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How are you doing?
Doing pretty good? It's been waiting for you.
How you've been running a little late today. I'm good, I'm good. Listen. You know it's ridiculous.
Yes, malware, DNA.
Malware DNA yeah.
So you know, like I like, I like technology, but I'm not a tech bro. I know a rap name. But uh, there's this. I'm reading this Wired story. They they Okay, I don't know. This is wild. Maybe you'll
find this interesting. I find it ridiculous. A group of researchers from the University of Washington, they created malicious software malware, yeah, and they put it into physical DNA strands EW so in a gene sequencer analyzes the DNA, the program gets read and then it corrupts the gene sequencing software and it takes control of the computer.
So you just give your like DNA.
Dn M malware.
You can put in twenty three and meters rip and then bring the whole thing.
Down DNA hijack love in that nuts. I'm gonna just inject myself of malware, do it. Yeah, that's the ridiculous part. My idea is I need some malware.
You'll find me out behind the headquarters building, chewing on a flash drive, just trying to get that sweet malware up in me.
So in that ridiculous It.
Is so ridiculous, love. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Goodness? Yes, getting off the rock.
This is a ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heist and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. I asked today for your indulgence. I think that that is because when things are tough, everyone has to go to their comfort zone.
Yes, that's why I wanted to tell you a story about Ireland earlier. YEA, something comfortingly nice makes.
People happy and calm. For me, that's usually like the garden or cooking, making, hugging on dogs. Oh yeah, what about you? What's your comfort zone place?
Speed? I don't mean the drug, I mean going fast, just the act of going fast. I feel so relaxed when I'm going fast.
I like that.
Yeah, it's not like comfort zone. It's more in the cool zone.
But like the world is wild. Yes, as Shanaide saying, these are dangerous days.
I think Elizabeth you've maybe realized I don't have a comfort.
Zone going fast, I.
Was kind of bing it's it's it's more I just feel good. I don't really have a comfort zone. I don't think I seek out enough comfort. You've made me realized I have a paucity of comfort comfort I need. I'm going to follow you in Shanade's advice, these.
Are dangerous days. You fill in the rest of the line in your head if you know it. But the show almost go on, almost go on. So I have to tell you a compelling story.
Right please.
I can't come here and like be like, oh, list off my tomato seedlings for an hour. I mean I could, but there's no crime there other than how criminally delicious those tomatoes are going to be. I have to tell you an hour's worth of a z any crime. So for that, I'm going to go to my comfort place and Zarin that is San Francisco Bay Area history.
Oh hell yeah.
Right with that, I have a question for you. Have you ever been to Alcatraz aka The Rock?
No? Actually I've never have.
Yeah, me neither. I am a fifth generation Bay Area residence and I have never been there.
We should go, We should totally requid a ridiculous crime episode on the road.
I kind of had wanted to do this one there, but like you know, I'm busy. I got it busy on the go lifestyles.
You forgot to get the boat tickets.
Yeah. I've been to the other like large free standing island in the bay Angel Angel Island. Yeah, yeah, a couple of times. Angel Islands so beautiful.
Yeah, that's like to go hiking off. Yeah, it's like nature preserved Alcatraz. Why would why would you want to go to a prison? That's a good point, you know what I mean? Like that was my issue with it. People. I've been offered to go and I was like, it's a prison, right, and it's cold. I got it to be cold for an hour to get there to go.
It means you have to go to like Peer thirty nine.
Yeah, you gotta go hang out all these tourists and you gotta be wet and cold, and then you go and hang out with them and they go, look al Capone wants to spit here.
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to put it on my list now.
I do want to go because I'm hoping they have like an al Capone banjo jazz band.
In the event that I ever leave my house to go somewhere other than here at a headquarters, it'll be Alcatraz.
Yeah, call me, let me know that.
So the island started out as kind of a prison, oddly enough, because the Oloney people on whose land we sit to record, they used the island as a place of exile or punishment.
Really, it was a banishment spot.
Makes sense. Yeah, that's what I That's what I was told. Whereas Angel Islands pretty big relatively speaking, and has its own like microclimates, even Alcatraz is small, rocky, yeah, and it's in like a gnarly part of the bay that gets hit with a lot of wind and a lot and weather. The water is almost always choppy and cold. Yes, And there's the wind, like I said, and it's not particularly close to the shore.
No, they got crazy currents right there, and there's sharks. That's where all the like the wind, the sail borders and stuff that go by because the winds are so reliable.
Yeah. Yeah. So when the Spanish showed up, they named the island like Isla Delos Alcatraces, And I'm saying that's where it gets it, island of the Pelicans. Yeah, and that's because there were so many Bobcats on the island no Pelicans.
So there essentially there was you said, Pelican Island, and then there's also Pelican Bay, the prison up nor Repelican, California.
That's the logo, that's the mascot Pelicans. So the name was later shortened to Alcatraz. It's way jazzier totally. There's a street in Berkeley called Alcatraz, so so named because like as you drive down the hill on it toward the bay, you're looking directly at the island. That's a fun fact. Enjoy the tours there, thank you. So after that, it was a US military fort in prison during the
Civil War, that's where they put Confederate sympathizers. Yeah, and then it was a maximum security federal prison in nineteen thirty four. That's when they kicked that off totally. And it was like the most dangerous dude wanted the bad boy Club. It was known for like super strict discipline, harsh conditions, near impossible to escape because of like those cold, treacherous waters. During the time that it was a federal prison,
there were fourteen escape attempts, thirty six men Alcatraz. Yes, some say there were no successful attempts.
Yes, that's what they say.
Others like me begged to differ. We'll get to that in a second. Due to high maintenance costs Alcatraz, they closed it in nineteen sixty three. In nineteen sixty nine, Native American activists, led by Richard Oaks, they occupied Alcatraz for nineteen months.
My friend's father was involved in that exactly, So shout out Victoria, Hello.
And they wanted the land return to Indigenous people. It gained national attention, influenced Native American rights policies. In nineteen seventy two, the island became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Now it's a big tourist attraction. So here's a fun fact for this virtual tour. Alcatraz had hot showers, yes, and that was to prevent the prisoners from getting used to cold water, which would make it less likely to escape.
Oh, they didn't want them to like basically, you know, make their body be not bothered by cold because that's what I would totally do that totally.
So instead you have to take a hot shower, craze just hot water coming out of them showers. Isn't that nuts? You can't temping yourself up? So Alcatraz is like a mile and a half from the nearest point of land, which is Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, OK. A mile and a half in the prison used and developed this armorer system for surveilling the interior and the San Francisco Chronicle writer Jay Campbell Bruce he wrote this book in
nineteen sixty three, Escape from Alcatraz quote. The armorer, in his vault, sealed in the inner side, accessible only from outside the prison, enjoys virtual omniscience about what is going on in the cell blocks. Microphones hidden about the prison relay sounds to him day and night. If a phone is off a hook for more than fifteen seconds, a bulb lights up on his board and he dispatches an officer to investigate. He receives, for the record, twelve official
counts a day of the inmate population. There are some thirty additional special counts, and if a count reveals a prisoner missing, he radios the Coastguard and the San Francisco Police. In the event of a riot, he hits the siren button to summon off duty personnel and distributes weapons from an arsenal in his vault. Rifles, pistols, submachine guns, gas grenades, ammunition. So there's like the one guy who's the brain of
it all. So we had these guys who tried to escape fourteen attempts thirty six dude.
So they're basically going up against this mastermind.
Yeah. Yeah, he's just like in the like control tower. He can do and see everything. Interesting, most of the people who tried to scoot out, most of those guys were either recaptured, shot or killed or you know, they gave up.
Oh really Yeah.
So one of the ones who was recaptured was John Giles on July thirty first, nineteen forty five. His job was on the loading dock at the prison. He had a little job. He went down there though, dressed as a US Army Tech sergeant and he got on an army boat that was headed back to the mainlan. So he had spent the past couple of years working on the doc putting together a sergeant's uniform. By like when laundry would come in from this nearby naval base, I'm
thinking Treasure Islander. It was sent to Alcatraz to be clean. He would just take little bits out, one by one, like the Johnny Cash song, and one piece of time made himself a whole uniform. He made fake dog tags, and he forged a shore pass. And so he gets down there in his little fake uniform, gets on the boat like, oh, you know, just getting out of here. Here's the thing. Officers on the boat quickly noticed they had too many officers count yeah, and at the prison
the guards were like, we don't have enough prisoners. So then there's the uniform, right Like, everyone's looking at him because the uniform doesn't really match up. It's not and he's got this janky shore pass, it's like wrinkled. So within twenty minutes the warden has chased him down in a speedboat and they pull made his boat pull off an Angel island. He's like, pull over over to the island island, We're not going on a horse stop. And then they sent him back to Alcatraz, and for that
he got an additional five years on his ticket. So two cats who did make it off the island were Theodore Coal and Ralph Rowe. In nineteen thirty seven, Theodore Cole, who was twenty three years old, he was serving fifty years for kidnapping. When he was seventeen. He'd actually been sentenced to death for participation in an armed robbery of a doctor pepper bottling plant in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Did he kills someone?
I don't know so, but all like these women's clubs, his own mother. They protested the sentencing, and the state Court of Appeals later reduced the term to fifteen years.
Okay, wow.
So nineteen thirty four he was in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He escaped in a laundry bag in a laundry truck. Then he hitchhiked, kidnapped a driver, hitchhiked, and forced him to drive him to Illinois. In early nineteen thirty five, he gets arrested in Texas, sent back to Oklahoma. Tries to escape a few more times, once by hiding in a garbage can. Another time he sawed off his cell bars. It was like every trope. May thirty five, he pleaded
guilty to kidnapping charges. Sent to Alcatraz, and that's where you're supposed to do his fifty years. When he arrived, he apparently said, quote, don't think I'll like it here. Doubt I'll stay long. Oh, oh okay, Yeah. Ralph Rowe, he's twenty nine in nineteen thirty seven and he was at Alcatraz serving ninety nine years for bank robbery years. He had a long rap sheet, he had all these crazy robbery charges. He escaped from one prison by hiding in a crate that was leaving on a truck.
Classic.
So he and Cole they arrive at Alcatraz around the same time. And when they're there, other inmates included a notorious bank robber Harvey Bailey and Alcopol as well as George machine Gun Kelly and Albert Bates. And those two were there because they kidnapped oil tycoon and millionaire Charles Erschall remember Ershall, stepfather of cryptozoologist Tom Slick, He of the Jimmy Stewart Yetihans.
Yeah, we got a bunch of stories of that one.
Oh yeah. So Cole and Roe they both worked in a model industries building in Alcatraz and that was on the northwest Ish end of it facing the Golden Gate Bridge.
That's what gorgeous views.
So Cole he was a janitor in the blacksmith part of it, and Roe he worked in the mat shop. And the mat shop is where car tires were like shredded, like torn up to make mats for the navy. That's the name the mat shop.
Huh yeah, car tires turned into matts.
Yeah yeah. So over like you know, maybe like a month or so, the two men, you know, they started like filing through a couple of the bars on the mat shop window, and they covered up their progress using shoe polish and like grease paint, scraps and putty. They just have all these little, you know, tools around them. February sixteenth, nineteen thirty seven, Cole and Roe finally made their move. So there was like really thick fog that day, so thick in fact that in the morning the inmates
were told, you have to stay in your cells. FOG's too thick, we can't see you, yeah, by a fog warning, fog warning. So by noon the fog had lifted some. And this is not unusual.
A lockdown is crazy, though, well crazy, and the fog is not unusual. But to be a lockdown, it's like a snow day, but in prison it's a fog exactly.
So lifts at noon and they're like, okay, you guys can go to your work site. So one o'clock, the prison guard did his rounds of the mat. There's row and coal working away. By the time he came back around at one point thirty, no row and coal. No one's working. So they had broken through the bars, removed three panes of glass. They slipped out of a hole that was eight and three quarters inches by eighteen inches wide. Whoa, yeah,
they were going lothered. Yeah. They used a wrench that they took from the machine shop to open a wire fence, and then that led them to this like twenty foot cliff over the water, and then they kind of like scrabbled down the side of it. Those are jagged, very jagged in the Yeah, it's almost straight up and down. They go down all these steep rocks to the shore, and the fog is still thick, and so the guards in the watch towers couldn't see them as they got
into the water. And according to the news, the fog was the fog was sick.
How thick was it?
Well, the guards could not even see the Coastguard boards that were approaching to within a few year yards of the island in response to calls by radio, So they call for the coast Guard. The Coastguards like we're here. They're like, I don't see you.
Honk, I don't see you are outside.
So later officials they figured that Cole and Roe had waited for a foggy day, of course, to both hide them from the guards and also because there would be fewer ferries in everything.
Yeah, it kind of shows down the waterless traffic.
So by the time the time that they escaped, too, they also did it at high tide, so it would be easier to die, like less to go distance.
To get to the water less of the drop.
The problem was that on that particular day, the tidal currents were super strong, eight miles an out.
You don't realize how fast those currents are.
Like even a strong swimmer would have been pushed out through the Golden Gate.
To show up on the other side of the Golden like the Pacific side.
Doesn't matter though they're escape kicked off. According to the New York Times at the time, quote the most intensive manhunt in recent California history. Yeah, so, six Coast Guard boats, one SFPD boat. They patrolled the coast of Alcatraz Island and the Bay. Sixteen police cars drove up and down the waterfront. The team searched Alcatraz Islands, surrounding Rocks, San Francisco,
four nearby counties, nothing They came up empty. On the same day, two revolvers and two rifles, as well as six hundred rounds of ammunition, were stolen from a forty foot sailboat called the Jenny G. Moore at the Saint Francis Yacht Harbor in San Francisco.
I was wondering which harbor they would land, So there was.
Much debate as to whether this was connected to the escape you know, Saint Francis Yacht Club Tony and I love so I love the idea of the guys swimming up and like hopping into a small sailboat as they call it in the news reports. This small sailboat, it's a forty foot you know.
Yeah, that's yeah.
So they pop in and they find chalk full of guns and ammo. Like that's crazy anyway, So when when they there were other news reports of like people getting lost in the fog while they were duck hunting and like coming in from the fog and Alameda and the police thought it was the escape convicts and held them at Tommy Guns until they Tommy, Yeah, what I'm trying to say, Zarin, is the fog was thick.
Carl had he was on one that day.
We get thick fog here in the bay, but nothing like I have ever experienced in Davis.
To fog. Yes, they named the fog in San Francisco, Carl. They don't even name it in Davis because an animates. Yeah, exactly.
That is the thickest fog ever. It's unreal anyway, so low and.
So thick you can't see your hand. You literally can't put your hand out and cannot see it. It causes all these car accidents every year.
It's fantastic. Yeah, so let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to catch up with these escape convicts. I'm over here in the fog.
I was hitting myself in the face, going, who's hitting you?
Theodore call Ralph Row. They skidaddled out of Alcatraz into the drink in the heavy fog, the foggy do On the first day of searching prison Warden was like, you know what, I think they drowned. You know, he just looked out the water. He's like, yeah, them boys is going. But then like a few days later, no bodies have turned up. He's like, you know what, I'd take it back. I think that someone picked him up in a boat and yeah, and others are like, you know what, we
got all these old car tires. I think they use those as flotation devices. Okay, I mean apparently they were like littering the side of the island. So whatever, that's not smart environmentally or escape early. So no one could speak to their swimming skills. But a sheriff from Oklahoma City, who you know, he knew who Cole was. He said, quote, he was lack a greased pig, and I wouldn't be
surprised at anything he could do that mouth. So to prove that swimming from Alcatraz to shore was actually possible, the San Francisco Examiner had a teenage girl swim around the island and back to the mainland. I mean people do it in like triathlons always do ye, but they they picked their times right. The Examiner was having a field day with this, by the way, like full page spreads articles that looked at every possible angle of the.
Storywings and maps.
Oh yeah, yeah. So they had like the histories of these guys, the weather, like currents, stories about the various searchs, like you said, maps, fantastic stuff. They don't do that like they used to know.
They did not know when they're trying to sell papers.
Yeah, exactly, and it was so informative. It's just fascinating stuff. Okay. December seventeenth, a journalist reaches out to Cole's parents. They had moved from Oklahoma to Visalia, California, to be closer to Alcatraz after he got sent there. I mean it's like two hundred miles from the Bay Area, but that's closer than Oklahoma, and.
It's not that could afford. It's nice.
There are a lot of Oakies.
Just by saying south of Frans I bet they were farming.
Yeah, agg country. Well, they had a ranch, they got a ranch. It's also gateway to Sequoia National Park.
Beautiful sun there's that come visit.
Back to the journalists visiting Cole's family, he let them know that Theodore had escaped, and they're like, Theodore Cole kind of looked like Jack White by the way, White stripes Jack. Yeah. So when you do the screenplay for this, see if you can get him tied to the product.
Dude, you know, he's one of my favorite people on the planet.
Likewise, Okay, so the journalist he tells the mom like CEO, escape the Rock, didn't know that, And the mom's like, no, I know he's dead. I know he's dead. That's her quote. I know he's dead. But then later when the authorities were like, oh, we don't think he's dead, actually, she said quote, it would be better I guess if he were dead. But he's not prepared.
Wow wow thanks mo.
Yeah, his stepfathers just said quote, we'll all be damned. That was his were and they were like deeply, deeply religious. The reason they didn't know about it. They didn't read daily papers, they didn't have a radio.
They didn't have a radio. They weren't listening to your girl Amy, simple.
No, sadly no. So they promised the press that they were going to turn their son over to authorities if he came to the ranch. Oh like wank wank. Yeah. There were various unconfirmed but reported sightings, like all around Oklahoma. In nineteen thirty eight, a taxi driver said that he got shot by Cole who was trying to rob his car. Two hitchhikers said they got a ride from a man
they were positive was Ralph Roe. In nineteen forty one, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the two guys were living in Peru and Chile, I don't know, simultaneously different like at whatever, and had quote plenty of money.
They're kind of like a Butcher Sun Dance move from South America.
Nineteen fifty eight, the FBI looked into a report that Cole and Roe were playing the banjo and guitar in a bar and New Jersey. That that's amazing is the story that I want to be true. Like, think about that for a second. So you have two Alcatraz buddies who defied the law and nature to escape the rock and his aid capture, only to take up musical instruments and start new lives playing at a bar in New Jersey banjo and guitar. That's delicious. Wait, that's a perfect
scene for your movie. You got Jack White just destroying it on the guitar eighteen fifty eight. I don't know who would play Ralph Rowe. Let me let me show you their mugshots and then you can you can tell me. Scroll down here, okay, so on your left is coal.
Oh okay, and then oh yikes, yeah it is some real criminals, criminals people back. He does look like Jack White never had a hot meal?
Yeah exactly. So, yeah, those are bad boys of rock and roll. And like, yeah, why do you like?
Was it the photographs? The food, like the lead and the milk? Like, what the hell is all of the above?
All of the above? Okay, So they're in nineteen fifty eight, they're playing in this bar. You got to figure out who you're going to cast as Ralph row anyway, nineteen.
Four, that's a tough challenge.
Seventy four, thirty seven years after they liked it, the active investigation was stopped.
Oh there, I thought it's gonna be like they were, like, you know, Roadies were the dead, Like they was spotted in Minnesota.
They were officially listed as missing and presumed dead.
Okay, and I think.
Like successful escape or not, those two are long gone, Like right now, they'd be in their one hundred teens or like one hundred twenties.
Yeah, they're out there with the Elvis sightings. It's now like you're dead, bro. Exactly. So do you think they made it out or not?
Sure?
You don't think they become sharp?
Yeah? Sure?
Honestly, do you think.
They made if the current was that strong, And I don't think they outside of the gate, you wouldn't ever find their bodies.
You would never see anything again. No, so nothing.
I don't think they did it. And I like, you know, you have to be a really strong swimmer, and they hadn't been.
Haven't practicing at all, They haven't been in the water. And also you cramp up and like you can't make your body work anymore. It's freezing cold.
They gets swimmers here.
There's that as well.
So hard so Alcatraz the rock. Those dudes made a break for it. Pretty ridiculous. But I have one that's even better. This is the best Alcatraz escape ever.
Do they butter themselves before they hit the water?
They're made of butter, Because.
I'd be covered completely large, I'd be covered in large.
I'd i'd be ordering from the commissary like vats of vassel.
Totally, I mean, like various oils and oneons wetsuits.
So this one happened in nineteen sixty two. It involved three guys, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin. Oh yeah, so Frank Morris arrived at Alcatraz January nineteen sixty and, according to alcatrazistory dot com please quote, by the time he reached his later teens, Morris's criminal record would include a multitude of crimes ranging from narcotics possession to armed robbery, and he had become a professional inhabitant of the correctional system.
He spent his formative years in a boys training school, and then he graduated to a series of even larger penitentiaries. So he allegedly had an IQ of one thirty five, which is considered above average or quote moderately gifted. Okay, so good for him. I'm sad that he missed out on being in the gifted and Talented program as a kid.
This is why I see people talk about, Oh, there are one thirty on the I know. I see that online and I'm like, who.
Cares, I don't know, I don't know.
Yeah, anyway, that's coming around. Okay, that's the number.
Sure you can go a lot higher than that. Oh I know, honey, lower too.
Yeah, I know, I've been tested.
So nineteen fifty five, Morris was serving a ten year sentence for robbery and marijuana possession. When he was he was in Louisiana State Prison in Angola.
See, and they say standards don't have ambition.
He escaped while he was out in the fields, cut in sugarcane.
Oh that's like something out of the exactly that.
Yeah. So about six months later around Thanksgiving time.
Field outside of Anglia. I mean I can just hear and feel the heat.
I'm so glad he escaped.
Oh kind of snakes.
And so he's out right, he's on the lamb. He gets he's part of a team that robbed a bank by boring a hole through a wall and burning open two vaults. They got six one hundred and sixty five dollars in coins, but that's like seventy three thousand dollars today. Yeahs all coins. They're just like doing a burden a lot of laundry. So he needs to make a phone call a cup of coffee. So they're caught a few months later. He got sentenced to fourteen years and you know,
sent to the rock. Then we have the brothers Anglin, John and Clarence. They had also been in and out of prison for bank robbery. Clarence had escaped before and by nineteen sixty both of them were back in Levenworth. August of nineteen sixty, while in Levenworth, they again tried to escape. According to that book, Escape from Alcatraz, Clarence quote cut the top off a big bread box and the bottom out of another. John sat in won and Clarence set the other on top, then packed in loaves
of bread. A truck was ready to haul John and the other boxes out to a prison farm camp when a supervisor, apparently wondering why the helpers had struggled to hoist that particular double box into the vehicle, grew suspicious. He pulled out a few loaves and discovered John inside with an iron barn and knife. Just hide in the bread.
I'm like a ten year old. I'm out of here totally.
That's another thing that's like out of o brother. Anyway, John, he gets sent to Alcatraz. Clarence shows up there a few months later. They were signed to adjacent cells, which does not seem like the wisest choice. I'd separate those two, I guess, and what would wind up being another bad choice as they were right by Frank Morris, our gifted criminal. So you know, when I was in the gifted program, it wasn't all math geniuses and science kids.
Future spies.
No, all of us were. Almost all of us were like weird creatives writing and this is unassigned. Mind you. Radio shows with vaudevillian musical numbers about leaking diapers, yes, or one woman shows about Joan of arc orse gits about the emotional toll of the moon landing. You can guess which one was mine, and it was only one of them anyway. So the brother's angling Alcatraz had been
super hardcore for a long time. Like I said, you know, you got that guy in the box like controlling everything, but like this is nearing the end of its bid, you know. And so by this time a lot of the stricter stuff had loosened up. Okay, So now after dinner the men had like four hours of free time in their cells before they had to go to bed. So from five thirty to nine thirty after dinner they could just chill out. Coolah. There was a utility core open.
Door cells that they can somebody.
No, I think they're closed up, I believe.
So.
Yeah, So there's this utility corridor that ran behind their group of cells. The Anglands and Morris. Around December of nineteen six, Morris decides, I've got to come up with an escape plan, so he made a tool. He welded the handle of a spoon with the file from his nail clippers, and then he used that to slowly chip away at the concrete around the bars of his cells
air vent. And like he figured, the wall was like eight inches thick and the air vent was only six inches by ten inches, so he couldn't squeeze through it. But he's pretty sure that if he got it up to like ten inches by fourteen, you know, he could make it.
Yeah.
It so he got to work like he needed help with the project, though this is not a one man effort. He also needed people to warn him if the.
Guards were watch.
Yeah, so he rolled up to his neighbors, the Anglans, but also Alan West. West was born in Brooklyn and he played the accordion and was in Alcatraz. And I think that's all we need to know about him. It tells the whole story as far as I'm concerned, Brooklyn, Accordion, Alcatraz.
I don't know Adion.
Probably I don't know what he was in for, but I love him. They had to figure unless it was something horrific, and then I don't love him. They had to figure out a way to hide their work, and that's when like Morris went into gifted kid mode. So he decided they could hide their work on the vents using painted paper mache.
That was gonna be an accordian concert.
I'm like to just wait. So they began cutting ad pages out of magazines, and like one of the Anglin brothers, all of a sudden was like, I feel an artistic urge coming on. I need art supplies. So he orders tubes of paint from the purchasing officer. I think I'm going to get into painting. Morris ordered himself an accordion like his pal West, not for like a dueling accordion session, but because he realized that the case would perfectly cover the air vent well.
So he just puts it there and he's like, oh yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So the men they made these like thick sheets of cardboard out of paper mache, painted it to look like it had the vent over it. They also started collecting the concrete that they chipped from the wall. One of the Anglin brothers he worked in the brush shop, and then he started collecting the bristles because it looked like hair and then they used real human hair gathered from the barber shop Zarin. They were channeling Willie Sutton.
They made dummies of themselves. Yeah. So by May of nineteen sixty two, the men had successfully removed the air vents. Morris and Clarence, who had finished first, they start building their dummy busts. And they made plaster from the chipped concrete that they'd collected, and soap and like white glue that they stole from the brush shop. Then they painted the plaster to make it look more life like. They added eyebrows, eyelashes, hair, John and Clarence, the brothers named
their dummy heads Oink and Oscar. Yeah. To test everything out, Frank Morris and Clarence they put their dummy heads in their bed and filled the rest of the quote body with like pillow jacket.
Yeah.
Then they climbed into the corridor behind the vent. Morris used a string tied to the handle of the accordion case to pull it back and cover the hole. Really. Yeah, So the two men they made their way up. They're climbing this utility pole to the top of the cell block. And when they were up there, they found this concealed space that they could use as a storage area. As their plan progressed, so they started collecting rain jackets so that they could build life jackets and a raft out.
Oh smart.
Yeah, And according to the FBI quote, the seams carefully stitched together and vulcanized by the hot steam pipes in the prison. The idea came from magazines that were found in the prisoner's cells.
So they're basically rubberizing the jackets. Yeah.
Yeah. Morris he built two oars out of some plywood that he had like lifted from the shop. Then they were like, okay, we've done all this, how do we get into the roof? And you know, easy enough. There's this rain cap on the shaft with cross bars. So with a piece of pipe that they found in the corridor, they were able to bend some of the bars, but they couldn't remove the rivets. So Morris he stole a fan from the music room, like hiding it in his
accordion case. He goes in with an empty accordion case. I'm just going to go practice. Just let me get into a choir room.
Give me a quick mind.
She shoves a fan in there. He tried to build a drill with the motor from the fan, but it wasn't powered. Yeah, so, but he was able to get some carborundum string from the machine shop because his friend worked in there. It's what that is is it's a quote a cord impregnated with an abrasive such as raw greens of silicon carbide, aluminum oxide or diamond powder and used for intricate repairs such as fine grooving on the sewing machines in the glove and tailor.
Shops, basically like diamond floss.
Yeah. Yeah, so that did the trick, and then they use that in some banjo string, probably borrowed from al Capone's dead body. Dorris and Clarence they were able to get through the rivets, so they made fake rivets out of soap and place those on the vent just in case someone came by to inspect it. So this whole process of THEIRS takes six months.
That's crazy, like shaping rivet heads and.
Out of soap and then painting it. So by this time it's early June nineteen sixty two, the Anglan brothers, they're ready to leave Morris. He he wants to spend more time learning about Angel Island, which something about.
Sixty two San Francisco, like they're about to show up in the craziest San Francisco.
Really, Yeah, Yeah, he wants to learn about Angel Island. It's like a mile and a half away, and the channel between it and Marin.
Yeah.
Going, He's like, we're not going into the city, We're going to Marin.
Yeah, there's the Admiral's Club harbor there right by the where the Golden Gate touches. On the other side, there's like an inlet harbor you can you can shelter and then you can totally get to before even knew you were there. Yeah. So, and there's an in and out burger right right right there.
So they agreed to leave in like ten days. Meanwhile, the guards had been inspecting cells recently, and West he gets nervous, not just because he plays the accordion, but because his paper mache great was like a little wobbly. It wasn't that great. So he filled in most of his hole with cement that he'd found left in the corridor, because like there had been plumbers working in there recently, so it's not even like, oh, no one ever goes back there. And so then he stuck the paper machee.
On top of that, he didn't want to get.
Caught and the other guys.
Yeah, yeah, the whole thing would tank. So let's pause here. It is West is a good dude, unless he wasn't a good dude, and in which case he's not. We don't like him. Yeah, when we get back, we're going to catch up with this crafty crew, zaren. Yes, okay, So we have Frank Morris, gifted Felon and the brother's Anglin, John and Clarence and then Alan West Brooklyn Accordion man on the spot. They're making a plan to escape, right, and it's the artsiest, craftiest plan I've ever heard totally.
So remember they had everything in place and then they decided that they'd put the plan in action in ten days and a few nights after they made that decision, on Monday, June eleventh, nineteen sixty two, the Anglins jumped the gun. They announced that they wanted to leave that night. So Morris, I don't know, Morris, he was both gifted and bullied. Those go hand in hand. He had no choice but to comply. He's like, all right, fine, fine, we'll go now. As soon as the nine thirty bed
check was completed. The men they set up their dummy heads and broke out of their cells for the last time. Zaren closed your eyes. Oh yeah, I want you to picture it. Yes, you are a jail bird, a convict. You're in Alcatraz serving a ten year sentence for public indecency, practicing both law and medicine without a license, perjury, and a marijuana possession with intent to sell. It's the scale. Is there in the scale? Did you in on that one?
No?
Anyway, you're nine years into your dime. The finish line is within view. You just want to get out and try to do things right this time. You've learned some trades here, You've got a line on some work. You just want to earn an honest book, find a nice girl, and settle down and smoke a lot of weed. That's all you want. It's Monday, June eleventh, nineteen sixty two, nine to thirty pm. The guards have just finished their
bed checks. You're on your cot reading to Kill a Mockingbird by the dimming light from a long summer night. It came out a couple of years ago. People donate books to the prison library, and you snag this one. You've checked it out a number of times, and this is your fifth read of it. You're almost done with it. You're in good with the librarian, and he has a book called Dharma Bums set aside for you. Sound good.
You can hear the footsteps of the guard tap down along the long corridor, getting fainter and fainter until he's gone. Then it's nothing but the sound of the light wind and the waves. In the cell across from you is a guy named Alan West. He and a dude called Morris and the Anglan brothers are working on an escape plan. You think it's stupid. I mean, they say you can't
survive an escape attempt here. Sure those fellas tried in thirty seven, and you're pretty sure though they didn't make it out of the water, same will go for this crew. In your mind, plus, you are so close to getting out it would be foolish to risk it all right now, So instead you flip the page on your paperback and continue your reading. But they're starting to make a little racket. You get up and you look over at their row of cells. Each of them are taking down their little
art projects, revealing the holes where they've been scraping. You can't believe the guards haven't caught on, But you're no snitch. More power to the these goofs if they can pull it off. You see that Wes is having trouble getting through his cement. He was worried the hole would be discovered and shoved a bunch of stuff in there. But the air here is wet and the dry bits in
there have hardened into a tough clump. He pulls and scratches at the cement as you look over and see the feet of Morris and the Anglans disappear into the holes in the walls of their cells. West is frantic, but then he realizes it's too late. He won't make it. You see Morris's face pop back out through the wall. He whispers to West, asking him what's the hold up. West whispers back that he can't get through go on without him. Without a word, Morris disappears back into the wall.
Wes sits down and sighs. He pushes his accordion with his foot and lets out a discordant wine. Then it's just the sound of the wind and the water. An occasional cough. You flip the page of your book you look down at the page and whisper aloud to West the line of text in front of you are always better in the morning. West looks up at you. You nodded him in the darkness. Close your book and rest your head on your pillow. Things are always better in
the morning. So Morris and the brothers Anglin they bust through the rain cap on the roof. They had their makeshift life vest and raft with them they'd stored in a little space. They found they had one of the oars, but they forgot to grab the other one. H Morris and the Anglin brothers they shimmeyed down a fifty foot
pipe to the ground. They climbed a barb wire fence, and once down by the water, they placed some boards that they took from like leftover pallets in the life jacket raft to help stiffen it.
Ah, there you go a frame.
So how in the world were they going to inflate this? Things?
Erin Oh, I didn't even think of them inflating at us. I was imagining, like they have made the raincoats really hard and rubberized, and they're just going to put wood in and it's going to like kind of just deplay displace.
Those seams, right, And so luckily Morris had taken up the accordion and he packed that down with them too, and he used that to inflate.
The rats, of course, brilliant.
So the tide it was only moving at two point five miles an hour, which is better than the eight something of the nineteen thirty seven escape. So the water, though, is like between fifty and fifty four degrees. That's pretty standard for the bay. It'd be colder if it was in the winter.
I'm just about to say that's actually not bad.
Yeah, and June isn't true summer here. You know, you have to wait till like September October. Anyway, here's a development for you. West finally made it out of his cell. He didn't give up, so maybe you read him another quote from To Kill a Mockingbird. Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
That's damn right.
So there's West up on the roof. He's liberated, but his pals are nowhere to be seen because they'd been out there around like ten o'clock or so. And now it's midnight.
Of course, yeah, he missed it.
According to west Quote, their plan had been to use their raft to make their way to Angel Island. After resting, they would then re enter the bay on the opposite side of the island and swim through a waterway called Raccoon Straits. Then on into Marin they would steal car, burglarize a clothing store, and then venture out in their own separate directions.
Not bad, you're right.
Plan. There were reports of a car being stolen in Marin County by three men the night of the escape, and then later that same car was found run off the road in the Central Valley. But the FBI, the US Marshals, they looked into it and it didn't go anywhere. It was that next morning, Tuesday morning, June twelfth, at the seven to fifteen am bedcheck, that the guards discovered
the escape. So this huge search on Alcatraz Island, Angel Island, all throughout the bay night, they had the whole night, You're right, like just ahead of them, and they're going like all over all the counties surrounding the bay. So on Wednesday and or like, the one they'd left behind was found two hundred yards off Alcatraz, and then on Thursday, a debris boat in the bay like searching for the debris, they found a small plastic bag made out of raincoats
and inside and dry. It was like sixty photographs, a list of names and addresses, and a receipt for a ten dollars money order made out to Clarence Anglin and cashed by the Alcatraz mail clerk. So it wasn't immediately made public at the time, but there was a report that a raft and a paddle were recovered on Angel
Island and there were footsteps leading away from him. So a few days after the escape, a reporter called the director of the Bureau of Prisons to check on progress, and the director told the reporter this, and somehow the Bureau of Prisons believed that this was proof that they had drowned. I would say it was the exact oppositely. I know, I'm a simple country Lawyer's there, I'm with you, what do I know? So June eighteenth, it's like a
week out. The reporter filed an article with the information about the paddle and the footsteps, and then the FBI wrote quote a release such as appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on June eighteenth, nineteen sixty two, makes it more difficult to conduct the investigation, since if in fact these prisoners successfully reached the mainland, they obviously would not contact the persons whose names were known to be in possession of investigative authorities.
Okay, yeah, thanks, it's true, basically, yeah.
Yeah, So Friday, June fifteenth, according to the FBI report, a quote May West life jacket may West. Yeah, identified it as identical to those made by the escapees washed up on Cronkite Beach in Marine County. You have you
heard that term a may West test? I hadn't either, so I looked it up on the Navy's Naval History and Heritage Command National Naval Aviation Museum website, and they had a picture of one with a description quote, this mark one life vest popularly known as a may West because when inflated, it gave the wearer a book some appearance.
That's what I was imagining, Yeah, belonged.
To Marine aviator Elden E. Ballard. He expressed pride in his service as a flying leatherneck, using his life vest as a canvas for drawing The SBD Dauntless dive bomber he flew, and the ubiquitous symbol of the Marine Corps a bulldog wearing a pilot's helmet. So it's one of those life vests with like a hole for your head, ties around the front. You blow it up, gives you
gives you boobies later. And this particular one on the website had drawings on it like tattoo flash looking you know what else was on this website?
What else, Elizabeth?
A red banner across the top of the page reads quote. Content on this website has been revised or removed to align with the President's executive orders and DoD priorities in accordance with DoD Instruction fifty four zero zero dot seventeen Official Use of Social Media for public affairs purposes.
Because a woman, it's what's the reason.
I know we're being escapist here in more senses than one, but I cannot act like this is normal. No, I'm sorry, this is not normal to have this banner at the top. We're just taking stuff out out of a whim to quote the swing another song, tell them told you so. This is not how it's supposed to go. It's in my head a lot these days. Anyway, back to the life fest, I can't escape anything, just like you can't escape Alcatraz. I try and do escapist research and then it's right there.
It comes right back at you life fest.
So it's fully intact. But there was like a small tear at the scene. So that's when they're like, oh, did they not make it? But I think if it's tied around you, yeah, you know, even they.
Can use a pair of genes as a life fest. You have to tie them the legs and you capture air and you put it underwater. And that's right, So it's possible. It is. And these guys as inventive as they.
Are, and they had like they had gone full on to make this life as There was the tube that you used to blow and and plate it and there's like a paper clip they would hold it. That was saying, yeah, and crafts is amazing. Oh they're incredible. The tube had heavy teeth marks on it trying to hold it. And June eighteenth, the warden at Alcatraz got a postcard postmark June sixteenth with the message ha ha we made it, signed Frank John Clarence.
I'm taking that as evidence.
I would say, yeah, they sent it to the FBI for handwriting analysis. It was inconclusive, but amazing if true.
I also, I mean, it seems like it'd be before anyone else knew they had escaped if it was postmarked sixteenth, since weren't most of the stories coming out after that.
Yeah, yeah, I love taunting correspondence from criminals. Yes, like, I'm looking at you, Zodiac killer stuff my thought, I am so, of course, there were so many suspected sightings. June fourteenth, someone reported seeing three suspicious men with quote phony accents in San Rafell, just on the other side of Angel Island from Alcatraz. The FBI later determined they were simply quote foreign exchange students from the University of Washington and were not the escapees.
So I'm thinking they came from Alden.
About a month after the escape, a body dressed in blue clothing similar to the Alcatraz prison uniform, was found up the coast from San Francisco, but it was too badly decomposed to be identified. But this didn't mean the end. One of the Angland's sisters later told the press that she was positive that both of her brothers had attended their mother's funeral in nineteen seventy eight, dressed as women. Yes, I love that. And she also had another incarcerated. She
had another brother who was locked up. He said he got a letter from Clarence and John when he was in jail after the escape, which is like, how many Anglin brothers are there? And are they all in jail?
Yes, totally.
The escape made it to the silver screen. Of course, you know you're too late on this one. It was the story behind the nineteen seventy nine movie Escape from Alcatraz during Clint Eastwood. Yeah, Springklin and the FBI closed the case in nineteen seventy nine, it said, quote, for the seventeen years we worked on the case, no credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the US or overseas. The three men are officially listed as missing and presumed drowned.
Well, I'm going to say I think they made it in. Yeah, good job, gentlemen.
The US Marshals, they took it over. They're like, oh, you're two too weak to keep going.
For cowboys, we never give up.
Twenty eleven, Supervising Deputy Mike Dyke of the US Marshall Service told CBS News that he thought that the men may have survived. Quote, I think probably the brothers lived. There's no body recovered. I can't close the case. Yeah, good guys, don't have it in me. However, in twenty twenty two, he told the press that quote, after working the case for seventeen years, it's my opinion that they very likely did not survive the first night of their escape.
Why did anyone come to that conclusion?
Because has been recovered. You can never say that one hundred percent, but based on all the evidence, more than likely all three of them died that night and were swept out into the ocean.
I don't see it the first time, yes, second time.
In twenty thirteen, San Francisco police they got a letter from a guy claiming to be John Anglin. Yes. The letter stated, quote, yes we all made it out that night, but barely. He said he had cancer and quote, if you announce on TV that I will be promised to go first to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I'll write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke. He wants to go to jail for medical health care.
So America.
Another deep breath, everyone, just deep breath. The writer of the letter said that he spent a ton of years after the escape living in Seattle, and that he also lived in North Dakota for eight years and then currently is in southern California. The guy who wrote the letter said that Morris had died in two thousand and eight and his brother Clarence had died in twenty eleven. FBI analysts they take the letter, they look at fingerprints. DNA
results inconclusive twenty fifteen. So apparently they didn't tell it on TV and he didn't get to go back.
And also do they have his fingerprints? I mean, do they have big handwriting samples enough they can do it before?
I don't know.
With the postcards, it's like, what do we think we're going to find FBI?
I don't know. Twenty fifteen, new evidence that the men were possibly alive emerged. Yes, the Anglan's nephews said that their family had gotten handwritten Christmas cards and photos and that the brothers were possibly living in Brazil. And there's a photo that allegedly shows them in Brazil in nineteen seventy five. Oh and so the family they hired an analyst, and the analysts confirmed using AI facial recognition that yeah, that's them in the pictures. The FBI was like, no, it's inconclusive.
Nothing's conclusive for the help. Yeah, it's just bodies. You got a body, call me when you got a body.
In twenty twenty two, the US Marshals they released updated renderings of what the guys might look like if there's still a live Updated renders always nineties in their ninety the hell Okay, so.
Did you see it? Did it seem like you like men like that? No?
What's your ridiculous takeaway?
I don't ever want to go to prison, but I would love to try to escape. Okay you know what I mean? Like, if I was there, that's all i'd be value. So I'm taking notes anytime we do a prison escape story. Anytime you're you're telling me, I'm like, oh, okay, that seems like that's a good Noteka, I remember that. Okay, gotta get the diamond flass. I'm like, all about you.
Got to practice your like sculpture skills, Oh yeah.
Rafts Hea, Yeah, what about you, Elizabeth?
I I think that people get that challenge of you can't escape this place. And you know, I also all of the people, all the guys in this had done had tried to escape other facilities. So there are people like you where it's just they cannot be penned in and others you know, right right, And I think that's really interesting, like the mindset of it. And I think it also goes to not saying that like you don't have impulse control, because you very much do, but.
I don't have the ability to have my life dominated like that. Yeah that's yeah problem.
And so these guys they have poor ink pulse control, they don't like their life dominated. They also can't see down the road. So a lot of times you're just like you can plan these things to a t, but then what how how do you go after that?
Totally? And like also how do you live in America as a convict? I mean damn? And everybody wants to find you and everyone wants to turn you in for a like a reward.
Yeah exactly, And you're a criminal and you're probably just going to get keep criming and so your risk of getting re arrested.
And you're and you're always just a life changing amount of money to somebody.
With all that said, Dave, may I have a talk back please?
By the way, that was really fun.
Thank you, O.
God. I let cheat.
Hi Aaron producer d This one's mostly for Elizabeth.
This is Grace.
I just wanted to let you know that last night I started watching the first episode of nine to one one and I was so tickled by how ridiculous that show is. So thanks for the recommendation. Love the podcast.
Look, Grace, I am so excited you have joined us. The journey it gets crazier and campier and sillier, and then you're really going to get invested in the whole thing.
It's fantastic, it really is. You've got me watching.
I love it. I'm so happy that you're part of the nine one one family. What's your emergency? That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. That website is full of.
Malware DNA malware.
DNA malware, so if you click it, you get the DNA malware, you grow a tail totally.
It's awesome and finn Yeah maybe some spots so good.
Crisper endorsed. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram. You can email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com if that's If that's your thing, jamail, or you can leave a talk back on the iHeart app, which is our preferred method of communication reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Alcatraz Art Room director Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judas. Research is by Unincarceratable Criminal mastermind
Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Plaster Bunk Dummies Thomas Lee and Travis Duck. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guests here and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben Bowleen and Noel Brown, who escaped from Alcatraz in twenty sixteen via ferry boat headed for Pure thirty nine and the Curi Delly Chocolate Factory.
Guidus Quime Say.
It One More Time, Gquious QUI.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.