Speaker 1: Hi, friends, It's me Josh, and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our September twenty twenty episode on the Escape
Speaker 1: from Alcatraz. Is our episode even better than the movie
Speaker 1: could be. It's a little more accurate at least, and
Speaker 1: even without Clint Eastwood, it's pretty thrilling. Nonetheless, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy the absolute living heck.
Speaker 2: Out of it.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you should know, A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck
Speaker 1: Jerry's out there in the ether somewhere like that one
Speaker 1: kid being transmitted from the camera to the TV in
Speaker 1: Willy Wonka. Wow, I got that one eight kinds of wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but anyway, this is stuff you should know, which is appropriate.
Speaker 1: Did I would get something eight kinds of wrong right
Speaker 1: at the beginning?
Speaker 3: Did you ever hear the story from Gene Wilder about
Speaker 3: the move at the beginning of that movie where he
Speaker 3: walks out with a cane.
Speaker 1: Where did the spill the summersault?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he sticks a cane in the ground and does
Speaker 3: the summersault. No, he said that that was his idea.
Speaker 3: And this just shows the brilliance of Gene Wilder. And
Speaker 3: he said he did that because he knew from that
Speaker 3: moment on no one would believe anything that that character said.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I have heard that before. Great, that is brilliant.
Speaker 1: That man was a brilliant man and a wonderful human being.
Speaker 2: I loved him.
Speaker 3: He's got one of his last interviews on Conan O'Brien
Speaker 3: was so great because Conan was just gushing, and I'm
Speaker 3: sure Geen Wilder was very i think, kind of taken
Speaker 3: back by how much he means to people.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen? Oh no, that wasn't the question
Speaker 1: I had. Did you know? Did you know that? Your
Speaker 1: question was did you fart? Did you know that Conan
Speaker 1: O'Brien and Dennis Leary are cousins?
Speaker 2: I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 1: According to Conan O'Brien asked a question on Jeopardy that
Speaker 1: is his cousin did not know that. Speaking of Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: we have a colleague named Ken Jennings who is on
Speaker 1: Jeopardy YEA. And we have another colleague, two colleagues called
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge, and they have a podcast called Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe. It's pretty cool, but they
Speaker 1: also chuck I just saw have a PBS Kid's animated
Speaker 1: program coming out September seventh called Eleanor Wonders Why Okay?
Speaker 1: And it looks adorable.
Speaker 2: Wow. That sounds like right at my daughter's alley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so check it out, everybody. PBS Kids, September seventh,
Speaker 1: Eleanor Wonders White and Congrats Daniel and Jorge.
Speaker 3: Do you have any famous cousins, famous or infamous? I
Speaker 3: think we are the famous cousins. That's how said. Our
Speaker 3: families are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It feels pretty great, though. I keep being like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's have another family reunion this month. Speaking of infamous cousins, Chuck,
Speaker 1: how about those anglum brothers?
Speaker 3: Huh? Yeah, man, this is I could have thought. I
Speaker 3: kind of thought we did this.
Speaker 2: I know we do.
Speaker 3: We do one on Alcatraz and maybe just briefly touched
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely because this is this.
Speaker 3: Movie, the nineteen what was it seventy nine Escaped from
Speaker 3: Alcatraz movie with Clint Eastwood was one of my favorite
Speaker 3: movies as a kid.
Speaker 1: It's a good movie. I went I watched it just
Speaker 1: the other night as part of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was an HBO special, so I must have
Speaker 3: been I didn't see it in when I was eight.
Speaker 3: I probably was like ten or eleven, and it was
Speaker 3: one of those movies I probably watched over a dozen
Speaker 3: times when I was twelve twelve years.
Speaker 1: Old, followed by Kroll and outline.
Speaker 2: Oh man, those are great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they always went together though, didn't they?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in war games. I mean that those are all
Speaker 3: HBO specials. But this was a really good movie.
Speaker 2: And I'm a big, big fan of prison escape movies.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking today when I was looking over
Speaker 3: this stuff again that it's so weird that like these
Speaker 3: guys were hardened criminals, and yet when you're researching this,
Speaker 3: all you can think about is, oh, man, I hope
Speaker 3: they got out of there, right, and I hope they
Speaker 3: lived the fat life in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Well that really speaks to like who they are, what
Speaker 1: they became because of this escape, which is put most
Speaker 1: simply their folk heroes. I guess, Oh yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: a part of being a folk hero is that you
Speaker 1: can transcend the kind of like, uh, crime judgments that
Speaker 1: society typically levies against people like criminals, like if you
Speaker 1: if you are so good at your craft or so
Speaker 1: good at something to do with criminality that you transcend
Speaker 1: being judged for your crimes. That's you've become a folk
Speaker 1: hero for sure. It's like dB Cooper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it helps that you know, these
Speaker 3: guys were armed robbers and thieves, and I think Frank
Speaker 3: Morris and we'll get into all these who these dudes are.
Speaker 3: But he was a drug trafficker. But they weren't rapist
Speaker 3: and murderers. I don't think you can transcend that.
Speaker 1: No, they were definitely non violent criminals from everything that
Speaker 1: I've seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they used a toy gun in one of these robberies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's adorable.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about these guys, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a group of people who escaped from Alcatraz,
Speaker 1: and as far as anyone knows, they are the only
Speaker 1: ones who really may have escaped from Alcatraz. They vanished
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two, last seen leaving their cells, and
Speaker 1: were never heard from again. And like you said, they
Speaker 1: were all hardened criminals, like lifelong career criminals. Frank Morris
Speaker 1: was thirty five when he left Alcatraz, and he'd been
Speaker 1: a criminal since he was thirteen. He was in and
Speaker 1: out of institutions, and like you said, He wasn't a
Speaker 1: violent criminal. He wasn't a rapist or a murder or
Speaker 1: anything like that. He was he liked to sell the drugs.
Speaker 1: He had like a forehead tattooed or are tattooed on
Speaker 1: his forehead for a while, which he very sensibly had
Speaker 1: removed later on.
Speaker 2: Is that what that means but that.
Speaker 1: He was a drug trafficker? Yeah, No, I think that
Speaker 1: means that he did a few too many drugs one night.
Speaker 2: Oh, he really did have a star.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that was some like prison thing for
Speaker 3: like the tear drop tattoo means, doesn't mean you killed
Speaker 3: somebody or something.
Speaker 1: That's what I've always heard, but I don't know. It
Speaker 1: could just be urban legend. But yes, what I've always heard.
Speaker 2: No, I really did have a star.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I think he got super wasted when I
Speaker 1: got a star tattooed on his forehead. There was a
Speaker 1: tattoo artist far too handy that night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, which I think the old saying don't ever
Speaker 3: make friends with tattoo artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or at least drinking buddies.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's true, but he was also super smart too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they point this out in the movie and
Speaker 3: a lot of the movie. I mean, it's pretty close
Speaker 3: to the real story that they did a really good job.
Speaker 3: But they do make a big deal in the movie
Speaker 3: about how smart he was. As I know, IQ is
Speaker 3: sort of take it or leave it as far as
Speaker 3: that being a real measurement of one's intelligence. But he
Speaker 3: supposedly had an IQ of one thirty and the BOP
Speaker 3: which stands for the was it Bureau of Prisons. I
Speaker 3: didn't know they had rankings, but they had rankings of
Speaker 3: intellectual intellectuality?
Speaker 2: Is that a word?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so it gets the point across ergo
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm curious what other rankings they have. But
Speaker 3: you know, best look in best abs. But he was
Speaker 3: in the top two percent supposedly in the American prison
Speaker 3: system as far as his intellectual capabilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you hit on a point there that I
Speaker 1: think we need to least at least bring up. Like
Speaker 1: the the movie did follow the actual the truth of
Speaker 1: the matter fairly closely in some cases. In other cases
Speaker 1: it veered wildly away. Like there was a character based
Speaker 1: on one guy who was very much involved, but they
Speaker 1: didn't even use his name, and they made him seem
Speaker 1: less involved than he actually was. There's a lot that
Speaker 1: the movie gets wrong. But the problem with covering this
Speaker 1: is that there's so many gaps and holes that are
Speaker 1: so easily and casually filled in that you can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder, like, wait, was this detail provided by somebody
Speaker 1: who saw the movie and took the movie as fact?
Speaker 1: Like where are we exactly? And just how pure the
Speaker 1: knowledge and understanding is of this escape. So you have
Speaker 1: to just kind of bear that in mind that it's
Speaker 1: kind of a blur in the annals of crime as
Speaker 1: far as factuality goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's a good story, great story, and most
Speaker 3: of this is pretty true.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 3: Frank Morris was four years into a fourteen year stint
Speaker 3: and this was for a bank robbery and he was
Speaker 3: transferred to the Rock in nineteen sixty. I didn't know
Speaker 3: we were using Wingo episode it's Alcatraz. It's a prison
Speaker 3: island or an island prison. Yeah, and some might say
Speaker 3: the island itself is a prison, which we'll get to.
Speaker 3: And then his buddies you mentioned the England brothers J W.
Speaker 3: John William and his younger brother Clarence were thirty and
Speaker 3: twenty nine years old, and they were from a very
Speaker 3: big family of migrant farm workers in South Georgia. They
Speaker 3: traveled all over the country wherever their work was, basically
Speaker 3: as a big family, and they got into stealing things
Speaker 3: from people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were the ones who used the toy gun.
Speaker 1: Later on, they were I think visiting family in a
Speaker 1: small town called Columbia, Alabama, which is in the southeast
Speaker 1: of the state, and they found out that this bank
Speaker 1: had been around for one hundred years in this town.
Speaker 1: It had never been robbed. So they assumed, we're going
Speaker 1: to change that. He'll be easy to knock over. And
Speaker 1: apparently it was pretty easy to knock over, and they
Speaker 1: had a toy gun that they used, and they still
Speaker 1: managed to get away with at least I think like
Speaker 1: ten grand or twenty grand, something pretty stantial amount of money.
Speaker 1: And they were on the run for a little while,
Speaker 1: but got caught and the Alabamas were not very happy
Speaker 1: with it, and they threw the book at these brothers.
Speaker 1: They got twenty five year sentences for robbing a bank
Speaker 1: with a toy gun, and that actually was way better
Speaker 1: than the sentence they initially faced, which was the potentially
Speaker 1: the death penalty.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they were caught and busted. And they had
Speaker 1: a third brother named Alfred too, who was also involved,
Speaker 1: but he was never sent to that to the rock
Speaker 1: as you put it, I bet it was not a bet.
Speaker 2: It was factually a lot easier to rob banks back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was way easier to be a criminal, even
Speaker 1: just a few decades ago. Yeah, just in general, I
Speaker 1: think now it's like, don't even try.
Speaker 3: No, you got I mean, if it's not the cops
Speaker 3: and their cameras, he got some dumb neighbor with their
Speaker 3: cameras like me.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I hate to get off topic so quickly.
Speaker 3: And we should post this on the Facebook page or something,
Speaker 3: or maybe I'll put it on Instagram. What I got
Speaker 3: attacked by a squirrel and it was captured by my
Speaker 3: front of the house camera.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, everyone wants to see that.
Speaker 2: This was great.
Speaker 3: I just I was taking out some recycling and I
Speaker 3: heard some rustling, and I went around the corner and
Speaker 3: I was like, this squirrel was freaking out, and then
Speaker 3: he literally leapt if you freeze from it, he leapt
Speaker 3: three feet in the air. Wow, and hit my leg
Speaker 3: and ran up my leg a little bit and then wow,
Speaker 3: And I react thussly.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. You know, it would be wonderful is to
Speaker 1: intercut close ups of your face when you got that
Speaker 1: Charlie Horse on internet round up? Oh my god, in
Speaker 1: with this squirrel attack.
Speaker 3: Amazing, it's a good thing. I don't care about myself
Speaker 3: and looking dumb.
Speaker 1: Why did you? Why did that squirrel attack you? What'd
Speaker 1: you do to it?
Speaker 2: I didn't do anything. It was freaking out.
Speaker 3: And then I turned and looked after I dropped the
Speaker 3: recycling off, and he and another squirrel were going at
Speaker 3: it in our oak tree.
Speaker 2: So I think he was just he was all riled up.
Speaker 2: He might you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did he have a star tattooed on his forehead?
Speaker 2: He did, right on his little, tiny free forehead.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yes, please do post that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So all right, these guys are all in Alcatraz,
Speaker 3: and Alcatraz at the time was like I said, it
Speaker 3: was sort of the rock itself was the prison, and
Speaker 3: that was the idea, was that even if you're even
Speaker 3: if you managed to get out of the prison that
Speaker 3: they eventually built, which we'll talk about, then you still
Speaker 3: can't get out of there because you got to swim
Speaker 3: over a mile to the nearest body of land about
Speaker 3: one point three miles. That water is really cold, the
Speaker 3: currents are brutal, the winds are really strong. San Francisco
Speaker 3: Bay is not you know, for people that haven't been there,
Speaker 3: it's not just some lovely little chill body of water
Speaker 3: that you hang out in.
Speaker 1: No, it's not a very hospitable body of water.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: So the idea was that, Yeah, like when you got
Speaker 1: sent to Alcatraz, you weren't getting off of that island
Speaker 1: and you were either parolled or died. And that was
Speaker 1: actually the reason that the Anglands and Frank Morris were
Speaker 1: sent there was because they had all met at the
Speaker 1: Federal penn in Atlanta. I guess the one down in
Speaker 1: Grant Park.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, which that building is amazing.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most forbidding buildings in the world.
Speaker 1: I would say. It looks like an old timey federal penitentiary.
Speaker 1: And al Capone was there too for a little while.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I actually drove by there not too long ago with
Speaker 3: my daughter for the first time.
Speaker 2: And I was like, check out that building.
Speaker 1: Look at that.
Speaker 2: It's like that's a prison. What's a prison?
Speaker 3: And I went, oh, well, I guess I got to
Speaker 3: explain that I'll tell you when you're eighteen if you
Speaker 3: make it and don't go to prison first.
Speaker 1: Right, So they all met at the federal pen in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if they actually made it out or
Speaker 1: if they were caught escaping, but they were known escape artists,
Speaker 1: like the Frank Morris had escaped from places in Florida.
Speaker 1: They didn't stay put when you put them in prison,
Speaker 1: and so that's why they were all sent to Alcatraz,
Speaker 1: and just crazily as they arrived between nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, they were all put pretty close together,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the England brothers had a joint, which
Speaker 1: is a very stupid thing to do, but that's what
Speaker 1: they did. In part. I believe because there was a
Speaker 1: certain thread of arrogance that ran through the administration of
Speaker 1: Alcatraz that it was just basically inescapable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you also sort of want happy prisoners,
Speaker 3: and I've heard of requests like that being made possible before, like, Hey,
Speaker 3: if you put me near my brother, we're gonna be
Speaker 3: a lot better behaved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're definitely not going to break out.
Speaker 3: I don't think we mentioned either, like Alcatraz was so
Speaker 3: formidable as a just an island that the very first
Speaker 3: time they used it was when the Army put soldiers
Speaker 3: there who cheered on President Lincoln's death. And so they
Speaker 3: didn't even bother building a prison though, they just built
Speaker 3: some barracks through them on the island. It was like, well,
Speaker 3: you're in prison now, because good luck getting out of here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I saw too. And when the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Prisons took over, they they really fortified it even more.
Speaker 1: Like you said, there was a larger building that housed
Speaker 1: everything from like the mess hall to the cell blocks.
Speaker 1: So when you were in a cell in a cell block,
Speaker 1: you were in you were in a little tiny prison
Speaker 1: inside a larger prison onside this island prison. And the
Speaker 1: cell blocks themselves had like three inch thick concrete walls,
Speaker 1: reinforced iron bars. The building itself was made a very
Speaker 1: thick concrete. It was it was just meant to to
Speaker 1: basically tell you there's there's no getting out here. But
Speaker 1: what's what's crazy is Frank Morris and the England Brothers,
Speaker 1: they weren't the first people to ever try to bust out.
Speaker 1: I believe they were part of a total of thirty
Speaker 1: six people who tried to escape. In the history of
Speaker 1: the prison, everybody else, almost everybody else was either killed, captured,
Speaker 1: or their bodies were found except and I did not
Speaker 1: realize this, Morris and the England Brothers were not the
Speaker 1: first people have vanished without a trace from Alcatraz. Had
Speaker 1: you heard about Ted Cole and Ralph Row?
Speaker 3: I hadn't heard about them until this, But in the thirties,
Speaker 3: late thirties, they did escape, and they did vanish, and
Speaker 3: you know, sort of like where this story's going. I
Speaker 3: don't think anyone wants to admit that from the prison
Speaker 3: system that they could have really made it right.
Speaker 2: So they're like, nah, they died, they drowned.
Speaker 1: But the thing is the thing that really differentiates the
Speaker 1: England Brothers and Frank Morris from guys like Ted Cole
Speaker 1: and Ralph Row. They all shared in common that they
Speaker 1: escaped from Alcatraz and vanished without a trace. The thing
Speaker 1: that differentiates Morris and the Englands is that their folk
Speaker 1: heroes because almost exclusively because of this plan they devised
Speaker 1: and executed, and that the plan was so good and
Speaker 1: so complex and well done that it actually lends credence
Speaker 1: to the idea that they may have survived and escaped
Speaker 1: from Alcatraz, genuinely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But they had in common is that they were
Speaker 3: all top ten in best abs in the prison system.
Speaker 1: Yep. And what everybody listening right now has in common
Speaker 1: is that you're about to hear an ad Okay, we're back, everybody,
Speaker 1: and I think it's high time we talk about the plan,
Speaker 1: the escape plan, don't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're going to escape from Alcatraz, it's not
Speaker 3: the kind of thing where you distract a guard and
Speaker 3: just run and jump over a fence. You got to
Speaker 3: start this thing, this plan, many months in advance. And
Speaker 3: by all accounts they and by all accounts meaning from
Speaker 3: the one account that we really have of this, they
Speaker 3: started planning easily six months before the escape. They start
Speaker 3: developing this plan. They start collecting kind of anything they
Speaker 3: can get their hands on that they think they can use,
Speaker 3: everything from just loose nuts and bolts and screws to
Speaker 3: things that I mean, they actually ended up using a
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff. But I got the impression that
Speaker 3: they were just kind of like, anytime they saw something
Speaker 3: that they could squirrel away and hide, they would do
Speaker 3: it because you never know what you could use it.
Speaker 1: For yeah, and so like over the six month period,
Speaker 1: they amassed something like eighty tools that they either stole,
Speaker 1: had stolen for them rebuild, or repurposed out of other stuff,
Speaker 1: or just made completely out of their own labor. They
Speaker 1: had a pretty extensive toolkit that they created, and one
Speaker 1: of the ways that they got a lot of the
Speaker 1: tools was from Alan West, who we haven't mentioned yet,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people don't realize there was a
Speaker 1: fourth conspirator in the Alcatraz escape who was a major
Speaker 1: integral part of it, but who actually didn't go along
Speaker 1: with the escape, as we'll see.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that part of the movie is so tough.
Speaker 1: It is, especially with that poor guy. He just looks
Speaker 1: character of womb like, I'm down on my luck. Can
Speaker 1: you spare a dime? Bro?
Speaker 2: He's so good, he's been in it so many things.
Speaker 1: But he was I think he was the guy who
Speaker 1: played Kramer on Seinfeld.
Speaker 2: In the in the pilot, in the NBC pilot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like in the show, the guy playing Kramer
Speaker 1: on the show in the show, I think that was him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he stole the M and MS, I think yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was in Escape from Alcatraz too. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: just he's perfect for that part. But this guy named
Speaker 1: Alan West, he was on the painting crew, and he
Speaker 1: put that to use big time. One of the first
Speaker 1: ways he did it was he was in the prison
Speaker 1: barber shop and managed to steal a pair of electric
Speaker 1: clippers while he was in there painting, and they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: this motor will come in handy. Well, let's repurpose it
Speaker 1: into a power drill, and they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty cool. He also, I mean, just having
Speaker 3: a little motor is so handy. So he came across
Speaker 3: a vacuum cleaner that wasn't working, and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: you mind if I repair this? I got to shake
Speaker 3: the tree first, but after that, you mind if I
Speaker 3: repair this?
Speaker 1: Isn't what they call it a vacuuming.
Speaker 2: No, And he got a pee on the on the
Speaker 2: chain gang. Don't you call it shaking the tree? Oh?
Speaker 1: I guess I think that's what it's called. Sure, But
Speaker 1: I mean, what was I have to do with fixing
Speaker 1: a vacuum nothing. It's just prison humor. Oh, I got it.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of prison jokes.
Speaker 1: So all the inmates listening right now is busted out laughing.
Speaker 1: Like he said, shake the tree.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a drinking game. Well explain, if you're listening
Speaker 3: from prison, if someone says shake the tree, you take
Speaker 3: a drink of pruno. Well that's another drink. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: the that's what you would drink when somebody said shake
Speaker 3: the tree. Say shake the tree one more time.
Speaker 2: Shake the tree.
Speaker 1: Guys, I think everybody's got a pretty good buzz in
Speaker 1: prison right now.
Speaker 3: So he says, let me fix this vacuum cleaner. They say,
Speaker 3: that's fine. He saw that the vacuum cleaner had a
Speaker 3: couple of different motors, and one of which he used
Speaker 3: to repair and actually make, you know, pass it off
Speaker 3: as a working vacuum cleaner. And then he just took
Speaker 3: that other one, and that meant that they could make
Speaker 3: a drill that was even more powerful than the other one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they had not one, but two electric drills
Speaker 1: at their disposal, which kind of gives you a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of just how dedicated and smart and crafty
Speaker 1: these guys were. Right. Yes, they also very famously ended
Speaker 1: up with fifty five zero different raincoats that were made
Speaker 1: from rubber prison issue raincoats, so they got from other inmates,
Speaker 1: And this really reveals something that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't necessarily realize. It seems like basically all
Speaker 1: the inmates in prison with Anglin and the Anglands and
Speaker 1: Morris were well aware of their plants, not necessarily every
Speaker 1: detail or even any of the details, just that they
Speaker 1: were planning on breaking out, and so they managed to
Speaker 1: get their hands on like fifty different raincoats from other
Speaker 1: prisoners that they used to build a life raft and
Speaker 1: life vests with.
Speaker 3: Pretty great I think the idea was is that these
Speaker 3: guys didn't like being on Alcatraz, so they kind of figured, Hey,
Speaker 3: if these guys actually get out, they're going to close
Speaker 3: this place down.
Speaker 2: We're going to get out of.
Speaker 1: Here, right not.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if I would have gone
Speaker 3: along with that rationale, I would.
Speaker 2: Have thought it's going to be even worse for us here.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but.
Speaker 2: We'll hang on to what happened till the end of
Speaker 2: the show. How about that.
Speaker 1: I think everybody would have kept their pruno from you
Speaker 1: had you raised that point.
Speaker 2: You know, so they've got all this stuff.
Speaker 3: They got paint, they got paper, they collect hair and
Speaker 3: from the barber shop they like sweep up his hair
Speaker 3: and keep that. You might be thinking why in the
Speaker 3: world would they need that.
Speaker 1: You'll just wait, you'll see.
Speaker 3: And then they had about three and a half hours
Speaker 3: each evening after dinner, slop and before lights out where
Speaker 3: they had to work and create a way out of
Speaker 3: their prison cell. And then once they get out of
Speaker 3: their prison cell, like you said, they're still in this
Speaker 3: larger building, then away out of there. But the first
Speaker 3: trick is getting out of their individual cells.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so from what I understand, that took up like
Speaker 1: the lion's share of the time between when they first
Speaker 1: hatched this plant in the time when they finally escaped.
Speaker 1: They were like these little six by eight or nine
Speaker 1: or something, very small ventilation chefs cemented into the wall.
Speaker 1: These grates were submitted into the wall, but really it
Speaker 1: was just a little metal grate over a hole. So
Speaker 1: they figured it they could start chipping away at that
Speaker 1: hole and enlarge the hole into something they could crawl through,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what they did. Eventually, over time, Frank
Speaker 1: Morris and then both of the Anglin brothers managed to
Speaker 1: create these holes, and they did so by serving his
Speaker 1: lookout for one another while the other one chipped one night,
Speaker 1: and then they would trade off that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And then here's the question that I have. I could
Speaker 1: not confirm one way or the other if it was
Speaker 1: a movie thing or if it was a real life thing.
Speaker 1: But in the movie, they create these kind of cardboard
Speaker 1: false walls that they're able to fill the hole with
Speaker 1: that it looks like the great is still there and
Speaker 1: the wall is still intact. So when they were out
Speaker 1: of their cells, they could put this false wall in
Speaker 1: behind them and nobody would be any of the wiser
Speaker 1: when they just walked past and casually glanced in there.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they did that or not.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a pretty great detail of the movie,
Speaker 3: so I'm inclined to believe it.
Speaker 1: Let's go with it.
Speaker 3: What I didn't see in or I haven't seen it
Speaker 3: a long time. Did they have those drills in the movie,
Speaker 3: because I just remember a lot of digging with the
Speaker 3: They kind of just like used a sharp and spoon
Speaker 3: as a little mini pick.
Speaker 1: A sharp and spoon with the warden's fingernail clippers that
Speaker 1: he steals in like one of the first scenes.
Speaker 2: But there was no drill in the movie, was there.
Speaker 1: Not that I remember? So there definitely were two drills.
Speaker 1: One of the drills, that one with the vacuum motor.
Speaker 1: They actually figured out it's just too loud. It's too powerful, yeah,
Speaker 1: and too loud. So they abandoned that one. But I
Speaker 1: don't know what became of the hair clipper drill. I
Speaker 1: didn't hear anything about that one other than that they
Speaker 1: created it and used it well.
Speaker 3: They managed to dig through though where they could get
Speaker 3: their bodies out of the cell, and that just must
Speaker 3: have felt like, you know, we're halfway there at this point, guys.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So they from there it led to a
Speaker 3: utility corridor. It was about a meter wide, and there
Speaker 3: were no guards in here, because this is sort of
Speaker 3: like the guts of the prison. Yeah, like why would
Speaker 3: you need to guard where there are no people?
Speaker 2: Wink wink.
Speaker 3: And in that corridor they could kind of move around freely.
Speaker 3: They would climb up to the ceiling. This is like
Speaker 3: a three story cell block, still within a larger building though,
Speaker 3: of course, like we mentioned, and then they had a
Speaker 3: full on workshop up there for a few weeks. They
Speaker 3: could store their tools, they could hide their stuff, they
Speaker 3: could build We haven't really talked about the rafts, but
Speaker 3: where they much they would build their rafts there and
Speaker 3: it just sort of serves as their staging area where
Speaker 3: they would eventually leave from to go buy this big,
Speaker 3: heavy iron grate to a ventilation shaft, which actually finally
Speaker 3: led to the rooftop.
Speaker 1: Right, But that big iron gray was a big iron
Speaker 1: problem because the bars were reinforced. They were i think
Speaker 1: welded or maybe screwed I'm not sure, into this iron
Speaker 1: ring that covered this ventilation shaft. So it was a
Speaker 1: big problem. And then they figured out that the bolts
Speaker 1: holding this whole thing together were actually not nearly as
Speaker 1: strong as the bars that made up the grate and
Speaker 1: the ring that held the bars, So they started working
Speaker 1: away at cutting the bolts. One way or another, I
Speaker 1: think they created a wrench. They built themselves a wrench,
Speaker 1: and they managed to use that to some pretty good effect.
Speaker 1: But it went from digging out of their cells to
Speaker 1: figuring out a way to get through this grate. That
Speaker 1: was kind of like stage two. And then let's talk
Speaker 1: about the raft, because the raft is an extremely important
Speaker 1: part of this whole thing, and I think really one
Speaker 1: of the things, if not the thing, that lends credence
Speaker 1: to the idea that they might have actually made it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they got these raincoats, and back then raincoats
Speaker 3: were just basically sheets of rubber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't breathe very well.
Speaker 3: They were very hot, like get sweaty Gordon's Fisherman type
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 1: A sweaty Gordon's Fisherman.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that guy was always sweaty.
Speaker 3: So they ended up creating a six foot by fourteen
Speaker 3: foot life raft from these raincoats from an article in
Speaker 3: Popular Mechanics, which shows up a couple of times, very
Speaker 3: useful magazine if you were trying to escape prison. And
Speaker 3: it was an article about a hunter who had gotten
Speaker 3: law and survived hunting geese that he attracted using rubber
Speaker 3: decoys that he'd made. So they get this idea. They
Speaker 3: build these inflatable pontoons made from these raincoat sleeves, so
Speaker 3: they were stuffed inside and made air tight by gluing
Speaker 3: rubber cement contact cement over the seams and then pressing
Speaker 3: them against steel pipes, which vulcanized it. It just basically melted
Speaker 3: everything shut. And then you have these floatable pontoons that
Speaker 3: you could use and craft this larger raft.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they had something that was inflatable because those
Speaker 1: seams were vulcanized. It would hold the air. The air
Speaker 1: couldn't escape, and they used a concertina. Oh, I can't remember,
Speaker 1: Handsome Pete. There's like a little guy who plays the
Speaker 1: accordion down on the docks that looks just like Krusty
Speaker 1: the clown in one of the Simpsons episodes, and he's
Speaker 1: playing a concertina. It's like a squeeze box. It's like
Speaker 1: an accordion without the keys and the buttons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it acts as bellows because it moves air.
Speaker 1: Essentially, that's what they used it for. They modified it
Speaker 1: so that they could use it to inflate their raft
Speaker 1: very quickly with this concertina that I guess they stole
Speaker 1: from the prison music room, which is pretty great. So
Speaker 1: they're working on all this stuff and the raft in particular,
Speaker 1: this is like the lynchpin of this whole plane. Is
Speaker 1: this raft in these life preservers, that work fell to
Speaker 1: Alan West. So while these dudes were like chipping away
Speaker 1: at the ventilation holes, Alan West was standing lookout for
Speaker 1: most of them, and he was creating this raft in
Speaker 1: these life fests, and so he wasn't able to chip
Speaker 1: away at his own ventilation hole nearly as fast. So
Speaker 1: while they were out, you know, working on the great
Speaker 1: the event covered great, he still had no way out
Speaker 1: of his cell at that point. He hadn't made it
Speaker 1: all the way through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know we should point out something that
Speaker 3: earlier we mentioned. If they happened to walk by and
Speaker 3: they don't notice a hole on the wall, because they
Speaker 3: may or may not have made these fall grates and walls.
Speaker 3: If you're a listener and you don't know the story,
Speaker 3: you might have said like, yeah, but wouldn't they have noticed.
Speaker 2: There was no one in the cell?
Speaker 1: Good question.
Speaker 3: What they did was they made paper mache recreations of themselves.
Speaker 3: They made these busts. They use that prison hair, which
Speaker 3: so gross, and use that rever cement again to glue
Speaker 3: this hair on. And if you see the real things,
Speaker 3: it's not Madam Tussou or anything.
Speaker 2: It's not like, boy, look at that.
Speaker 1: Likeness photo realistic.
Speaker 3: But it's in the dark and you're sort of, i think,
Speaker 3: as a human trained to see what you're looking for.
Speaker 3: So if your guard that's just walking by, you see
Speaker 3: a head turned the other way with prison hair on
Speaker 3: it and some pillows under a blanket, and you don't
Speaker 3: think it looks fake it just looks like it wouldn't
Speaker 3: like Ferris Bueller style with like a fake snore on
Speaker 3: the Hi fi system or anything.
Speaker 1: Right, but you just kind of walk past it.
Speaker 3: It worked well enough, Like they did this for weeks
Speaker 3: and weeks and weeks with these paper mache busts, and
Speaker 3: it worked.
Speaker 2: They never got noticed.
Speaker 1: No they didn't, because I mean remember like that that
Speaker 1: they were working between the end of dinner and lights out,
Speaker 1: So they just seem to have made it look like
Speaker 1: they went to bed early and put the paper mache
Speaker 1: busts in there. Guys are sleepy. Yeah, Frank got a lot,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of questions about this, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to investigate any exactly. So do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the escape and then go to abreak?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the way to do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So finally they get to this point where the
Speaker 1: great is. The bars are removed from this great enough
Speaker 1: that they can slip through, and they realize that they
Speaker 1: have they have successfully penetrated to the exterior of the building.
Speaker 1: That's right, Okay, they're on the roof. Well, they know
Speaker 1: they can get on the roof. Now they know there
Speaker 1: is go night.
Speaker 2: I bet you they got up there at least one
Speaker 2: to be like all right.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't heard anything like that. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions about why this particular night.
Speaker 1: Was this the very first night that they were able
Speaker 1: to get out and they're like, let's go, which seems
Speaker 1: likely to me, or were they waiting for a particular night,
Speaker 1: or like you said, they tested it before they do
Speaker 1: any dry runs. We don't really know that. But we
Speaker 1: do know is that on Monday, June eleventh, nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: jw Angling, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris all left their
Speaker 1: cells and the first thing Frank Morris did was go
Speaker 1: to help Alan West finish the puncturing the hole through
Speaker 1: his cell wall. Still had not done this yet. He's like,
Speaker 1: come on, we got to go. But apparently part of
Speaker 1: the plan was to help him punch the hole out
Speaker 1: the rest of the way and then he would escape
Speaker 1: with them. Frank Morris apparently tried in vain and went
Speaker 1: off to get Clarence England to come try. They trade
Speaker 1: it off, and then Clarence tried. He couldn't do it either,
Speaker 1: so I guess he had the very uncomfortable I'll be
Speaker 1: right back. I got to go, I gotta go shake
Speaker 1: the tree or something like that. I'll be right back.
Speaker 1: You stay here, And that was the last anybody ever
Speaker 1: saw of Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin or J. W. Anglin
Speaker 1: from that moment until today.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they get to that corridor, they climb up to
Speaker 3: the roof of the cell block and then through that
Speaker 3: ventilation shaft that great is no longer a problem, and
Speaker 3: they push away Alan West.
Speaker 1: They can just barely hear him saying, like, you guys
Speaker 1: are coming back right any minute now, you said.
Speaker 3: So, there's this rain cover on top. They pushed that
Speaker 3: thing off, and this all makes some noise. And in
Speaker 3: the movie they kind of accurately display that too as
Speaker 3: some clanking and clanging around. And I don't think in
Speaker 3: the movie they did this, but in real life, supposedly
Speaker 3: there was so much noise that they did like a
Speaker 3: little forty five minute kind of a search of the area.
Speaker 1: Didn't see anything going on. No, they didn't go.
Speaker 3: Up on the roof, that's for sure, and they basically
Speaker 3: didn't find anything.
Speaker 2: So the guys are out.
Speaker 3: They shimmy about fifty feet to the ground via drain pipe,
Speaker 3: which is how you always do it go to that
Speaker 3: perimeter fence. And I'm sure the perimeter fence was fine,
Speaker 3: but I think the idea was that they're never getting
Speaker 3: out anyway. So I don't think it had like fifteen
Speaker 3: feet of razor wire or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I think it did have double barbed wire at least
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: That's nothing for us.
Speaker 1: It's not like Concertina wire or anything.
Speaker 2: No, nothing like that.
Speaker 3: Around one in the morning, Alan West, Poor Alan West.
Speaker 3: He finally gets that cell great broken open. I'm sure
Speaker 3: he just thinks, all right, I'm going to catch up
Speaker 3: to these guys and it's going to be all good,
Speaker 3: and I'm getting out of here. Followed that same route.
Speaker 3: It's been a couple of hours. At this point, though
Speaker 3: he saw that these were genuinely good dudes, it seemed
Speaker 3: like because they did leave him a paddle. I don't
Speaker 3: think we mentioned they made paddles out of chair legs
Speaker 3: and the rest screws and nuts and bolts and a
Speaker 3: pon tune that was all inflated for him. And he
Speaker 3: got a little snack low of rice, Krispy Tree, it's
Speaker 3: Krispy Tree, the little Bruno little shot of Bruno for
Speaker 3: his courage, and then he looks over terrible timing, and
Speaker 3: there's a guard in a new position that basically could
Speaker 3: see anything that he tries to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from that point forward.
Speaker 1: He's visually pinned down on the roof. He can't do anything.
Speaker 1: So this is around one am or something, and he figures, okay,
Speaker 1: the guard will eventually move. Well, alan West says, the
Speaker 1: guard never moved until dawn. It doesn't this guy pee right,
Speaker 1: doesn't he ever shake the tree? And he didn't. He
Speaker 1: did not shake the tree, stayed put. And so eventually
Speaker 1: Alan West was forced to climb back down the ventilation chaft,
Speaker 1: back down from the roof of the cell block, three
Speaker 1: stories back to his cell that he had just a
Speaker 1: few hours earlier. Finally, after months, punched a hole through
Speaker 1: and he went and laid down and just waited for
Speaker 1: the heat to come down on them. And indeed it
Speaker 1: did because at the seven am bedcheck, three dummy heads
Speaker 1: were discovered where three inmates real heads should have been,
Speaker 1: and the prison just went berserk.
Speaker 3: You know that feeling you get when you take a
Speaker 3: wrong turn and go like three or four miles in
Speaker 3: the wrong direction and.
Speaker 2: Have to go all the way back the other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, imagine being Alan West and having to do that.
Speaker 1: That time's infinity, that time's infinity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to take another break?
Speaker 1: I think so. Man, all right, we'll get to the bot.
Speaker 3: Well, we won't get to the bottom of this, but
Speaker 3: we'll speculate all over the place right after this.
Speaker 1: Okay. So there are some things that we know about
Speaker 1: this from watching the movie, but the movie writers based
Speaker 1: the movie on a book, and the book author I
Speaker 1: believe based his stuff on an interview or interviews with
Speaker 1: Alan West that Alan West had with the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Prisons in the FBI, because basically everything we know about
Speaker 1: the escape from Alcatraz came from the mouth of Alan West.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he made a deal.
Speaker 3: He said, listen, I'll tell you all about it, but
Speaker 3: you can't throw me in here for longer. Because I
Speaker 3: tried to escape prison. You got to give me immunity
Speaker 3: for that attempted escape. And let's be honest, guys, it
Speaker 3: really wasn't much of an attempt. Can you give me
Speaker 3: a break here? I had to make the sad walk
Speaker 3: of shame back to the cell.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that that definitely factored into their
Speaker 1: decision to give him immunity, like man, probably, so you
Speaker 1: really got a hard luck case.
Speaker 3: So he makes a deal and says, I'll tell you everything.
Speaker 3: But again, this is just his account of it. One
Speaker 3: thing that kind of jumped out is maybe it's not
Speaker 3: the most accurate account, was that he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was the mastermind.
Speaker 2: I thought of the whole thing from the start.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if that's quite true, because it
Speaker 3: seems like Clin Eastwood did Yeah.
Speaker 1: Certainly in the movie. The movie is basically it should
Speaker 1: be called Colin the Frank Morris story. He's the main character.
Speaker 1: Everybody else is a side character. It really kind of
Speaker 1: downplayed a lot of the contributions by the England brothers,
Speaker 1: certainly by Alan West. Doesn't even use Alan West's name.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how much of an influence is
Speaker 1: from that movie, or if that movie was just based
Speaker 1: on the general idea that Frank Morris was the mastermind
Speaker 1: and the leader, that he was a very intelligent person
Speaker 1: and kind of a born leader from what I know.
Speaker 1: So it's just not clear whether Alan West actually came
Speaker 1: up with this plan or not. Was he the one
Speaker 1: who sewed the raft all this time and he got
Speaker 1: left behind, or maybe he had really weak arms, And
Speaker 1: this was just what he told the Bureau of Prisons investigators.
Speaker 1: It was the reason why he never was able to
Speaker 1: chip out of his cell. Who knows, but just so
Speaker 1: just bear in mind from this point forward, we're just
Speaker 1: going to go on with this his gospel. But all
Speaker 1: of this is coming from Alan westsmouth. He was the
Speaker 1: one that was left behind.
Speaker 3: I feel like in the movie he got to the
Speaker 3: point where he could not jump up by himself and
Speaker 3: reach the grate.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in the movie they help each other upright,
Speaker 1: and then he would he would have had to have
Speaker 1: done it himself.
Speaker 3: And he couldn't jump. He just kept jumping and jumping
Speaker 3: and couldn't make it.
Speaker 1: Yes, but from what I know, he made it up
Speaker 1: to the roof and was pinned down on the roof
Speaker 1: by that guard and the watchtoyeah. But I don't think
Speaker 1: it was a guard inside. No, no, no, no, you're right
Speaker 1: in the movie it was like that.
Speaker 3: So the plan was, and this again from west account said,
Speaker 3: was to sail this raft or I guess, paddle this
Speaker 3: raft across the bay to Angel Island about a mile
Speaker 3: away a little over, and he said. From there they
Speaker 3: were going to rest for a little bit, get their bearings,
Speaker 3: stash everything, and then swim to the mainland across what's
Speaker 3: called the Raccoon Straits to Marin County, and then once
Speaker 3: they got there they would start doing crime again. Immediately.
Speaker 3: They could rob a store for closing money and steal
Speaker 3: a car and get the heck out of there as
Speaker 3: quickly as possible before the word gets out.
Speaker 1: Ostensibly, which is a pretty great plan actually, except for.
Speaker 3: The crime part. Like I would have, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess the idea is to just get as far
Speaker 3: away as possible. But I don't know if I would have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you need a car. It's not like somebody's
Speaker 1: going to just give you one.
Speaker 2: I can take the Bart.
Speaker 1: Sure you could take the Bart. I guess the part
Speaker 1: was around back then. I think it was a pretty
Speaker 1: good Maybe they were just like one last heist to
Speaker 1: get away from here. Maybe that's what it was.
Speaker 3: Maybe because they just want I mean, I get did
Speaker 3: want the urge to get as far away from there
Speaker 3: as possible. But also what if all of a sudden
Speaker 3: cops are on.
Speaker 2: You from stick on the car immediately.
Speaker 1: Risk It is a big risk and a lot of
Speaker 1: people say that they were actually helped. On the other side,
Speaker 1: there was a guy named oh Man. I can't remember
Speaker 1: his last name, but his first name or his nickname
Speaker 1: was Bumpy. He was a Gillicutty Harlem crime lord, drug
Speaker 1: lord who was just a total ba and they think
Speaker 1: that he may have had something to do with helping
Speaker 1: them escape with somebody who would have shown up and
Speaker 1: picked them up and driven them off. Other people say
Speaker 1: that one of the England's girlfriends was there, but the
Speaker 1: FBI supposedly investigated and said Frank Morris didn't have anybody.
Speaker 1: He was an orphan, he didn't have anybody on the
Speaker 1: outside he could have helped. The Anglands had family that
Speaker 1: definitely would have helped if they could, but they didn't
Speaker 1: have the means to actually to help them out in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. So yeah, but they were a tight family,
Speaker 1: and they were the kind of family where I think
Speaker 1: if one of them had called him be like I'm
Speaker 1: breaking out, I need you to pick me up, they
Speaker 1: would have done it. That. They're like that kind of
Speaker 1: tight family bond. Now, like my family would be like,
Speaker 1: oh well, I'll call you right back, and then hello, FBI.
Speaker 1: How much of a reward do you have for giving
Speaker 1: up a prison escapee? Yes, a federal prison. Oh that
Speaker 1: much hunk? Great? Do you have a pen?
Speaker 2: Can you do any better?
Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's exactly what my family would follow up with.
Speaker 2: They did find some evidence.
Speaker 3: So they did a search for about a week and
Speaker 3: a half along with the FBI, like you were saying,
Speaker 3: in the Bureau Prisons and the Alcatraz people, they were
Speaker 3: all super mad, of course, especially in the movie version.
Speaker 3: And they search Angel Island, They searched all the other
Speaker 3: islands in the bay, and they did find one of
Speaker 3: those like preservers that had teethmarks on the inflation valve.
Speaker 3: They found a wallet wrapped in plastic that they figured
Speaker 3: was jw.
Speaker 2: Anglin's.
Speaker 3: They found one of those oars, and they found it
Speaker 3: looked like most of one of the rafts or most
Speaker 3: of the raft But no bodies, no stolen cars, no burglaries,
Speaker 3: No one had reported anything in the area, unusual to
Speaker 3: according to their plan, which was to you know, steal
Speaker 3: closing money in a car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the Bureau of Prisons, like right out
Speaker 1: of the gate was like they drowned there. They were
Speaker 1: washed out to see. That's it, we'll never hear from
Speaker 1: him again. But they're dead. They didn't actually escape, And
Speaker 1: this was in nineteen sixty two. It wasn't until nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine that the FBI closed the book and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably what happened. We presumed that they were dead
Speaker 1: and their bodies lost at sea. But when they were
Speaker 1: building this case, they cited the story of a guy
Speaker 1: named Seymour Webb who had jumped from the Golden Gate
Speaker 1: Bridge at virtually the same time the Englands and Morris
Speaker 1: would have been in San Francisco Bay, and his body
Speaker 1: was never found, despite there being witnesses who watched him jump.
Speaker 2: Very flimsy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, but at the same time it does kind
Speaker 1: of demonstrate like, look, man, they could have this guy
Speaker 1: was never Yeah, he was never found. He jumped to
Speaker 1: the same time the Anglands and Morris were in the water,
Speaker 1: so maybe their bodies were never found. There was a
Speaker 1: sighting of a body about five weeks later in July
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two by a group of Norwegian sailors
Speaker 1: who saw something kind of floating off and they're like,
Speaker 1: is that a body? Yeah. They one got binoculars and
Speaker 1: they say that's a body.
Speaker 2: It was a body.
Speaker 3: It was floating upside down, so all they could see
Speaker 3: was the butt basically kind of bobbing in the water,
Speaker 3: and the butt looked through their binoculars at least to
Speaker 3: have on jeans, have on denim, and they you know,
Speaker 3: that was part of the prison outfit, was they were
Speaker 3: wearing denim. And this is the part that kind of
Speaker 3: gets a little flimsy to me is the FBI said
Speaker 3: that there were no missing persons in the area in
Speaker 3: that timeframe that were wearing jeans.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for this? So sitting down, who knows?
Speaker 3: And it was reported many weeks later, so you know,
Speaker 3: it was all it was kind of hearsay, I guess
Speaker 3: at that point it was.
Speaker 1: And then by the time they actually reported the sighting,
Speaker 1: it was October. So they're like, well, that's kind of useless.
Speaker 1: But they do point to that and say, okay, this
Speaker 1: combined with Seymour web, we think that their bodies were
Speaker 1: swept out to see. Not everybody agrees with that, including
Speaker 1: the Anglan family, who very much maintained that their brothers
Speaker 1: survived this escape from Alcatraz and actually had a photograph
Speaker 1: that I don't know where they got it, but they
Speaker 1: have a photograph that was supposedly taken of their brothers
Speaker 1: in Brazil in nineteen seventy five looks that they shared.
Speaker 1: Then it does It certainly doesn't. There was actually a
Speaker 1: company I can't remember the name of the company, but
Speaker 1: they do like artificial intelligence facial recognitions. So they're just
Speaker 1: really leading the way to a dystopia. But they were like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: we want to introduce you to our software. So we're
Speaker 1: going to analyze this picture. And their AI said, yep,
Speaker 1: definitely the angling's how cool is that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I certainly looked at it, and it could
Speaker 3: be it didn't look so unlike them that it was
Speaker 3: like no way. And again I found myself being like, ah, man,
Speaker 3: these guys made it to Brazil and they're the Robin
Speaker 3: Banks there to this day.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, I have them raising cattle in Brazil. That's
Speaker 1: my that's my idea.
Speaker 3: In twenty thirteen, there was a letter sent to the
Speaker 3: San Francisco Police Department supposedly from J. W. England saying, Hey,
Speaker 3: we made it, guys, but just barely. Morris died in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight. We kept in touch, great guy,
Speaker 3: Clarence died in twenty eleven and I'm still alive, but
Speaker 3: I got cancer. I need help, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: come forward if you promise and pinky swear and tell
Speaker 3: the public that you're not going to send me to
Speaker 3: jail for more than one year and you're going to
Speaker 3: heal my cancer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And apparently they analyzed the letter and like, this
Speaker 1: is inconclusive. But the FBI was like, we close this
Speaker 1: case in nineteen seventy nine, we're not about to open
Speaker 1: it up. But here's the thing. The idea that they
Speaker 1: survived is that least possible enough that for this whole time,
Speaker 1: the US Marshall's Office, who took over the case from
Speaker 1: the FBI in nineteen seventy nine, have kept it open.
Speaker 1: Like these guys are wanted outlaws still to this day,
Speaker 1: even though they would be eighty nine, ninety and ninety five.
Speaker 1: I think by now they are considered wanted fugitives and
Speaker 1: the cases open. Even though I believe the Marshal Service
Speaker 1: typically believes that they're dead, they haven't closed the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's my deal.
Speaker 3: If you do something like this and you don't leave
Speaker 3: some rock solid deathbed evidence, then you're just selfish.
Speaker 1: You really are.
Speaker 3: You owe it to the world to have this be
Speaker 3: a lead story and be like, Frank Morris died and
Speaker 3: here's the evidence, here's that little flower from.
Speaker 1: The rev Yeah, exactly, teach your smartest head of cattle
Speaker 1: to stamp out a message in morse code. That's what
Speaker 1: I want you spending your dying days doing, teaching that cow.
Speaker 3: The marshals say that they don't think they survived and
Speaker 3: went on to lead lives of solitude because they're like,
Speaker 3: these guys are career criminals. They would have done something again,
Speaker 3: they would have gotten caught again. It's a good point
Speaker 3: arguments four is that, And they don't know if they
Speaker 3: planned this that way or not. But when they went
Speaker 3: on the day they went, and during the hours they went,
Speaker 3: they actually had a few good hours of pretty calm
Speaker 3: bay currents. The you know, it could be so bad
Speaker 3: that they're going to pull you out to sea, or
Speaker 3: so bad that they take you in the wrong direction,
Speaker 3: completely away from land. And they said that, you know,
Speaker 3: whether it was just providence or whether they planned it
Speaker 3: this way. They had a cloudy night, so there wasn't
Speaker 3: much light from the moon, and they had a really
Speaker 3: calm bay, so in theory they might could have done this.
Speaker 1: They could have, but the winds were really terrible that
Speaker 1: night too. I think they were a gusts up to
Speaker 1: like twenty one miles an hour, sustained winds of like
Speaker 1: ten miles an hour in which direction though, that's tough
Speaker 1: to row. Who knows. If it was lucky, then yeah,
Speaker 1: if it was blowing them toward Angel Island, that was
Speaker 1: in their favor. It was blowing in any other direction
Speaker 1: that would make it very very low to Brazil, and
Speaker 1: then maybe so they're like, well, that was fortunate, didn't
Speaker 1: even have to steal a car. The other problem is
Speaker 1: the water. The water temperature is like fifty degrees farentheight,
Speaker 1: which is very very cold, and you get very numb
Speaker 1: and eventually sent into shock and then exhaustion pretty quickly
Speaker 1: after being in this water for thirty minutes or last.
Speaker 3: But people swim in that thing. They do and it's
Speaker 3: happened before. They have triathlons in that water, and people
Speaker 3: do it. So it's not to say that these guys
Speaker 3: could not have done it. It wasn't so frigid that
Speaker 3: science would say, oh no, you would die inside five
Speaker 3: minutes in this water.
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, especially if they were operating on the
Speaker 1: adrenaline that they surely would have had from the escape.
Speaker 1: She meaning fifty feet down a drain pipe alone will
Speaker 1: pump you full of some pretty decent adrenaline. So who
Speaker 1: knows what they were capable of at the time.
Speaker 3: I have a theory is that the Anglins killed Frank
Speaker 3: Morris out there on that raft, and that was the
Speaker 3: body they saw floating, and that's why they made it
Speaker 3: to Brazil and we never heard from Frank Morris again.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't like your theory.
Speaker 2: You don't think I don't turning on them at the
Speaker 2: last minute.
Speaker 1: No, No. My theory is that that body was actually
Speaker 1: Seymour Web, that he was wearing denim jeans underpants that
Speaker 1: got taken off of his other pants, and that he
Speaker 1: wasn't actually dead, but he met a mermaid or merman
Speaker 1: who he fell in love with and spent the rest
Speaker 1: of his life under the sea with.
Speaker 2: Well, that's lovely. I like that theory.
Speaker 3: But the cherry on top here is that those prisoners
Speaker 3: who wanted to help them escape because they thought the
Speaker 3: prison would close were right. The prison was shut down
Speaker 3: the following March, and the Bureau Prison said, you know what,
Speaker 3: we were gonna shut this thing down anyway because Alcatraz
Speaker 3: is just too much to keep up. This big concrete
Speaker 3: block on a rocky island is too expensive to keep up,
Speaker 3: right with very few guards.
Speaker 2: So who knows.
Speaker 3: But in the movie they definitely sort of betray it
Speaker 3: as as that's the reason why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the warden never had a happy day again.
Speaker 2: That's right. Pretty satisfying film.
Speaker 1: Pretty satisfying film. And Chuck, I guess we said all
Speaker 1: this to say this. We have a book coming out
Speaker 1: that we would love for you to pre order.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: Stuff you should know is that Jarring, an incomplete compendium
Speaker 3: of mostly interesting thing and guys. One of our lifelong
Speaker 3: dreams is to be on the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they give you a T shirt.
Speaker 3: We really want to get on that list, and if
Speaker 3: that list came out today, we wouldn't be on it.
Speaker 3: So we would love for you to step up and
Speaker 3: help our dreams come true. Sure, how's that for a plea?
Speaker 1: I think that's a great plea, A plea and a
Speaker 1: plug altogether. It's a pleague.
Speaker 2: What is this in cost twenty bucks?
Speaker 1: I think so? And it's worth every penny I can
Speaker 1: tell you because we you wrote it. That's right. So
Speaker 1: that's it. If you want to go order our book,
Speaker 1: you can pre order anywhere you get books. Thank you
Speaker 1: in advance. And I think that's it for Escape from
Speaker 1: Alcatraz too, right, that's it. If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about escaping from Alcatraz, there are some really great
Speaker 1: articles and books and all sorts of stuff out there
Speaker 1: on the Internet for you to dig into. So get digging.
Speaker 1: Since I said get digging, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call this Delaware response. We kind of
Speaker 3: poked fun at Delaware a little bit, Oh we now,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: It was me.
Speaker 3: But Delawarians, Delawareans, Delawarans, Delaware, Delawarean nights. They are lovely people,
Speaker 3: as it seems, because we've gotten quite a few emails,
Speaker 3: and they'll have good humor about their lovely little state.
Speaker 3: Hey guys, our Delaware family had to laugh at your
Speaker 3: pirate radio podcasts. Delawareans, Oh yeah, that's right. There would
Speaker 3: be proud to be known as the Luxembourg of the
Speaker 3: United States. Most people drive through our state on nine
Speaker 3: ninety five and less than thirty minutes but if you
Speaker 3: do stop by. Our state is rich in history and agriculture,
Speaker 3: and we have a few nice beaches.
Speaker 2: What you should know is the ark on the top
Speaker 2: of our state.
Speaker 3: I guess it's an arch, is made by a twelve
Speaker 3: mile radius from Newcastle and historic Town. What many people
Speaker 3: do not know is the bottom of the arc formed
Speaker 3: a wedge betwixt Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. The ownership of
Speaker 3: that land was in dispute between Delaware and Pennsylvania for decades,
Speaker 3: only to be resolved in nineteen twenty one. Rumor has
Speaker 3: it that the disputed land was a haven for unsavory
Speaker 3: types who capitalized on the uncertain jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the show.
Speaker 3: It informs and entertains my family and we wish you
Speaker 3: well from Delaware. The first state to ratify the constitution,
Speaker 3: oh that is from Doug wasgat and family.
Speaker 1: Nice Doug, thank you. I would have led with the
Speaker 1: first state to ratify the constitution. Thing.
Speaker 2: I bet they tout that a lot. It's a good
Speaker 2: thing to tout.
Speaker 1: Yep. We want to be like Doug and defend your state,
Speaker 1: whether it's Delaware or not. We want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: and you can send it in an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: You Know Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.