WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Prison Breaks 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:06.240 Happy Saturday. A prison break was part of our episode 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:09.720 on William J. Sharky earlier this week, and we talked 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.400 about some more prison breaks in our Friday Behind the Scenes. 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:16.520 So today's classic episode is a set of six prison breaks, 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.160 including one that we just mentioned in that discussion. And 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.320 this originally came out on May eleventh, twenty twenty two. 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:29.120 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:39.000 production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.240 Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. A few years ago, 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.920 I was in Philadelphia and went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:49.240 which was a prison for about one hundred and fifty 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.320 years and now it's a historic site. And one of 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:54.640 the things I learned about while I was there was 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.800 a dramatic escape from the prison in nineteen forty five, 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.960 and I met put that into my little notes app 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:05.920 on my phone where I jot things down when I'm 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:08.400 on vacation. It was one of those things, though, that 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.039 I couldn't quite figure out how to make it work 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.400 as an episode, and I kept circling back to it periodically. 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:17.720 It finally dawned on me that it might work as 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.840 a set of six impossible episodes because there are some 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:26.080 common themes among a lot of the prison break stories, 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:32.839 like there's often a lot of tunneling. Uh so uh 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:35.920 A couple times a year, I pulled together six episodes 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.679 that are are grouped together in some way, and so 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:42.520 now we're going to have six prison breaks. And just 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:45.960 to level set here, I would not at all call 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:51.280 this a representative sample of history's prison escape attempts because 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.760 number one, the vast majority of information we have for 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:59.520 this episode is from places where English is the predominant language, 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.920 and that's just a matter of what's available to us. 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:07.200 Number Two, I was really focused on escapes that seemed 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.560 particularly ingenious and how they were planned and carried out, 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:16.160 not on ones that were violent. So there is a 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.440 little violence in this episode, but it it is not 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.880 one where the you know, a prison break happened in 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:24.960 the middle of a violent uprising where a lot of 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:27.160 people got killed. I was really looking at the ones 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.880 that are kind of offbeat a little bit in some ways. Right, 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:35.720 this is more Shawshank redemption than horrible riot situation. Yeah, 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.880 several of them seem like clear inspirations for some of 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:44.720 the Shawshank escape, So just know that going in, all right. 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:46.560 So we're going to start with the prison break that 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:51.120 inspired this episode. The Eastern State Penitentiary opened in eighteen 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.440 twenty nine, and it was built in an era when 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:56.120 reformers were trying to change the way prisons in the 0:02:56.160 --> 0:03:00.320 criminal justice system worked. In Philadelphia, this effort was led 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:04.440 by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:09.079 whose members were predominantly Quakers. The prison was called a 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:13.040 penitentiary because its purpose was to inspire penitents among the 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.519 people housed there by keeping them in a state of isolated, 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:21.600 silent contemplation. Hundreds of prisons that followed this theory were 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:25.839 built around the world in the nineteenth century. Although these 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:29.640 reformers were trying to move away from things like public 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:34.920 floggings and executions for relatively minor crimes and also to 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:39.800 make incarceration more humane, this system that they devised was 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.640 innately cruel. It came to be known as the Pennsylvania system, 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:48.520 and it was basically perpetual solitary confinement. People were totally 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:53.480 alone in these single occupancy cells that had attached small 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.680 walled in exercise yards. They were forced to wear hoods 0:03:57.720 --> 0:03:59.840 when they were in common areas so they couldn't see 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:03.120 or talk to anybody else, and over time the prison 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.480 moved away from this practice, and the Pennsylvania system was 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:11.000 officially abandoned by nineteen thirteen. By that point, more people 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.200 had recognized that endless solitary confinement was in fact cruel, 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.200 but the system that replaced it was cruel, just in 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:22.479 a different way. Overcrowding became a major issue, with new 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.880 cell blocks built between the existing ones, until a prison 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.560 that had originally housed two hundred and fifty people instead 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:34.360 housed seventeen hundred. A series of riots and uprisings took 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.320 place in the nineteen thirties in response to poor conditions 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:39.720 at the prison and to low pay at the on 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:42.760 site workshops and factories where they were forced to work. 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:49.040 In nineteen forty four, a plasterer and stonemason named Clarence Kleimdans, 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.240 who was known as Kleiny, was housed in cell sixty 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:54.760 eight of Cell Blocks seven, and this was at the 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.360 far end of one of those cell blocks that had 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:00.520 been planned as part of the prison's initial de as 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.880 a penitentiary, and it's possible that he moved into the 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.360 cell with the intention of tunneling out of it. From 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.479 the beginning, it had been used for storage, and he 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:11.360 had offered to repair it so that he could live 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:14.520 in it. Once he was housed in Cell sixty eight, 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:17.800 he and his cell mate William Russell started digging a 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.880 tunnel in secret, one that went through the cell wall, 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.159 then down twelve feet, requiring a ladder to get to 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:27.720 the bottom. From there, the tunnel leveled out and stretched 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:30.760 about one hundred feet, running under the exercise yard and 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.359 the wall that encircled the prison, and then up again 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.360 to the street outside. They made a plaster mask so 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:39.600 it would look like one of them was in bed 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.320 that one would dig while the other kept watch, and 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.680 they'd put the dirt they dug up in their pockets 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:49.719 and then scatter it in the exercise yard. Klindens hid 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:52.640 the entrance to this tunnel with a panel that he 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.839 made to roughly match the intact walls of the cell, 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.279 and then put a metal trash can in front of 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.599 it and in the tunnel. He shored it up with 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.160 wood and installed lights and ventilation fans. When the tunnel 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:08.600 intersected with a sewer, pipe under the prison. They built 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.440 a connection to the pipe so they could dispose of 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.960 their waste through a sewer. This was a complex engineering 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:20.680 feat handled with whatever they could cobble together. It's pretty ingenious. 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.960 On April third, nineteen forty five, twelve men escaped through 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:28.480 this tunnel going to sell sixty eight while everyone else 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.240 was on the way to breakfast. At the end of 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:33.440 the tunnel, they broke through the last few feet of 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.720 earth and scattered in different directions as they came out 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.520 of it. Most of them, though, were back in the 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.440 prison within a day, and all of them had been 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.919 caught within a few months. Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:50.039 who would later totally take credit for this escape in 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.400 his autobiography, he was caught almost immediately. He basically came 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:56.600 out of the hall and they grabbed him right there. 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:02.080 Clarence Kleindenst was in custody after about three hours. One 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:04.679 group tried to make their getaway in a milk truck 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.760 that they stole, and they were caught after police rammed 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.880 the truck with a police car. One man, who was 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:14.160 twenty four year old, James Grace, turned himself in eight 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:18.080 days after the escape. William Russell and one other man 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.560 were both shot during the escape attempt and they were 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:24.440 brought back to the prison infirmary. Otherwise, the men who 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.000 tried to escape were punished. Some of them were placed 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:31.520 into these tiny windowless underground cells known as klondike. These 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:35.080 were too small to even stand up in. Of course, 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:39.400 this whole escape was enormously embarrassing for the prison. It 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:41.760 was not at all the first escape attempt, or even 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:46.120 the first successful escape attempt from the Eastern State Penitentiary 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.080 that had happened all the way back in eighteen thirty two, 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:54.239 but it was a colossal security breach. Months of digging 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.520 had gone unnoticed, and more than one inspection of Cell 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.920 sixty eight had failed to spot. That timeunnel entrance. Prison 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.680 authorities investigated and mapped the tunnel, and then they filled 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.800 it in and covered up the entrance with cement. Then 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.200 later in two thousand and five, Eastern State Penitentiary embarked 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.840 on an archaeological study to find and map the tunnel. 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:20.600 This effort included ground penetrating radar work cameras, and a 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.240 small robotic rover that was kind of remote controlled and 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.400 went down the tunnel. They had to use a jackhammer 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.320 to get through the tunnels covered over entrance. As we 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.199 said earlier, Eastern State Penitentiary is now a historic site 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.640 and as of twenty seventeen, its mission is to interpret 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:42.439 the legacy of American criminal justice reform. Yeah, we'll talk 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:44.240 about that a little bit more in the behind the 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:50.120 scenes on Friday. Moving on, for about eighty years, starting 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.120 in seventeen eighty eight, people convicted of crimes in the 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:58.280 UK could be transported to Australia's punishment. Other colonies as well, 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.880 but Australia is the focus here. Often this was for 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.800 a period of seven years, but a lot of people 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.280 sent to Australia never returned to Britain again. They either 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:10.880 couldn't afford to make the trip or they didn't want 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.400 to after having made a life for themselves in Australia. 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.960 And only a small number of people who were sentenced 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:22.000 to transportation had been convicted of a violent crime. A 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.720 lot of them had been convicted of offenses that most 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:29.040 people would think of as pretty petty today. Women in particular, 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:32.839 tended to have been convicted of things like stealing handkerchiefs 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:37.120 or cloth, or pickpocketing. Our next prison break was a 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.800 group of women who were being held at Limerick Jail 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:44.520 in Ireland awaiting transportation to Australia. They were supposed to 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.480 be transferred to a prison in Cork on May twenty third, 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.439 eighteen thirty, which is where they would embark on this 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.600 ship that was going to take them to Australia. But 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.360 the night before that transfer to Cork, nine women and 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:01.920 a baby escaped from Limerick Jail. The women were Mary King, 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:07.720 Mary Hurley, Mary Devon, Ellen Hurley, Margaret Shaughnessy, Margaret Clancy, 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.760 Bridget Shelton, Mary Hickey and Catherine Welsh. And the baby 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:17.800 was Mary Devon's eleven month old daughter. As escapes go, 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:20.240 this one is maybe less dramatic than some of the 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:22.520 others that we're talking about today, but it does still 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.800 involve some ingenuity. Leading up to their transfer date, these 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:31.120 women made a habit of singing and quote noisy vociferations 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:34.480 after dark, so it had been established that they were 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:38.760 just loud. Someone had provided them with a file, some 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:43.160 nitric acid also called aquafortis, and other tools to help 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.880 them get out of their cells. Then, on the twenty third, 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.200 two men used a ladder that workers had left behind 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.920 while making repairs to get into the women's ward. The 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.440 men started helping the women get their cells open, while 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.480 the women got to their nightly singing to cover up 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:05.120 the noise. In the words of the Monmster Merlin quote, 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.840 this amusement they enjoyed with more than ordinary spirit on 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.880 this occasion, and without exciting any particular notice. Meantime, the 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:18.960 iron fastenings were assailed by the burglars with extraordinary success. 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.560 The continued knocking was heard in the adjacent ward, but 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.520 the sound of their operations was so drowned in the 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.120 melody of the accompanying voices as not to reach the 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.720 ears of the jail governor or his assistance. The locks 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.160 gave way before repeated efforts, and nine females with an 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:41.559 infant were extricated from Durance's vile. Once they were out 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.120 of their cells, the women and their accomplices climbed back 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:47.400 down the ladder and used it to get over the 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.600 outer walls unnoticed. But these women did not stay at 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.880 large for long. Mary Hickey was caught the night of 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.120 the escape, and newspapers reported on the capture of other 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:02.640 women in the following days, including Catherine Welsh, who asked 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:05.160 to be taken back to the Limerick jail after being 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:07.920 caught shoplifting. Yeah, they were going to take her to 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:09.560 a different jail, and she was like, can I just 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.240 go back to Limerick because that's where I escaped from. 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.960 It appears that, with one possible exception, all of the 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:20.920 women involved in this prison break did wind up being 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.719 transported to Australia. Two of them are mentioned in an 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:28.280 article about a ship that departed for Australia on January 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.400 twenty ninth of eighteen thirty one, and then all but 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.280 one of the rest of them are listed on ship's 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.880 actual registers of the people being transported. So there were 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.960 five on a ship that departed on September twenty seventh, 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.000 eighteen thirty one, and then one on a ship that 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.400 left on March ninth of eighteen thirty three, So that 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.840 leaves only one of the women unaccounted for. We are 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.880 going to take a sponsor break, and after that we'll 0:12:53.920 --> 0:13:07.680 come back to more escape stories. Next up, we have 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.079 the escape from Alcatraz in nineteen sixty two, and way 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.520 back in two thousand and eight, prior host to the show, 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.959 Candace and Josh did an episode titled did someone Really 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:23.559 Escape from Alcatraz number one, That is Forever Ago. It 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.360 was an entirely different show with a different format at 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.760 that point, and most of that ten minute episode is 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.800 focused more on the general history of Alcatraz as a 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:36.600 prison and not on the escape itself. If you're interested 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.520 in the more general history of Alcatraz, we talk about 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.160 that a bit in our two parter on the Occupation 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.800 of Alcatraz. Those episodes came out in twenty nineteen. So 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:49.679 Alcatraz is an island in San Francisco Bay. It has 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:54.160 a steep, rocky shoreline, and it is surrounded by treacherous waters. 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:58.000 Although this may have discouraged people from trying to escape, 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:02.439 there were still fourteen different as escape attempts during Alcatraz's 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.520 time as a federal prison that was from nineteen thirty 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:09.880 four to nineteen sixty three. Nearly all of the thirty 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.160 six men involved in these attempts were captured or killed, 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:17.720 but five of them are classified as missing and presumed drowned. 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.720 Two of them were Theodore Cole and Ralph Rowe, who 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.160 filed through the bars of a window in the mat 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.200 shop and tried to escape during a storm in nineteen 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:31.240 thirty seven. The other three were involved in the nineteen 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:35.720 sixty two escape. There were actually four men involved in 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:40.480 this attempt, Frank Morris, John Englin, John's brother, Clarence, and 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:45.400 Alan West. They had all been convicted of various burglaries, robberies, 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:48.840 and thefts, and they'd all been incarcerated together before, and 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:51.760 they all knew each other. They had been transferred to 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:56.400 Alcatraz after having tried to escape from other prisons. They 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.640 started planning to escape from Alcatraz in December of nineteen 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.840 sixty Morrison the Anglans had been assigned cells that were 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.720 adjacent to one another, and one of them found some 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.520 old saw blades they thought they could use. These men 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:15.560 improvised so much for this escape attempt. They improvised tools 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.600 to dig and break through walls, including making a drill 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.720 from a vacuum cleaner motor, although that turned out to 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.320 be too noisy for them to really use. Scrapwood became 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.680 basic paddles, and a concertina that is a musical instrument 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.680 that's sort of like an accordion became a pump to 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:37.560 inflate their raft, and that raft, apparently using instructions they 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.600 found in popular mechanics, they made a six foot by 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:45.040 fourteen foot raft out of about fifty raincoats. They may 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.080 have taken some of these raincoats from other men by force, 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.440 but there was also a rumor that if anybody successfully 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:55.040 escaped from Alcatraz, the government would shut the prison down, 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:57.800 So it seems like some of the men were happy 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:00.800 to kind of wear their raincoats out to the exercise 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:03.640 yard and then leave them there to be picked up, 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:06.760 kind of donating them to this effort to get the 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:11.680 prison shut down. The escaping men then used contact cement 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:15.120 they had stolen from various workshops around the prison and 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:19.080 heat from the steam pipes to vulcanize the seams of 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.480 the raft. They used this same method to also make 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:26.760 life preservers. Each of their cells had an air vent, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.360 and they used various tools to make a series of 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.840 holes around these vents so that the whole thing in 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.840 each cell could be pulled out from the wall. This 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:38.680 got them into a utility corridor where they made and 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:42.720 hid what they would need to escape. Yet another improvised 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:46.160 tool with all this was a periscope, which they used 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:49.560 to watch for guards while they were working. They also 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:51.840 worked out a way to get from the corridor and 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:56.120 onto the prison roof. Similarly to how Clarence Kleindenst and 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:59.160 William Russell had used a mask they made to make 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.000 it look like one of them was in bed while 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.000 the other one was digging a tunnel, these four men 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:08.280 made heads out of homemade plaster and painted them topped 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:10.560 them with human hair so that it would make it 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:15.760 look like they were asleep in their beds. These heads, 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:19.800 I think they're actually pretty good. They're better than I 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:24.600 could do, I think. On June eleventh, nineteen sixty two, 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.560 Frank Morris and the England brothers went out through their 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.280 removed ventilation grates, covering the hole behind them with whatever 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:35.400 they could. Alan West had tried to reinforce the concrete 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.840 around his grate and had accidentally cemented it in place, 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.200 and by the time he was able to get it free, 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.879 his accomplices had already left. From up on the roof, 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.520 Morris and the Anglands climbed down a smokestack and then 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.199 over a fence, cutting through the barbed wire at the 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.560 top of the fence, and then they seemed to have 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.720 launched their raft from the northeast corner of the island, 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.840 but then What happened to them after that is a mystery. 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.119 During bedcheck on the morning of June twelfth, a guard 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:07.520 at first thought that the three men were still asleep 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.560 in their beds, but then realized they weren't in their 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:13.960 cells after touching one of the fake heads through the bars, 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:18.280 and a manhunt began. Authorities recovered a package of letters 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:22.159 sealed in rubber paddles and life vests, either in the 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.000 water or washed up at various points around the San 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:30.080 Francisco Bay. Sailors from a Norwegian freighter reportedly saw a 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.080 body in the water on July seventeenth, but did not 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:37.960 report that until October. Although there have been some simulations 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.840 that suggest that the three men could have made it 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:44.960 to shore was theoretically possible, at this point, they are 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.919 presumed to have drowned in their escape attempt. The FBI 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:53.520 closed the case on December thirty first of nineteen seventy nine. 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:57.400 Although Alcatraz did close less than a year after this escape, 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.440 it was because the prison needed a multimillion dollar restoration project, 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:04.800 and on top of that, it was expensive to operate 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.720 because of its island location. The federal government decided that 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:10.640 it would be cheaper to just build a whole new 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:13.840 prison than to try to restore and keep running Alcatraz. 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:20.600 Next up. Libby Prison was originally a food warehouse, and 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.440 then later it became home to a grocery and ship 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.840 provisioning business. Was in Richmond, Virginia, and during the US 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:31.240 Civil War, the Confederate government took it over and turned 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:34.720 it into a prison to house US prisoners of war, 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:42.679 particularly US military officers, and conditions there were really just appalling. Obviously, 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:44.919 it was not built to be a prison, and beyond that, 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.399 it was situated on a canal that routinely flooded the 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:52.080 building's cellar in wet weather, and the rising waters drove 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.520 rats out of the cellar and into the rest of 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:59.120 the structure. The windows were open spaces covered in bars, 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.480 and they let in little fresh air, but not much late, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.520 and they didn't offer much protection from storms or extreme temperatures. 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.280 The upper two floors where the prisoners were housed were 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:14.840 very sparsely furnished. There weren't even enough bunks for everyone. 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.440 This was an immensely overcrowded facility, with as many as 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:22.680 one thousand people packed into just six rooms, without enough 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:29.600 food or supplies. Unsurprisingly, disease was rampant. Colonel Thomas E. 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:35.040 Rose of the seventy seventh Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry started planning 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.399 an escape almost as soon as he arrived at Libby Prison. 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:41.240 He thought it might be possible to dig a tunnel 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:45.320 from that rat filled cellar to a nearby tobacco shed 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.240 where they could get out without being seen by guards. 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:53.480 Because all of the rats and the ongoing flooding problems 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.920 made the cellar smell terrible, so bad that it was 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:01.320 nicknamed rat Hell. That also meant the Confederate guards mostly 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:03.879 stayed out of it, so this was one place they 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:08.439 could work on a tunnel mostly undetected. Construction of an 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.760 escape tunnel started with removing bricks from behind a stove 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.879 in the kitchen, which was the only room the imprisoned 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.880 men were allowed free access to. This made an entry 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:22.360 into the cellar, and from there Rose and his accomplices 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.959 started digging with makeshift tools, putting the dirt into an 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:29.439 old spatoon to take it away. It was hard to 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:31.919 tell how far they'd gotten, though, and at one point 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:34.840 they broke through the surface and realized that they still 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.560 had several feet left to go. They managed to fill 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:43.600 that accidental opening in before they were noticed. Robert Knoxneden 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.120 was a cartographer who was being held at a neighboring prison, 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:50.320 and he wrote this account of the escape, which happened 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.280 on February ninth, eighteen sixty four. Quote. Everyone wanted to 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.160 be first in order to get down the chimney as 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.479 well as the long tunnel. It was necessary to strip naked, 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:02.960 wrapped the clothes in a bundle, and pushed this on 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:05.840 before them. As soon as it was seen that only 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:09.280 a few men could possibly get out for daylight, all 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.240 rushed for the mouth of the tunnel who could, each 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.800 man being determined to get out first. The room was 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.399 now crowded to suffocation, all struggling to get in the hole. 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.080 The strongest men forced their way to the front, while 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:26.320 the weak ones were more roughly brushed aside and jammed 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:29.879 up against the walls. Sneaden also made a map of 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:33.879 the prison in watercolor, showing the prison, the tunnel route, 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:37.040 nearby streets, and of their buildings, and the James River 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:40.159 and its adjacent canal. That map is now in the 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:44.240 collection of the Virginia Historical Society. In one account of 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.159 this escape, during the roll call. The next day. A 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:51.920 Confederate official said, where are they all? And somebody answered, 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:56.399 they fell out the window, which cracks me up a 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:00.000 whole lot of window drops. One hundred and nine men 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.960 managed to escape through that tunnel, with more than half 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:07.000 of them successfully making it to Union territory. Some of 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.840 the ones who managed to evade capture had help from 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.199 Union spy Elizabeth van Lew who was mentioned in our 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:16.560 prior episode on Mary Elizabeth Bowser, which was a Saturday 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:20.040 classic not too long ago. Forty eight of the men 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:23.560 were recaptured and too drowned while trying to cross a river. 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:27.240 Colonel Rose, who had started the whole escape plan, was 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:29.679 one of the ones recaptured, and he was held at 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:33.480 Libby until April thirtieth, eighteen sixty four, when he was 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:37.400 released as part of a prisoner exchange. A few weeks 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.760 after this escape, h Judson Kilpatrick and Olrich Dahlgren tried 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:46.240 to liberate the prison, but they were discovered. Dahlgren was killed, 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:49.720 and papers he was carrying with him suggested that there 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:52.520 was a plan in the works to burn down Richmond 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:57.960 and kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis. After this, Richmond's proest 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:02.240 Marshal John H. Winder Awe, authorized Major Thomas Pratt Turner, 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:05.400 who was commandant of the prison, to dig a pit 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:08.720 under the prison, fill it with gunpowder, and blow the 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:12.040 whole thing up if there were any further escape attempts. 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:16.000 That threat was never carried out. Soon the Confederate Army 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:20.600 started transferring men out of Libby to other prisons. After 0:24:20.640 --> 0:24:23.280 the war was over, the entire thing was dismantled and 0:24:23.320 --> 0:24:26.320 moved to Chicago, where it operated as the Libby Prison 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:29.800 War Museum from eighteen eighty nine to eighteen ninety nine. 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:33.560