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In 1933, Alcatraz was transferred to the U.S. In the early 1900s, military prisoners helped to build a new, 600-cell jail, as well as a hospital, cafeteria, and other prison buildings. It was the perfect spot for a prison, because it was isolated and everyone assumed that no prisoner could successfully escape by swimming across the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay. Army also began to use Alcatraz to house military prisoners. A fortress was built, cannons were installed, and the West Coast's first operational lighthouse was constructed. According to official records, no one ever successfully escaped from the fortress known as Alcatraz.Īlcatraz takes its name from the name given to the island by Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775: La Isla de los Alcatraces or "Island of the Pelicans." In 1850, President Fillmore converted the island to military use. It sits upon an island known as "The Rock" in chilly San Francisco Bay. This is particularly true of one of the most famous prisons in U.S. From locked cells and thick walls to armed security guards and lookout towers, escaping from prison is no easy feat. Have you ever thought about what a task it would be to break out of a jail? Prisons are built with one goal in mind: keeping prisoners inside. There's nothing quite like the tale of someone overcoming all odds to break their bonds of confinement. They left the heads in their beds while they worked on the raft and the night of the getaway.īabyak was 15 years old and living on Alcatraz when her father, the associate warden, got the June 12, 1962, call that three inmates had escaped the night before with an eight-hour head start.From classic books like The Count of Monte Cristo to modern movies like The Shawshank Redemption and television shows like Prison Break, people have always been fascinated by stories of wrongfully- imprisoned people escaping from jail. They also had created mannequin heads out of paper, paint and hair purloined from the prison barber shop. To prepare for their flights, they also produced a raft and life vests out of more than 50 cotton raincoats, with rubberized backing, that inmates were assigned, said "Breaking the Rock" author Jolene Babyak. The crawl spaces they fashioned eventually pierced the six-and-a-half-inch thick walls until they reached a utility corner, from which they were able to shimmy out through a roof vent.
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The four reportedly spent months using spoons and forks to dig holes in the crumbling masonry surrounding the air vents in their cells. The FBI acquired most of what it learned about the great escape from a fourth inmate who planned to take part in the break-out but, at the last minute, ran into technical problems. The warrants on them will expire when each man passes his 100th birthday. If the Anglins or Morris ever surrender or are tracked down, Dyke said he would arrest them, but "I'd have to compliment them because it was very meticulous what they did, how they escaped from here." Federal prosecutors then would have to decide whether to charge them.
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Widner's sons arranged for their mother and aunt to visit Alcatraz because they wanted, in Kenneth Widner's words, "to clear up some misnomers about the boys" that followed their unlikely escape's passage into prison lore, a book and a Clint Eastwood movie. "I've always believed they made it, and I haven't changed my mind about that," Widner, 76, said Monday while visiting the former penitentiary to commemorate the anniversary of her siblings' daring getaway. Marshals Service, which maintains active arrest warrants on Morris and the Anglins. Out of the 36 Alcatraz inmates who tried to flee before the prison was closed in March 1963, the three are the only ones who remain unaccounted for, according to the U.S. Whether the three men perished in chilly San Francisco Bay, as prison officials and federal agents insisted at the time, remains a subject of hot speculation because their bodies were never found. The two Florida women are the younger sisters of John and Clarence Anglin, who along with fellow prisoner Frank Morris, disappeared from the federal prison on Alcatraz Island 50 years ago.