Season 08 Episode 38: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see you on board. It was a freezing cold morning in January of nineteen sixty off the coast of San Francisco. The bay was engulfed in a lair of thick fog, so dense that the passengers of the boat couldn't see the water around them, nor the lights of the city a mile away. But that didn't stop Frank Morris trying.

As he sat in chains alongside nine other prisoners, he turned his head and squinted as hard as he could into the darkness until he could just make out the distant shape of the city. Even though his wrists and ankles were shackled, he refused to let himself feel like a prisoner. This was all temporary, he said to himself, and he'd be back on the mainland soon enough. At thirty eight, Frank had been fending for himself his entire life, and often by eleven. He committed his first crime at thirteen.

Since then, he'd been in and out of prison ever since for various nonviolent offenses, most recently bank robbery. You must really like the big house, one of the cops had said to him during his most recent arrest. But that was just it. Frank didn't like prison. He hated feeling trapped more than anything in the world, and he had a long history of escape attempts, which is how he'd found himself here on this boat heading to the

most infamous prison in America. During his trial for the bank robbery, the judge had labeled him an escape artist, and then, with a sneer in his voice, he sentenced him to fourteen years at Alcatraz. As the boat began to slow down, Frank looked up at the imposing concrete form of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. It loomed over him through the fog like it was trying to intimidate him. He

knew that life on Alcatraz was no picnic. He'd heard the stories prisoners dying by suicide or maiming themselves, unable to cope with the brutal conditions and the isolation. But that wasn't going to be him, because Frank had a plan. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith. Alcatraz was a prison within a prison, formerly a military fort. The building itself was highly secure, made out of reinforced concrete and surrounded by strategically placed watch towers staffed by

guards twenty four seven. But the most effective security measure was the island itself. Even if a prisoner did somehow make it out of the building, they'd find themselves on a rugged, unforgiving strip of land, surrounded by freezing cold water with vicious currents that could effortlessly drag you out to sea. With the mainland more than a mile away, it would be suicide even at et it That double layer of security made Alcatraz ideal for housing the most

hardened and slippery criminals. It was a fortress known ominously as the Rock. Day to day life on the Rock was tough. The building was cold, beset by constant wind that howled and echoed around the windows, and prisoners had very few privileges. With visits limited to one per month, their contact with the world beyond the island was minimal, so despite the impossibility of escape, some prisoners got desperate enough to try. There had been more than ten escape attempts.

In almost every case, the prisoners had been caught or had died as they tried to flee. But Frank Morris wasn't just any prisoner. With the reported IQ of one hundred and thirty three, he was intelligent, had the self confidence to match. Sure, he'd tried and failed to break out of other prisons in the past, but he'd learned a lot from those failures. He wasn't going to rush into anything. He would bide his time years if necessary,

and more importantly, he would have help. In the autumn of nineteen sixty nine, months after Frank began his sentence, thirty year old John Anglin arrived on the island. Frank and John knew each other from a previous stint behind bars in Louisiana. Now Here they were again both in prison for bank robbery, and the two men had more in common than their crimes. Like Frank, John had also made attempts to escape in the past, and the two men still shared a deep belief in their own ability

to beat the odds. As luck would have it, John was assigned to a cell adjoining Frank's, making it easy for the pair to catch up and compare notes on their previous prison break attempts. And then a few weeks later, John's brother, Clarence, arrived at Alcatraz two. The two brothers were both in prison for the same crime, a nineteen fifty eight bank robbery in Alabama. Clarence's transfer to Alcatraz

had just taken longer to be processed. Clarence made a request to the prison authorities to be placed in an adjoining cell with its brother, despite their criminal history together. It was granted. After all, given the facilities tight security protocols, what harm could it do. This was the first of several mistakes made by the powers that be at Alcatraz.

During the day, the prisoner's movements and communications were closely monitored but at night, once the cell doors were locked, Frank, John and Clarence were free to plot to their heart's content. Throughout the winter of nineteen sixty one into sixty two, the trio's plan began to take shape. The first thing they needed was tools. Since there was no hope of getting hold of real ones, they'd have to improvise. They also had to avoid drawing any attention to themselves as

new arrivals. Frank, John and Clarence were being watched closely by the guards. Enter their fourth co conspirator, Alan West, who'd been at Alcatraz for five years. Although he'd never made a break for it himself, he'd witnessed more than one failed attempt during that time. Of course, the details of attempts were always kept under wraps by the guards,

but were traveled far asked among the inmates. So Frank and the Angling brothers welcomed Allan into the group, not least because his time spent at the prison made him useful. Unlike the others, Allan had been there for long enough that the guards trusted him. Although prisoner's movements were heavily restricted, good behavior would eventually be rewarded with a plumb work assignment,

which in turn came with more freedom of movement. Allan worked on the prison painting crew, which meant that he could be posted just about anywhere within the building on a given day, and one day, when he was assigned to repaint the prison barber shop, he noticed a pair of electric clippers had been left unattended. After checking that nobody was watching, he grabbed the clippers and slipped them

into the sleeve of his uniform. During another shift, Allan saw a broken vacuum cleaner lying in the corner of the barber shop, waiting to be taken out to the trash. He crouched down beside it and examined its dusty form. When a guard asked him what he was doing, Alan replied, I'm pretty sure I could fix this. Do you mind if I give it a try. The guard shrugged and told him to do whatever he wanted with it. Back

in his cell. That evening, Alan dismantled the vacuum cleaner and took out the motor from inside, and after a little tingering, he was able to get it working again. Excited, he told the others about his hall the following day they could use the motors from the vacuum cleaner and the electric clippers. He told them to make two electric drills, and armed with these tools, they could finally put into motion Frank's ambitious escape plan. The evenings at Alcatrats followed

a predictable rhythm. After completing their work assignments for the day, the inmates would sit down in the dining hall for an early dinner. They would then return to their cells at four fifty p m. With the doors closed and locked. At five, They then had four and a half hours until lights out at nine thirty. For most inmates, those hours were pretty uneventful. They could read books, listen to approved broadcasts on the radio, or write letters back home.

But for Frank, Morris, John and Clarence Anglin, and Alan West, those evening hours were precious. Each night, in the privacy of their cells, they began to chisel away at the concrete wall. They focused their efforts on the air vent underneath their sinks, where the concrete was already in poor condition. By drilling holes in the concrete surrounding the vent, they

were eventually able to remove the grill covering it. Then they each began gradually widening the holes they worked slowly, monitoring the levels of noise around them to know what tools to use. One hour out of each day was designated as Music Hour, during which classical music was played to the inmates through a loudspeaker. During this time, the men could use their homemade electric drills, using the music

to mask the noise. Inmates were also permitted to play their own music, and since Frank had an accordion with him, he'd play it as John and Clarence drilled. When they couldn't risk the noise of the drill, they switched to more basic tools, metal spoons from the dining hall or the discarded saw blades that Allan had managed to steal from the woodwork shop. Over a period of several months, the men widened the holes just enough to be able

to climb through them. On the other side, they discovered a barely used utility corridor where no guards were stationed. The first night they found the corridor, they didn't actually cross into it, not wanting to push their luck too far. The guards at Alcatrats also patrolled the hallways after lights out and periodically glanced into the cells to check on the prisoners. So they needed to find a way to

cover the gaps in their cell walls. They made sheets of fake concrete using papier mache, then using a mixture of toilet paper, toothpaste, and soap, they also made papier mache heads. Onto those, they stuck handfuls of hair that Allan had collected from the barber shop. In broad daylight, they wouldn't fool anyone, but they weren't operating in daylight. Tucked against the pillow, half buried underneath the blankets, they were sure they were good enough to pass muster with

the guards. At least they hoped they were. Throughout the spring of nineteen sixty two, Frank, John, Clarence, and Alan began venturing out of their cells almost every night, leaving their dummy heads behind in their beds. At first, they were nervous, but as the nights passed, they soon realized that nobody suspected a thing. The decoys were working perfectly. They followed the utility corridor behind their cells to a stairway which led up to an empty top level of

their cell block. Covered in dust. The area had clearly never been used, the perfect location to set up a secret workshop. So far, they'd got away with constructing their makeshift tools in their own but the final stage of preparation required a lot more space. The part of the escape that worried Frank the most was the water. If they were caught before they left the island, he thought, so be it. But once they actually cast off from the rocky shores of Alcatraz, that's when things would get

truly dangerous. Since he'd been worrying over this part of the plan from the start, he'd also come up with a solution. Over the past few months. The four men had been systematically stealing prison issue raincoats. It was easy to do. The raincoats were issued to inmates during yard

time on rainy days, then cast aside and forgotten. Nobody kept track of them, so nobody noticed that more than fifty had gone missing since the beginning of nineteen sixty two, and so armed with their piles of raincoats, the men began constructing a huge life raft that would be large and sturdy enough to carry all four of them across

the dangerous waters of San Francisco Bay. Using hot steam from the prisons pipes, they melted the edges of the coats, then fused them together into a six by fourteen foot raft. Frank's accordion came in handy once again. Having taken it apart, they converted the concertina inside it into a pump, which they could then use to inflate the raft. By the early summer, they dissembled everything they needed to make their getaway, but they still had to find a way out of

the building. Their secret passageway onto the top floor had remained completely undetected, and they knew getting out onto the roof was their best shot at freedom. The only problem was that the ceiling was more than thirty feet high. Eventually, using the network of pipes that lined the walls of the room, they were able to climb up to the ceiling and prize off the cover of a ventilation shaft. From there, they crawled through on to the prison roof.

Frank Morris felt the cold night air on his face and could almost taste freedom. After six long months of careful planning and preparation, they'd quite literally dug their way out of the most impenetrable prison in the United States. Now they just had to summon the courage to pull it off for real. The night of June eleventh, nineteen sixty two was just like any other At Alcatratz. The lights went out at nine thirty p m on the dot, and silence descended over the cell block. Half an hour later,

the guards completed their first round of cell checks. Not a single one of them noticed that four of the inmate's beds were occupied by flimsy dummy heads made out of soap, toothpaste and discarded hair. By that time, Frank Morris and John and Clarence Angling had already made it safely into the utility corridor behind their cells, but Alan West wasn't so lucky. The men had used various methods to disguise the holes in the back of their cells. Allan had used a small amount of cement to reattach

the grille covering the vent. He thought it would be easy enough to prise it back off when the time came, but the cement had hardened and all of the group's tools were hidden inside the workshop on the top floor. Using only his bare hands, Allan frantically tried to chip away at the cement that had now sealed him back into his cell. Meanwhile, Allan's co conspirators had made it

all the way to the roof. They had no idea why he hadn't showed up at the agreed time, and they felt bad for him, but none of them were about to put their own freedom at risk. They'd worked too hard for this moment, and they had more pressing worries to deal with, namely making it down onto the ground without being spotted. The rooftop was in clear sight of the guard tower, and there was nothing they could

do to avoid it. Carrying the heavy, folded up raft between them, Frank, John and Clarence took a deep breath and sprinted as fast as they could across the roof. They shimmered down a drain pipe that ran the whole length of the building, then continued sprinting across the prison yard, keeping to the shadows as much as they could. Having reached the barbed wire fence, the trio took a moment

pause for breath. Frank glanced back at the hulking form of the prison behind them, bracing himself for the sound of an alarm, but there was nothing. They scaled the twelve foot barbed wire fence, taking great care not to snag their life raft. Just one hole would render it completely useless. Having made it down to the ground on the other side, they scrambled down a steep embankment toward

the water. After finally making it to the northeast shore of the island, they inflated the raft using Frank's repurposed accordion. They placed the raft in the calm, black waters and took a moment to make sure it wasn't taking on water before jumping on board and pushing off into the night. Unlike the morning Frank had arrived at Alcatraz, that night was a clear one with perfect visibility. As he looked out across the black water, the lights of San Francisco

beckoned them forward. They were almost free. Shortly after sunrise on June twelfth, nineteen sixty two, the morning whistle sounded at Alcatraz. As the inmates sleepily filed out of their cells and towards the dining hall for breakfast, one of the guards noticed that Frank, John, and Clarence were missing. He went to investigate and saw that the doors to

the men's adjoining cells were still closed. Frowning, he rapped hard on one of the doors with his night stick, then swung it open, but first it looked like the three men were all still in bed, but no matter how loudly he yelled their names, none of them moved. That's when the guards stepped further into the cell and walked right up to Frank Morris's bedside. As he reached out to shake his shoulder, he jerked his hand back. The color of Morris's skin was deathly pale, too pale

to be alive. But once the initial shock had faded, the guard realized that, in fact, whatever he was looking at was actually too pale to be human at all. He yanked back the blankets, and the crude dummy head rolled out of the bed, onto the floor and broke in half at his feet. The guard frantically radioed for help, and within a minute the prison central alert system had been activated, triggering a deafening alarm that echoed throughout all

the cells. Acting warden of Alcatraz, Art Dollison, had been in his role for less than a year. It was supposed to be a temporary assignment, but nonetheless, once it became clear that three inmates had escaped, it was up to him to lead the response. Under Art's direction, the entire prison went into lockdown, with inmates confined to their cells until further notice. He called in extra prison staff

and mounted a huge search, combing every inch of the island. Meanwhile, Alan West was doing everything he could to lay low. Around one a m. He'd finally managed to prize away the vent cover in his cell and escape on to the roof, but just as he'd feared, the others were long gone. In shock and sadness, he'd clambered back down the ventilation shaft and lain awake in his cell until daybreak.

Even worse, he'd been too exhausted and dejected to put much effort into disguising the whole in his cell wall, although he did what he could to make up for it. Once the alarm sounded, it didn't take long for the guards noticed that the shaft had been tampered with. Outside Alcatratz, the search was rapidly expanding. The FBI and the Coastguard began a manhunt to cross San Francisco Bay and the surrounding area. When they brought Alan in for questioning, he

confessed without much hesitation. Since his co conspirators hadn't showed him much loyalty when they left him behind, he had little problem sharing what information he had in exchange for immunity. Thanks to the extensive details that Alan West provided, the authorities were able to form a solid picture of the escapees plan. The main idea was to make it to the mainland, steel clothes and a car, and then head east.

It was two days after the escape when a member of the coast Guard spotted unusual looking piece of plywood floating in the bay. It had been fashioned into the shape of a paddle. A week later, what was left of the raft washed up close to the Golden Gate Bridge. The authorities also found John Anglin's wallet wrapped in plastic floating nearby, but there was no trace of the men themselves, despite months upon months of further searching. According to the authorities, however,

there was no mystery. Based on their assessment of the raft and the strength of the currents on the night of June eleventh, they concluded that the men hadn't stood a chance. The diy raft had likely broken apart at some point during the crossing, and they'd simply drowned too far from the shore for their bodies to ever be found.

And yet, as many have pointed out, the remnants of the raft were found close enough to San Francisco that it's certainly not impossible that the escapees did survive the journey, and the FBI was certainly not convinced that the men were dead. In fact, their case remained officially open for seventeen years before finally being closed at the end of

nineteen seventy nine. The Anglin family, for one, claimed they received multiple unsigned postcards over the years, along with phone calls from a line where the other party was silent. This led them to believe that either John, Clarence or both was still out there, desperate to make contact but too afraid to blow their cover. Then, in twenty thirteen, the San Francisco Police received a strange and haunting letter.

It appeared to have been written by John Anglin. The letter claimed that all three men had survived the escape gape, but only just. They'd gone on to live the rest of their lives on the run, constantly afraid of being caught. Frank and Clarence had died in two thousand and five and two thousand and eight, and John himself was now sick with cancer. He wanted to negotiate his surrender in

exchange for medical treatment. The FBI tested the letter for finger prints and DNA evidence, but the results were inconclusive and they were unable to make contact with the letter's author. To this day, the fate of the escape ease remains an unsolved mystery, but the fate of Alcatraz itself was sealed by the escape. The prison closed less than a year later, Although the official reason was high operating costs, the high profile humiliation of the prison break had been

the final nail in the coffin. Nobody would ever take Alcatraz seriously as a maximum security facility. Again. Shortly before the prison closed, the new acting Warden Richard Willard, gave an interview to the BBC, during which he was asked why he was so sure that the men hadn't survived. Standing on the shores of Alcatraz at the time, Willard gazed out toward the bay and replied, you hear the wind, don't you? And you see the water do you think you could make it? This episode was written by Emma

Dibden and produced by Richard mclin smith. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard mclin Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and

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