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June 11, 1962. A foggy night in the San Francisco Bay. While the rest of the world slept, three men were busy crawling through a hole they’d spent months carving with sharpened spoons. Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin didn't just walk out the front door; they pulled off the most legendary prison break in American history. People are still obsessed with what happened to the 3 guys who escaped from alcatraz because the FBI officially says they drowned, but their families? They have a very different story to tell.
The Rock was supposed to be inescapable. It’s sitting in the middle of a freezing, shark-infested (mostly just dogfish, but the rumors worked) bay with currents strong enough to rip a ship off course. Yet, these guys vanished. They left behind dummy heads made of soap, toilet paper, and real human hair from the barbershop floor. It’s creepy, honestly. When the guards realized they were staring at decoys the next morning, the trail was already cold.
The Official Line: Did They Really Drown?
For decades, the U.S. Marshals and the FBI held a pretty firm line. They basically argued that the bay is a meat grinder. The water temperature in June fluctuates between $10^{\circ}C$ and $13^{\circ}C$. If you hit that water without a wetsuit, hypothermia sets in fast. Your muscles cramp. Your lungs seize. You die.
The FBI officially closed its case in 1979. Their reasoning was simple: no bodies were ever recovered, but no evidence of a successful life on the mainland ever surfaced either. They found some personal effects floating near Angel Island—a plastic bag with photos, a life jacket made of raincoats, and a single paddle. To the feds, this looked like a shipwreck. They figured the makeshift raft, glued together with stolen contact cement, simply fell apart under the pressure of the tides.
But here’s the thing. The tides that night were weird. If they timed it right—and Frank Morris was reportedly a genius with an IQ of 133—they wouldn't have been fighting the current. They would have been riding it.
The Evidence That Changes Everything
If you look at the 2015 History Channel documentary or the various reports from the Anglin family, the "death by drowning" theory starts to look a bit shaky. The Anglins' nephews, David and Ken Widner, came forward with a photograph. It shows two men standing in Brazil in 1975. A forensic artist compared the facial structures to the Anglin brothers. The match? It was "highly likely."
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Think about that.
Thirteen years after they supposedly died in the San Francisco Bay, they might have been hanging out on a farm in South America. The family also claims they received Christmas cards for years, signed by John and Clarence. The handwriting was analyzed, and while not 100% definitive, it was close enough to keep the U.S. Marshals' case open to this day. Unlike the FBI, the Marshals don't close a case until the subject is proven dead or reaches the age of 99.
How They Actually Did It
We have to talk about the sheer grit it took to get out. Most people think they just hopped a fence. Nope.
- The Holes: They used spoons and a makeshift drill made from a vacuum cleaner motor to widen the vents in their cells. They worked during the prison's "music hour" so the sound of grinding concrete was drowned out by accordions and guitars.
- The Utility Corridor: Behind the cell walls was an unguarded service alley. They spent nights there, setting up a secret workshop.
- The Raft: This is the crazy part. They stole over 50 "rubberized" raincoats. They used heat from steam pipes to vulcanize the seams. They even built a bellows out of a concertina to inflate the thing.
- The Exit: They climbed up the plumbing, kicked out a rooftop ventilator, and slid down a bakery smoke pipe to the ground.
They were gone. By the time the 7:15 a.m. roll call happened, they could have been anywhere.
The Letter from 2013
In 2013, the San Francisco Police Department received a letter that sent shockwaves through the cold case community. It started with: "My name is John Anglin."
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The writer claimed that all three had made it, but barely. He said Frank Morris died in 2008 and his brother Clarence died in 2011. The letter-writer offered to turn himself in and serve one more year in jail in exchange for medical treatment for cancer. The FBI ran DNA and fingerprint tests. The results? Inconclusive.
Classic Alcatraz.
The Mystery of Frank Morris
While the Anglin brothers have family members speaking up for them, Frank Morris is a ghost. He was the ringleader, the strategist. Some believe he was the one who coordinated with outside help. There have been rumors for years that a boat was waiting for them near the shore—a detail the prison authorities desperately wanted to debunk because it implied a massive security failure.
If Morris made it, he likely disappeared into the criminal underworld of the 60s. He was a foster kid who had been in and out of institutions his whole life. He knew how to be invisible. If he did die in the bay, he took the secret of his final moments to the bottom.
Why It Still Matters Today
We love a good underdog story, even when the underdogs are convicted bank robbers. Alcatraz represents the ultimate "unbeatable" system. Seeing three guys beat it with nothing but spoons and raincoats is fascinating. It’s about human ingenuity.
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Today, you can visit Alcatraz. You can stand in the hallway and see the vents they crawled through. Looking at the distance between the island and the shore, it looks so close. You feel like you could swim it. But then you feel the wind coming off the Pacific, and you realize how terrifying that water actually is.
What You Should Do If You're Obsessed With This Case
If you really want to understand what happened to the 3 guys who escaped from alcatraz, don't just watch the Clint Eastwood movie. Dig into the primary sources.
- Visit the Island: If you're ever in San Francisco, take the ferry. Seeing the scale of the utility corridor in person changes your perspective on the escape.
- Read the U.S. Marshals' Files: They occasionally release updated age-progression photos of the men. It’s wild to see what a 90-year-old Frank Morris might look like.
- Check the Tide Charts: Look up the "Bay Model" in Sausalito. They have a massive hydraulic model of the bay that scientists used to prove the men could have drifted to Horseshoe Bay instead of out to sea.
The case remains the only unsolved escape from the Rock. Whether they are buried in the silt of the bay or living out their final days in a quiet village in Brazil, the mystery is likely never going to be fully solved until a body—or a deathbed confession—surfaces. For now, the legend of the three men who did the impossible stays alive.
Next Steps for Researching the Escape:
Check the official FBI Vault for the "Alcatraz Escape" files; they have hundreds of pages of scanned memos and photos from the original 1962 investigation. You can also research the 2014 study by Dutch researchers who used 3D particle tracking to prove that if the men left at exactly midnight, the tide would have pushed them toward the Golden Gate Bridge, making a landing at Lime Point highly probable.