bed blankets and clothes would be confiscated and he had to endure the
ordeal naked when Capone entered Alcatraz he was diagnosed with syphilis Capone wouldn't believe it and paid
other convicts to take his medicine after a few years the gars noticed that the syphilis was affecting his brain his
speech deteriorated and from time to time he had put his clothes on backwards eventually Capone was completely
disabled by the disease he died on January 25th 1947 eight years after his release from Alcatraz one of the Rock's
most famous residents was Robert Stroud who served a life sentence for two murder convictions Stroud initially was
incarcerated at Leavenworth where he spent his time in solitary confinement studying birds and wrote two books on
their diseases his life is chronicled in a movie called the Birdman of Alcatraz starring Burt Lancaster it painted a
heroic picture of Stroud as an oppressed convict tormented by prison officials who wanted to confiscate the 300 Birds
he had collected Robert Stroud was surly quiet a morose individual he did very little talking very few of the inmates
talked to him and most most of them disliked him char was a very intelligent man with only a third-grade education
get to read and write about three four languages but it was psychotic very demented man and at most times very
difficult to get along with at Leavenworth Stroud was caught hiding three and a half gallons of grain
alcohol which he had distilled from birdseed and from contraband smuggled to him in the bottoms of bird cages for
this and other offenses he was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942 he had a lot of funny habits a lot of times he'd
walk around in his cell quite naked it also shave every here off his body and those are some of the things that were
different than most inmates on the rock Stroud was not allowed to keep a single bird in his cell but apparently as
biographers felt the titled Birdman of Alcatraz had a catchy ER ring and Birdman of Leavenworth the thirty-years
Alcatraz was the most dreaded prison in America tough cold and virtually escape proof 14 escapes or attempt 10 men died
and all the rest were captured except three many former inmates believe those three made it one of these inmates was a
suspected collaborator Clarence Karns a confidential close friend of the escapees Clarence Karns spent 13 years
on Alcatraz and was a youngest person in confinement arriving in 1946 when he was
just 18 years old that same year Clarence became embroiled in the bloodiest escape attempt on Alcatraz his
history a desperate bid that resulted in the deaths of two guards and three inmates two other inmates were executed
for their role in the murders but Carnes was spared and instead received a life sentence Don de Navy a professor at
Merritt College in Oakland co-wrote a manuscript with Clarence Karns this was a first insider's account of the escape
Clarence passed away last year but Denis shares his collaborators opinion these guys made us they made it because
Clarence said they did and I trust that if you call the Bureau of Prisons today they will tell you no one escaped from
Alcatraz they made it this is an embarrassment who's going to admit to in Clarence's manuscript he wrote
cowardice in Alcatraz was a thing you didn't want into very often those had proven long before they got there that
they were cowards a daring escape of Frank Morris and the Anglin against the longest odds that could possibly exist
his telling proof that Clarence knew what he was talking about Alcatraz had a deservedly formidable reputation the
ratio of guard to inmate was the highest of any prison in the country one guard to every three convicts Alcatraz was a
last stop in the federal prison system only the worst troublemakers were sent there there were a few privileges for
the first two years of operation prisoners were not even allowed to talk to one another out of a 24 hour day
twenty-three were spent in a solitary cell the inmates were counted at least fourteen times a day but no man made
security precautions could begin to match Alcatraz's most distinguished feature the bay that surrounds it
Alcatraz was open because it was hoped to be and we believe it has been the inescapable prison Alcatraz was never
considered escape proof it was considered to be a very difficult place to escape from for one reason and one
reason only and that was the water that lay between the island and the mainland or in the other direction from the
island and Angel Island that was the only thing that made it difficult to escape from Alcatraz was that water the
water was there that was the barrier Alcatraz a state-of-the-art security included a master control room that
oversaw the three-tiered cell blocks there each prisoner was assigned to his own cell guards prowled restlessly
looking for signs of trouble you got so many counts you make a day and you gotta count bodies and we had a
lot of official counts then we had a lot of unofficial counts which the officers
working and supposed to take so what my opinion is if you can beat the count you
can escape from anyplace if you can't beat the count you're gonna get caught one of the hallmarks of Alcatraz is
rigid security with a sporadic shakedowns of the prisoners cells Clarence Karns was often targeted as he
worked in a prison library and distributed reading material to the board prisoners authorities suspected
that he used this job as a cover to circulate contraband materials they were correct Karns was the most important
inmate on Alcatraz he had gained the respect of virtually all the other inmates because he knew how to keep his
mouth shut he was in a sense the Godfather of Alcatraz those who needed information
those who wanted advice sought Karnes out okay cause about Clarence was invited to participate in the escape but
as he was under such close scrutiny he declined he did remain close to the plot a plot that began with a robber named
Allen West West was a close friend of Carnes and was assigned to paint the top tier and ceiling of the cellblock at the
prison one day while working there he discovered a way to access the prison's roof through a ventilation shaft West
noticed that the ventilation duct through the cell house roof was constructed in such a way so that there
were cross bars in between you couldn't cut the bars but Wes discovered that all
you had to do was cut the entire duct from its surrounding support and just shove the whole thing out
by October of 1961 West had begun planning his escape he enlisted the help of the Anglin brothers they had been at
the prison for one-and-a-half years and had a history of escapes from other institutions the angle ins were expert
craftsmen because he'd grown up in the Florida swamps they knew how to construct rafts they knew how to
negotiate currents they were expert swimmers as well perhaps the most pivotal figure in the plot was another
bank robber named Frank Morris according to prison records he had an IQ of 133 approaching the genius range his cell
was next to Wes and once he was brought into the plan he put his intellect to good use Morris
also had a record of other escape attempts he had been at Alcatraz for one and a half years Morris if you could use
the term was the intellectual type he was a thinker anything connected with this escape that had any real brains
behind it can be credited to Moore's prisoner still have no way to get to the top of the cellblock for their first
floor settlers but Clare's cars grew away during this few hours of freedom during the 1946 escape Carnes had
discovered this utility corner that ran the length and the height of the cellblock inside the corridor heating
and water pipes have formed a makeshift ladder it is a dangerous climb but it was the only way the convicts could
reach the roof Ward began to circulate through the prison grapevine that an escape was on it seemed everyone but the
guards knew that something was up Kearns's job made it possible for him to pass information to the four ringleaders
it was not what might be called general knowledge but I think that there was quite a few of the other inmates that
were aware that an escape attempt was being made and it's surprising to me that this
could be the case without some information getting to the authorities and a convicts on Alcatraz you know even
if the whole population know about it you can almost be guaranteed that a guards wouldn't never hear about it
that's just the way the cons on Iraq were in preparing for their escape the convicts took advantage of one of
Alcatraz's few luxuries in the early part of the evening there was what they call a music R and anybody who had a
string instrument could play when that music is playing it kind of has an effect of deafening the officer who was
making his inspections and the inmates that were digging were is digging away you think that somebody's gonna escape
they're gonna escape through the front it never entered my mind did somebody go back through the corridor I don't know
why it's like I guess you don't use the back door in between head counts the angle ins Westin Morris dug out the rear
of their respective cells West also used the time to craft false ventilation fronts to hide their escape materials in
order to evade the incessant head counts while they prepared their escape the convicts devised a brilliant ploy they
decided that they would have to make dummy heads to be in their bunks in case one of them was not in there when the
guard would go by and this was at a time when the lights were turned low and it would be difficult to recognize either
then see that a face was in the bed Morris asked me about how you mix flesh tone salmon arm and iris I did I did a
lot of oil painting on Alcatraz he asked me a number of times and I begin to wonder why is he so interested in flesh
tone and then I began to put it all together because they needed a flesh tone color for a dummy heads the
construction of these dummies took place after the lights had been extinguished the dummies themselves were made from
soap concrete powder and stolen paint one of the angles worked in the barber shop and provided the hair that gave
them an extra touch of realism this is one of the actual dummies the men created still preserved by the National
Maritime Museum across the bay in San Francisco these are two drills used by the convicts they're constructed from
Barbara shears and parts from a vacuum cleaner they're thought to have been used to drill through the huge duct
leading to the roof these are the actual spoon which authorities believe are used to
dig through the convicts cell walls by the time the convicts had crafted these items they'd managed to surmount many of
the obstacles standing between them and freedom but huge ones remain they still had to find a place to hide while they
used the drills that cut through to the roof additionally in the midst of the prison's tight security and close
scrutiny they had to find some private space where they could build their raft alan west came up with a solution when
West was painting some material would get down and get scattered around and so I don't know who gave the orders that
that he would be allowed to hang some blankets up along the side of there so that this material would not get thrown
over the side in retrospect it gave those people a place to to work for eight months the cell house roof is
blanketed on giving the inmates complete privacy to drill out the ventilation shaft and collect the items they needed
for their escape Morris and the Anglin would take turns climbing to this workspace the dummies left on their
pillows enable them to evade the nightly headcount each night with a lookout in place they would make the hazardous
climb to the roof in his manuscript Karns writes many times through the years I had met men who had tried to
escape but their floor had been too little planning and being too hasty to try to get away he had not been thorough
in their thinking and that's what defeated them on Alcatraz the four men who painstakingly prepared
their daring escape that winter in 1962 made no such mistakes back in 1962 the angle ins Frank Morrison Ellen West
spent nine months preparing for their impending swim and as winter pass into spring they made their final plans for
the patrolling guards the spring of 1962 is like any other but the inmates do differently and right under the gaze of
their keepers they help the four escapees in their preparations one by one other convicts are up tsch asleep
assed the escapees the raincoats they needed to build their raft and life jackets at night the men made their life
preservers in their cells and hid them in the partially dug out escape tunnels in this secret workspace hidden by the
blankets the englands and morris took turns assembling their raft they were getting close very close to the time
when they would be ready [Music] June 11th 1962 the lights have been extinguished the time to escape and
finally arrived [Music] Allen [Music] time to comb quietly the anglers made the buy now routine trip to their
workspace and for the first time west tried to slip through the hole in his cell wall West had his exit carved out
to the point where all he needed was to punch his way through suddenly there's an iron bar that had been used as part
of the reinforced masonry when the cell house had originally been built and that
no one knew was there leaving the instigator the plan behind the angles and Morris finally in the words of
Clarence Karns saw the moon for the first time in decades they were almost free the convicts
descended from a corner of the roof by way of an exhaust pipe adjoining the kitchen
ironically though prepared for every security breach inside the prison security outside was weak nobody noticed
the men as they carried their raft and life preservers closer to the beach the last step before the most grueling part
of the journey only one fence stood between them and the 54-degree waters of San Francisco Bay ever so carefully
planned utilizing of dummy faces the making of the lifejacket the making of a raft I don't know of any escape from a
prison which had more ingenuity utilized the escapees were confronted by one final hurdle how to quietly inflate
their huge raft their solution was perhaps a most ingenious yet Frank Morris had received a small accordion
called a concertina used during the daily music hour they had taken the keys out of the concertina and therefore you
could put your hand on one strap the concertina and push it up and down it would operate just like a bellows very
remarkable exercise of patience and stick-to-itiveness the only weak point in this escape was the failure to really
take serious consideration of that water out there the record of previous escape
should have been sufficient to determine from tackling that water it's impossible
to beat that water that was the mistake break Morris John Anglin Clarence Anglin
had made it off the rock what happened to the next remains a mystery [Music] the following day it was business as
usual on Alcatraz beginning with a morning headcount dummy in 152 Clarence Anglin John Anglin and Frank Morris had
escaped immediately extensive search began one of the largest manhunts in the countries
it's a Lindbergh kidnapping 25 years earlier we were ordered to broaden the bay and course start looking around the
eye and then over an angel on scanning the beaches to see if anything that pertained to them might have washed up
and then it became evident that we weren't going to find him whether he had made it or not no one knew for sure
authorities believe that the men were headed for nearby Angel Island but for 24 hours nothing was found
then remnants of the escapees rat began to surface and so too did a controversy on whether or not the men survived the
day after the escape a home made or was discovered floating between Alcatraz and
Angel Island this paddle matched one that the convicts had left behind in the cellblock On June 14th two days after
the breakout a rubber rat packet was also discovered floating near Angel Island they contained an address book
eighty family photographs and a money order that belonged to one of the escapees my conclusion would be that it
was items that these people needed these were keepsakes of these men this is all
they had in this world when I seen that I said well I think they didn't make it because I think it's something they
would even possibly risk her life to save on the 15th of June a prison raincoat was found floating near the
North Shore of San Francisco on the 22nd ten days after the escape pieces of the
convicts raft were finally only 50 yards off the east shore of Alcatraz I feel sincerely that the floatation equipment
that they had came apart on them and that instead of being able to ride above the water
they were submerged in the water [Music] Donna Burleigh was the FBI agent in charge of the investigation
probably the earliest thing could have gotten into the water would be 10:30 the outgoing tide started that night at 10
o'clock and that outgoing tide is very strong and I firmly believe that they were taken by the currents into the
Pacific Ocean the day of the escape a Norwegian ship spotted a body floating 20 miles past the Golden Gate Bridge the
one able to retrieve it their description matched that of Frank Morris they cited what he had on and it
coincided with the apparel of the escapees there is some evidence to suggest that at least one of the men
survived the day after the escape a man claiming to be John Anglin called a San Francisco lawyer known to represent
Alcatraz inmates the attorney in question was out of the office so the call was transferred to another attorney
eugenia McGowan the person called and the receptionist put him through to me and he said I'm John Anglin and I want
you to contact the US Marshals office to set up a meeting and I said for what purpose and he said in effect don't ask
questions just do as I tell you call the US Marshals office to set up a meeting and I said well I'm not going to do that
unless I know why and he said Do You Know Who I am and I said no he said read the newspaper and he hung up the FBI set
up a phone tap in eugenia McGowan's office hoping the man would call back he never did and they eventually ended the
surveillance dismissing the call as a prank a few weeks after the break Clarence Carnes claimed he received a
postcard from the escapees in it they gave the pre-arranged code words that confirmed their success the card read
Gone Fishing if they had made it to shore the first thing they would have had to do was was was
something off of somebody they would have had to get a car they were had to get money they would had to do something
that would have certainly been noticed there were no reports of robberies a car thefts attributable to the escapees
however the men may have been helped by someone on the outside Claire's believed
that convicts secured the aid of an Alcatraz inmate named bumpy Johnson Clarence
shared with me that Ellsworth bumpy Johnson black Capone of Harlem underworld king of Harlem had arranged
for a boat to be out there to pick the Englund and Morris up now it would have been pitch black out there but my guess
is that they did get to that boat that was waiting for them according the class cars the boat then took the convicts to
pier 13 in San Francisco's Hunters Point district my feeling is that that's just
something that Karns has dreamed up and that there is not the slightest possibility there's any truth in it my
opinion of Clarence Carter that he's in in many of Alcatraz and they any information he received from him would
have to be taken with a grain of salt because of his background and that you would have to said you flee verify
everything that he said so far there have never been any indication that what he has said has any truth concerning the
fact that they have escaped co-conspirator Allen West was questioned about these outside contacts he denied
existence the race wouldn't have copped out you incop bow you know I wish West was
people he was solid people and I don't believe you know there until his day I don't believe you have a toll of nothing
today the FBI and prison authorities have not changed their opinion they believe the men drowned within minutes
of hitting the water the escape was just another dismal failure in our opinion now of course we never are cocksure
enough to say well we're know they're dead but we were pretty sure that they were dead because there was no trace of
them whatsoever however they're still on the missing list and not the dead list six months after the escape of Morris
and the Anglin brothers another attempt proved that they could have survived the
swim it began in the storeroom located underneath the kitchen over a period of time that must have been years
a succession of convicts sawed away at the bars on a window some believe they use a spatula stolen from the kitchen
another theory is that the inmates use pieces of string covered them in wax and then dip them into ordinary kitchen
cleanser making a crude and fragile file imagine the frustration of trying to sort through steel with a piece of
string but by December of 1962 two men ready to make the final cut John P Scott and Lee Parker two
convicted bank robbers made the last cuts on the bars on December 14th 1962 the cold waters quickly convinced Parker
to give up the swim but Scott was undaunted he was carried by the current over three miles to the south base of
the Golden Gate Bridge where he washed ashore half frozen nearly dead onto a rocky beach some
children thinking he had fallen off a boat alerted authorities Scott was immediately taken into custody
his escape attempt is the only known case of an inmate sir the frigid waters which that December
would have been the same temperature as the water and the bay today on Alcatraz one of the few privileges granted to
inmates was a prison library and it was here according to authorities that the Anglin brothers and Morris had
access to two magazines that may have aided their escape a March 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics contained an article
on water tight sailing jackets and the may 1962 edition of Sports Illustrated featured an article on makeshift
rubberized boats police authorities believe that the men modeled their life jackets and raft on these articles was
this crudely made raft sturdy enough to survive the forceful currents of the bay
and if the raft did fail could the escapees have made it to shore by swimming to test the likelihood of the
rafts survival we've constructed a similar raft out of raincoats three experienced kayakers will attempt to
paddle this raft to shore to test a theory that the convicts had to abandon the raft and swim to shore
we've asked endurance swimmer Dave Horning to brave the frigid waters surrounding Alcatraz and swim to a San
Francisco Beach Diana Nyad is standing by with our team of rafters who are just about ready to begin their journey the
only thing that we're not duplicating accurately for the from the day of the escape is the time of day they left at
night would that have made a tremendous difference I don't think a tremendous difference but I think it is to our
advantage and that we can see and make a plan for the first few obstacles that they had to overcome first of which is
this 8-foot sea wall which has is very sharp and slippery like breaking rocks below the second is that we can see
these swirling Eddie's and currents that are around Alcatraz and we can make a plan as to how to get out of here I
think the context really didn't know where the curve was going to take them well I thank you all very much for your
adventuresome spirits and we'll be checking in with you all the way along we've switched now to our swimmer Dave
Horning and dave has swum some of the coldest bodies of water in the world including in the Soviet Union tell
people at home who have never been immersed in dangerously cold water what happens to the body as I go into the
water here this morning be like an embracing shock which will go through my body and this thing when I
hit the water and there will be some question in my mind in regards to how long I'll be able to last in this 47
degree water okay now that's you you're very experienced in cold water now what what about these three convicts I
understand that they were not even allowed to take cold showers on Alcatraz for fear that they might acclimate
themselves to the bay so what do you think their chances might have been well I think they had a chance to stay in the
water for a certain amount of time because of the fact that they had a certain thing going for them known as
motivation the motivation to get off of Alcatraz and the escape from the rock once they hit that water that a
motivation would concentrate them into being able to generate some adrenaline to keep them growing and once that
adrenaline sunk in that would help keep them insulated for a certain period of time but once they started really
succumb to the effects of the cold water who knows what would happen okay well we
thank you very much and good luck to you the swimmer and rafter will be off in just a few minutes and Bob all I can
really say is that I'm just so very happy it's not going to be me in the water today back to you
Thank You Diana the route these men will be taking will be the same route it is believed the 1962 escapees followed the
escapees left from the eastern shore of the island approximately here if they were attempting to swim to Angel Island
about one and a half miles away as the authorities believed the currents would have carried them away from the island
out toward the Pacific Ocean if they were lucky they made it ashore at the Golden Gate Bridge Dave is facing the
same conditions but his plan is that cut across the strong currents here and swim
ashore at Crissy Field our swimmer and Raptors are now in position Diana will give them a signal to start Diana is
everyone ready well Bob I'd say we're just uh less than a minute away from getting underway here let me quickly set
the scene for you we have a number of camera crews out here including one up in a blimp to get the aerial view we
also have a couple of paramedic teams and this is why the water temperature at 47 degrees is colder than the ice water
you keep in your refrigerator and that means that upon entry the body dramatically and immediately loses heat
and if you're in there for too long you go into a state of hypothermia meaning that the bloodstream and the core organs
cannot function properly anymore and literally you can go into a state of arrests so I don't care how expert a
swimmer you are you take this situation very seriously let me check on Shore now
to see if Dave and our three rafters are just about ready to embark David are you
ready we're upstairs all set good luck be safe everybody from three two one go we have asked Dave to wear an underwater
microphone so that we can communicate with him if any problems should arise you'll notice from the very beginning
that Dave will keep up a very very rapid stroke pace and that's because he is going to be chilled all are shocked when
he first enters the water and he wants to generate a great deal of heat the rafters are going to have even more
problems staying warm because they've got to just kind of float and kick behind them with that cumbersome raft a
David told me before that he's probably going to get to shore in about 45 minutes but let's be accurate about the
convicts we look at Dave over here stroking very powerfully and even though a couple of the convicts the Anglin
brothers were from Florida and I understand very good swimmers still they weren't in this kind of condition
obviously they hadn't swum in years they weren't used to cold water so they were
not going to be stroking as powerfully as this now if you look back at the rafters and see just how slowly they are
progressing this is probably more realistic to what went on that night in 1962 you might have had three powerful
people but still they weren't used to the cold it was nighttime they didn't know precisely where they were going so
I think that this progress that the rafters are doing is is probably very similar to what we could expect and
they're probably if they make it gonna take more like two hours and that would be just at the edge of hypothermia later
on we'll be able to see if we talk to him that his face will be quite stiff his mouth will look as if it's a
somewhat frozen and the signs of hypothermia that a trainer would look or as he's swimming as he if he becomes
confused if he swims around in circles if he hallucinates and is telling you that he's seeing things that aren't
really there that's your sign to take your swimmer out and get him warm [Applause]
[Music] we are now 20 minutes at a Dave hornings attempt to swim from Alcatraz to San
Francisco for years the guards on Alcatraz told inmates that the bay was infested with man-eating sharks marine
biologist Leighton Taylor says that that is a myth there are not man-eating sharks here in
San Francisco Bay there certainly are just outside the Golden Gate on the outer coastal beaches and I'd really
guess that the the guards probably told the prisoners about the attacks in 1950s
and so forth and probably really put the fear of God and the prisoners about sharks but it's not true that San
Francisco is a shark infested Bay has there ever been a shark attack inside the bay no there are sharks in San
Francisco Bay but they're mud dwellers and they're on the bottom and by the time a prisoner got to the bottom he was
out of the picture by then anyway I say thank you even though inmates believed there were
sharks in the bay this didn't stop some convicts from trying to make a break for
freedom the first escape attempt was in 1936 just two years after the prison opened Joseph Bowers received the
25-year sentence receiving $16.63 because he robbed the store in the same building as a post office a federal
offense he was given the maximum sentence with little likelihood of parole from the island of Alcatraz the
city of San Francisco seems just an arm's reach away on April 27th 1936 Bowers is working at this incinerator
this must have been one of the most tempting spots to try and escape suddenly Bowers appear to go berserk and
began a scale of fence an alert guard spotted Bowers from a catwalk close by yelled at him to stop and fired two
warning shots over his head Bowers made it over the top of the fence and began to clamor down the other side the guard
now aiming to stop him fired again ours was hit wounded he relaxed his grip on the fence and fell 60 feet to his death
in December of 1937 another escape was tried this was no impulse rather a carefully planned scheme that might have
been successful Theodore coal was taught he find the 50 years sentence for kidnapping his
partner was ralph roll a 37 year old bank robber with a long criminal record in a 99 years sentence on December 16th
1937 the two men were making mats in the industrial building north of the cellblock even for San Francisco it was
a foggy cold day approximately 1 o'clock in the afternoon they sought out a shop
window and broke through a fence the current was Swift that day running at 8 miles per hour
grabbing hold of a 5-gallon can they attempted to swim to freedom the Rowan Code scape 1937 was one that I
think was impossible to make the tide was running very swiftly outdoors to go and gate the water is 55 degrees Alvin
Karpis an inmate told me that he watched a row and Co escape and as he looked out
he could see the bodies slipping into the bay and he believed they drowned just recently John Stanley a San
Francisco reporter discovered this 1941 article in the files of the San Francisco Chronicle it claims that Rowan
Cole survived fled to South America and then using a secret code contacted their
confidence back at Alcatraz federal officials still maintain the row and Cole had perished
perhaps a story was a hoax concocted by inmates but to this day Rowan Koehler officially listed as missing
this newsreel documents the bloodiest of all the escape attempts on Alcatraz it began on May 2nd 1946 here for nearly 40
hours of murderous mutiny armed convicts shut it out with God bring me just webinar coil Louisville
Bank Robert joke read SEC in cold blood he shot down an armed guard in an orgy of murder
Marv Hubbard Tennessee kidnapper with one rifle and one automatic they waged a desperate but futile fight you can see
the smoke from rifle firing tear gas bombs as gods fought to rescue prison officials held as hostages in cellblock
C it all began here the north end of the cellblock convicts coy and Hubbard jumped on armed guard William Miller
taking his keys and locking him in an empty cell coy greased his body and climbed to the top of the cellblock
where the bars were weakest using a homemade tool he managed to spread the bars and squeeze through into the gun
gallery over the next few hours a convicts captured nine guards held them hostage here in these two cells
hour after hour guards and convicts exchanged gunfire as crowds gathered to watch from the hills of San Francisco a
detachment of Marines scaled the walls and dropped concussion grenades into the cellblock from the roof or the second
day two teams of guards entered the cellblock in a furious shootout the hostages were rescued and the
ringleaders killed to the gods all credit to of their number were killed 15 wounded assistant
warden Miller shot by coy Scott perhaps for life for the criminal ringleaders dis blue
some in coy [ __ ] hubbard fingerprinted as they lie on slabs in the mall theirs
is the final reward for a life of crime [Music] here's a quick update on both the
swimmer and rafters Dave Horning just off my shoulder here is about 35 minutes into the swim and I would say he's made
it two thirds of the way just taking a quick look back there to see just how far he had gone quickly to let you know
how the rafters are doing at the moment now that they have broken free from the shore of Alcatraz they're actually
making much better progress I keep going back and forth with the potential scenario of those convicts that night
just a few minutes ago I thought boy they're they're barely moving they're never going to make it to land anywhere
now they've actually been able to catch the current somewhat they're going maybe
a mile and a half to maybe even close to two miles an hour so I'm switching back
the other way again and thinking maybe they could have made it I understand that the rafters are getting very cold
and frustrated that they aren't making much progress they're only still a quarter of a mile
away from Alcatraz let's go to Diana we have three men here who have kayak all over the world they're young they're
strong in excellent shape and they're having a great deal of difficulty making any progress and you can see they're
being thrown around by the tide left and right probably what was happening that night to the convicts out here was just
some desperation not not a goal of getting somewhere but just to get anywhere I'm sure the convict didn't
have much traffic out of here on the bay but our swimmer and rafters today are having a great deal of traffic we've got
barges tugboats tourist boats etc not to mention a number of seals so it's somewhat
entertaining although they're casting quite a bit of weight [Music] just to check on Dave's medical
condition we've asked him a few simple questions like his name this the same way that referees in boxing ask the
fighters if they if they're coherent he's responded very well but evidently he is cramping in one leg cramps can be
very very serious in the water but we still assume that he's going to be ok Dave is only a few yards away from
completing his swim Diana how is he doing the one thing I'm concerned about is not the cold but the cramp in his leg
we still assume that since he's closing in on the beach that he's going to be ok and we should
mention here we've talked so much about hypothermia your core temperature actually goes down even further once you
get out from a spell in cold water so when he gets out of here we're gonna be able to talk to him very briefly but 3
or 4 minutes after that he's going to have to get warm and the way he does it is put on a pair of running shoes and go
for a jog and generate his own heat it's actually the best way to do it well it looks conclusive Dave is
literally 20 yards from the shore lifeguards have now entered the water with him for the last few feet
especially having reported a cramp just to make sure that he's able to walk out and he seems to be just fine we'll have
a word with him in just 30 seconds or so [Applause] [Music] [Music] yeah how's going ball all right Dave I
know we don't have much time before you get your running shoes on tell me your experience first of all you came in in
just a little bit over an hour how was it out there it was great when I first hit the water the cold shock the water
definitely was embracing halfway through the snow my feet and legs went numb and then a final 10 to 15 minutes both
legs totally cramped up and I really had to wonder whether I'd be able to make it
in I I can hear just the way you're talking it is slightly a bit of slurred speech as your mouth quite frozen in
place sleep called chin well listen this brings us to your opinion now that you've done it do you believe they could
have made it there's no question in my mind that they could have made it the question is how they were felt it's the
coffee that probably would have been their motivation okay well listen we thank you so much for your brave effort
today and I'm going to reserve my opinion later because Dave Horning is one thing the rafters are another thing
so we're going to go back out and check and see how they actually do Davis succeeded in a swim to Crissy Field
however the rafters have only reached this point a quarter mile off Alcatraz let's go back to Diana for an update on
the rafters they are not doing well they just haven't made much progress they came around Alcatraz very quickly but
now they're kind of stuck in the front of the island maybe kept in by that incoming flood tide come on over bill
[Music] so I know you're strong it must not be you guys what's happening out there
we're actually fairly comfortable but we're not getting anywhere and then the boat is starting to fall apart and we
think even with the we have certain advantages with the type of rig we have and if we're trying to really assess how
the conducts that we don't think they did very well and we have a little more modern clothing on and and I think that
given the situation when they left at night that know where they're going they're in pretty weak condition from
not having much exercise that the prison they probably at least we're very uncomfortable more likely got
hypothermia and just didn't get anywhere we were actually very confident when we're leaving Alcatraz and the boat was
in good condition but the more the more time we had to think about it the more unlikely the whole possibility of them
surviving seems these guys were career convict and they hadn't shown up since and you would think over 27 years they
would have probably committed another crime have gotten caught so I have a feeling their fish burger did the Anglin
brothers and Frank Morris survived their daring escape based on what we've seen today it certainly is possible yet it
seems odd that in the last 27 years so few clues of surface to prove that they made it whether or not the men survived
their escape compromised the reputation of Alcatraz less than a year later the prison closed for that reason alone it
can be said the men did beat the rock thanks to Diana Nyad congratulations Dave thank you very much you brave men
on the raft join us again next week for another edition of unsolved mysteries [Music]

Brief Summary

The episode examines the 1962 Alcatraz escape and theories about the fate of the escapees.

Key points

The Great Alcatraz Escape. In June 1962, three men vanished from Alcatraz, sparking a mystery that endures.
Al Capone's Alcatraz Experience. Al Capone, once a powerful mobster, faced harsh conditions at Alcatraz.
The Ingenious Escape Plan. The escapees crafted dummy heads to evade guards during their daring escape.
The Great Escape. Morris and the Anglin brothers escape from Alcatraz, sparking a massive manhunt.
The Postcard. A postcard claiming success from the escapees raises questions about their fate.
Shark Myths. Experts debunk the myth of man-eating sharks in San Francisco Bay.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

They may still be at large and perhaps are still in hiding tonight.

The possibility of the escapees still being alive.

2:00WatchMay 16, 2019

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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