How Three Men Fooled Alcatraz With Fake Heads and Vanished

On the morning of June 12, 1962, at the count, an officer on Alcatraz reached through the bars of a cell to wake a sleeping prisoner. The head rolled onto the floor. It was made of cement and paint, and real human hair. Frank Morris and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin were gone, and they have never been found. This film follows them out, step by step, as the FBI's case file tells it: the vents dug out with sharpened spoons, the workshop hidden on top of the cell block, the raft made of raincoats, the concertina turned into a bellows, the climb up the pipes and out through the roof, down the bakery smokestack, over the fence and into the bay. And the fourth man, Allen West, whose hole would not open in time. Almost everything we know about the plan comes from West alone; the film says so, and shows where the evidence bears him out. Then the two versions of what happened next. The FBI presumed the men drowned. The US Marshals still list them as wanted. And then the claims: a postcard to the warden six days later, a white boat with no lights, Christmas cards and roses with no name, two tall strangers at a funeral, a photograph from Brazil, and a letter that reached the San Francisco police in 2013: "I'm 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer." The film sorts them: what is proven, what is disputed, and what is legend. CHAPTERS 0:00 The morning count 0:56 The Rock 1:57 Four men 3:26 The work 6:37 The night 10:27 The search 12:38 Two versions 14:26 The claims 18:11 The ledger SOURCES FBI case file 76-26295, "Alcatraz Escape" (FBI Vault, parts 1-17), including the interviews with Allen West, the officers' statements, the FBI Laboratory report of August 8, 1962 and the search reports Federal Bureau of Prisons, "Alcatraz" (history page: escape attempts, closure) National Park Service, Golden Gate National Recreation Area: collections and archived exhibits US Marshals Service: profiles of Frank Lee Morris, John William Anglin and Clarence Anglin; release of June 7, 2012 San Francisco Chronicle, June 13-20, 1962 (transcribed by SFgenealogy) KPIX 5, the 2013 letter (January 22, 2018); ABC7 News (May 2016); SFGate (2015) Knight-Ridder (Phil Long), Seattle Times, January 2, 1994 (Thomas Kent; Robert Anglin) The Anglin family's accounts: Associated Press (June 2012); CBC As It Happens (October 19, 2015); The Telegraph (October 2015); Grand Forks Herald (2022, updated 2024); The Independent (August 12, 2024) R. Hut, F. Baart, O. Hoes and others (TU Delft, Deltares), "Reconstructing the Alcatraz escape", AGU Fall Meeting, December 2014 MythBusters, "Alcatraz Escape" (2003) FURTHER READING J. Campbell Bruce, Escape from Alcatraz (1963) Jolene Babyak, Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz (2001) Michael Esslinger, Alcatraz: A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years (2003) MAP DATA Coastline and land: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), openstreetmap.org/copyright Lakes and rivers: Natural Earth (public domain) Elevation and depth: Terrain Tiles by Mapzen, hosted on AWS Open Data United States 3DEP (formerly NED) and global GMTED2010 and SRTM terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey Global ETOPO1 terrain data U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada Mexico terrain data source: INEGI, Continental relief, 2016 US state outlines: us-atlas (ISC), from US Census Bureau cartographic boundary files