6 Gangsters Who Tried to Escape Alcatraz Before Frank Morris

The warden told the press he was dead. He was lying in a cave, close enough to hear the guards walk past. Then he did something no record explains. Six gangsters. Six plans to get off the one prison that took the men no other prison could hold. Between 1934 and 1963, thirty-six prisoners tried to leave Alcatraz in fourteen separate escapes. We follow six of them: Floyd Hamilton, Ralph Roe, Thomas Limerick, Arnold Kyle, Doc Barker and Joseph "Dutch" Cretzer. Every one of those plans turned on something small enough to hold in your hand. A whistle. A wrench. A pane of glass. A key. Count them. One famous escape is not on this list. We tell you why at the end. Where a scene is a recreation, we say so on screen. Dramatized recreation. SOURCES Federal Bureau of Prisons, Alcatraz escape records and inmate files National Park Service, Alcatraz Island historical records Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion on the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz FBI records San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, 1941 and 1946 coverage Associated Press and United Press, 1937 to 1946 Joplin Globe KQED #Alcatraz #MobHistory #TrueCrime