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Imagine being a guard at Alcatraz waking up to a warning siren at 7:30 am. Wandering if it was a false alarm or a real one. You would be thinking of how someone could escape from an escape proof prison. There would be guards running everywhere. This is probably what was going through everyones head. This is exactly what happened June 11, 1962.
That morning three men were not found in their cells. The men were Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris. Clarence and John Anglin were brothers and both did a bank robbery in Columbia, Alabama. Frank Morris Robbed a bank in Slidell, Louisiana. Frank Morris had an IQ of 133 and is thought to be the person to set up the escape.
The last time anyone saw the three men was a 9:30 p.m. The three men made life-like dummy heads to trick the guards. The heads were made from plaster and put real hair on them. They put pillows under the blankets to make it look like a human. There were air vents on the walls that they crawled through into the walls. They widened the vent by using forks and knifes they sneaked in their cells. While they worked on the air vent they made a fake cover to cover up the hole when they were not working on it.
The three men climbed up a pipe that was thirty feet. In the room they went in there were 12-inch bars that they bended by using a crowbar. Then the men climbed up to the roof and went to a 50-foot pipe. Next they climbed down the pipes onto the ground. They snuck past the guard tower without being spotted and climbed over the barbed wire fence. The men got to the waters edge with there supplies. There supplies were life-preservers, plywood paddles and a raft made from raincoats.
The next morning the guards saw the dummy heads and the alarms were sounded. The guards searched the island and found nothing. Later another convict’s cell had a large hole in the wall with a cover. The convicts name was Allen Clayton. The reason he had not escaped was because his hole was to small. The other men wouldn’t wait for him and he had to stay. He told the guards their escape plans. The plan was to swim to Angel Island.
The guards searched the island and found a plywood paddle. A couple days later a water proof packet was found containing personal things to the men. The next day a life preserve was found 3 3/4 miles away. The three men are thought to be dead. To this day we don’t know if the men survived.