Happy 60th Alcatraziversary!
60 years after the island prison's great escape, we're still in the dark
the true crime that's worth your time
Sixty years ago this week, one of Best Evidence’s favorite true-crime stories hit the news: The escape of Clarence and John Anglin and Frank Morris from Alcatraz, San Francisco’s famous island prison. Sixty years! In many ways, it feels longer ago than that — I mean, my parents were teens when this went down. Maybe yours were, too.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s de facto in-house retrospectivist, Peter Hartlaub, has a handy aggregation of the paper’s coverage of the events since June 12, 1962 (though it refers to Clarence Anglin as “Charles,” which is perplexing), including an excerpt of a wild editorial that basically said “good for them!” regarding the plaster dummy and glued-together raincoat escape attempt:
If Morris and the brothers Anglin have in fact gotten away with it and stultified all the art, science and penological abracadabra that went into making Alcatraz ‘escape-proof,’ we offer them a silent cheer for having at last destroyed the myth of its inviolability.
(The Anglins were bank robbers who weren’t known for ever harming any of their victims, Morris was also a repeat property crimes offender, so it’s not like the Chron was cheering rapists and murderers on, I guess.)
In the years since, the case has been turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service, which has age-advanced sketches of the three escapees on its site, along with tip line information if you should see them. As the drawings look like pretty much every old white guy in line with me at the coffee shop this morning, I’m not expecting any 90-year-olds to get scooped up in the case any time soon, but it’s 2022, so who knows.
Maybe that whole “who knows” is what’s kept the story top-of-mind for so many years. Who knows if they made it to shore, who knows if the Anglins and Morris lives out their lives in peace, who knows if that’s one of them in front of me debating between oat and almond milk. The escape’s enduring legacy is why we’re running down seven of the most notable takes on the 1962 Alcatraz escape. I’m sure I’ll miss some of your favorites, so please do add yours in the comments. — EB
Escape From Alcatraz (1979)
I mean, this is an all-time classic that Sarah and I should really screen at some point, right? (A live watch with paid subscribers, perhaps?) Clint Eastwood has rarely been more jazzily cool, those tan pants and blue shirts are so chic, and it’s surprisingly funny. Factually, it plays with the truth a bit, but nothing worth freaking out over.
Escape from Alcatraz (1963)
This is the best-selling book at the Alcatraz gift shop (or was at my last visit, which was well over a decade ago). J. Campbell Bruce’s book published in 1963, right as the prison closed for good, and covers its history as well as its most famous escape. It’s great pick up and read a little bit any time reading, and the 2005 re-issue (the copy you’re most likely to find, these days) has loads of cool Alcatraz-era photos that weren’t in the original version. (And I’ll bet Sarah could help you find a copy.)
Criminal: The Escape (2017)
The venerable podcast spoke with then 82-year-old Marie Anglin Widner (Clarence and John’s sister) and U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke, both of whom believed that at least some members of the trio survived. According to coverage of the 50th anniversary of the escape, Dyke was “the only official investigator still assigned to the case,” and said then that “there's still a decent chance they made it.”
Alcatraz: Search for the Truth (2015)
This History Channel doc is ground well-tread for most fans of the story and it has a vaguely sales-y style that’s…not my favorite, but it’s worth at least a half-assed watch for novelty’s sake. In the 1 hr 28 min show, David and Ken Widner (two of the Anglins’ nephews) work with retired Marshal Art Roderick to build a case that the escapees made it to shore alive and headed to South America. The Widners claim that the FBI hasn’t just ignored their theory but that the agency has actively harassed them over their pursuit of the “truth.” Yeah, I don’t know about that, but I don’t mind hearing about it with one finger on the fast-forward button. Looks like you can find it on A&E’s app or via various methods.
Escaping Alcatraz: The Untold Story of the Greatest Prison Break in American History (2017)
Don’t have the patience for the History doc above? David Widner, with Alcatraz historian/obsessive Michael Esslinger (seriously, his Twitter handle is @ExploreAlcatraz) wrote this book about the prison and escape, with a strong focus on the Anglins’ role. (Still salty that the Escape movie was mostly about Morris, maybe?) This book is wildly detailed, to the point that your eyes might blur a bit. Esslinger does a nice job of balancing Widner’s claims, though, making it a more satisfying product than it might have been otherwise.
Mythbusters: “Escape from Alcatraz/Duck Quack/Stud Finder” (2003)
The series about special effects artists who test out various urban legends and apocryphal knowledge isn’t always a hit for me — sometimes the goofiness and patter can grind me down. But I return to this episode (and the gunfire into water one) often, because its the most vivid illustration of what Morris and the Anglins endured the night they fled. They end up deciding that it’s “plausible” that the trio made it, but watching the video, it’s definite that if they did, the process of making it across the bay in a makeshift raft in the dark really, really sucked. The vast Mythbusters catalog is available on Discovery’s app, which is different than Discovery+ (I think).
FBI Records: The Vault
The FBI’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Library has made available 17 pages of documents from the escape available online, ranging from the days after the incident until the FBI officially closed the case in 1979. If you, like the Widners, are convinced that the FBI decided they didn’t make it to avoid embarrassment over a successful escape plot, you’re unlikely to be swayed by the feds’ arguments for case closure:
Crossing the Bay. Yes, youngsters have made the more than mile-long swim from Alcatraz to Angel Island. But with the strong currents and frigid Bay water, the odds were clearly against these men.
Three if by land. The plan, according to our prison informant, was to steal clothes and a car once on land. But we never uncovered any thefts like this despite the high-profile nature of the case.
Family ties. If the escapees had help, we couldn’t substantiate it. The families appeared unlikely to even have the financial means to provide any real support.
Missing in action. For the 17 years we worked on the case, no credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the U.S. or overseas.
But that’s the fun of it, I suppose.
Honorable mention: Someone Is Hiding on Alcatraz Island (1986)
Eve Bunting’s YA novel isn’t about the escape or any other true crime, but I must include it as Sarah dug it up and sent it to me — and, I mean, that author name (birth moniker: Anne Evelyn Bolton) is just the icing on the cake. Here’s the book description, if you want to relive the heady days of 1980s young adult thrillers:
When Danny saves an old woman from a mugger’s attack, he doesn’t expect to tangle with the toughest gang in school, the Outlaws. But then, he doesn’t know the mugger is the gangleader’s brother. Desperation overcomes his fear when he heads to Alcatraz Island to escape the Outlaws’ revenge When he realizes the gang has followed him there, his terror turns to action.
Hiding out in the abandoned prison, Danny feels sure he will be safe. But no one has ever escaped from Alcatraz alive. Now that the gang is stalking him, is death the only way out?
If this case went down today, Danny would likely be saved by the Outlaws’ reluctance to spend $49 per ticket to get to the island (there’s only the one boat that docks there, so that’s the only way on or off), $59 if they want to go at night.
But if you visit San Francisco and are up for the trip, it’s money well spent — seeing the prison is worth it for a lot of reasons, not least of all because as you ride that rocking boat up to the island, you, too, will wonder how the Anglins and Morris could have made it ashore. — EB
This week on Best Evidence: Queer as Folk’s true-crime ties, and Weinman on Kilgallen and Zodiac. (Still not our dads!)
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