Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 450: Alcatraz Part III - We Gotta Get Off This Rock

Episode Date: April 24, 2021

On the final episode of our Alcatraz series, we tell the stories of the convicts who attempted the impossible: breaking out of the famously inescapable prison. Did anyone manage to fly the coop?Kevin��MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

There's no place to escape to. This is the last on the left That's when the cannibalism started Here's the plan there, but we've got to Are you doing Sean Connery Other than the other than the sentiment that you've expressed the worst Sean Connery, I have ever heard in my life You've got to get out the lock that is broken that is only worse than when Sean Connery tried to do an Irish accent escape I am hanging out with thespian Extraordinaire Henry's a Browsky Henry Shabrowski a shrapnel woman. It's not helping your career

Marcus Parks as well. Hello Today today, we are on to part three of our series on Alcatraz specifically focusing on the escapes From Alcatraz or perhaps just the escape. We got to get off this mother No, you're that you're switching up snakes on a plane and the rock These motherfucking eggs As we said in the last episode Alcatraz was built as a response to the wave of crime sweeping through America during prohibition

Until its end the administration of Alcatraz and the FBI Claimed that the penitentiary housed only the most incorrigible of Incorrigibles and I'll put this on them why so many jerks ended up at Alcatraz because if those are your standards That is who you're gonna attract. Oh, I see interesting interesting However, some prisoners including a few of the men we'll be talking about today They were men who had committed relatively minor infractions But they were sent to Alcatraz simply because somebody in the establishment didn't like them Is that kind of the the duty of the same dude that we called last week the the guy the Booker of Alcatraz the Talon Scout

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean essentially they would put in for a transfer to Alcatraz like fuck you I'll send you to Alcatraz and then they would apply to like this guy is an incorrigible He needs to go to Alcatraz He needs to be in the most secure place in all of America and that you know talent scout for Alcatraz would decide because Alcatraz It's like was pretty small. They didn't have a whole lot of room there So, you know, someone would call in a favor and say like hey, this guy pissed on my shoes Send him to Alcatraz, and they'll say yep, okay, he's got a fucking open pee hole and you can't help a piss Absolutely, and you know it was a good day at your local penetrant entry when somebody got the letter

They were going to Alcatraz and started singing. I've got the golden ticket I've got the golden ticket in my Filonious hand Alcatraz for ruining the chocolate river. Oh, isn't that sad? Well, as far as what some of those small infractions were a man named Eric Taylor was sent to Alcatraz for tax evasion Would be escapee Alan West was sent there for car theft and near the end of the prison's lifespan a man was sent to Alcatraz for stealing a pig might as well steal his wife Seriously the worst infraction I have ever heard in my entire life because there is a fat family in Texas that we're planning on having a pork dinner

And that pork dinner was canceled that family got a divorce and you know what that ruined the entire Bush legacy And that's why Jeb failed And Marcus's should also know how precious a pig is because you're a part of pig royalty Train pigs to walk in a straight line with the little slappy sticks like on that one show in Discovery Plus I know the tap-tap the tap-tap my family are but they're very talented when it comes to pigs Oh, absolutely now some men were even sent to Alcatraz solely on the suspicion of being a troublemaker Brian Conway killed a man in self-defense, but was still sent to Alcatraz because he was quote Certified incorrigible which really meant that he gave the FBI a run for their money

All I know is I can just see myself in the showers and all of a sudden Oh my god, is the pig thief around Next thing you know, I'm that's how I tricked him into my net. Oh my god These showers are horrible. I know people are so violent You're one big old long pig and you turn around when I made my simple little call your big old wet Soapy pig. I hate it here When this guy was in prison in Atlanta and a mutiny was a Bruin Officials shipped Conway off to Alcatraz just on the possibility that he might be responsible. Oh

But on today's episode, we're not focusing on the people who stayed on Alcatraz. Yeah, boo Yeah, you want to get alpha you want to get off of that rock instead we're talking about the people who escaped We will however spend a good chunk of time talking about the men who tried escaping from Alcatraz But ultimately failed because while the prison was not quite as inescapable as officials made it out to be It was still to say the least Difficult to leave. It was very difficult to leave But I definitely watched several documentaries over this week that all kind of say the same thing Do you say in Francisco Bay waters? You might as well sleep in a valley of swords

You cannot enter the water meanwhile I typed in swimming in San Francisco Bay, and it's just a there the first thing comes up is a picture of an old woman in floaties You can see Alcatraz in the background and she's just kind of cold-looking They just say you have to wear a wetsuit Now from what the guards said about the men of Alcatraz and inmates first thought upon arriving at the island was how he could get off But most of the inmates could never figure out even the first step towards an escape plan I am way way too juvenile for you to say the sentence in inmates first impulse was trying to figure out how to get off We because immediately thought of him just jerking off as soon as he got to the rocky got aroused and tried to touch his penis

So I don't even know why you say those sentences Marcus You know I wrote that and thought that you might think that and decided to leave it in as a test and you failed that test Marcus is already becoming a teacher. He's got the thing Professor glasses on crushing dreams Well out of the thousands of men who did stretches at Alcatraz only 23 attempted escape in 14 documented incidents and while none have been confirmed to have gotten away scot-free and alive It's very possible that at least five men escaped Alcatraz Island Now as far as Alcatraz Island itself went the waters around Alcatraz while dangerous

We're not quite as deadly as the propaganda proliferated by the prison officials made it out to be yeah Because your Nana can take it really the infamous sharks that supposedly circled the island of Alcatraz were virtually Non-existent and so rare in the San Francisco Bay that one didn't even need to factor them into the equation When attempting an escape the sharks were just to keep the dumbest prisoners out of the water That is gonna greatly inhibit my plan of putting a harness on a shark Mm-hmm having him sort of carry me to the shore. You're also talking about a lot of shark training Yeah, you don't need a lot of chum and that's hard to bring in and out of jail The they kept the rumor going. I was watching one documentary

We have where prison guard was like it's fun to see the idiots be scared of fish But there also was a rumor that it was probably more of a joke that the guards would catch sharks Cut off one of the fins just so they'd be forced to swim in a circle around the island I love Alcatraz jokes just so fun Now concerning that journey while the swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco certainly isn't easy It isn't even close to impossible Back when Alcatraz held a tiny town two teenage daughters of prison guards swam from the island to the mainland in 47 minutes or so claimed the Alcatraz women's auxiliary and you can just see them in the back of a Pink Floyd concert just

filthy totally It was all worth it Becky And while that sounds like a somewhat apocryphal story a cheekily named event called the Alcatraz shark fest swim has escorted more than 15,000 swimmers from a boat floating just off the island to the shore over the last 27 years And that's just one of dozens of Alcatraz swim clubs. All of this was done out of spite It is because people have been saying it for years about Noah could swim in the bay and now everyone's like well We all can swim in the bay I think this anti shark propaganda has gone too far straight up from the 1960s version of Batman

Where they say the shark will attack you even if you're trying to get out of the water So you need shark repellent to jaws and now this I don't think the shark is a bad animal whatsoever and needs to be defended It's not it's the perfect ultimate predator and it keeps all of the oceans in line I agree Now the swim from Alcatraz is actually so simple that a nine-year-old named James Savage four foot six and 57 pounds Swim from San Francisco to Alcatraz and back What in just a little over two hours and he just broke the record set the previous year by a ten-year-old

What well that kid was technically thrown from a car into the bay Also, he had to do it for survival. I'm not sure if the modern nine or ten-year-old could pull that off That seems exhausted. Yeah, you do that was last year. That was last year. Holy shit It's what happens. That's the strength you build from getting cyberbullied Now all these people obviously had wet suits and swim gear and such But the relative ease in which they made the swim proves that a swim from Alcatraz to the shore was by no means the death sentence That Alcatraz prison officials made it out to be but you're also counting on an Alcatraz prisoner I'm just saying this knowing about any single thing other than steel and pigs

Because they don't know how to survive on the water whatsoever. You can easily drown I can drown in a tub if I'm tired enough and I want to you could drown in a toilet And I think you almost did drown in a sprinkler system that you thought was a tub You almost run in a fountain that you thought was a pool It was just a fountain in and you really almost got kicked out of that hotel It was physically impossible because the water did only come up to my mid-thigh when I was sitting down So technically didn't cover my full legs. I give it. It was a bad afternoon. I was hungover and I And I was filled with magic. Yeah, for those that don't remember that conversation

He truly was he took a bath in a fountain and kids walked by him and were like mommy Why is that man in a fountain and you're like it's wrong to talk out loud about men with disabilities? Now Alcatraz inmate had to be either extraordinarily clever or Moronically bold to even get in the water the American mixture And most of the criminals who spent time at Alcatraz talked a big game when they arrived But they ultimately failed to deliver on even an attempt For example, there was Harvey Bailey the so-called dean of American bank robbers who walked away with ill-gotten gains worth $15 million in today's money before he was caught

Upon arriving at Alcatraz. He said that no prison would ever hold him hell. Yeah, man stick it to the man And sure he was wrong. Oh and spent 12 years on the rock well Well, my question is you steal 15 million dollars grease the wheels. I'm a patrolman. I'm making 30k a year I noticed you stole 15 million dollars. I also stole a pig back in the day. Oh, we thought that it was you Here's a million bucks to leave me the F alone. Well, this was back when it was a million dollars You're not gonna rest it worth you 50 million dollars. It wasn't 50 million then it was like $9,000 and two kettles of milk Alvin old creepy carpus of the Ma Barker gang bragged that he could break out of any prison made by man Can't hold him down. Oh, no way. He then spent 25 years on Alcatraz. Oh, it's so funny when you're talking metaphorically

Yeah, yeah, make a lot of statements. It's more of a he was like no no no that was a hypothetical question Yeah, can I be kept out and I be kept behind bars? Also, it's the mental prison that I was talking about I'm free as hell in my mind Then there was Roy Gardner the male bandit who become a criminal after a piece of shrapnel lodged itself in his head While he battled the Germans and France during World War one. What? Yeah, Gardner actually seemed to develop a kind of Stockholm syndrome in Alcatraz And he actually made security tighter by rigging a dumbwaiter in the vegetable room to act as a crab trap Where the veggies could come down, but nothing including inmates could go up

What do you mean like when you mean a crab trap like actually collecting crabs? No, no, no, it just worked like a crab trap, you know, where you know, it's where they go in but they can't come out So, but where were the vegetables going? It's not it's not a one-to-one comparison. It's just like I don't know how the fuck a crab trap That's just how the fucking book put it Work like a crab trap Maybe if I just said that it worked right like a crab trap you guys would let it go But obviously you didn't

Where's the vegetables coming down from? Why do you care about the vegetables, the maize and insane person trying to do something about with the vegetables? I don't know if it's like kernels of wheat in my mind, but I just watched a bunch of crabs in my mind Just eating a bunch of corn in a dumb way Well even machine-gun Kelly who despite his name never killed anyone and was actually most famous for kidnapping an oil baron Machine-gun Kelly was broken by the rock Kelly spent 17 of his last 21 years on earth as the Alcatraz Cobbler and bookkeeper and he exited Alcatraz with the much less imposing nickname of

Pop-gun Kelly. Oh That's not nice. Was it peach cobbler? No Shoes the shoemaker. I think she went to you know, he's Look at his subtle smile knowing if you just lay some extra strength humor in the episode But while those men all seemed to settle into the maddening daily routine of the rock There were plenty who attempted escape and the escapes began before the island even became Alcatraz penitentiary Alcatraz means pelican

Pelican In 1918 back when it was still a military prison consisting of a brick building Four inmates snuck past the guards on Thanksgiving and sailed to San Francisco on a makeshift raft Never to be seen again. It's such a Norman Rockwell painting of like a bunch of old-timey prisoners just sneaking past a bunch of like Filled with turkey like a And this this is the story. This is the most famous story, right? Absolutely. No, this is not the most famous one No, no, we're gonna spend time on that story. Oh, yeah

Three other prisoners soon tried the same thing But they were swept out to sea by the tide and a ferry boat crew picked them up chilled Seasick and praying for rescue in the cold waters of the ocean. Oh my However, there were others at this time who worked smarter not harder at escaping the island One prisoner who did clerical work simply wrote out an order for his own release Using a Ford signature what he then walked down to the wharf Presented the order took a boat to Fort Mason and caught a streetcar headed to downtown San Francisco He made himself a get-out-of-free jail pass. Yeah, just walked out in middle school. You never got a hold of the hall pass

No, I gotta go every once while if you knew the right people and you made the right connections You get a couple of blank hall passes and you fill them out for yourself Or as I was getting I kept getting pulled to the vines principal's office just to hang out I think he was grooming me He groomed me for success Because what he did was show me it's about who you know and about who you might be flirting with who might be a teacher I hung out with the vice principal as well, but mostly the secretaries. They were fantastic in that office But all those escapes that was before

Alcatraz became Alcatraz. Okay once Alcatraz Island became Alcatraz federal penitentiary Escapes became far more difficult although they were not impossible in 1937 just three years after the penitentiary opened two prisoners named Ralph Rowe and Ted Cole Just might have pulled it off Ralph wrote like many men in Alcatraz was a bank robber with a history of prison escapes While Ted Cole was sent to Alcatraz for killing his cellmate in Oklahoma Before trying to escape prison in a laundry bag. Whoa, that's that is pretty common actually Yes, I want a basket escape. Yeah, easy to look like a bunch of socks if you just lay there. Absolutely

But when Cole arrived at Alcatraz, he reportedly said quote and don't think I like it here I doubt I'll stay long You laugh at weird stuff. I didn't imagine Ted Cole to be like the Riddler, but now that you And as it was Cole stay was indeed short on December 16th 1937 Rowe and Cole were working in the rubber mat shop on the north end of the Island and when the guard left the shop Momentarily the two convicts race to a window where they'd already cut out two bars Once they got to the window they wiggled their way out Is this the one where they covered up the holes in the bars with shoe polish?

Because that's the thing where they would kind of they would dig dig dig dig dig dig this is old school where they dig Out the bottom of the border away, yeah, and then what they do to cover it is that they would stuff a bunch of shoe polish in it Yeah, oh no they they absolutely had all kinds of ways to hide the like little by little because you can't just get a hacksaw And just go Be done that day you had to do everything just a tiny little better to time some of them worked on for months and months I also want to put this in the ear of our listener all of these stories of the quote-unquote successful escape 10 attempts at Alcatraz show an incredible amount of Attention to detail and patience and honestly if there's anything you're trying to escape or any deed you're trying to commit

It's most important to do it bit by bit day by day It's such an incremental pace that no one knows what you're doing until it's too late You are forgetting the most important and the most difficult aspect of escaping from prison, which is weight loss You have to lose a bunch of weight. We learned that from the people who escaped upstate, New York They were on a day before that buddy. Yeah, also Marcus. I have a question. They were in a rubber mat They they made rubber mats. Yeah, why not take one of those out and use that as a flotation device That price sink right to the ground. Why would a rubber? Because I would say if you took a rubber mat. No, not but unless it's porous

What if it's porous flow, but if it's dense then it's just gonna sink right to the bottom because really cuz yeah I figure a rubber mat. Yeah, that's okay. Good point. Never mind. I don't know what floats. Hope. Hope does, yes indeed Luckily on the day they escaped it was foggy as it often was on Alcatraz during the winter months As such the tower guards missed the escape and after the men got past the towers They smashed a lock on a fence with a rock and jumped off a cliff into the bay Neither the men nor their dead bodies were ever found But four years after the escape the San Francisco Chronicle published a story claiming that Ralph Rowe and Ted Cole Had escaped to South America where they were living happy and free

I mean, honestly, if you want to live in a if you want to live as a vagrant underground, just stay in san francisco Yeah, we have been they could have just gone to the freaking but san francisco is very expensive Not if you live with not if you live a certain lifestyle Rather live in Alcatraz than in the fight in the fucking tenderloin on the street You don't get three squares a day, but yeah, it's three knots in a cot We'll see we didn't have funer than tenderloin, but the people who are harassing us They were having a good time Yeah, the people that were fucking each other in between the cars

Yes, so I'm saying you be the couple fucking between the cars and they're having a blast if we were in Italy We would have called that romance. Absolutely Yeah, that guy that I saw in the fucking CVS with an gaping open wound on his thigh was having a fantastic day And you would think he was there for for band-aids, but he was there for rockstar energy Now while it is a romantic notion to think that these men made it all the way to san francisco Using nothing more than their grit and determination. We also can't say for sure that they made it for lack of dead bodies See one thing that is absolutely true about the waters around Alcatraz is when the tide flow is rolling It's nearly impossible to fight your way through on either a raft or while you're swimming

Like while I was mentioning your nana can swim in the bay The truth is is that's why it's good to have a someone to guide you while you're swimming Is that you're supposed to go at certain times because the rip tide can be really intense Sure. Yeah when those kids were swimming to and from Alcatraz, there was a guy in a kayak right next to him You know, they always keep it's not that's a thing. It's not easy But you know these swims are all carefully timed timed out But that was just the raft molester to make sure that they were moving fast. Yeah, of course that was the person they were trying to escape No, it's entirely possible that the bodies of Ralph roe

Oh, and you want to play the character Now You did this Marcus you left this you left this door open because he looks for raft molesters Henry's new SNL character I gotta floaty. Don't you want one? We're actually looking for someone more like mango Oh, yeah, they always are asking for another man Well, it is entirely possible that the bodies of Ralph roe and Ted Cole were swept out to sea through the golden gate Or their bodies could have gotten caught on underwater debris Or if the crabs got to their stomachs the gas that usually bring

The gas that usually brings a body to the surface had nowhere to gather Which is why you always slit the belly during a sea burial because otherwise Yeah, the reason why a body floats is because gas gathers in the stomach and that's what brings the body to the top So if you slash a stomach and a body that you're throwing into the water that fucker will sink right to the bottom That's great information It's actually quite interesting. So you don't need the cement shoes literally just cut the gut and throw them in Well, I mean they still might wash up the cement shoes are good for uh, you know, that that's good to make sure But yeah, you really want to slit that belly. Yeah, you're sending a message with the cement shoes

That's the whole point. That's like you the whole point is to see a guy floating there with the cement in there. It's kind of fun Yeah, yeah, okay Yeah, and of course there's a lot of crabs in san francisco bay and crabs are sometimes known to go at the bellies Of dead bodies. They're going to go for the the softest flesh. Oh, okay, interesting Now perhaps spurred on by even the possibility that roe and Cole escaped Alcatraz was beset by a number of escape attempts in the following years In 1938 three prisoners named rufus franklin thomas limerick and tex lucas Bashed a guard's head with a hammer in the model shop and made a break for it

The prisoners however were almost immediately spotted by the guard towers limerick was shot just above the eye and died Instantly franklin was shot on the right shoulder and lucas was caught hiding under a catwalk But as far as franklin and lucas went they both received a life sentence for the death of the guard Would you say that there was almost a The vibe I use I seem to get from old prisoners talking about alcatraz Is that there was almost not a competition to see if who could escape? But this feeling that because

The officials at alcatraz made such a big deal about how this is an inescapable prison That we put those that have escaped from other places here and oftentimes they have escaped from leavenworth or these other big old spots So they come here. So it almost kind of feels like this is the new york yankees or people who who escaped from prison Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the rep. Yeah Well a year after that one five inmates made a break for it and included in that group was a bank robber named Henry young See young had gotten his fill of alcatraz after doing time in the dark hole for a myriad of infractions Including but not limited to Not eating all of his food having extra socks in his cell

Starting a fistfight during a ball game over an umpire's decision and for blowing a raspberry at a guard Oh, these are all fun things. That really isn't that bad. Yeah, just They made him finish his food. What kind of we talked about it last we talked about this at length from the last episode No, I know but I just didn't realize that you got sent to the hole. Oh, yeah for not finishing your food I thought it was more like Like more just like they made fun of you any that was what alcatraz. That's why we even started to really cover alcatraz It was just how strict they were. That's what their whole point is we Fucking break the worst of the worst. Yeah

Well in addition to all that Henry young was also severely punished for banging his pillow on the concrete floor of his cell While leading his fellow inmates at a fairly straightforward song about a prison guard that went like this They'll hang old meat head from a sour apple tree They'll hang old meat Pretty good day in alcatraz Wow, this is actually man, you know say what you want. This music is fucking awesome Oh, do you remember uh, that was what we talked about with her word mullin

Uh about how he would sing and scream and sing and say also to the point that it made ed come ed Kemper really really upset Oh Well in retaliation to the song old meat head dragged young from his cell Threw him down a flight of stairs and knocked out two of his teeth by jumping on his face I don't like it. This is just all of that punishment for making art. Please Two other guards then took their turns beating young with saps before again throwing him in the dark hole Guys, maybe you'd like to hear my b-sides Don't hang meat head from anything. I am sorry. I'm gonna admit it. I do like that song better

But unfortunately, I'm still gonna have to jump on your face. I can write a whole series of songs So young and four other inmates including ma barker's son doc tired of all this shabby treatment Escaped by cutting through the bottom bar of their cells using a banjo string Coated with an abrasive compound that ate through the bars Interesting They were hastily making a raft out of driftwood on alcatraz beach when they were predictably Spotted by the guards and machine gun fire came raining down doc barker was immediately shot in the head and killed another accomplice was shot in the legs and a third surrendered

The last two however, including Henry young fled and managed to hide out on the island One inmate was found near a cliff frozen and begging for mercy while young was found nearby inexplicably wearing only his underwear that was the first instance of white boy summer He uh, they the reason why he was only in his underwear. This is the truth was that uh, when they they didn't have a plan But when they got to the beach, I was like reading this it was this covered in a documentary and in a plan So what they got there and they realized oh, we have to make a raft They removed all their clothes and cut them into strips and try to tie a bunch of logs together And then because they're stupid and they didn't know what they were doing

They didn't work and so then they were forced to flee from on the beach new Doesn't the lord make that plan for you when you see that you're on a beach and the only way off is to swim Why didn't they just start swimming because they were told an hour and a half they were told the base full of sharks And that if you go in the water, you'll die. You'll freeze it up. So it really was psychological Yeah, because they could have very well made it right Marcus If it was the right time of day, but it was really luck Because unless you had access to tide charts, then you didn't really know about the the title commons and goons of alcatraz So it really whether you made it to whether a prisoner made it from the beach in on alcatraz to san francisco

It was complete and total luck. Well, wouldn't you know what guys you escaped with the right prisoner kissle? I've got the tide charts right here in my briefcase There it is they were in my ass Yes, that's where they have to keep stuff Now security was actually I found a fun a fun new term a fun new prison term During the research here ditty bag Ditty bag it's where they kept their their dominoes and their dice and all that stuff They carried all their stuff. They carried the ditty bag around. Oh, that's fun. That's nice

Now security was heightened after each breakout and after the 1939 attempt Most bars in the prison were made toolproof and the locks in the cells were upgraded with electronics that made them that much harder to break But while these improvements certainly slowed down escape attempts, they by no means stopped them In 1943 a group of four inmates which included Bonnie and Clyde gang member floyd hamilton Planned to swim to san francisco using five gallon cans as floaties Okay, once they arrived in san francisco the plan was to open up the cans because inside of the cans Were four army uniforms that they'd stolen from the dry cleaning shop So they could just put on the army uniforms

This is during world war two and they could just blend into the wartime crowd No one would be the wiser cool if I am super stoned. It's 8 p.m I'm in a cell we're talking about this story so far so good This is a great plan And it actually was a pretty good plan. Yeah, if they would have stuck to the plan Yes Now the plan was to make their break after the morning count on april 13th under the cover of the morning fog But the guards stuck around longer than usual and the longer the guards stayed the more the fog disappeared

So instead of just waiting for another foggy day of which there were many The men lost patience knocked the guard and the skull tied him up and made a break for a 30 foot high cliff They jumped in with their floaties and started swimming But since the morning fog had indeed burned off The south tower guards spotted them right off the shore and opened fire again with his machine gun One inmate was shot in the head But the fellow escapee did the right thing and dragged him back to shore The other two though James Borman and Floyd Hamilton he if Bonnie and Clyde fame disappeared

Borman was soon found shivering behind a boulder near a cave But it took another three days for the bulls to find Floyd as it turned out Floyd had been hiding in a cave near where Borman was found the entire time Wedged in between two rocks and when he finally shimmied out of his crack He was wearing only his underwear. He was covered in lacerations from jagged rocks And he was by reports sporting the look of a trapped wounded animal Just tell me if it's Wednesday I only came out because I knew there would be Salisbury steaks

He may have been able to trip him out and make him think that he wasn't human If he would have come out and started saying crab people crab people and they'd be like they're coming from the rocks But to be honest if you are one of the sniper guards at Alcatraz, this seems like a pretty good job Like if you want to snipe people Well, these guys are old chances They were all trained marksmen every single man in the guard tower was top of the top of the line And that's like it That's where they put a lot of their money in concentration was like in these snipers in the guard towers

That it was that one big reputation that Alcatraz Has rightfully earned. Yeah, which is you get shot if you try to escape here. Wow. Yeah Now although most of the escape attempts we've talked about thus far have met violent ends And they mostly involved in mates hitting a guard in the head and running for it Some men devised clever long-term plans to escape the rock And this one might be my favorite escape attempt of all my favorite long-term plan is just wait out your sentence That would be a good one And this next guy he was not in Alcatraz for life. He had a long sentence, but not in there for life

John K. Giles stole pieces of an army sergeant's uniform out of the laundry bit by bit over a period of years Slowly constructing a costume without raising any suspicion. This is what background actors do too It really this is straight up that Johnny cash slog about how he stole to make up with the car that he wanted to have Yeah, yeah, of course. One piece at a time. Yeah. Yeah. Do a one piece at a time. I won't say Yeah, there was a cramp song that was hold. There was a whole thing with that Psycho belly. That's that's the first uh That's the first term the first used term the first usage of the term. Psycho belly is in that song. Oh, you got mad Yes, you did for no reason

No, I wasn't mad. I was mad at myself for not remembering that immediately. Of course That's why it's hard to have a conversation about music even with oneself The John's plan was solid in theory because it was simple nonviolent and quiet like the best plans are He figured that while wearing this uniform He could hop on the boat that came to pick up the army uniform See laundered and ride it to san francisco where he disembark as a free man. Yeah, but giles Unfortunately didn't have enough intel on exactly what happened after one got on a boat from alcatraz

Nor did he have any idea where the boat was actually going once it left the island He just makes one big circle just comes right back to alcatraz Instead of san francisco the boat went to fort mcdowell on nearby angel island And when a count on the army boat showed one extra man and the count at alcatraz showed one less prisoner Uh-oh john was taken back to alcatraz where the inmates called him wrong way giles until the day of his release That's fucking cruel. It really is. That's cruel. There's no reason for that. We all know and he's like Yeah, you think that this is fun for me. I still have all of this captain's gear I do love that the prison guards did like common core math and they're like well if they have one more

one more fake soldier on the boat going to that Uh, then we were losing one prisoner. That's a great way to learn math, isn't it? Isn't it? It is Now the next big escape attempt came in 1946 with the battle of alcatraz discussed at length on the previous episode After that deadly debacle warden johnston beefed up defenses and removed all weapons from the prison itself Instead he noted how the marines brought down the rebels and therefore installed gun ports along the south wall of the prison Through which guards could fire rifles from the catwalk in the event of another incident Doing time I watched you to prepare for this episode and this is true. I watched urnus goes to jail

And the soundtrack to that movie is fantastic and it's important to remember Criminal reform needs to happen in this country and we need to see it's through the eyes of urnus goes to jail Because you know what happens if we try to kill these prisoners with a death penalty. What did you just give them zap powers? Oh, that's horrible And let's not forget that the pen scene in the courtroom is still one of the funniest scenes ever committed to cellulite Top five comedic moments of all time. Yeah, he was also a voice actor in uh in toy story Yeah Now after warden johnston retired warden swope took over and while swope was in many ways a bit of a sadist

He also allowed more activities such as painting and movie nights every other weekend Oh, well the goal is to you give with one hand and you take with the other So you you heavily you try to heavily prize the people that do well in jail And then you heavily punish anybody that fucks with the rules Now it's hard to say if it was the increased security or the expansion of privileges But after the battle of alcatraz the island had no serious escape attempts at all for a full 10 years the longest stretch in alcatraz history and of course you can thank carrie grant for that and his amazing acting Why would you leave the rock when he is performing on tuesday's movie night?

Oh, you're talking about the movie just the star power of carrie grant. Yes, absolutely Actually, sure If they were playing a movie that i liked in prison i was planning an escape I would wait until i watched the movie that i liked absolutely because movies were more rare than exactly also the food was good Yeah, food was great There was however one last serious escape attempt before the incident that effectively shut down the rock that happened in 1958 It was perpetrated by clade johnson and erin burget although neither man would survive the break Now concerning these two criminals as author jay cambell bruce described clade johnson

His weaknesses were flashy cars whiskey mixed with lemon juice and a plump blonde named butcher knife billy glade I like clade johnson That would be a friend of mine. He's a cool guy. I don't know about the whiskey with what was it lime juice? Whisky with lemon juice you could have a little bit if you have a little lemon juice with ice in it You got it like a nice like fragrant like bourbon a little sweet. I'm i mean, it was prohibition i guess That johnson doesn't this point. No, that's this point. Yeah, now johnson does sound like a cool guy The reason why it took him so long to get caught was because he was quiet well mannered and courteous during his hold ups As opposed to the more bombastic bank robbers of the time

He just simply people usually thought he was joking where he just walked him to say like Uh, please uh empty out your register and they're like, oh you you're such a card and then he'd pull out a gun and be like No, I need you to empty it out right now and then they go, okay The something about the casual gentlemanly like bank robber is such it's like it is still kind of like Ooh, it's fun. It's like It's classic. It's kind of american tradition But johnson's luck ran out like most men's did and alcatraz soon became his home Johnson had been on the island for nine years

But in year number nine He was put on garbage detail with a criminal named erin burgeon nicknamed wig due to his long blonde curls Still too dare say that these curls ain't natural And you even dare look at my head and even seem to think I have a lace front because I don't Let me just uh with strong winds You look great. You look great. I'm a natural blind. That's not a comb over. That is nice According to wigs father He had been a mighty good boy who went to church never drank and made an honest living picking cotton until they got mixed up with a

No-account woman. I'd never been bald This so-called no-account woman took wig from banner missouri to st Louis where wig joined a gang and got picked up for a postal robbery with eight loaded guns in his car It's what you do to impress a woman one guy tries to kill a president and the next guy next guy, you know Works on a podcast network. Yeah, sure different types Now johnson and wigs plan to escape alcatraz wasn't complicated They threatened to guard with a shiv while they were on a garbage detail They tied them up and they headed straight for the water and bereft of a real plan

Johnson was found half an hour later chattering his teeth while saying they made a good try, but it just didn't work wig however was not found for another two weeks because wig was the first and only man to have been Confirmed to have drowned during his escape from alcatraz island. Oh my god That water must have been so cold his scalp must have separated from his from his skull Because there seems to be his floating beautiful natural hair was just found on the beach There was a wig the whole time He's also a liar Now there were a lot of ways to fuck up the swim from alcatraz to san francisco

But wig made the worst mistake one could possibly make See wig wasn't too bright and he figured that since the water was cold the obvious solution Would be to wear a lot of clothes He wore heavy shoes an extra pair of socks and an extra pair of long cotton drawers and and he also Tied he also taped up the cuffs to his pants to make it see to make it like oh no They won't get in through these pants if I tape it up They won't just fucking soak right on through

But he ended up just what he ended up actually making weights for his legs everything turned into a big long wake He got waterlocked and he sunk straight down to the bay and when they found his body He was still wearing the homemade wooden fins that he'd affixed to his shoes Which only made him heavier just to look on his surprise bald face like at the bottom of the ocean I almost have sympathy because it's so dumb. He's so stupid. He's so very very stupid. Yeah Now wig been the 18th man who tried to escape the rock five had died and two had vanished But most had in fact been beaten by the cold waters that formed Alcatraz's natural barrier But in 1962 three men would execute their escape attempt with complete preparation and supreme confidence

And while some argue that they drowned in the bay It seems more and more likely as time goes on that in 1962 Frank Morris and the Anglain brothers escaped from Alcatraz Whoa, cool. This is a this is again like Robert Stroud such crime history and of all the movies Like how we said how bird man from Alcatraz did we how we said bird man of Alcatraz? You know made Robert Stroud appear to be a guy who had his shit together And it's like a handsome movie star and all this shit sure escape from Alcatraz

To me really fits the story like you know Clint Eastwood is great in that movie and it's such a good I don't know. It's a I love this part of crime history I mean the guy that we're talking about Frank Morris. He was played by Clint Eastwood So just to have fucking have it like that's that's what kind of man Frank Morris was Now Frank Morris wasn't necessarily a bad person, but he was certainly a lifelong criminal Coming in just under the genius line with an IQ of 133 Frank was primarily a burglar with a long history of successful escapes He's just one of those guys who's always been in jail. He's been in out of jail. He's a career criminal

Right. Yeah. See just before being sent to Alcatraz Frank Morris was doing a 10-year stretch at Angola for robbery and possession of marijuana Oh, no, and while working in the fields cutting sugarcane, he and a fellow inmate named William Martin Disappeared They made their way to New Orleans where they cased a bank in the small town of Slidell just across Lake Pontchartrain Once the plan was formulated Frank William and another partner named Earl Bronke sprung into action on Thanksgiving night I don't know why so many fucking things happen on Thanksgiving night I think it's because it's a dead time and people normally stay home. Yeah on Thanksgiving night

They bored a hole in the rear wall of the bank burned open two vaults and came away with the haul of over $6,000 The problem though was that it was $6,000 in coins And also, how do you get that all out? And he must have like had to put that into some kind of truck or some show that that's very heavy very It had to have just been like silver dollars. It had to have just been all but still 6,000 Even if it was completely silver dollars, that's still 6,000 silver dollars. It's also very suspicious When you know when one bank knows that they lost $6,000 in coins and then every go like yes one rules worse, please Let me just

You know, just like put the little pile is dragging in a garbage bag behind you all of the toys Shhh shhh shhh shhh everywhere you go. Now the gang lived as high of a life as coins allowed for a month and a half Yeah, all the gumballs you could eat all the sticky hands But the FBI soon tracked them down to a motor court southwest of baton rouge Where the three men were found sharing company with three ladies sex Oh my For the escape and the added charge of bank robbery the soft spoken and generally quiet frank morris was sent to alcatraz Where he soon made unlikely friends with a chatty inmate named allen west

Who'd been sent to alcatraz for driving a stolen car across state lines? Oh, it's like yin and yang they have fun together. He's quiet. He's loud together. They are normal Within 10 months though frank morris was joined by a couple of familiar faces In october of 1960 the anglin brothers john and clarence arrived from the federal pen in Atlanta Where both had just happened to have served time with frank in the past Now the anglins were bank robbers from a town in florida called little manatee They'd been nabbed for sticking up a bank in alabama for 19 000 dollars following an escape from the florida state prison And that escape from florida state prison had been clarence's fourth prison break

Just lay low. Have they ever heard of the term lay low? They're too free, man They're too excitable. They can't be held down by these walls. These guys aren't taking shit from nobody I feel like they could have just gone gotten the cabin lived on the farm whatever it may have been for the rest of their life These are the type of crimes. I'm not going to celebrate but the to me. These are the funnest crimes like bank robbery You know, so we're no one's getting murdered or knowing. Absolutely. It's just the bank getting money taken from them It's like good. Go take their money And even after getting popped for the bank job in alabama The anglins tried escaping leavenworth by hiding themselves in a box packed with bread

But both were caught when the supervisor noticed the men loading the box into a truck were struggling to lift it It's like all right now quit practicing your damn pantomime. I know this ain't heavier than it's supposed to be You damn pantomimes are hypnotizing me with your soundless and your wordless motions Either that or two people are trying to escape You're fired Now as opposed to morris who is a meticulous planner more on the introspective side The anglins were described as cunning impulsive swamp country throwbacks But for whatever reason morris the anglins and allen west were the perfect for some to pull off

What is most likely the only successful escape from alcatraz? Wow, I got kind of emotional reading the one part where the the brothers were separated for a long time in different prisons and how like Coming to alcatraz together was like a reunion for them. Oh, that's a weird thing where they got to see each other Like that's gotta be one of those like prison friendships seem to be kind of fun Yeah, you see guys in certain stints, but then you know later on he goes and you know like He kills a whole family or something, but then you can see him again. Then you get to see him again. That's nice Yeah, it's like in life after lock up where uh, you know where love after lock up or life after lock up Depending on which season you're watching, but it's like when the ladies uh stay in touch with their former cellmate and they call each other

They're bunkies It's my bunkie or wifey either one. Oh wifey is when they had a lot of fun Now by 1960 alcatraz had loosened up quite a bit when it came to the rules The new warden was a good-natured fella named olyn g blackwell Who quite oddly remade alcatraz in the image of a school for wayward girls All right, the alcatraz mixed with the wayward girls begins to feel like the kink.com set I like the idea. So this guy was a real reformist. He was Yeah, well, he was a good-natured man and with alcatraz or probably with any prison

You know the the prison reflects the warden and what's inside the warden and the the decisions that are made They're looking to redirect the men's anger. He put brittle plastic Crocheting and knitting needles up for sale in the commissary along with yarns of all hues and instruction booklets on how to tackle needlework before long knitting and crocheting were trends in Alcatraz and each night before bedtime the soft click-click of knitting needles could be heard through the halls of the prison As some of the most hardened criminals in america crochet doilies and knitted bedspreads to be sent out as gifts for friends and family Hey Ted! Hey Ted, look! Little swatsikas! Man, I never feel like we're the first hipsters. This is so cool

I love that we're kind of like neofashes, but like we're kind of we knit. I'm a soft boy Nazi. Yeah Yeah, well perhaps relaxed by that soothing clicking and clacking the guards also Just sort of laid back See in the past Alcatraz guards would constantly patrol the halls during the four hours prisoners spent in their cells before lights out By 1960 though the guards rarely got up from their stools And even when they did patrol the corridors cell checks had devolved into little more than quick glances From what Jay Campbell Bruce wrote while the gunmen and the guard towers were always ready with machine guns The feeling on the inside is that the doors are locked. Everything's tight and the men are embroidering doilies

Strange strange times at Alcatraz And naturally this loosening of the rules had a cascading effect Men playfully threw watered up balls of bread at the guards and the mess They talked to their neighbors and friends at their cell fronts openly and loudly and convicts with banjos guitars accordions and coronets Jammed with abandon almost every night of the week You just threw me back into the wayway machine because I used to fight. That's how you catch carp Yeah, you wad up little white bread. You throw that in there and you can get yourself a carp

Or I guess you can throw it in a prison guard either way. They're angry I do think that there is some term for carp in prison I think it literally does mean like a type of homemade condom or something I might be incorrect, but I do believe that that is a term a homemade condom in prison Yeah, where it's just like a leather glove like one finger of it You can reuse it. You can wash it out someone email side stories lpotl at gmail.com They should sell condoms in prison given the nature of what happens in prison I think it'd be good

But I don't think that they do because technically that is illegal to do in prison But also men can't get pregnant. Yeah, there's a series of other things here. Oh, yeah Yeah, I don't think prisons are necessarily filled with the type of men who use condoms Yeah, you never know though. You never know about changing culture. These people are nitty In other words, it's not hard to see why alcatraz was ripe for another escape attempt And the means for escape came in the form of an inmate electrician named willard winhoven See winhoven had removed a fan over a ventilator shaft over b-block in 1957 But it never replaced the fan which left an escape route onto the roof if one could get into the shaft

Now frank morris the mastermind behind this whole plot heard about this shaft from his new friend allen west But he needed to find a way to easily and quietly sidle his way in up and out Supposedly the eureka moment from morris came one day while he was clipping his fingernails in his cell Using the gunk cleaner on his clippers Morris found that he could chip away at the metal ventilation grill in his cell or chip away at the you know the plaster around it Sure So he rightly figured that all he had to do to access the open grate leading to the roof Was to slowly dig the grill out of the wall a little bit at a time

But he also knew that this would take fucking forever and he'd have to hide what he was doing in the meantime The solution to this problem was provided by allen west See allen played the accordion and since accordion cases are quite large Frank could use one to hide his work at night should the bulls glance in Then so frank took up the accordion. Yeah, I guess I could start playing the polish violin I can't think of something more annoying than being in prison and having your cell No offense marching in a fourth of july parade. Could you please stop playing that? Also, this is where we start to see all of the bits in

Every comedy movie do you love of prisoners slowly hiding like where the dust goes? I want to say this was a naked gun three There would they have those bits where it's just like he keep wherever frank goes to lunch And he has to drop all of the various soot out of his like his uh Sleeven ship This is the actual story that all of those bits might be wrongfully accused Could be

Well, once the plan was formulated john and clarence anglin joined allen west and frank morris And each man began digging out the grill and their respective cell piece by piece so they could all escape alcatraz together As far as what they did with the debris they avoided flushing it down the toilet So as to not draw the attention of a plumber Instead the men never chipped off more than what they could fit in their pocket without creating a bulge And the debris was dusted out into the yard This is important. It's it's paying attention and attention to detail Yeah, and having a lot of patience if you're willing could just do it piece by piece by piece

No one will know whatever it is you're doing take your time be slow with it The process of removing the grills took six months And that was even after frank morris created a more efficient digging implement by welding his nail clipper to a spoon Using matches wrapped in rubber bands to melt silver shavings that connected the two instruments Wow, they're fucking he really was very clever very creative But once morris dug out the grill he found that the grill was welded to four pieces of strap iron Embedded into the concrete Someone had already thought maybe they're going to try to get out through the fucking grill

But they didn't do a good enough job because all it took to pop that grill off Was a wedge fashioned out of a broom handle. He popped it in there stomped on it Strap iron cracked and the grill was off the wall. You know what I would have done Fill it with bees On the inside of the building is nothing but bees Honestly inside inside the building In the walls I'm glad that you're here as a part of the prison reform movement. I'm glad that you're here to these your experience

The only thing about the bees we thought about the bees is that bees One thing about them. They're not loyal to the guards And they don't see and understand they don't seem to differentiate between what are guards and what are prisoners The bees seem to sort of just be everywhere and and are now Attacking the birds. Listen you motherfucker. I got 18 crates of bees. I got to move for my wife is going to leave me Do you want these goddamn bees? She said get into the bee business. It was stupid. She said the honey business No one likes honey. She said this is the simpsons, right? Isn't that a whole bit in the simpsons where he's got the bees? He's got to get rid of them. Am I wrong?

I'm sure in the one of the 500 seasons that there's been a bee there's been a Homer is a beekeeper fucking episode somewhere on season 25 Exactly now once the grills came off the walls the men had to replace them with something So they made cardboard grills out of paper mache That was indistinguishable from the fucking original and they made the paper mache using magazine pages But they would only take out the pages that had ads on both sides Because if there were ads on both sides no one was going to fucking miss it and call attention to the fact that somebody was Ripping pages out of the fucking magazines if they would have told me this story in art class I would have given a flying fuck about paper mache. Yep. Because I hated those days

I hate it but I hate paper mache. Well, you blow up the balloon then you wrap the balloon and then you deflate the balloon And then you have a ball that's trash. It's trash. It's trash ball. It's garbage. I know what it is The original girl was then stored in the ventilation hole and no one was the wiser As far as how the process of making the fake grills went Frank Morris had Alan West keep an eye out for the guards And if a guard was coming West would whistle home on the range Which would be the cue for Morris to hide his work and quickly take the position of a man lounging on his bed Breeding a magazine just covered in sweat Nothing to see here

Now once the replacement grills were made Morris and one of the anglons were then able to shimmy up to this Legendary air vent for a little reconnaissance This time a mere whistle wouldn't do so West stood out in the hallway with his accordion Ready to play his version of come back to sorento if a guard decided to get off his ass that day again And that's the polish fire alarm. This whole thing is The music track is all the accordion That's the soundtrack to all of this. Yes But much to the prisoners dismay once they got to the top of the shaft

They were met with what else but a rain hood covering the top bolted down and barred up The inmates however were not deterred using a makeshift drill and some abrasive Carborundum string they were able to cut through six rivets holding down the rain hood And once the hood was gone, they used a bar spreader to break their last obstacle to freedom Part of the reason why they think they had such an ability to come up with like essentially new prison tech Is their rumors are I don't know what is real and what is not real But it seems to be that they estimate 80 people knew about the plan to do this Wow, and everyone stayed quiet

It was the people were lockstep apparently when there was an escape plan at Alcatraz everyone's like, how can I help? Because they're excited because number one it's something to do Yeah, you get to help people do a task and especially if you're a person who's not necessarily like Doesn't want to take the risk to escape or you're like you only have like five years You got to do just smuggle out some kind of thing There's like a little thrill to give somebody who's trying to make it to the outside Oh, I love smuggling out tools in my ass. I've been doing it for free for a long time You tell me you could actually use this hammer and I keep saying kissle. You don't have to put it up your ass

We're not in prison. Yeah. Well, it's good to prepare Well, the book escape from Alcatraz argues that uh, nobody knew about this. Yes, I don't know Yeah, I don't know because they do say like every time every time one of the anglons or west would be like Why don't we like we why don't we just ask this guy for this fucking string that we can get used to get through the bars? He's like no as few people as possible as few people as possible know about this shit Maybe it's just prisoners talking shit. Good babe. I also I also think prisoners much like much like high school a lot of gossip That's what I mean. Yeah, it's just them just saying like fuck it. They just like yeah, I knew about it I also know shot JFK and it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald. It was a little woman. I like to call Jackie Kennedy

You know what? That's the first time I've ever heard that and I'll go with it But of course there was the matter of how to give themselves as much lead time as possible Once they left their cells See even though guards didn't patrol much during the four hours before lights out They did patrol after the men were asleep to make sure of course that they were still in their cells So to make it appear as if they never left the cells each man constructed and painted again a paper mache head And even gave each one the correct hair color and hair style Using hair that one of the plotters pocketed after his shift at the barbershop

I would have put a little tooth little toothbrush near where my my groin is to make it look like I was having an erotic dream The guy would be like, whoa, he's got a little bone erection. He's definitely sleeping. He's having another one of his erotic dreams And then of course there was the matter of the swim See they knew enough about past escape attempts to know that the swim was usually where men either failed or died So instead of just going for it haphazardly, they made a raft out of raincoats Using a schematic found in an issue of popular mechanics. It was the how to escape from alcatraz Do you think we should publish this? I don't know. Yeah, you know people gotta know most people aren't an alcatraz. That's a good point By the end of it, the men had accumulated 55 raincoats and each one was sealed to the next

Using heat from the same hot water pipes that ensured the prisoners would never get acclimated to cold water Okay And so on June 11th, 1962 Frank Morris the Anglin brothers and Allen West made a break for it during the hour when the inmates were allowed to play Instruments and sing because they needed something to cover the sound of them shimmying through the shaft No, is it true? How long do you know how long the entire prep time took? What do you mean the end? Oh from the beginning of the the plan until think about two years Damn. Oh my goodness. Maybe maybe not exactly two years. I know it took six months for them to dig out the grill

Yeah, and then all of the other parts thing they did but then it's like then they after they dug out the grill They had to make the figure out how to make a fucking girl out of paper mache Then they had to figure out how to get the fucking rain grade off Then they had to figure out how to make paper mache heads then they had to figure out how to make the raincoats Like these things were done like one after another. They were not done simultaneously Each little thing was figured out one at a time and of course everything done with a finite amount of time Yes, I would assume that's interesting. So this is a long con Mm-hmm the dummies were put into place the men crawled in they replaced the real grills with the fake one

And finally they pulled their accordion cases towards the shaft with a string So any bull walking by would think each prisoner had just gone to bed early. They thought of everything I love that. This is the same escape attempt as the Kenosha kickers from home alone Where John Pandy was traveling like literally they stole this idea. I can't believe accordions are the crux of all of this Mm-hmm Now Morris and the Anglin brothers made it to the shore first and by stealing four boards from a nearby stack of lumber They gave their coat raft a little substance They pushed off at 10 p.m. By most estimates and they were never seen again

And there's a lot of talk of like how were they tracked? How did you know like where were they were in their escape attempt? and apparently the Prisoners that said that they knew what was going on is that the roof of alcatraz was covered as we've said a thousand times Birds and so when they went up the shaft That's how they knew they were going is that all of the birds started going crazy So they went up there because they had to first of all pull up this raft and then they had to complete the raft on the roof So when they pulled it all up, they had the one final step. It was like, but they're also fighting birds up there

That's a lot of bullshit and strap yourself to 12 20 birds. They could pick you up This is you fly off. This is real life when men's wives die. They die too. Oh Man, you just really bring up your dead wife a lot. No No, just enough Alan West, however had trouble. See he hadn't been able to figure out how to keep his wall from collapsing Ever since he broke out his grill So he'd glued the whole thing shut thinking he could easily break it free at the moment of truth But while he could have broken it quickly He couldn't have broken it quietly and by the time he made it to the shore at midnight

His partners in crime had already been gone for two hours. Oh That's a whole load Boat pulled out. Well, they had a they had an agreement, of course You are not ready to go. If you're not there, the ship is leaving. Yeah And defeated Alan West just gave up and went back to his cell So now that we know that three men indeed escaped Alcatraz The biggest question is whether or not Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers survived

Now there's a lot of debate concerning this topic But I found a lot of good information for both arguments in an article written for sf gate by katie dowd and andrew chammings Now chammings comes down firmly on the side that the three men did indeed survive and he has some compelling arguments to back it up See on that night the fog was high Visibility was good and the ebb tide at its peak ran only 2.2 knots, which is apparently relatively low Yeah, it is a lot of dot knots. Yeah Really? I'm not allowing it Oh, so I can't I actually don't allow that

I can't I can't express myself. You want to fuck? We're talking prison bro. You're stepping on my fucking turf You're gonna make shitty puns, bro. It's not even a fucking coming to my own. You're gonna make shitty fucking puns It's just dot knots. Yeah, because he said fucking knots bro like he's talking about wind Also dot knots Fought he was at these in that movie with the chicken birds Yeah Birds are you talking about the incredible mr. Limpet? Yeah, that's the one now. That's the one. He was the fish What's the one where hey, mr. Chicken? It's like hey there, mr. Chicken. Hey, blow me mr.

Now you're encroaching on my territory and you're encroaching on my territory meaningless facts that derail the show Marcus I can't believe that you did what he would mark it when Henry is done Oh my god, I'm gonna meet you guys in the showers. Alcatraz means pelican I am actually now I'm mad Really Chamming's argument mostly rests on the fact that no bodies were ever found by the statistics He cited two and three suicides from the golden gate bridge are recovered And these are the same fucking waters that these inmates were sailing into

Okay, so while it is possible for one body to get swept out to sea It's more unlikely that all three would be lost had they drowned Furthermore a modeling of the tides on the night in question. This modeling was done by pbs Chose that the raft if it held together would have ended up at either the marron headlands or Under the bridge if they just let the tide take them they would have made it Okay, speaking to the structural integrity of the raft though, even if it did completely disintegrate All three men were reportedly strong swimmers and considering how much of a planner frank morris was It's likely he trained for what would obviously be a challenging physical task

But how would he how would he train my bunch of prisoners filling buckets full of piss? And then you'd have to swim in the piss Get your push-ups and sit-ups and prepare but that's running in place You don't have to just look at them. These are difficult holding your breath Yeah, but that's why you want good cardio. Yeah Now the fbi did their damnedest to convince everyone that the three escaped inmates definitely drowned Despite a lack of bodies because if people can escape from this extraordinarily expensive supposedly inescapable prison then what the fuck was the point the salisbury steak

Absolutely good point But isn't that a favor that the fbi gave to them that because if everyone thinks they're dead, that's perfect That's exactly what they want. That's what they try to do, but then but the america wants them to live Of course and the fbi is of course investigating the entire time the fbi did an insane investigation trying to find these men But they're also telling everyone like no, no, no, they drowned. They definitely drowned while in the background They're desperately looking for any sign that these men survived or desperately looking for their bodies And ironically enough jay agrohoover actually did have all of his fbi agents fill a tub full of piss to see how long he could swim in it Yeah, well, that means it's different though. That's that was cop science. Yeah. Yeah, that's just him having fun

But as far as circumstantial evidence goes two incidents on the night in question point towards survival That night a blue 1955 chevy was stolen in maren county and a blue chevy carrying Three men subsequently ran another car off the road in stockton But perhaps the most compelling evidence is photographic in 2015 an alleged photo from 1975 of the anglin brothers Standing next to a termite mound outside of rio de Janeiro surfaced and damned if it doesn't look like both of them Hold on a second. You don't take that many pictures in 1975, but they saw a termite mound and we're right here It's a big fucking termite mound. That is gigantic

Um, but you also heard the story of when the anglin brothers mother died Because they had supposedly all been a bit in contact over the years because apparently the anglin brothers mother had got A card every year on her birthday from a source to the who knows if this is real or not Well, this is just folklore But apparently she got a card every year from some anonymous place where they would come They didn't know who came from she assumed it was her sons because they were all very close But apparently in her funeral, I guess this is I don't know if this is a story or not two

gangly big suspicious looking women Arrived at the funeral in hats makeups and a dress did not speak to anyone no one can identify them But they came is that daemon wanes from white chicks? They watched the funeral I left before it was over because the fbi came to the funeral to see whether or not the anglin brothers would show up Of course, I saw these two gorgeous women and had sex with them all night

It's not even thinking with the anglin brothers. Well, you know sometimes boys like to dress up with you know In dresses and stuff. We've all done it before for halloween sure and you do try to make yourself look as good as possible So, you know, they did look at each other be like is my lipstick right? I mean, obviously they're trying to look like ladies Yes, you want to look good Well just three years ago a local san francisco tv station got a hold of a letter written to the sfpd from a man claiming to be John anglin who would have been 83 at the time that he allegedly wrote the letter? He claimed that while he and his accomplices barely made it to the shore that night in 1962 All three of them lived long lives in south america with frank dying in 2008 and john's brother clarence following

In 2011 I mean the hardest part about escaping alcatraz to live in south america is learning german because it is not easy out there The Germans are closest to is very close to english. You can figure it out and you have all those wonderful helpful teachers Wow, what are you in south america for escaping alcatraz? How about you? I was on the wrong side of the war Well, the reason why I say you wrote the letters because you know both the other two men were dead and he said I have cancer And I'm not doing too good. I'm frank anglin. Oh, honestly though, but none of these guys were particularly malicious, right? They just got in trouble in their own jails. There's courier criminals. I mean, they stole money and they did kind of various shit like that They were just kind of roused about no birdman of pelican

No birdman of alcatraz. No pedophilia So we can root for these guys anyway Anyway, I mean, I'm sure they weren't the most stable people to be around I'm sure they would fucking stab you just as soon as look at you. They did not seem like friendly men Um, but they were definitely, you know, I mean, they weren't murderers Yeah, they were or anything like that. Yeah, they wouldn't stab me They didn't take a bunch of kids and put them in a fucking like ancient chuchu train and drive them down farm beneath gotham city That's what I'm saying. These guys are kind of great anti-heroes

But of course these are again all very romantic notions And writer katie dowd doesn't see the escape through this lens She argues that while a title pattern did exist that night that would have pushed them into safety That title pattern had a very narrow window between 11 30 and midnight And by what everyone can figure out morris and the anglons pushed off at 10 p.m And the title patterns at that time would have swept all three men out through the golden gate to the sea And that's if they left at 10 p.m

That same model also said that any debris would have washed up on angel island and debris did indeed appear Within days a paddle and a rubber packet containing photographs and a list of names and addresses washed up Which you would think would be something the anglons would keep close if they survived As far as why debris surfaced when the bodies didn't they could have again gotten caught in some underwater debris And sometimes the water of the bay is too cold for bodies to bloat or so says the fbi Hmm now even if the bodies did bloat and float dowd uses a whole different number for recovered suicides from the golden gate bridge Which might be more accurate instead of using modern numbers like the other guy did she used the numbers from 1960 to 1962

In those years while 30 jumps were recorded and an additional 12 were suspected Only 17 bodies were recovered. Do you think they just weren't we're looking for them that hard? Maybe maybe not But as far as dowd is concerned the biggest evidence for drowning is the complete lack of profile concerning the escapees Each one of these men were career criminals and while frank morris was certainly methodical The anglons were known to be a bit impulsive which doesn't really jive with a low profile This does however possibly point towards one of the anglons recklessly driving the blue Chevy the night of the escape. Remember they fucking run a guy off the road Also, they can change just because you're impulsive doesn't mean you're constantly going to be doing things that you know

Get you caught for a crime. I mean, I mean they're on the run. They're on the run They're gonna be a little bit more hesitant. I think they could have possibly learned from two years of very meticulous planning What self-control meant? I maybe maybe in that way alcatraz worked mm-hmm Really for doubt it comes down to the fact that even though their faces were in every newspaper in america And even though their hometowns were watched for decades by law enforcement And even though each person on anglons recovered list was investigated not a single investigative thread was found No thread that is unless you count the fbi's investigation into a rumor that clared anglons was living in south america

Which is exactly where frank morris and the anglons were said to have escaped to wow That combined with the car theft the impulsive behavior that followed the picture and the fact that we don't know specifically that they left at 10 p.m. Means that for my money They fucking made it that's for marcus's money. That's it for his money. He holds on to it tightly I also think it's the fbi By protesting it so much to me. That's what flips me into believing that they made it which it's them being like There's no way they could possibly make it and then you look into it and be like

They're you can't say no way Because if they had a rap and it got him even halfway across the fucking bay They had a really good shot of getting to the other side and once they got to the other side Which these I think other criminals might not have had the same amount of prep But they must have had some form of outside help So they either have figured out how to communicate outside of these prison walls Which was very difficult because their letters and shit were monitored unless they managed to truly do it in a whisper campaign Outside of the jail which actually might speak to more people knowing that it was going on then not

And the fact that if maybe if there was more of a network on the inside of the jail helping them It might have helped them coordinate for shit on the outside Yeah, and Alcatraz the the letters department had a had very very specific roles Like there was a role for no cryptic language, you know, if if it couldn't be the guy with the thing doing a thing Oh, have you talked to frank about the guy? And got the fish from the market the market. He's by the wolf Right, right. Yeah, it sounds like it might be code. Yeah cannolis

cannolis are not code those are actually just that's about cannolis Now as we said last episode the movie bird man of Alcatraz did as much to hasten the closing of Alcatraz as anything But it was really the 1962 escape that convinced the people holding the purse strings that Alcatraz No longer served any purpose Alcatraz cost five Million dollars a year It had a bad reputation for mistreating inmates and it seemed like every 10 years or so some massive dust up of one kind or another Made its way into the headlines

What was more is that another guy escaped Alcatraz in December of 1962 John Paul scott successfully made the swim by doing it nude Without a raft in colder temperatures But he was too tuckered out once he got there and they just found him naked on the beach This is like the thing once Usain Bolt sets the record everybody could start getting faster than him Is that the truth? No, I mean it's once you have a record people definitely try to break it That's too bad this guy. Well, I mean, I don't know what he was in for so maybe it's best that he was found

Yeah, you always want to check You only want to check first. What are you in for? Oh, you're just in here for soap. Oh, you just stole soap Oh inside of children you put them inside. That's where you hit it if it's tax evasion. I'm fine with it So really what the FBI and prison officials didn't want people to know Was that the only way to make Alcatraz truly inescapable was to make it a silent shivering hell on the bay And since it didn't really seem worth it anymore Alcatraz closed permanently in 1963 As far as what the original plans for what to do with Alcatraz island after the prison closed went

There were a number of absolutely insane ideas They thought about a statue of liberty west Oh, that's cool. That's cool. I like that a casino Sure, man, that would be dope to go fucking gangle to go gamble at Alcatraz Yeah, no for some reason I feel like ganglain is better. I think that's an actual battle. That's what we'd be doing They thought about a cathedral a college a seagull refuge. Oh, it's not about just giving it back to the pelicans Alcatraz means pelican Well, two of the more like I would say uh adult ideas

Is that they thought about turning Alcatraz into a no miners allowed sin city? Or a quote-unquote nudist metropolis. Don't take the subway I don't know. Well, I think that just sounds fantastic And of course they did settle on the greatest way to make sure that no whatever gets off the rock Give shops give shops and also you have to put you have to plan two months in advance to get on the rock Well, disney wanted to buy it and let tourists be a convict for a day Oh my god, this is really But do we do have to remember how fucking disgusting all of this is the amount of human suffering within these walls

And then everyone's just like maybe we can make it for mickey mouse Look, I'm in the chair for killing a bunch of women Oh, look you're being executed like all those people were really executed. Oh, we all got to finish our plates. We got to use your legs Oh, that's crazy Others wanted to build great monuments to the space program. That's random I get that's cool It was also like they plant like there was also a giant horseshoe shaped hotel That was another one a convention center was another idea. Sure

But in the end Alcatraz island was left just as it was Today, it's essentially a difficult to book tourist destination for grandparents and newlyweds who think ahead Making it a mere shadow of what was once the most notorious island in America Yeah, now it's little st. James. I can't believe it could have been a casino I can't believe a margaritaville could have been on there. That's actually totally perfect for it I will never go into our Alcatraz though because I'm not planning two months out in advance and I just I don't know how I feel about it. Isn't it? It's a little strange, right that this this whole of this whole of suffering though It's like I paid 25 bucks to go there if not more and then I bought this cool shirt

It's cool, but it's not as cool as you think it'd be Marcus took two planes to see Auschwitz Yes, yeah, but Auschwitz that's something different. That's something different all together out of the two Yeah, I would say Alcatraz Auschwitz is definitely as far as like sinners of human suffering goes Auschwitz is definitely more worth going to than Alcatraz also and you can see so much more shit there if you get the fast pass I don't even like your jokes right now, but The thing with the thing with Auschwitz was Hopefully that was a once in a in a world situation where it was absolutely horrible But we still have a massive prison problem in this country. So Alcatraz isn't really a museum to the past

It's more of just like you can pretend like you are like, you know, like you're your father in prison No, it's it was interesting. It was interesting while writing this to think about the you know, the men and the but it is It's a big concrete Building there's really you go into one of this. Did you go into one of the cells? Yeah, it's fucking terrifying It's after they shut the door behind you. They're very very no, I would not allow that I'm very claustrophobic And would not allow any sort of Fucking, you know shutting of doors. I just don't in a tiny room

We have the largest prison population in the world second, maybe most of china Uh, perhaps we don't know the numbers I just don't need to cosplay prisoner when I could easily just kill a man in a drinking and driving accident And the next thing you know, I'm there in real life Walt Disney only tried to do it, but instead he made Disney World. Yeah Yeah, it was a better. It was definitely a better plan. Yeah, well margaritaville on Alcatraz That's what Ben Kissles says give the island to Guy Fieri. Please. It's too cold Yeah, he might not like it. He's a warm weather guy, but he does have a place in the bay Oh, and also, you know what else?

Alcatraz is full of eggs He hates eggs. He does. That's what we love our guy. Anyway, we totally derailed But thank you all so much for listening to this little history of Alcatraz. I love this shit guys Um red rocks. We are coming to red rocks We got news that we are the first ever podcast to ever perform red rocks Um, uh, that's not saying that the quality of that establishment is sliding. I'm not sure that that's appropriate But it is true. Um, but we are there now and we are very very excited to be there by these tickets We're going to be there. We're going to be screaming at you. What are we going to say boys?

Don't do that gas pumps work in this country This is going to be huge Check out our last podcast weed. It is out there in the northern california and in san diego There's the boulevard in san diego and then weed in up and down in santa anna. Those are santa anna Those are so cal so cal but then north california if you dial 1 800 cannabis You can get the last podcast in the week the last podcast on the left vapes. Um, we got three different strains try them out Honestly, we're so excited about the arola. We've already had it's been awesome. Very yes thank you all to everyone who supported us by buying the vapes and

We're going to keep those coming out 1 800 cannabis give it a ring and we're going to figure out this stuff as Uh federally it becomes more and more obvious that it must be legalized. We will be on the front lines of that And of course we we have a meeting this next week coming up with the last prisoner project So of course we will be giving back to the communities that have been most devastated by the war on drugs So I know there was some concern or some talk about that But of course that's the front of our minds. It's so nice because it's Definitely a pet subject here like of criminal reform and criminal justice reform Uh, no one should be in jail for a week. Absolutely not. So last prisoner project support them

And we'll be speaking with them to partner with them can't wait for that and uh, yeah red rocks. Oh my goodness gracious How awesome and we'll see y'all in Grundy county coming up. It's coming real soon may 15th Yep, and 14th. I'm gonna have to get my trap. I'm gonna get my travel shoes on I bought it. I bought a suitcase at target yesterday. We are there Hey, also, you're actually gonna bring a suitcase. You never bring suitcases I know I usually double up the undies double up the socks double up the shirts make funny you clowns But now suckers suckers with luggage. Yeah, but now I'm actually gonna bring luggage And another thing the next episode in our series on the beastie boys on no dogs in space is out right now

So we've got three parts out of six out So this is a great time to catch up on the first three before we dive into uh, the last part of the fucking career Awesome. Sweet. Yeah, and check out we got new episodes of someplace underneath lpn deep dives dune Please support these podcasts by following them and wherever you listen to your podcasts for someplace underneath and unspotify For dune and all the other fucking shows on this fucking succulent neck network of ours Absolutely, thank you all so much for supporting all the shows and of course you can find us We are available on the instagrams of the world. Oh, I am thinking about getting on tiktok all nude All right, finally some real engagement

Thank you all so much for listening. Hail yourself. Hail satan again Magustin I said the thing I said the thing as was required by the fucking contract. I don't have to say this rock Are you done saying? No, never. He can't be released. It's in this country. I know This show is made possible by listeners like you Thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them for more shows like the one you just listened to

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