Imagine planning the perfect escape only to vanish into legend.
For 50 years, the world believed three men drowned trying to flee Alcatraz, their bodies lost to the sea.
But what if they actually survived? A mysterious letter arrived decades later.
Strange family visits were reported at funerals, and a photograph from Brazil sparked new questions.
The truth about that summer night in 1962 isn’t what you’ve been told.
What really happened after they disappeared? On the morning of June 12th, 1962, guards at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary made a discovery that would shock the nation.
When Officer Lawrence Bartlett rang the wakeup bell and walked past cell 142, something felt wrong.
The inmate inside, Clarence Angland, wasn’t moving.
Officer Bill Long approached to wake him, and that’s when it happened.
The head rolled off the pillow and hit the floor with a hollow thud.
It wasn’t a man.
It was a dummy head made of soap, toilet paper, and real human hair.
Within minutes, two more fake heads were discovered in nearby cells.
Three of America’s most dangerous prisoners had vanished from the country’s most secure prison.
Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Angland were gone.
But this wasn’t a spur-of-the- moment decision.
This escape had been planned for 6 months.
Alcatraz Island sat 1 and a/4 miles off the coast of San Francisco, surrounded by freezing water and deadly currents.
The prison opened in 1934 and quickly earned its nickname, The Rock.
It was designed to hold America’s most notorious criminals, men who had caused problems at other prisons.
Alapone served time there.
Machine Gun Kelly spent 17 years behind its walls.
The message was clear.
If you ended up on Alcatraz, your criminal career was over.
Prison officials claimed it was escape proof.
The water temperature hovered around 50°, cold enough to cause hypothermia in minutes.
The currents moved at 6 to 9 mph, strong enough to sweep even strong swimmers out to sea.
Guards patrolled constantly.
Search lights swept the shores every night.
By 1962, 36 men had tried to escape, but the mystery remained.
Had anyone ever succeeded? Frank Morris arrived at Alcatraz on January 18th, 1960.
He wasn’t like other prisoners.
Guards noticed something different about him immediately.
Morris was quiet, polite, and exceptionally intelligent.
His IQ tested at 133, placing him in the top 2% of the population.
But intelligence and a troubled childhood had led him down a dark path.
Born in Washington, DC in 1926, Morris never knew stability.
His mother, Clara, couldn’t care for him properly.
She had violent outbursts and rarely gave him attention.
By age 11, Morris was completely orphaned and spent the rest of his childhood bouncing between foster homes.
His first arrest came at 13.
By his late teens, he’d been charged with narcotics possession, car theft, armed robbery, and grand lararseny.
Prison became his second home.
But Morris had one talent that made him dangerous.
He was brilliant at escaping.
In 1955, while serving time at Louisiana State Penitentiary for robbery and marijuana possession, Morris escaped with another inmate named William Martin.
They hitchhiked to freedom, picked up by a farmer near Baton Rouge.
For months, Morris lived free in New Orleans.
He even cased a bank in the small town of Slidell.
But his freedom wouldn’t last.
A year later, police caught him during a burglary in Kansas City.
That escape attempt convinced authorities Morris needed maximum security.
They sent him to Alcatraz with the prisoner number A141.
When Morris arrived, he studied everything.
He watched the guard’s routines.
He noticed which prisoners could be trusted.
He observed the prison’s weaknesses.
And then he met the Angland brothers.
Some accounts say they’d known each other at Atlanta Penitentiary.
Others suggest Alcatraz was their first meeting.
Either way, a partnership formed that would change history.
John and Clarence Angland weren’t career criminals by choice.
They were products of poverty.
Born in Donaldsonville, Georgia to a family of 13 children, the boys knew hardship from birth.
Their parents, George and Rachel Angland, were seasonal farm workers who moved constantly searching for work.
In the early 1940s, the family relocated to Ruskin, Florida, 20 mi south of Tampa.
The truck farms and tomato fields provided steady income.
Every June, they migrated north to Michigan to pick cherries.
Life was hard, but the Angland children learned valuable skills.
John and Clarence became inseparable.
They also became incredible swimmers.
Family members watched in amazement as the boys swam in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan, even when ice floated on the surface.
That skill would prove crucial years later.
But first, their lives would take a criminal turn.
Clarence was 14 when police first arrested him for breaking into a service station.
The brothers soon graduated to bigger crimes.
In the early 1950s, they started robbing banks together, usually with their brother Alfred.
But the Angland brothers had a code.
They only targeted closed businesses to ensure nobody got hurt.
They claimed they used a real weapon only once during a bank heist, and even then it was just a toy gun.
On January 17th, 1958, their luck ran out.
John, Clarence, and Alfred robbed the Bank of Colombia in Alabama, stealing $19,000.
The FBI tracked them down quickly.
All three received 35-year sentences.
They served time at Florida State Prison, then Levvenworth Federal Penitentiary, and finally Atlanta Penitentiary.
But the brothers refused to accept their fate.
They attempted escape after escape, each failure bringing harsher consequences.
One escape attempt became legendary among prisoners.
At Atlanta Penitentiary, Clarence hatched an audacious plan to smuggle Jon out.
He found two large bread boxes and cut the top off one and the bottom off another.
Jon climbed inside the first box while Clarence placed the second on top, then packed it with loaves of bread.
A truck was ready to haul the boxes to a prison farm camp.
Freedom seemed within reach, but a suspicious supervisor noticed the unusual size of one container.
He opened it and discovered Jon hiding inside.
That failed attempt sealed their fate.
Prison officials decided the Angland brothers needed the toughest facility in America.
Jon arrived at Alcatraz on October 24th, 1960, receiving prisoner number AZ1476.
Clarence followed on January 16th, 1961, becoming inmate AZ1485.
The brothers were separated from their families and from Hope.
The fourth man in this story was Alan Clayton West.
Born in New York City on March 25th, 1929, West developed a reputation as violent and aggressive.
He’d stolen countless cars and served three prison farm terms before driving a stolen vehicle across state lines.
That crime landed him at Alcatraz in 1957 where he became inmate A1330.
West wasn’t well-liked by guards or prisoners.
His behavior earned him time in isolation in Dblock, the prison’s punishment section.
He worked as a maintenance orderly, a job usually given as punishment.
But this job gave West access to areas other prisoners never saw.
He painted on the prison roof.
He worked in utility corridors.
He noticed things.
In spring 1961, while painting the roof, West made a crucial observation.
The ventilation shafts might provide a path to freedom, but West couldn’t escape alone.
He needed partners.
Different accounts exist about who actually masterminded the escape plan.
West, during later interrogation, claimed the idea was entirely his.
He said he realized the ventilation shafts were a way out.
While painting the roof, West insisted he proposed the plan to the Angland brothers, who then brought in Morris, but prison officials were skeptical.
They knew West’s background and tendency to exaggerate.
Most believed Frank Morris was the true architect.
Another version comes from former inmate Darwin who wrote in his autobiography that John Angland masterminded everything.
Reporter John Campbell Bruce suggested Morris learned about the ventilation shaft weakness from another prisoner in the brush shop.
That prisoner revealed an inmate electrician named Willard Winhovven had removed a fan motor from a shaft in 1957 and it was never replaced.
Whoever started it, the plan began taking shape in early 1962.
The escape plan was brilliant in its simplicity, but required months of careful preparation.
Each prisoner cell had a ventilation grate at the bottom of the back wall, about 6 in by 9 in, much too small for a man to fit through.
But the concrete around these grates was old and crumbling.
Morris realized they could widen the holes using tools they’d made or stolen.
They found discarded saw blades on the prison grounds.
They stole metal spoons from the mess hall.
Morris even improvised an electric drill from a vacuum cleaner motor.
Night after night, they worked in darkness, scraping away concrete bit by bit.
The noise could have given them away instantly, but Morris had a solution.
He ordered an accordion just like Wests.
During music hour, when prisoners were allowed to play instruments, Morris played loud enough to mask the scraping sounds coming from their cells.
Hiding their work proved just as important as the work itself.
Each night before bed, the men covered the growing holes with painted cardboard that matched the cell walls perfectly.
Guards walked past during routine checks and saw nothing unusual.
After months of scraping, the holes finally became large enough for a man to squeeze through.
But that was just the beginning.
Behind the cells lay an unguarded utility corridor.
From there, they could access pipes and shafts leading upward.
The men began climbing up to the vacant top level of the cell block whenever possible.
In this dusty, forgotten space, they set up a secret workshop.
This became their headquarters for the most crucial phase, building equipment for the water crossing.
They would need life preservers and a raft strong enough to survive the bay.
Morris found inspiration in an unlikely place magazines.
Frank Morris rid everything he could find.
In the March 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics, he discovered an article titled Your Life preserver.
How will it behave if you need it? The article explained how to construct a functional flotation device.
Morris studied it carefully.
Over 50 raincoats went missing from Alcatraz that spring.
Guards noticed, but couldn’t explain where they’d gone.
The raincoats were being smuggled up to the secret workshop.
Using stolen and donated materials, the prisoners constructed life preservers based on Morris’s design.
They also assembled a 6 ftx 14 ft rubber raft.
The seams had to be handstitched carefully.
They sealed everything with liquid plastic available in the prison shops.
Heat from nearby steam pipes helped cure the rubber.
Morris found more useful information in other magazines.
The November 1960 issue of Popular Mechanics taught him about resin for making items waterproof.
A May 1962 Sports Illustrated article about water safety explained channel Bowies and navigation hazards.
The prisoners also made paddles from plywood and screws stolen from the maintenance shop.
Every piece had to be created in secret and hidden in the cramped workshop space.
But the most impressive feat was yet to come.
They needed to fool the guards long enough to make their escape.
If guards discovered empty cells during the night count, alarms would sound immediately.
Their head start would vanish.
So, they created something that sounds like Hollywood fiction, but was absolutely real dummy heads.
Using a homemade mixture of soap, toothpaste, concrete dust, and toilet paper, they sculpted heads that looked remarkably realistic.
They painted them with flesh tones stolen from the maintenance shop.
Real human hair swept up from the barberh shop floor was carefully glued to each head when positioned on pillows with blankets pulled up and clothing stuffed underneath.
The dummies looked like sleeping prisoners in the dim cell lighting.
The final obstacle was the roof itself.
The ventilation shaft they planned to use led to the roof, but it was sealed by a large fan held in place by rivets.
The men somehow managed to climb up the shaft during their nighttime workshop sessions and painstakingly removed each rivet.
They replaced them loosely so guards inspecting the roof wouldn’t notice anything wrong.
But when the time came, the fan could be pushed aside easily.
By June 1962, everything was ready.
They’d spent six months preparing.
They had their route planned through the widened vents, up the utility corridor, through the ventilation shaft, onto the roof, down a kitchen vent pipe, over two 12- ft barbed wire fences, and finally to the northeast shoreline.
The date was set June 11th.
That night, after lights out at 9:30, they would make their move.
But would all four men make it out? June 11th, 1962 started like any other day at Alcatraz.
Guards conducted their usual routines.
Prisoners went through their normal schedules.
But Morris, the Angland brothers, and West knew this was the night.
Everything depended on timing and luck.
At 9:30, lights went out across the cell block.
The prisoners waited in darkness, hearts pounding, listening to the guard’s footsteps fade.
Then they made their final preparations.
Morris carefully positioned his dummy head on his pillow, arranging the blanket just right.
The Angland brothers did the same.
Each man stuffed clothing under his blankets to create the shape of a sleeping body.
Then, one by one, they slipped through the holes they’d spent months creating.
Morris went first, then John, then Clarence.
They gathered in the utility corridor behind the cells, ready to climb up to their workshop, and then to freedom.
But something was terribly wrong with West’s cell.
West had made a critical mistake.
Worried about the crumbling concrete around his vent, he’d reinforced it with cement.
To prevent it from collapsing, and giving away their secret, but the cement had hardened more than he expected.
The opening was too narrow.
West pushed and strained, but he couldn’t squeeze through.
On the other side of the wall, Morris and the Angland brothers faced an impossible choice.
They could wait and try to help West widen the hole, but every minute increased their chance of discovery, or they could leave him behind and continue alone.
The decision was made quickly.
They couldn’t risk the entire escape.
West would have to stay.
The three men climbed up the ventilation shaft toward the roof, their homemade equipment and supplies hauled with them.
West was left alone in the darkness, still struggling desperately with the too narrow opening.
His role in planning the escape meant nothing now.
Morris and the Angland brothers reached the top of the ventilation shaft and pushed aside the fan they’d loosened months earlier, night air rushed in, carrying the smell of salt water and freedom, they climbed onto the roof carefully.
Aware that a single wrong step could send them tumbling down or alert the guards below.
Guards later reported hearing a loud crash during the night, but no one investigated.
Perhaps they assumed it was nothing important.
Perhaps the sound was dismissed as routine noise in an old building.
Whatever the reason, the three escapes weren’t discovered.
They made their way across the roof to a kitchen vent pipe on the building’s exterior.
The pipe ran 50 ft down to the ground.
One by one, they slid down through the darkness, trying to control their descent quietly.
They landed safely and immediately faced their next obstacle.
Two 12 ft barbed wire fences surrounding the prison grounds.
The barbed wire could have shredded their skin and clothing, making the swim impossible.
But somehow they managed to climb both fences successfully.
Years later, investigators found no blood or torn fabric on the wire, suggesting the men took their time and moved carefully.
They made it to the northeast shoreline near the power plant.
This spot was a blind area in the prison’s network of search lights and gun towers, exactly as they’d planned.
The cold San Francisco Bay water lapped at their feet.
Somewhere out there in the darkness two miles away was Angel Island.
That was their target.
From there they planned to reach the mainland, steal clothes and a car and disappear forever.
But first they had to survive one of the most dangerous bodies of water in America.
They inflated their improvised raft using a concertina stolen from another inmate and modified to work as a bellows.
According to FBI records, at approximately 11:40 p.
m.
on June 11th, Frank Morris and John and Clarence Angland launched their raft into the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay.
The water temperature was around 50°.
The currents were fierce, moving at 6 to 9 mph.
Professional mariners considered these waters treacherous, even in daylight with proper equipment.
But the three men paddled away from Alcatraz, using their homemade plywood paddles, wearing their improvised life preservers, clinging to a raft stitched together by hand.
Within minutes, the darkness swallowed them completely.
Back inside the prison, Alan West finally managed to widen his hole enough to squeeze through.
He made it into the utility corridor, climbed up to the workshop, and found the supplies left behind, an unfinished pontoon, a plywood paddle, three life preservers, his fake dummy head, and a partially completed raft that was supposed to be for him.
West climbed all the way up the ventilation shaft and poked his head out onto the roof.
Seagulls, startled by his appearance, scattered into the night, their cries echoing across the island.
For a terrified instant, West froze, certain the noise would bring guards running, but no alarm sounded.
He was alone on the roof with a decision to make.
He could try to complete his escape using the unfinished raft and equipment, but he’d be going alone, hours behind the others with inferior gear.
The chances of survival seemed impossibly small, or he could climb back down, return to his cell, and wait for morning.
At least he’d be alive.
West made his choice.
He climbed back down the shaft, exhausted and defeated, and returned to his cell.
He tucked himself into bed, knowing that within hours guards would discover the dummy heads and his role would be exposed.
Morning came quickly at Alcatraz.
The wake up bell rang at 700 a.
m.
on June 12th.
Officer Lawrence Bartlett began his routine walk through the cell block.
When he reached Clarence Angland’s cell, something seemed off.
The prisoner wasn’t moving.
Officer Bill Long approached to wake him.
He reached toward the still figure and the head rolled off the pillow onto the floor.
The hollow thud echoed through the cell.
For a split second, the officers stood frozen, trying to process what they were seeing.
Then pandemonium erupted.
Morris’s and John Angland’s dummy heads were discovered moments later.
Three of the most secure cells in America’s most secure prison stood empty.
A massive search began immediately.
Guards swept every inch of the prison.
Dogs were brought in.
The workshop was discovered.
The widened vents were found.
The road of escape became clear.
But where were the prisoners now? Multiple military and law enforcement agencies launched an extensive air se and land search that would continue for 10 days.
Alan West was immediately placed in isolation as an accessory to the escape.
There he cooperated fully with investigators, explaining the entire plan in detail.
West claimed the inmates had intended to paddle to Angel Island, then continue to the mainland where they’d steal clothes and a car before vanishing.
FBI agents listened carefully, but remained skeptical of some details.
They suspected West might have lost his nerve at the last moment rather than simply gotten stuck.
West’s claims about masterminding the plan were dismissed as boasting, but his information about the intended wrote proved valuable for the search efforts.
On June 14th, 2 days after the escape, a Coast Guard cutter found a paddle floating about 200 yd off the southern shore of Angel Island.
This was significant.
Angel Island was exactly where West said they’d planned to go.
In the same location, workers on another boat discovered something even more intriguing.
A wallet wrapped in plastic.
The wallet contained names, addresses, and photographs of the Angland brothers, friends, and relatives.
Why would they abandon such personal items? FBI agents debated the meaning.
Some argued the men must have drowned and the bay was simply returning evidence of their fate.
Others suggested the wallet might have been lost accidentally during landing, not evidence of death.
On June 21st, 10 days after the escape, a life vest washed up on Konite Beach, nearly 3 miles outside the Golden Gate Bridge.
The strings were still intact.
The next day, a prison boat picked up another life vest just 50 yards off Alcatraz Island.
Its strings still knotted at the back, but nothing else was recovered.
No bodies, no raft, no clothing.
The physical evidence supported two completely different theories.
Either the raft had sunk and the men drowned as officials suspected, or the men reached land successfully, and the items found were simply lost equipment.
One witness report from that night was largely ignored at the time, but became significant later.
Robert Czechy, a San Francisco police officer, was standing at the St.
Francis Yacht Harbor on the Marina District waterfront on the night of June 11th.
He reported seeing a fishing boat in the bay near Alcatraz.
The boat remained in position for about 15 minutes, then left, heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
Since unauthorized boats were forbidden within several hundred yards of Alcatraz, Czech found this suspicious.
Could someone have been waiting to pick up the escapees? The FBI dismissed Czech’s account without serious investigation? They were already convinced the men had drowned.
But this wasn’t the only strange report from that night.
Within days, multiple sightings and odd incidents began occurring up and down the California coast.
On the same day the paddle was found, something else happened that wouldn’t be widely known for decades.
A blue Chevrolet sedan model year 1955 with California license plate KPBO76 was reported stolen in Marin County.
The theft occurred on June 12th, the day after the escape.
Contemporaneous reports in the Humbled Times and San Francisco Examiner confirmed this.
The following day, a motorist in Stockton, California, 80 mi east of San Francisco, reported to the California Highway Patrol that he’d been forced off the road by three men in a blue Chevrolet.
Three men, the same day escapees, would have needed transportation in a car matching the description of the stolen vehicle.
Yet FBI records indicate this lead was never fully pursued.
Why not? Some researchers have suggested officials were already committed to the drowning theory and didn’t want contradictory evidence.
Others believe the car theft was simply a coincidence unrelated to the escape.
But the strange incident didn’t stop there.
Over the following weeks, months, and years, reports continued to surface.
A month after the escape, on July 17th, a Norwegian freight ship called SS Norfjel spotted a body floating in the ocean 15 nautical miles from the Golden Gate Bridge.
The crew knew about the escape attempt.
They wanted to recover the body, but their ship didn’t have adequate cold storage facilities.
They also had no radio contact with the Coast Guard.
The body was left floating.
San Francisco County coroner Henry Turkl later cast doubt on speculation that it could have been one of the escapes.
He pointed out the improbability of a body still floating after more than a month in the ocean.
Instead, Turkl suggested it was likely Cecil Philip Herman, a 34year-old unemployed baker who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge 5 days before the sighting.
But without recovering the body, no one could say for certain.
The mystery deepened.
FBI investigators completed their analysis and announced their official position.
The FBI stated that while it was theoretically possible for the men to have reached Angel Island, the odds of surviving the turbulent currents and frigid waters were negligible.
They pointed to the lack of reported thefts on the mainland.
If the men had survived and reached shore, they would have needed to steal clothes and transportation.
No such thefts were reported or traced to the fugitives.
At least that was the official statement.
But as we now know, a car was reported stolen that same day.
And there were reports of three men in that car forcing someone off the road.
These facts didn’t fit the preferred narrative.
Multiple hoaxes occurred in the week after the escape which may have made authorities dismissive of all claims.
A man claiming to be John Angland called a lawyer named Eugenia Mawan in San Francisco asking to arrange a meeting with the US Marshall’s office.
When she refused, he hung up.
That was clearly a prank.
A postcard arrived at the San Francisco FBI office with a message written on it.
Ha, we made it.
Frank, John, and Clarence.
The FBI quickly determined it was a hoax when fingerprints and handwriting didn’t match any of the escapees.
Someone claiming to be Morris phoned acting warden Arthur Doles.
But when Dolison asked personal questions only Morris would know, the caller hung up immediately.
Another fake.
These hoaxes gave authorities justification to dismiss other reports as well.
West was transferred to McNeel Island, Washington after Alcatraz closed in March 1963.
He later served additional sentences in Georgia and Florida before being released in 1967.
But West’s freedom lasted only one year.
In 1968, he was arrested again in Florida for grand lararseny.
At Florida State Prison, West fatally stabbed another inmate over what may have been a racially motivated incident in October 1972.
He died of acute peratonitis in 1978 while serving life imprisonment.
6 months after the famous escape, another Alcatraz inmate named John Paul Scott attempted something remarkable.
Scott made inflatable armbands from rubber gloves and swam 2.
7 nautical miles from Alcatraz to Fort Point at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Teenagers found him suffering from severe hypothermia and exhaustion.
After recovering at Letterman Army Hospital, he was returned to Alcatraz.
Scott became the only Alcatraz inmate known to have reached the shore by swimming.
His escape attempt was made in worse conditions than Morris and the Anglins faced, and he used inferior equipment.
Yet he survived.
This fact strengthened the argument that the three men could have successfully navigated the bay.
If Scott could do it alone with rubber gloves, couldn’t three men working together with better equipment succeed? The prison itself closed less than a year later.
Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy ordered Alcatraz shut down on March 21st, 1963.
The facility cost nearly $10 per prisoner per day to operate, compared to just $3 at Atlanta.
Plus, 50 years of saltwater saturation had severely eroded the buildings.
The escape didn’t cause the closure, but it certainly didn’t help Alcatraz’s reputation.
The FBI officially closed their file on December 31st, 1979 after a 17-year investigation, their final conclusion.
Morris and the Angland brothers most likely drowned in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay while attempting to reach Angel Island.
The evidence cited included the remnants found in the bay and the personal effects left behind.
Officials believed the raft broke up and sank after departing Alcatraz.
The three convicts likely succumbed to hypothermia and their bodies were swept out to sea by the rapid currents.
Case closed except the United States Marshall Service didn’t close their case.
It remained open and active.
Deputy US Marshall Michael Dyke told reporters years later that there’s an active warrant and the Marshall’s service doesn’t give up looking for people.
In 2009, Dyke said he was still receiving leads on a regular basis.
The warrant would remain active until the missing men reached the age of 100 between 2002 and 2003.
But why keep a case open for men officially presumed dead? Perhaps because too many questions remained unanswered.
And then the really strange reports began emerging.
Family members of the Angland brothers claimed they occasionally received postcards and messages from unknown sources over the years.
Most were unsigned.
Others were signed Jerry and Joe, names that meant nothing to investigators, but might have been codes.
The family produced a Christmas card, they said, was received in their mailbox in 1962, just months after the escape.
The card read from John.
Merry Christmas.
Was it really from John Angland, or was someone playing a cruel trick on a grieving family? Robert Angland, one of the 11 siblings, was quoted in a 1993 newspaper saying they’d received mysterious phone calls for years.
The mother of the Angland brothers reportedly received flowers anonymously every Mother’s Day until her death in 1973.
At her funeral, witnesses reported seeing two very tall, unusual women wearing heavy makeup.
Were these women actually John and Clarence in disguise? It sounds like something from a movie, but family members insisted it happened when the father of the Angland brothers died in 1989.
Robert claimed two bearded men attended the funeral and then disappeared.
Federal officials acknowledged that in the mid to late60s and into the 70s, there were six or seven sightings of the Angland brothers reported, all in North Florida or Georgia.
Why would officials keep investigating sightings if they truly believed the men drowned in 1962? In 1989, a woman identifying herself only as Kathy called the tip line of the television show Unsolved Mysteries.
She reported that a photo of Clarence Angland matched the description of a man living on a farm near Mariana, Florida.
Another woman also recognized a photo of Clarence Angland and said he lived near Mariana.
She correctly identified his eye color, height, and other physical features.
This wasn’t guesswork.
She knew specific details.
Another witness claimed that a sketch of Frank Morris bore a striking resemblance to a man seen in the same area.
In a 1993 episode of Unsolved Mysteries, author Dawn Denvi discussed interviews he’d conducted with inmate Clarence KS.
KS claimed he received a postcard from Morris and the Anglins after the escape.
The message read simply, “Go fishing.
” According to KS, this was a pre-arranged code word meaning their escape had succeeded.
KS expressed his belief that Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, a notorious Harlem gangster, may have arranged for a boat to pick the three men up from the bay.
KS suggested the boat dropped the escapees off at Pier 13 in San Francisco’s Hunters Point District.
Officials disavowed Cara’s claims, but the story persisted.
That same year, a former Alcatraz inmate named Thomas Kent appeared on the television program America’s Most Wanted.
Kent claimed he helped plan the escape and said he had provided significant new leads to investigators.
According to Kent, Clarence Angland’s girlfriend had agreed to meet the men on shore and drive them to Mexico.
Kent said he declined to participate in the actual escape because he couldn’t swim, but officials were skeptical.
They noted that Kent was paid $2,000 for the interview, suggesting financial motivation for his story.
Then came one of the strangest claims of all.
A man named John Leroy Kelly dictated an extended deathbed confession to his nurse in 1993.
Kelly claimed that he and a partner picked up Morris and the Anglins in a boat and transported them to the Seattle Washington area.
But the story took a dark turn.
Kelly confessed that later under the guise of transporting them to Canada.
He and his partner murdered the escapes.
Kelly claimed they killed the men to steal $40,000 their families had supposedly collected for them.
He even provided a location in Seattle where he said the three escapes were buried.
Authorities investigated, but no human remains were found at that location.
Was Kelly lying? Was he confused? Or did someone move the bodies? In 2003, the television show Mbusters decided to test whether the escape was even physically possible.
Hosts Jaime Heinman and Adam Savage along with a crew member constructed a raft using the same materials and tools available to the inmates in 1962.
They launched from Alcatraz Island at night, just as Morris and the Anglins had done.
After paddling through darkness against powerful currents, the Mythbusters team successfully made landfall on the Marin headlands at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Their conclusion, the escape was possible.
This was significant scientific evidence that the official drowning theory might be wrong.
A 2011 National Geographic Channel documentary called Vanished from Alcatraz uncovered something shocking.
Deputy Marshall Michael Dyke, the last marshall assigned to the case, found reports from the week of the escape that had been overlooked or ignored, contrary to official assertions, that the raft was never found.
A raft was actually reported discovered on Angel Island the day after the escape.
Even more intriguing, there were footprints leading away from it.
Why wasn’t this evidence publicized? And remember that stolen blue Chevrolet we mentioned earlier.
The documentary confirmed those contemporaneous newspaper reports.
A car was reported stolen in Marine County on June 12th.
The next day, a motorist in Stockton reported being forced off the road by three men in a blue Chevrolet.
These weren’t newly discovered facts.
They were in newspapers at the time.
Yet, somehow they were dismissed or ignored.
Some researchers began suggesting a cover up.
Perhaps authorities didn’t want to admit that prisoners had escaped from America’s most secure prison.
In 2014, scientists at Delft University in the Netherlands conducted a study of San Francisco Bay’s ocean currents.
Using computer models and historical tide data, they analyzed the exact conditions on the night of June 11th, 1962.
Their conclusion was startling.
If the prisoners left Alcatraz at 11:30 p.
m.
, they could have made it to Horseshoe Bay, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The currents and tides would have carried them in that direction.
Furthermore, any debze would have naturally floated toward Angel Island, which is exactly where the paddle and personal belongings were found.
However, the scientists noted that timing was critical.
If the men left before or after that narrow window, the tides and currents would have drastically reduced their chances of survival.
But if they left at precisely the right moment, which FBI records suggest they did, survival was definitely possible.
Then in 2015, the most compelling evidence yet emerged.
The Angland family came forward with items they’d kept secret for decades.
Kenneth and David Whitner, nephews of John and Clarence, appeared in a History Channel documentary called Alcatraz Search for the Truth.
They displayed Christmas cards containing handwriting that appeared to match the Anglins.
The family claimed these cards were received for 3 years after the escape.
Handwriting experts verified the writing as authentic.
But there was a problem.
None of the envelopes contained postmarked stamps, so experts couldn’t determine when they were actually mailed or delivered.
Still, the family had more evidence.
They spoke of a family friend named Fred Brrizzy, who grew up with the Angland brothers.
Bridzy claimed that in 1975, 13 years after the escape, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
While there, he said he recognized John and Clarence.
The brothers were alive, living in South America.
Bridzy said he took photographs of them.
The family produced these photos, which showed two men standing next to a large termite mound.
Other photos showed what Bridzy claimed was a Brazilian farm owned by the men.
Forensic experts hired by the family examined the photographs carefully.
They confirmed the photos were taken in 1975 based on the film type and aging characteristics.
More importantly, facial comparison experts stated the two men in the photo were more than likely John and Clarence Angland.
However, the age and condition of the photographs, plus the fact that both men were wearing sunglasses, made a definitive identification impossible.
Art Roderick, a retired deputy US marshal who once headed the investigation and worked with the Angland family, called Bridzy’s photograph absolutely the best actionable lead we’ve had.
But he remained cautious, noting it could still be a fabrication or misdirection.
Michael Dyke, another marshall on the case, was more skeptical.
He called Bridzy a drug smuggler and a con man.
Brrizzy’s widow agreed, saying her late husband was prone to making up stories, and she never heard him mention seeing the Anglins in Brazil.
Bridzy also presented an alternative escape theory that sounds almost too clever to be true.
He claimed the men didn’t use the raft to cross the bay at all.
Instead, they paddled around Alcatraz Island to the boat dock.
There they attached an electrical cord, which was reported missing from the dock that night, to the rudder of a prison ferry that departed the island shortly after midnight.
According to this theory, they were towed behind the ferry to the mainland, then released the cord and paddled to shore.
It’s an ingenious idea, but is it true? Before his death in 2010, Robert Angland, brother of John and Clarence, told surviving family members he’d been in contact with his brothers from 1963 until approximately 1987.
That’s 24 years of secret communication.
The family announced plans to travel to Brazil to search for evidence, but they were warned.
The Alcatraz escape remains an open Interpol case.
If Jon and Clarence were found alive in Brazil, they could be arrested and extradited.
The mystery seemed destined to remain unsolved.
Then in 2018, something extraordinary happened.
The FBI disclosed the existence of a letter received by the San Francisco Police Department in 2013.
The letter was kept secret for 5 years before being revealed to the public.
The writer claimed to be John Angland.
In the letter, he stated that Frank Morris died in 2008 and his brother Clarence died in 2011.
The letter writer explained his purpose.
He wanted to negotiate his surrender in exchange for medical treatment.
He claimed to have cancer and needed help.
He wrote that he was 83 years old and just wanted to cooperate in exchange for care.
The letter included specific details about the escape that weren’t widely known.
But was it authentic? The FBI analyzed the letter carefully.
Handwriting experts compared it to known samples of John Angland’s writing.
The conclusion was inconclusive.
The handwriting couldn’t be definitively matched or ruled out.
The letter could be real or it could be an elaborate hoax by someone who researched the case thoroughly.
If the letter was genuine, it meant John Angland had survived for 51 years after escaping Alcatraz.
It meant he’d outlived his partners and lived as a free man for half a century.
But it also raised questions.
Why come forward now? If he truly had cancer and wanted treatment, why not just surrender instead of sending an anonymous letter? And why wait 5 years to make the letter public? The timing seemed suspicious to many investigators.
Some suggested the letter was sent by a family member trying to keep the legend alive.
Others believed it was genuine, but that John Angland died before he could follow through on his offer.
A 2019 episode of the series Mission Declassified investigated FBI reports.
Further, investigative journalist Kristoff Putsil uncovered multiple sightings of a blue Chevrolet matching the stolen car’s description over the months following the escape.
Reports placed the car in Oklahoma, Indiana, Ohio, and South Carolina.
In South Carolina, three months after the escape, three men matching the escapees description allegedly attempted to acquire a residence in the woods.
Each sighting was investigated, but never definitively connected to Morris and the Anglins.
Were these the fugitives or just coincidences? The sheer number of reports makes coincidence seem unlikely.
In November 2025, YouTube creator Mark Robber collaborated with journalists Johnny Harris and Cleo Abram on an ambitious project.
They decided to recreate the prison escape exactly as it happened.
Using the same plans and period accurate materials, they studied the same magazine articles Morris had read.
They used similar tools to create a raft, paddles, and life preservers.
Everything was made by hand, just as the prisoners had done.
Then they launched from Alcatraz Island at night, riding the tide as the original escapes had.
All three successfully reached a point near the Golden Gate Bridge.
They didn’t make it to Angel Island as planned, but they proved without question that survival was possible.
Like the Mythbusters before them, they demonstrated the official drowning theory wasn’t as certain as authorities claimed.
So, what’s the truth? Did Frank Morris and John and Clarence Angland drown in San Francisco Bay on June 11th, 1962? or did they pull off one of the greatest escapes in American history? Let’s consider what we know for certain.
The escape itself happened exactly as described.
The dummy heads, the widened vents, the secret workshop, the homemade raft and life preservers.
All of this is documented fact.
We know they left Alcatraz Island at approximately 11:40 p.m.
We know items were found in the bay a paddle, a wallet, two life vests, but we also know a raft was reportedly found on Angel Island with footprints leading away.
We know a car was stolen the next day and three men in that car were reported forcing someone off the road.
We know multiple sightings occurred over the years in Florida, Georgia, and other locations.
We know the family received mysterious cards, calls, and visits.
We know photographs surfaced that forensic experts say likely show the Angland brothers alive in 1975.
We know a letter arrived in 2013 claiming to be from John Angland stating both his partners had died.
And we know that multiple scientific recreations from Mbusters to Mark Robber have proven the escape was physically possible.
The evidence supporting survival is substantial.
But the evidence suggesting death is significant, too.
The frigid water, the powerful currents, the lack of bodies or confirmed sightings.
These facts can’t be ignored.
Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.
Maybe one or two survived while another drowned.
Maybe they made it to shore but died from hypothermia shortly after landing.
Maybe they survived for months or years before being killed as John Leroy Kelly claimed.
Or maybe, just maybe, Frank Morris and the Angland brothers pulled off the impossible.
They could have reached the mainland, stolen clothes and a car, and disappeared into new lives.
They might have lived as free men for decades, always looking over their shoulders, but never caught.
Consider the intelligence involved.
Frank Morris had an IQ of 133.
He’d successfully escaped from prison before.
He spent six months meticulously planning every detail of this escape.
The Angland brothers were expert swimmers who’d grown up navigating treacherous waters.
They had motivation, skill, and preparation on their side.
Consider also the mistakes by authorities.
A crashed noise on the roof wasn’t investigated.
A stolen car report wasn’t connected to the escape.
A raft found on Angel Island was dismissed or hidden.
Footprints leading from that raft were ignored.
Multiple sightings were written off as unreliable.
Was this incompetence or was it intentional? Some researchers believe officials couldn’t admit that prisoners escaped from Alcatraz successfully.
The prison’s entire reputation was built on being inescapable.
To acknowledge a successful escape would have been professionally and politically devastating.
So perhaps the drowning theory became the official story, not because it was true, but because it was necessary.
The timing of Alcatraz’s closure is also suspicious.
Less than a year after the escape, the prison was shut down.
Officials cited costs and deteriorating buildings, but Alcatraz had been expensive for decades.
The buildings had been eroding for years.
Why close it specifically in 1963? Perhaps the escape revealed security weaknesses that couldn’t be easily fixed.
Perhaps it became clear that the rock wasn’t as impregnable as claimed.
Whatever the reason, America’s most famous prison closed its doors, and the mystery of the three missing men became legend.
63 years have passed since that June night.
If any of the men survived, they would be in their 90s or hundreds now.
Frank Morris would be 99 years old.
John Angland would be 95.
Clarence Angland would be 94.
The active warrant expires between 2026 and 2031 when each man would reach 100 years old.
At that point, the case will finally close.
Not because it was solved, but because time ran out.
But the questions will remain.
Families will still wonder.
Researchers will still investigate.
And late at night, when fog rolls across San Francisco Bay and obscures Alcatraz Island, people will still imagine three desperate men paddling through darkness toward an uncertain fate.
Did they drown within sight of freedom, their bodies swept out to sea, their dreams dying in the cold water? Or did they feel their feet touch solid ground, shed their makeshift life preservers, and walk away from their past into new identities? The truth is, we may never know for certain.
The ocean keeps its secrets.
The men, if they survived, kept theirs even better.
And perhaps that’s fitting.
Sometimes the mystery is more powerful than the answer.
Sometimes not knowing haunts us more than any confirmed ending could.
The escape from Alcatraz has become more than just a historical event.
It’s become a symbol of human determination, ingenuity, and the desperate drive for freedom.
Think about what these men accomplished.
They spent six months scraping concrete with spoons and saw blades, working in darkness, knowing that discovery meant solitary confinement, or worse.
They handstitched a raft using stolen raincoats.
They sculpted dummy heads that fooled guards in a maximum security prison.
They climbed ventilation shafts, slid down pipes, scaled barbed wire fences, and launched themselves into one of the world’s most dangerous bodies of water.
Whether they lived or died, whether they drowned or thrived, they accomplished something extraordinary.
They exposed the myth of the inescapable prison.
They proved that even in the most controlled environment, human creativity and determination could find a way.
And they created a mystery that has captivated the world for more than six decades.
Books, movies, documentaries, and television shows have explored their story.
The escape has been analyzed, recreated, debated, and mythologized.
Frank Morris, John Angland, and Clarence Angland have become legendary figures.
Their names forever linked to one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
So tonight, as you lie in bed thinking about this story, consider what you believe.
Look at the evidence we’ve presented.
Think about the scientific recreations proving survival was possible.
Remember the sightings, the mysterious cards, the photographs from Brazil, the letter claiming to be from John Angland.
Consider also the cold water, the dangerous currents, the lack of bodies, the official conclusions of experienced investigators.
What does your gut tell you? Did three desperate men die within sight of freedom, their bodies lost forever to the Pacific Ocean? Or did they achieve the impossible, living out their lives under new names, taking their secret to their graves? Perhaps the most haunting aspect is that if they did survive, they could never truly be free.
They would spend every day looking over their shoulders.
Every knock on the door could be the marshalss.
Every stranger could be an informant.
They could never contact their families openly, never return to their homes, never truly rest.
Is that freedom or just a different kind of prison? And somewhere out there, maybe on a quiet farm in Brazil or a small town in America, maybe in an unmarked grave or at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
Three men know the answer, but they’re not telling, and perhaps they never will.
This true crime story remains one of the most daring prison escapes in history.
The Alcatraz escape of 1962 stands as the ultimate prison breakout.
A real prison break that continues captivating true crime documentary enthusiasts worldwide.
This dramatic prison escape attempt turned into a legendary jailbreak that sparked countless investigations.
Whether this famous prison escape ended in tragedy or triumph, it proves that even the most notorious criminals could challenge the impossible.
The true prison escape from the rock remains an unsolved mystery.
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What do you believe really happened that night? Share your thoughts below.
