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How the Escape from Alcatraz Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
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Speaker 1: thank you in advice. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
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Speaker 1: a production of our Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:56
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Jerry's
0:59
Speaker 1: out there and that ether somewhere. Um like that one
1:03
Speaker 1: kid being transmitted from the camera to the TV in
1:08
Speaker 1: Willy Wonka. Wow, I got that one eight kinds of wrong.
1:13
Speaker 1: But anyway, this is stuff you should know which is appropriate?
1:17
Speaker 1: Did I would get something eight kinds of wrong right
1:20
Speaker 1: at the beginning. Did you ever hear the story from
1:22
Speaker 1: Gene Wilder about the move at the beginning of that
1:25
Speaker 1: movie where he walks out with a cane where he
1:28
Speaker 1: did the spill the summersault. Yeah, he see sticks a
1:31
Speaker 1: cane in the ground and does a summer salt. He
1:33
Speaker 1: said that that was his idea. And this just shows
1:36
Speaker 1: the brilliance of Gene Wilder, And he said he did
1:39
Speaker 1: that because he knew from that moment on no one
1:41
Speaker 1: would believe anything that that character said. Oh yes, I
1:46
Speaker 1: have heard that before. That is that is brilliant. That
1:49
Speaker 1: man was a brilliant man in a wonderful human being.
1:51
Speaker 1: I loved him. He's got One of his last interviews
1:53
Speaker 1: on Conan O'Brien was so great because Conan was just
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Speaker 1: gushing and Gene Wilder was very I think, kind of
2:00
Speaker 1: taken back by how much he means to people. Um uh,
2:04
Speaker 1: have you ever seen? Oh no, that wasn't the question
2:08
Speaker 1: I had. Did you know? Did you know that? The
2:11
Speaker 1: question was did you fart? Did you know that Conan
2:15
Speaker 1: O'Brien and Dennis Leary are cousins. I don't think I
2:19
Speaker 1: knew that. According to Conan O'Brien asking a question on Jeopardy,
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Speaker 1: that is his cousin did not know that. Uh. Speaking
2:29
Speaker 1: of Jeopardy, Uh, we have a colleague named Ken Jennings
2:34
Speaker 1: who was on Jeopardy. And we have another colleague, two
2:40
Speaker 1: colleagues called Daniel and Jorge, and they have a um
2:44
Speaker 1: A podcast called Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe. It's
2:46
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But they also, Chuck, I just saw have
2:49
Speaker 1: a PBS Kids animated program coming out September seven called
2:53
Speaker 1: Eleanor Wonders Why and it looks adorable. Wow. That sounds
2:59
Speaker 1: like right at my daughter, Alley. Yeah, so check it
3:01
Speaker 1: out everybody. PBS Kids September seven, Eleanor Wonders Why And
3:04
Speaker 1: congrats Daniel and Jorgey. Do you have any famous cousins,
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Speaker 1: famous or infamous? I think we are the famous cousins.
3:13
Speaker 1: That's that's how sad our families are. Yeah, it feels
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Speaker 1: pretty great, though. I keep being like, hey, let's have
3:18
Speaker 1: another family reunion this month. Speaking of infamous cousins, Chuck,
3:25
Speaker 1: how about those Anglan brothers. Huh? Yeah, man, this is uh.
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Speaker 1: I could have thought I kind of thought, we did this,
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Speaker 1: I know we do, we do one on Alcatraz, and
3:35
Speaker 1: maybe it just briefly touched on it. Absolutely because this
3:39
Speaker 1: is uh, this movie, the nineteen what was it seventy
3:43
Speaker 1: nine Escape from Alcatraz movie with Clint Eastwood was one
3:48
Speaker 1: of my favorite movies as a kid. It's a good movie.
3:51
Speaker 1: I went. I watched it just the other night as
3:53
Speaker 1: part of this. Yeah, it was an HBO special, so
3:57
Speaker 1: I must have been. I didn't see it in when
3:58
Speaker 1: I was eight, and probably was like ten or eleven,
4:01
Speaker 1: and it was one of those movies I probably watched
4:04
Speaker 1: over a dozen times when I was twelve twelve years old,
4:07
Speaker 1: followed by Krull and Outline. Oh man, those are great.
4:12
Speaker 1: They always went together, though, didn't they? Yeah, in war games.
4:15
Speaker 1: I mean that those are all HBO specials. But this
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Speaker 1: is a really good movie. And I'm a big, big
4:20
Speaker 1: fan of prison escape movies. And I was thinking today
4:24
Speaker 1: when I was looking over this stuff again that it's
4:27
Speaker 1: so weird that like, these guys are hard and criminals,
4:32
Speaker 1: and yet when you're researching this, all you can think
4:35
Speaker 1: about is, oh man, I hope they got out of there,
4:38
Speaker 1: and I hope they lived the fat life in Brazil.
4:40
Speaker 1: Well that really speaks to like who they are, what
4:43
Speaker 1: they became because of this escape, which is put most
4:46
Speaker 1: simply their folk heroes, I guess. So, Yeah, that's definitely
4:50
Speaker 1: a part of being a folk hero is that you
4:51
Speaker 1: can transcend the kind of like judgments that society typically
4:57
Speaker 1: levies against people like criminals. Like if you if you
5:01
Speaker 1: are so good at your craft, are so good at
5:03
Speaker 1: something to do with criminality that, um, you transcend being
5:08
Speaker 1: judged for your crimes. That's you've become a folk hero
5:12
Speaker 1: for sure. It's like dB Cooper. Yeah, and I think
5:14
Speaker 1: it helps that. Uh you know, these guys were armed
5:16
Speaker 1: robbers and thieves and I think Frank Morris and we'll
5:20
Speaker 1: get into all these who these dudes are, but he
5:22
Speaker 1: was a drug trafficker. But they weren't rapist and murderers
5:25
Speaker 1: that I don't think you can transcend that, know, they
5:28
Speaker 1: they were definitely non violent criminals from everything that I've seen.
5:33
Speaker 1: They used to toy gun in one of these robberies. Yeah,
5:36
Speaker 1: it's adorable. Well, let's talk about these guys like you
5:38
Speaker 1: were saying, Um, we're talking about a group of people
5:41
Speaker 1: who escaped from Alcatraz, and as far as anyone knows,
5:44
Speaker 1: they are the only ones who really may have escaped
5:47
Speaker 1: from Alcatraz. They vanished in nineteen sixty two, um, last
5:51
Speaker 1: seen leaving their cells and were never heard from again.
5:56
Speaker 1: And like you said, they were all hardened criminals, like
5:59
Speaker 1: lifelong rear criminals. Frank Morris was thirty five when he
6:03
Speaker 1: left Alcatraz, and he had been a criminal since he
6:06
Speaker 1: was thirteen. Um, he was in and out of institutions,
6:11
Speaker 1: and like he said, he wasn't a violent criminal. He
6:13
Speaker 1: wasn't a rapist or murder or anything like that. He
6:16
Speaker 1: was he was he liked to to to sell the drugs.
6:20
Speaker 1: He had, like his forehead tattooed or a star tattooed
6:24
Speaker 1: on his forehead for a while, which he very sensibly
6:26
Speaker 1: had removed later on. Um, is that what that means
6:31
Speaker 1: but that he was a drug trafficker? No, I think
6:34
Speaker 1: that means that he did a few too many drugs
6:36
Speaker 1: one night. Oh he really did have a star. Yeah,
6:39
Speaker 1: I thought that was some like prison thing for like
6:41
Speaker 1: the tear drop tattoo means you doesn't that mean you
6:45
Speaker 1: killed somebody or something. That's what I've always heard. But
6:47
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could just be or been legend,
6:50
Speaker 1: but yes, what I've always heard he really did have
6:52
Speaker 1: a star. Okay, yeah, I think he got super wasted,
6:55
Speaker 1: had a star tattooed on his forehead. There was a
6:57
Speaker 1: tattoo or just far too handy that yeah, yeah, which
7:03
Speaker 1: I think the old saying don't ever make friends with
7:05
Speaker 1: tattoo artists or at least drinking buddies. Sure, that's true.
7:10
Speaker 1: But he was also super smart too. Yeah, And they
7:13
Speaker 1: point this out in the movie, um and a lot
7:16
Speaker 1: of the movie. I mean, it's pretty close to the
7:18
Speaker 1: real story that they did a really good job, but
7:20
Speaker 1: they do make a big deal in the movie about
7:22
Speaker 1: how smart he was. I know i Q is sort
7:25
Speaker 1: of taking or leave it as far as uh that
7:28
Speaker 1: being a real measurement of one's intelligence. But he supposedly
7:31
Speaker 1: had an i Q of one thirty and the b
7:34
Speaker 1: o P which stands for the was it Bureau of Prisons.
7:39
Speaker 1: I didn't know they had rankings, but they had rankings
7:41
Speaker 1: of uh intellectual intellectuality? Is that a word? Uh? Yeah,
7:47
Speaker 1: I think so it gets the point across ergo it is. Yeah,
7:50
Speaker 1: And I'm curious what other rankings they have. But Um,
7:53
Speaker 1: you know, best looking, best abs. But he was in
7:57
Speaker 1: the top two percent supposedly in the American prison system
8:01
Speaker 1: as far as his intellectual capabilities. Yeah, so you you
8:04
Speaker 1: hit on a point there. I think we need to
8:06
Speaker 1: at least at least bring up like the the movie
8:10
Speaker 1: did follow the actual the truth of the matter fairly
8:14
Speaker 1: closely in some cases. In other cases it veered wildly away,
8:20
Speaker 1: Like there was a character based on one guy who
8:23
Speaker 1: was very much involved, but they didn't even use his name,
8:26
Speaker 1: and they made him seem less involved than he actually was. Um,
8:29
Speaker 1: there's a lot that the movie gets wrong. But the
8:31
Speaker 1: problem with covering this is that there's so many gaps
8:36
Speaker 1: and holes that are so easily and casually filled in
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Speaker 1: that you can't help but wonder, like, wait, was this
8:43
Speaker 1: was this detail provided by somebody who saw the movie
8:46
Speaker 1: and took the movie as fact, Like where are we exactly?
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Speaker 1: And just how pure the knowledge and understanding is of
8:53
Speaker 1: this escape. So you have to just kind of bear
8:55
Speaker 1: that in mind that it's a it's kind of a
8:57
Speaker 1: blur in the annals of crime as far as um
9:01
Speaker 1: factuality goes. Yeah, but it's a good story, great story,
9:05
Speaker 1: and most of this is pretty true. I think so.
9:08
Speaker 1: Frank Morris was four years into a fourteen year stint
9:12
Speaker 1: and this was for a bank robbery and he was
9:15
Speaker 1: transferred to the rock in nine sixty. It's Alcatraz. It's
9:22
Speaker 1: a prison island or an island prison, and so I
9:25
Speaker 1: might say the island itself is a prison, which we'll
9:28
Speaker 1: get to. And then his buddies you mentioned the England
9:31
Speaker 1: brothers J W. John William and his younger brother Clarence.
9:36
Speaker 1: We're thirty and twenty nine years old, and they were
9:40
Speaker 1: from a very big family of migrant farm workers in
9:44
Speaker 1: South Georgia. They traveled all over the country where wherever
9:47
Speaker 1: the work was, basically as a big family, and they
9:50
Speaker 1: got into stealing things from people. Yeah, and they were
9:54
Speaker 1: the ones who used the toy gun. Later on, they
9:56
Speaker 1: were I think visiting family in a small town called Columbia, Alabama,
10:01
Speaker 1: which is in the southeast of the state, and they
10:05
Speaker 1: found out that this bank had been around for a
10:07
Speaker 1: hundred years in this town. It had never been robbed.
10:10
Speaker 1: So they assumed, we're going to change that. It'll be
10:12
Speaker 1: easy to knock over. And apparently it was pretty easy
10:15
Speaker 1: to knock over. And they had a toy gun that
10:17
Speaker 1: they used, and they still managed to get away with
10:19
Speaker 1: at least I think like ten grand or twenty grand something,
10:22
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial amount of money. And they were on
10:25
Speaker 1: the run for a little while but got caught in
10:27
Speaker 1: the Alabama AND's were not very happy with it, and
10:30
Speaker 1: they threw the book at these brothers. They got twenty
10:33
Speaker 1: five years sentences for robbing a bank with a toy gun,
10:37
Speaker 1: and that actually was way better than the sentence they
10:40
Speaker 1: initially faced, which was the potentially the death panel. That's yeah,
10:45
Speaker 1: so so they were they were. They were caught and busted.
10:48
Speaker 1: And they had a third brother named Alfred too, who
10:50
Speaker 1: was also involved, but he was never sent to that
10:53
Speaker 1: to the rock as you put it, I bet it
10:55
Speaker 1: was not a bet. It was actually a lot easier
10:58
Speaker 1: to rob banks back then. Yeah, it was way easier
11:01
Speaker 1: to be a criminal, even just a few decades ago. Yeah,
11:05
Speaker 1: just in general, I think now it's like I don't
11:08
Speaker 1: even try, No, you got I mean, if it's not
11:10
Speaker 1: the cops and their cameras, he got some dumb neighbor
11:12
Speaker 1: with their cameras like me right, Oh man, I hate
11:17
Speaker 1: to get off topics so quickly, and we should post
11:20
Speaker 1: this on the Facebook page or something, or maybe I'll
11:22
Speaker 1: put it on Instagram. What I got attacked by a
11:24
Speaker 1: squirrel and it was captured by my front of the
11:26
Speaker 1: house camera. Oh yeah, everyone wants to see that. This
11:30
Speaker 1: is great. I just I was taking out some recycling
11:32
Speaker 1: and I heard some rustling, and I went around the
11:33
Speaker 1: corner and I was like, this squirrel was freaking out,
11:36
Speaker 1: and then he literally leapt if you freeze fram it,
11:39
Speaker 1: he leapt three feet in the air and hit my
11:42
Speaker 1: leg and ran up my leg a little bit. And
11:44
Speaker 1: then wow, and I react thustily. That's awesome. You know,
11:48
Speaker 1: would be wonderful as to intercut close ups of your
11:51
Speaker 1: face when you got that Charlie Horse on internet round up.
11:54
Speaker 1: Oh my god, in this squirrel attack, it's a good thing.
11:58
Speaker 1: I don't care about myself and looking dumb. Why did you?
12:02
Speaker 1: Why did that squirrel attack you? What did you do
12:03
Speaker 1: to it? I didn't do anything. It was freaking out.
12:05
Speaker 1: And then I turned and looked after I dropped the
12:07
Speaker 1: recycling off, and he and another squirrel we're going at
12:10
Speaker 1: it in our oak tree. So I think he was
12:12
Speaker 1: just he was all riled up. He might have been Yeah,
12:16
Speaker 1: did he have a star tattooed on his forehead, did
12:18
Speaker 1: right on his little tenty free forehead. Yes, please do
12:22
Speaker 1: post that. Okay, So all right, these guys are all
12:26
Speaker 1: in Alcatraz. And Alcatraz at the time was um. Like
12:31
Speaker 1: I said, it was sort of the rock itself was
12:34
Speaker 1: the prison. And that was the idea was that even
12:37
Speaker 1: if you're even if you managed to get out of
12:39
Speaker 1: the prison that they eventually built, which we'll talk about,
12:42
Speaker 1: then you still can't get out of there because you
12:44
Speaker 1: gotta swim over a mile to the nearest body of land,
12:47
Speaker 1: about one point three miles. That water is really cold,
12:50
Speaker 1: the currents are brutal, the winds are really strong. San
12:54
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay is not you know, for people that haven't
12:57
Speaker 1: been there, it's not just some lovely little chill body
13:01
Speaker 1: of water that you hang out in. No, it's not
13:03
Speaker 1: a very hospitable body of water. It's not so um.
13:07
Speaker 1: The the idea was that, yeah, like when you got
13:10
Speaker 1: sent to Alcatraz, you weren't getting off of that island
13:14
Speaker 1: and you were either paroled or died. Um. And that
13:18
Speaker 1: was actually the reason that the England's and Frank Morris
13:20
Speaker 1: were sent there was because they had all met at
13:22
Speaker 1: the Federal pen and at Atlanta, I guess the wind
13:25
Speaker 1: down in Grant Park, right, Yeah, which that building is amazing.
13:29
Speaker 1: It's one of the most forbidding buildings in the world.
13:33
Speaker 1: I would say it looks like an old timey federal penitentiary.
13:36
Speaker 1: Al Capone was there too for a little while. Yeah.
13:38
Speaker 1: I actually drove by there not too long ago with
13:40
Speaker 1: my daughter for the first time, and I was like,
13:42
Speaker 1: check out that building. Look at that. It's like, that's
13:44
Speaker 1: a prison to what's a prison? And I went, oh, well,
13:47
Speaker 1: I guess I got to explain that. I'll tell you
13:49
Speaker 1: when you're eighteen if you make it and don't go
13:52
Speaker 1: to prison first. Right. So they all met at the
13:56
Speaker 1: Federal pen and Atlanta, and I can't remember if they
13:58
Speaker 1: actually made it out or if they were called escaping,
14:00
Speaker 1: but they were known escape artists like the um Frank
14:03
Speaker 1: Morris that escaped from places in Florida. Um. They didn't
14:07
Speaker 1: stay put when you when you put them in prison,
14:10
Speaker 1: and so that's why they were all sent to Alcatraz
14:13
Speaker 1: and just crazily as they arrived between nineteen sixty and
14:17
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, they were all put pretty close together,
14:20
Speaker 1: and in fact, the Angland brothers had adjoining cells, which
14:24
Speaker 1: is a very stupid thing to do, but that's what
14:26
Speaker 1: they did in part, I believe because there is a
14:30
Speaker 1: certain thread of arrogance that ran through the administration of
14:34
Speaker 1: um Alcatraz that it was just basically inescapable. Yeah, and
14:40
Speaker 1: I think you also sort of want happy prisoners, and
14:44
Speaker 1: I've heard of request like that being made possible before,
14:48
Speaker 1: like hope you put me near my brother, We're gonna
14:50
Speaker 1: be a lot better behaved. Yeah, we're definitely not going
14:53
Speaker 1: to to break out. Um. I don't think we mentioned either,
14:56
Speaker 1: Like Alcatraz was so formidable as a just an island
15:01
Speaker 1: that the very first time they used it was when
15:03
Speaker 1: the Army put soldiers there who who cheered on President
15:07
Speaker 1: Lincoln's death, And so they didn't even bother building a
15:11
Speaker 1: prison though. They just built some barracks through them on
15:13
Speaker 1: the island. It's like, well, you're in prison now, because
15:15
Speaker 1: good luck getting out of here. Yeah, that's what I
15:17
Speaker 1: saw too, um. And when the Bureau of Prisons took over,
15:22
Speaker 1: they they really fortified it even more. Like you said,
15:25
Speaker 1: there was a larger building that housed everything from like
15:29
Speaker 1: the mess hall to the cell blocks. So when you
15:31
Speaker 1: were in a cell in a cell block. You were
15:34
Speaker 1: in you were in a little tiny prison inside a
15:36
Speaker 1: larger prison, inside this island prison. UM. And the cell
15:41
Speaker 1: blocks themselves had like three inch thick concrete walls, reinforced
15:45
Speaker 1: iron bars. The building itself was made a very thick concrete.
15:49
Speaker 1: It was it was just meant to to to basically
15:52
Speaker 1: tell you there's there's no getting out here. But UM,
15:55
Speaker 1: what's what's crazy is UM Frank Morris and the England Brothers.
15:58
Speaker 1: They weren't the first people to ever try to bust
16:00
Speaker 1: out UM. I believe they were part of a total
16:04
Speaker 1: of thirty six people who tried to escape in the
16:07
Speaker 1: history of the prison. UM. Everybody else, almost everybody else
16:11
Speaker 1: was either UM killed, UH captured, or their bodies were
16:16
Speaker 1: found except and I did not realize this, UM Morris
16:21
Speaker 1: and the England Brothers were not the first people to
16:23
Speaker 1: vanish without a trace from Alcatraz. Had you heard about UM,
16:26
Speaker 1: Ted Cole and Ralph Roe. I hadn't heard about them
16:29
Speaker 1: until this, But in the thirties, late thirties, they did escape,
16:34
Speaker 1: and they did vanish, and you know, sort of like
16:38
Speaker 1: where this story is going there, I don't think anyone
16:40
Speaker 1: wants to admit that from the prison system that they
16:42
Speaker 1: could have really made it. So they're like, nah, they die,
16:45
Speaker 1: they drowned. But the thing is, the thing that really
16:47
Speaker 1: differentiates um, the England Brothers and Frank Morris from guys
16:52
Speaker 1: like Ted Cole and Ralph Roe. They all shared in
16:54
Speaker 1: common that they escaped from Alcatraz and vanished without a trace.
16:58
Speaker 1: The thing that differentiates Morris in the Englands is that
17:02
Speaker 1: they're folk heroes because almost exclusively because of this plan
17:07
Speaker 1: they devised and executed, and that the plan was so
17:11
Speaker 1: good and so complex and well done that it actually
17:16
Speaker 1: lends credence to the idea that they may have survived
17:19
Speaker 1: and escaped from Alcatraz genuinely. And what they had in
17:23
Speaker 1: common is that they were all top ten in best
17:26
Speaker 1: abs in the prison system. And what everybody listening right
17:30
Speaker 1: now has in common is that you're about to hear
17:32
Speaker 1: an ad to Okay, we're back everybody, UM, and I
18:03
Speaker 1: think it's high time we we talked about the plan,
18:05
Speaker 1: the escape plan, don't you. Yeah, if you're gonna escape
18:09
Speaker 1: from Alcatraz, Um, it's not the kind of thing where
18:12
Speaker 1: you distract a guard and just run and jump over
18:14
Speaker 1: a fence. You gotta start this thing. Uh, this plan
18:18
Speaker 1: many months in advance, and by all accounts they and
18:22
Speaker 1: by all accounts meaning from the one account that we
18:24
Speaker 1: really have this, they started planning easily six months before
18:29
Speaker 1: the escape. They start developing this plan. They start collecting
18:33
Speaker 1: kind of anything they can get their hands on that
18:35
Speaker 1: they think they can use. Um everything from just loose
18:40
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts and screws to um things that I mean,
18:44
Speaker 1: they actually ended up using a lot of this stuff,
18:46
Speaker 1: but I got the impression that they were just kind
18:48
Speaker 1: of like any time they saw something that they could
18:51
Speaker 1: squirrel away and hide, they would do it because you
18:53
Speaker 1: never know what you could use it for. Yeah, and
18:56
Speaker 1: so like over the six month period, they amassed something
18:59
Speaker 1: like a d tools that they either stole, had stolen
19:04
Speaker 1: for them rebuild, or repurposed out of other stuff, or
19:09
Speaker 1: just made completely out of like their own labor. Like,
19:12
Speaker 1: they had a pretty extensive toolkit that they created. UM.
19:17
Speaker 1: One of the ways that they got a lot of
19:18
Speaker 1: the tools was from Alan West, who we haven't mentioned yet,
19:23
Speaker 1: but a lot of people don't realize there was a
19:25
Speaker 1: fourth conspirator in the Alcatraz escape UM who was a
19:30
Speaker 1: major integral part of it. But who actually didn't go
19:34
Speaker 1: along with the escape As we'll see that part of
19:37
Speaker 1: the movie is so tough. It is, especially with that
19:40
Speaker 1: poor guy. He he just looks came out of the
19:43
Speaker 1: womb like down on my luck? Can you spare a dime's?
19:49
Speaker 1: But he was, um, I think he was the guy
19:51
Speaker 1: who played Kramer on Seinfeld in the in the pilot,
19:57
Speaker 1: in the NBC pilot. Yeah, so like in the show
19:59
Speaker 1: the I playing Framer on the show. In the show,
20:02
Speaker 1: I think that was him that he stole the eminem's
20:04
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, so he was an escape from Alcatraz
20:09
Speaker 1: to Yeah, he just he's perfect for that part. But
20:12
Speaker 1: this guy named Alan West, he he was on the
20:14
Speaker 1: painting crew and he put that to use big time.
20:17
Speaker 1: One of the first ways he did it was he
20:19
Speaker 1: was in the prison barber shop and managed to steal
20:22
Speaker 1: a pair of electric clippers while he was in their
20:24
Speaker 1: painting and they were like, hey, this motor will come
20:27
Speaker 1: in handy. Well, let's repurpose it into a power drill,
20:30
Speaker 1: and they did, Yeah, that's pretty cool. He also, uh,
20:33
Speaker 1: I mean just having a little motor so handy. So
20:36
Speaker 1: he came across a vacuum cleaner that wasn't working, and
20:39
Speaker 1: he said, hey, do you mind if I repair this? Uh,
20:43
Speaker 1: I gotta shake the tree first, but after that, you
20:45
Speaker 1: mind if I repair this? And that what they call
20:48
Speaker 1: it the vacuuming. No, and he got a pee on
20:51
Speaker 1: the on the chain gang that you call it shaking
20:53
Speaker 1: the tree. Oh, I guess I think that's what it's called. Sure,
20:58
Speaker 1: But I mean it wasn't have to do with fixing
21:00
Speaker 1: a vacuum nothing. It's just prison humor. Oh. I got
21:04
Speaker 1: to me a lot of prison jokes. So all the
21:06
Speaker 1: inmates listening right now is busted out laughing. Like he said,
21:09
Speaker 1: shake the tree. Well, it's a drinking game. How we'll explain.
21:14
Speaker 1: If you're listening from prison, if someone says shake the tree,
21:16
Speaker 1: you take a drink of pruno. Well that's another drink. Yeah,
21:22
Speaker 1: that's the but that's what you would drink when somebody said,
21:25
Speaker 1: shake the tree, the tree one more time, Shake the tree, guys.
21:28
Speaker 1: I think everybody's got a pretty good buzzing prison right now.
21:31
Speaker 1: So he says, let me fix this vacuum cleaner. They say,
21:33
Speaker 1: that's fine. He saw that the vacuum cleaner had a
21:37
Speaker 1: couple of different motors, and one of which he used
21:40
Speaker 1: to repair and actually make, you know, pass it off
21:42
Speaker 1: as a working vacuum cleaner. And then he just took
21:45
Speaker 1: that other one, and that meant that they could make
21:48
Speaker 1: a drill that was even more powerful than the other one. Yeah. Um,
21:51
Speaker 1: so they had not one, but two electric drills um
21:56
Speaker 1: at their disposal, which kind of gives you a pretty
21:57
Speaker 1: good idea of just how dedicated and smart and crafty
22:01
Speaker 1: these guys were, right Yes, um. They also very famously
22:05
Speaker 1: ended up with fifty five zero different raincoats that were
22:10
Speaker 1: made from rubber prison issue raincoats, so they got from
22:12
Speaker 1: other inmates. And this really reveals something that I think
22:15
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't necessarily realize. It seems like
22:18
Speaker 1: basically all the inmates in prison with England and the
22:23
Speaker 1: England's and Morris were well aware of their plans, not
22:26
Speaker 1: necessarily every detail or even any of the details, just
22:29
Speaker 1: that they were planning on breaking out, and so they
22:32
Speaker 1: managed to get their hands on like fifty different raincoats
22:35
Speaker 1: from other prisoners that they used to to build um
22:38
Speaker 1: a life raft and life vests with pretty great I
22:42
Speaker 1: think the idea was is that these guys didn't like
22:44
Speaker 1: being on Alcatraz. So they kind of figured, Hey, if
22:47
Speaker 1: these guys actually get out, they're going to close this
22:49
Speaker 1: place down. We're going to get out of here. You know.
22:53
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if I would have gone
22:54
Speaker 1: along with that rationale, I would have thought, it's going
22:57
Speaker 1: to be even worse for us here. But we'll we'll
23:00
Speaker 1: hang on to what happened until the end of the show.
23:02
Speaker 1: How about that. I think everybody would have kept their
23:05
Speaker 1: pruno from you had you raised that point. You know.
23:08
Speaker 1: So they've got all this stuff. They got paint, they
23:10
Speaker 1: got paper, they collect hair and uh from the from
23:15
Speaker 1: the barbershop. They like sweep up this hair and keep that.
23:17
Speaker 1: You might be thinking, why in the world would they
23:19
Speaker 1: need that. We'll just wait, you'll see. And then they
23:22
Speaker 1: had about three and a half hours each evening after dinner,
23:26
Speaker 1: slop and before lights out where they had to work,
23:31
Speaker 1: um and create, you know, a way out of their
23:33
Speaker 1: prison cell. And then once they get out of their
23:36
Speaker 1: prison cell, like you said, they're still in this larger building,
23:39
Speaker 1: then a way out of there. But the first trick
23:41
Speaker 1: is getting out of their individual cells. Yeah. Well, so
23:44
Speaker 1: from what I understand, that took up like the lion's
23:46
Speaker 1: share of the time between when they first hatched this
23:51
Speaker 1: plan in the time when they finally escaped. Um, they
23:54
Speaker 1: were like these little six by eight or nine or something,
23:58
Speaker 1: very small ventilation chef cemented into the wall. Um. These
24:03
Speaker 1: the grates were cemented into the wall, but really it
24:06
Speaker 1: was just a little metal grade over a hole. So
24:08
Speaker 1: they figured it they could start chipping away at that
24:10
Speaker 1: hole and enlarge the hole into something they could crawl through.
24:13
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what they did. UM. Eventually, over time,
24:17
Speaker 1: Frank Morris and then both of the England brothers managed
24:21
Speaker 1: to create these holes. UM. And they did so by
24:25
Speaker 1: by serving his lookout for one another while the other
24:28
Speaker 1: one chipped one night, and then they would trade off
24:30
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And then here's the question that
24:33
Speaker 1: I have. I could not confirm one way or the
24:35
Speaker 1: other if it was a movie thing or if it
24:37
Speaker 1: was a real life thing. But in the movie they create,
24:40
Speaker 1: um these kind of cardboard false walls that they're able
24:45
Speaker 1: to fill the hole with that it looks like the
24:47
Speaker 1: great is still there and the wall is still intact. UM.
24:51
Speaker 1: So when they were out of their cells, they could
24:53
Speaker 1: put this false wall in behind them and um, nobody
24:56
Speaker 1: would be any the wiser when they just walked past
24:58
Speaker 1: and casually glanced in there. I don't know if they
25:01
Speaker 1: did that or not. I mean, it's a pretty great
25:03
Speaker 1: detail of the movie, so I'm inclined to believe it.
25:07
Speaker 1: Let's go with it. What I didn't see in or
25:09
Speaker 1: I don't I haven't seen it in a long time.
25:11
Speaker 1: Did they have those drills in the movie, because I
25:12
Speaker 1: just remember a lot of digging with them. They kind
25:16
Speaker 1: of just like used a sharpened spoon as a little
25:19
Speaker 1: mini pick a sharpened spoon, uh, with a the warden's
25:25
Speaker 1: fingernail clippers that he steals in like one of the
25:27
Speaker 1: first scenes. But there was no drill in the movie,
25:30
Speaker 1: was there? Not that I remember? So there definitely were
25:32
Speaker 1: two drills. One of the one of the drills, that
25:34
Speaker 1: one with the vacuum motor. They actually figured out it's
25:38
Speaker 1: just too loud, it's too powerful um and too loud
25:41
Speaker 1: that so they abandoned that one. But I don't know
25:44
Speaker 1: what became of the um hair clipper drill. I didn't
25:47
Speaker 1: hear anything about that one other than that they created
25:50
Speaker 1: it and used it well. They managed to dig through
25:53
Speaker 1: though where they could get their bodies out of the
25:55
Speaker 1: cell uh, and that just must have felt like, you know,
25:58
Speaker 1: we're we're halfway there, point guys. So they um from
26:03
Speaker 1: there it led to a utility cord or it was
26:05
Speaker 1: about a meter wide, and there were no guards in
26:08
Speaker 1: here because this is sort of like the guts of
26:09
Speaker 1: the prison, like why would you need to guard where
26:12
Speaker 1: there are no people wink wink uh And in that
26:16
Speaker 1: quarter or they could kind of move around freely. They
26:20
Speaker 1: would climb up to the ceiling. This is like a
26:22
Speaker 1: three story cell block still within a larger building though
26:26
Speaker 1: of course, like we mentioned, and then they had a
26:28
Speaker 1: full on workshop up there for a few weeks. They
26:31
Speaker 1: could store their tools, they could hide their stuff, they
26:34
Speaker 1: could build uh. We haven't really talked about the rafts,
26:37
Speaker 1: but where they were much they would build their rafts
26:39
Speaker 1: there and it just sort of sort of serves as
26:42
Speaker 1: their staging area where they would eventually leave from to
26:47
Speaker 1: go buy this big heavy iron grate to a ventilation chaft,
26:50
Speaker 1: which actually finally led to the rooftop. Right. But that
26:54
Speaker 1: big iron gray was a big iron problem because the
26:57
Speaker 1: bars were reinforced. There was they were um I think
27:01
Speaker 1: welded or maybe screwed I'm not sure into this um
27:06
Speaker 1: iron ring that covered this ventilation shaft. So it was
27:10
Speaker 1: a big problem. And then they figured out that the
27:12
Speaker 1: bolts holding this whole thing together were actually not nearly
27:15
Speaker 1: as strong as the bars that made up the great
27:18
Speaker 1: and the ring that held the bars. So they started
27:21
Speaker 1: working away at cutting these bolts. One way or another,
27:24
Speaker 1: I think they created a wrench. They built themselves a wrench,
27:27
Speaker 1: and they managed to use that to some pretty good effect.
27:30
Speaker 1: But it went from digging out of their cells to
27:33
Speaker 1: figuring out a way to get through this great um.
27:37
Speaker 1: That was kind of like stage two um. And then
27:40
Speaker 1: let's talk about the raft, because the raft is extremely
27:43
Speaker 1: important part of this whole thing, and I think really
27:46
Speaker 1: one of the things, if not the thing, that that
27:48
Speaker 1: lends credence to the idea that they might have actually
27:51
Speaker 1: made it. Yeah, so they got these raincoats, and back
27:53
Speaker 1: then raincoats were just basically sheets of rubber. Yeah, they
27:58
Speaker 1: didn't breathe very well, very hot things like Gordon's Fisherman
28:02
Speaker 1: type of stuff. A sweaty Gordon's Fisherman. Oh yeah, that
28:06
Speaker 1: guy was always sweaty. So they ended up creating a
28:09
Speaker 1: six ft by fourteen foot life raft from these raincoats
28:12
Speaker 1: from UH an article in Popular Mechanics which shows up
28:15
Speaker 1: a couple of times, very useful magazine if you were
28:18
Speaker 1: trying to escape prison. And it was an article about
28:21
Speaker 1: a hunter who had gotten lost and survived hunting geese
28:25
Speaker 1: that he attracted using rubber decoys that he'd made. So
28:29
Speaker 1: they get this idea. They build these inflatable pontoons made
28:33
Speaker 1: from these raincoat sleeves, so they were stuffed inside and
28:36
Speaker 1: made air tight by gluing rubber cement contact cement over
28:41
Speaker 1: the seams and then pressing them against steel pipes which
28:43
Speaker 1: vulcanized that it just basically melted everything shut. And then
28:47
Speaker 1: you have these floatable pontoons that you could use and
28:50
Speaker 1: craft this larger raft. Yeah. So they had something that
28:54
Speaker 1: was inflatable that because those seams were vulcanized, it would
28:58
Speaker 1: hold the air. The air couldn't escape. Um. And they
29:01
Speaker 1: used a concertina. Um oh, I can't remember, Handsome Pete.
29:08
Speaker 1: There's like a little a little guy who plays the
29:11
Speaker 1: accordion down on the docks that looks just like Krusty
29:14
Speaker 1: the clown in one of the Simpsons episodes, and he's
29:17
Speaker 1: playing a concertina it's like a squeeze box. It's like
29:20
Speaker 1: an accordion without the keys in the buttons. Yeah, but
29:22
Speaker 1: it acts as a bellows because it moves air. Essentially,
29:25
Speaker 1: that's what they used it for. They modified it so
29:27
Speaker 1: that they could use it to inflate their raft very
29:30
Speaker 1: quickly with this concertina that I guess they stole from
29:32
Speaker 1: the prison music room, which is pretty great. So they're
29:35
Speaker 1: working on all this stuff and the raft in particular,
29:38
Speaker 1: this this is like the the lynchpin of this whole
29:41
Speaker 1: plan is this raft in these life preservers. That work
29:44
Speaker 1: fell to Alan West. So while these dudes were chipped,
29:47
Speaker 1: we're like chipping away at the ventilation holes. Um. Alan
29:51
Speaker 1: West was standing lookout for most of them, and he
29:54
Speaker 1: was creating this raft in these life fests, and so
29:58
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to chip away at his ventilation hole
30:01
Speaker 1: nearly as fast. So while they were out, you know,
30:04
Speaker 1: working on the great event cover great, he still had
30:08
Speaker 1: no way out of his cell. At that point. He
30:10
Speaker 1: hadn't made it all the way through. Yeah, And you know,
30:13
Speaker 1: we should point out something that earlier we mentioned. If
30:17
Speaker 1: if they happened to walk by and they don't notice
30:19
Speaker 1: a hole in the wall, because they may or may
30:21
Speaker 1: not have made these false uh grates and walls. If
30:26
Speaker 1: you're a listener and you don't know the story, you
30:27
Speaker 1: might have said, like, yeah, but wouldn't they have noticed
30:30
Speaker 1: there was no one in the cell? Good question. What
30:33
Speaker 1: they did was they made paper mache recreations of themselves.
30:36
Speaker 1: They made these busts. They use that prison hair so
30:40
Speaker 1: cross and use that reversement again to glue this hair on.
30:45
Speaker 1: And if you see the real things, it's not Madam
30:49
Speaker 1: Tussu or anything. It's not like, boy, look at that
30:52
Speaker 1: likeness photo realistic, but it's in the dark and you're
30:56
Speaker 1: sort of, I think, as a human trained to see
30:58
Speaker 1: what you're looking for. So if your guard that's just
31:01
Speaker 1: walking by, you see a head turned the other way
31:05
Speaker 1: with with prison hair on it and some pillows under
31:09
Speaker 1: a blanket, and you you don't think it looks fake.
31:12
Speaker 1: It just looks like it wouldn't like Ferris Bueller style
31:14
Speaker 1: with um like a fake snore on the Hi fi
31:18
Speaker 1: system or anything, right, But you just kind of walked
31:20
Speaker 1: past it. It worked well enough, Like they did this
31:22
Speaker 1: for weeks and weeks and weeks with these paper mache busts,
31:26
Speaker 1: and it worked they never got noticed. No they didn't
31:28
Speaker 1: because I mean remember like that that they were working
31:31
Speaker 1: between the end of dinner and lights out, So they
31:34
Speaker 1: just seemed to have made it like like they went
31:36
Speaker 1: to bed early, um and put the paper mache busts
31:40
Speaker 1: in there. Sure are sleepy. Yeah, there too much for you.
31:44
Speaker 1: Frank got a lot. I got a lot of questions
31:46
Speaker 1: about this, but I'm not gonna investigate any exactly. So
31:50
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about the escape and then
31:51
Speaker 1: go to a break? Yeah, I think that's the way
31:55
Speaker 1: to do it. Okay. So finally they get to this
31:59
Speaker 1: point where great is the bars are removed from this
32:03
Speaker 1: great enough that they can slip through, and they realize
32:06
Speaker 1: that they have, um, they have successfully penetrated to the
32:13
Speaker 1: exterior of the building. That's right, okay, on the roof. Well,
32:18
Speaker 1: they know they can get on the roof. Now they
32:20
Speaker 1: know there's go night there at least once to be
32:23
Speaker 1: like all right, I don't know, I haven't heard anything
32:25
Speaker 1: like that. And there's a lot of questions about why
32:28
Speaker 1: this particular night. Was this the very first night that
32:30
Speaker 1: they were able to get out and there like let's
32:32
Speaker 1: go um, which seems likely to me, or were they
32:35
Speaker 1: waiting for a particular night, or like you said, they
32:38
Speaker 1: tested it before they do any dry runs. We don't
32:40
Speaker 1: really know that, um, But what we do know is
32:43
Speaker 1: that on Monday, June eleven, UM, J. W. Angling, Clarence
32:49
Speaker 1: Angling and Frank Moore's all left their cells and the
32:52
Speaker 1: first thing Frank Morris did was go to help Alan
32:55
Speaker 1: West finished um puncturing the hole through his cell wall.
32:59
Speaker 1: Course all had not done this yet. He's like, come on,
33:02
Speaker 1: we gotta go. But apparently part of the plan was
33:05
Speaker 1: to help him um punch the hole out the rest
33:07
Speaker 1: of the way and then he would escape with them. Um.
33:10
Speaker 1: Frank Morris apparently tried in vain and uh went off
33:13
Speaker 1: to get Clarence England to to come try, and they
33:16
Speaker 1: traded off, and then Clarence tried. He couldn't do it either,
33:20
Speaker 1: So I guess he had the very um, uh uncomfortable
33:26
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. I gotta go, I gotta go
33:28
Speaker 1: shake the tree or something like that. I'll be right back.
33:31
Speaker 1: You stay here. And that was the last anybody ever
33:34
Speaker 1: saw of Frank Morris, Clarence England or J. W. England
33:38
Speaker 1: from from that moment until today. Yeah, so they get
33:41
Speaker 1: to that corridor, they climb up to um the roof
33:45
Speaker 1: of the cell block, and then through that ventilation shaft
33:47
Speaker 1: that great is no longer a problem, and allan west
33:51
Speaker 1: they can just barely hear him saying like, you guys
33:53
Speaker 1: are coming back right any minute now, you said, Um,
33:57
Speaker 1: so there's this rain cover on top. They pushed that
34:00
Speaker 1: hang off and this this all makes some noise, and
34:02
Speaker 1: and in the movie they they kind of accurately displayed
34:05
Speaker 1: that to us, some clanking and clanging around. And I
34:09
Speaker 1: don't think in the movie they did this, but in
34:11
Speaker 1: real life, supposedly there was so much noise that they
34:14
Speaker 1: did like a little forty five minute, um kind of
34:17
Speaker 1: a search of the area. Didn't see anything going on. No,
34:21
Speaker 1: they didn't go up on the roof, that's for sure,
34:23
Speaker 1: and uh, they basically didn't find anything. So the guys
34:28
Speaker 1: are out. They shimmy about fifty feet to the ground
34:32
Speaker 1: via drain pipe, which is how you always do it,
34:35
Speaker 1: go to that perimeter fence. And I'm sure the perimeter
34:38
Speaker 1: fence was fine, but I think the idea was that
34:41
Speaker 1: they're never getting out anyway. So I don't think it
34:44
Speaker 1: had like fifteen feet of razor wire or anything. Like that.
34:47
Speaker 1: I think it did have double barbed wire at least
34:50
Speaker 1: for sure. That's nothing. It's not like concertina wire or anything. No,
34:53
Speaker 1: nothing like that. Around one in the morning, Alan West,
34:58
Speaker 1: Poor Alan West, he finally gets that cell great broken open.
35:05
Speaker 1: I'm sure he just thinks, all right, I'm gonna catch
35:07
Speaker 1: up to these guys and it's gonna be all good,
35:10
Speaker 1: and I'm getting out of here. Followed that same route.
35:14
Speaker 1: It's been a couple of hours. At this point, though,
35:17
Speaker 1: he saw that these were genuinely good dudes, it seemed
35:19
Speaker 1: like because they did leave him a paddle. I don't
35:21
Speaker 1: think we mentioned they made paddles out of chair legs
35:23
Speaker 1: and the screws and nuts and bolts and a pontoon
35:27
Speaker 1: that was all inflated for him. And he got a
35:30
Speaker 1: little snack, a little Bryce Crispy Treatrice Crispy treat, the
35:33
Speaker 1: little Bruno, little shot of Pruno for his for his courage,
35:36
Speaker 1: and then he looks over terrible timing, and there's a
35:39
Speaker 1: guard in a new position that basically could see anything
35:43
Speaker 1: that he tries to do. From that point forward, he's
35:46
Speaker 1: visually pinned down on the root. If he can't do anything,
35:49
Speaker 1: So this is around one am or something, and he figures, okay,
35:53
Speaker 1: the guard will eventually move. Well, Alan West says, the
35:56
Speaker 1: guard never moved for until dawn. That doesn't this guy
35:59
Speaker 1: p right, doesn't he ever shake the tree? Um? And
36:04
Speaker 1: he didn't. He did not shake the tree, stayed put.
36:06
Speaker 1: And so eventually Alan West was forced to climb back
36:09
Speaker 1: down the ventilation shift, back down from the roof of
36:12
Speaker 1: the cell blocks three stories back to his cell that
36:15
Speaker 1: he had just a few hours earlier. Finally, after months,
36:19
Speaker 1: punched a hole through and he went and laid down
36:22
Speaker 1: and just waited for the heat to come down on him.
36:25
Speaker 1: And indeed it did because at the seven am bed check,
36:29
Speaker 1: three dummy heads were discovered where three inmates real heads
36:33
Speaker 1: should have been. Uh, and the prison just went berserk.
36:37
Speaker 1: You know that feeling you get when you take a
36:39
Speaker 1: wrong turn and go like three or four miles in
36:42
Speaker 1: the wrong direction and have to go all the way
36:43
Speaker 1: back the other way. Yeah, imagine being Alan West and
36:47
Speaker 1: having to do that. That time's infinity, That time's infinity. Yeah,
36:51
Speaker 1: you wanna take another break? I think? So? Man, all right,
36:54
Speaker 1: we'll get to the well, we won't get to the
36:56
Speaker 1: bottom of this, but we'll speculate all over the place
36:58
Speaker 1: right after this. Kind Okay, so there are some things
37:29
Speaker 1: that we know about this from watching the movie, but
37:33
Speaker 1: the movie writers based the movie on a book, and
37:37
Speaker 1: the book author a belief basis stuff on an interview
37:42
Speaker 1: or interviews with Alan West that Alan West had with
37:45
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Prisons in the FBI. Because basically everything
37:48
Speaker 1: we know about the escape from Alcatraz came from the
37:52
Speaker 1: mouth of Allen West. Yeah, so he made a deal.
37:56
Speaker 1: He said, listen, I'll tell you all about it, but
37:59
Speaker 1: you can't throw me in here for longer because I
38:02
Speaker 1: tried to escape prison. You gotta give me immunity for
38:04
Speaker 1: that attempted escape. And let's be honest, guys, it really
38:07
Speaker 1: wasn't much of an attempt. Can you give me a
38:09
Speaker 1: break here? Right? I had to make the sad walk
38:12
Speaker 1: of shame back to l I have a feeling that
38:14
Speaker 1: that definitely factored into their decision to give him immunity, Like, man, probably,
38:19
Speaker 1: so you really you really got a hard luck case.
38:22
Speaker 1: So he makes a deal and says, I'll tell you everything.
38:25
Speaker 1: But again, this is just his account of it. Um.
38:29
Speaker 1: One thing that kind of jumped out is maybe it's
38:31
Speaker 1: not the most accurate account was that he was like, yeah,
38:34
Speaker 1: I was the mastermind. I thought up the whole thing
38:37
Speaker 1: from the start. And I don't know if that's quite true,
38:40
Speaker 1: because it seems like Clint Eastwood did. Yeah. Certainly the
38:44
Speaker 1: in the movie the movies, basically it should be called
38:47
Speaker 1: colin the Frank Morris story. He's the main character. Everybody
38:51
Speaker 1: else is a side character. It really kind of downplayed
38:56
Speaker 1: a lot of the contributions by the England brothers, certainly
38:59
Speaker 1: by Alan Wait doesn't even use Alan West's name. Um,
39:03
Speaker 1: So I don't know how much of an influence is
39:06
Speaker 1: from that movie or if that movie was just based
39:08
Speaker 1: on the general idea that Frank Morris was, um the
39:11
Speaker 1: mastermind and the leader, that he was a very intelligent
39:15
Speaker 1: person and kind of a born leader from what I know.
39:17
Speaker 1: So it's just not clear whether Alan West actually came
39:21
Speaker 1: up with this plan or not. Was he the one
39:23
Speaker 1: who sewed the raft all this time and he got
39:26
Speaker 1: left behind, or maybe he had really weak arms and
39:29
Speaker 1: this was just what he told the the Bureau of
39:32
Speaker 1: Prisons investigators. It was the reason why he never was
39:35
Speaker 1: able to chip out of the his cell. Who knows,
39:38
Speaker 1: but just so, just bear in mind from this point forward,
39:41
Speaker 1: just going to go on with the with this is gospel.
39:43
Speaker 1: But all of this is coming from Alan Westmouth. He
39:45
Speaker 1: was the one that was left behind. I feel like
39:47
Speaker 1: in the movie he got to the point where he
39:49
Speaker 1: could not jump up by himself and reach the great
39:51
Speaker 1: Is that right? Uh? Yeah, So in the movie they
39:54
Speaker 1: help each other up and then um, he would he
39:58
Speaker 1: would have had to have done it himself, and he
40:00
Speaker 1: couldn't jump. He just kept jumping and jumping and couldn't
40:02
Speaker 1: make it. Yes, but from what I know, he made
40:05
Speaker 1: it up to the roof and was pinned down on
40:07
Speaker 1: the roof by that that guard in the watch to guard. No,
40:11
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, you're right. In the movie it was
40:13
Speaker 1: like that. So. Uh. The plan was, and this is
40:17
Speaker 1: again from west account said, was to sail this raft
40:20
Speaker 1: or I guess paddle this raft across the bay to
40:24
Speaker 1: Angel Islands about a mile away a little over. And
40:27
Speaker 1: he said from there they were going to rest for
40:28
Speaker 1: a little bit, get their bearings, stash everything, and then
40:32
Speaker 1: swim to the mainland across what's called the Raccoon Straights
40:36
Speaker 1: to Marin County, and then once they got there they
40:40
Speaker 1: would start doing crime again. Immediately. They could rob a
40:44
Speaker 1: store for clothsing money, and steal a car and get
40:47
Speaker 1: the heck out of there as quickly as possible before
40:48
Speaker 1: the word gets out. Ostensibly, which is a pretty great
40:51
Speaker 1: plan actually, except for the crime part. Like I would have,
40:55
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess the idea is just get
40:56
Speaker 1: as far away as possible. But I don't know if
40:58
Speaker 1: I would have. Yeah, but you need to call are.
41:00
Speaker 1: It's not like somebody's gonna just give you one. I
41:02
Speaker 1: can take a bart. Sure you could take the bart.
41:06
Speaker 1: I guess I think it was a pretty good Maybe
41:10
Speaker 1: they're just like one last heist to get away from here.
41:12
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what it was. Maybe because they just want
41:14
Speaker 1: I mean, I get that want the urge to get
41:17
Speaker 1: as far away from there as possible. But also what
41:20
Speaker 1: if all of a sudden cops are on you from
41:22
Speaker 1: stealing a car immediately. I guess it gets a risk.
41:26
Speaker 1: It is a big risk, and a lot of people
41:28
Speaker 1: say that. Um, they were actually helped. On the other side,
41:31
Speaker 1: there was a guy named um oh Man. I can't
41:35
Speaker 1: remember his last name, but his his first name or
41:37
Speaker 1: his nickname was Bumpy. He was a Harlem crime lord,
41:42
Speaker 1: drug lord Um who was just a total b a
41:46
Speaker 1: um and they think that he may have had something
41:48
Speaker 1: to do with helping them escape with somebody who would
41:52
Speaker 1: have shown up and pick them up and driven them off.
41:55
Speaker 1: Other people say that one of the England's girlfriends was there,
41:58
Speaker 1: but the FBI supposedly investigate it did and said Frank
42:00
Speaker 1: Morris didn't have anybody. He was an orphan, He didn't
42:03
Speaker 1: have anybody on the outside. He could have helped. The
42:05
Speaker 1: England's had family that definitely would have helped if they could,
42:08
Speaker 1: but they didn't have the means to actually to help
42:12
Speaker 1: them out in San Francisco. So yeah, but they were
42:16
Speaker 1: a tight family, and they were the kind of family
42:18
Speaker 1: where I think if one of them had called him
42:20
Speaker 1: been like I'm breaking out, I need you to pick
42:21
Speaker 1: me up, they would have done it. That They're like that,
42:23
Speaker 1: that that kind of tight family bond, not like my
42:26
Speaker 1: family would be like, oh, well, I'll call you right
42:28
Speaker 1: back and then hello, FBI. How much of a reward
42:31
Speaker 1: do you have for giving up a prison Escapeee? Yes,
42:35
Speaker 1: a federal prison all that much? Hunk? Great? Do you
42:38
Speaker 1: have a pen? Can you do any better? So, yeah,
42:42
Speaker 1: that's exactly what my family would follow up with uh,
42:45
Speaker 1: they did find some evidence. So um, they did a
42:48
Speaker 1: search for about a week and a half. Um, along
42:50
Speaker 1: with the FBI, like you were saying, in the bureau
42:52
Speaker 1: prisons and the Alcatraz people, they were all supermad, of course,
42:56
Speaker 1: especially in the movie version. And they searched Angel Island,
43:00
Speaker 1: They searched all the other islands in the bay, and
43:02
Speaker 1: they did find one of those life preservers that had
43:05
Speaker 1: teeth marks on the inflation valve. They found a wallet
43:09
Speaker 1: wrapped in plastic that they figured was JW Anglands. They
43:13
Speaker 1: found one of those oars and they found it looked
43:17
Speaker 1: like most of one of the rafts or most of
43:19
Speaker 1: the raft But no bodies, no stolen cars, no burglaries. Um.
43:26
Speaker 1: No one had reported anything in the area unusual to
43:29
Speaker 1: to according to their plan, which was you know, steal
43:32
Speaker 1: closing money in a car. Yeah. And so the beer
43:34
Speaker 1: of prisons, like right out of the gate was like
43:36
Speaker 1: they drowned there. They were washed out to see that's it.
43:39
Speaker 1: We'll never hear from them again. But they're dead. They
43:41
Speaker 1: didn't actually escape. Um. And that this was in nineteen
43:44
Speaker 1: sixty two. It wasn't until nineteen nine of the FBI
43:47
Speaker 1: closed the book and said, yeah, that's probably what happened.
43:50
Speaker 1: We we presumed that they were dead and their bodies
43:53
Speaker 1: lost at sea. Um. But when they were building this case, uh,
43:57
Speaker 1: they cited the story of a guy named Seymour Webb
44:02
Speaker 1: who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and virtually
44:05
Speaker 1: the same time the England's and Morris would have been
44:08
Speaker 1: in San Francisco Bay and his body was never found,
44:12
Speaker 1: despite their being witnesses who watched him jumps. Very flimsy yeah, um, yes,
44:17
Speaker 1: but at the same time, it does kind of demonstrate like, look,
44:19
Speaker 1: maybe this guy was never Yeah, he was never found.
44:22
Speaker 1: He jumped at the same time the England's and Morris
44:24
Speaker 1: were in the water, so maybe their bodies were never found.
44:27
Speaker 1: There was a sighting of a body about five weeks
44:30
Speaker 1: later in July of nineteen sixty two UM by a
44:34
Speaker 1: group of Norwegian sailors who saw something kind of floating
44:37
Speaker 1: off and they're like, is that a body? They won't
44:40
Speaker 1: got binoculars, and they said, that's a body. It was
44:43
Speaker 1: a body. It was um floating upside down, so all
44:46
Speaker 1: they could see was the butt basically kind of bobbing
44:49
Speaker 1: in the water, and the butt looked through their binoculars
44:52
Speaker 1: at least to have on jeans, have on denim, and
44:56
Speaker 1: they you know, that was part of the prison outfit,
44:58
Speaker 1: was they were wearing denim. And this, this is the
45:01
Speaker 1: part that kind of gets a little flims into me,
45:03
Speaker 1: is the FBI said that there were no missing persons
45:06
Speaker 1: in the area in that time frame that we're wearing jeans, right,
45:12
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? So sitting down, who knows?
45:15
Speaker 1: And it was reported many weeks later, so you know,
45:18
Speaker 1: it was all it was kind of hearsay, I guess
45:20
Speaker 1: at that point it was. And then by the time
45:23
Speaker 1: they actually reported the sighting, it was October. So they're like, well,
45:25
Speaker 1: that's kind of useless. But they they do point to
45:28
Speaker 1: that and say, okay, this combined with Seymour web, we
45:31
Speaker 1: think that their bodies were swept out to see Not
45:35
Speaker 1: everybody agrees with that, UM, including the Angland family, who
45:39
Speaker 1: very much maintained that their brothers survived this escape from Alcatraz.
45:44
Speaker 1: And actually UM had a photograph that I don't know
45:48
Speaker 1: where they got it, but they they have a photograph
45:50
Speaker 1: that was supposedly taken of their brothers in Brazil in
45:56
Speaker 1: l Then it does it certainly doesn't there's actually a
45:59
Speaker 1: company you I can't remember the name of the company,
46:01
Speaker 1: but they do like um, artificial intelligence facial recognition. So
46:05
Speaker 1: they're just really leading the way to a dystopia. But
46:08
Speaker 1: they were like, hey, everybody, we want to introduce you
46:10
Speaker 1: to our software. So we're gonna analyze this picture and
46:14
Speaker 1: um there a I said, yeah, definitely the Anglands. How
46:17
Speaker 1: cool is that? Yeah? I mean I certainly looked at it,
46:20
Speaker 1: and it could be it didn't look so unlike them
46:23
Speaker 1: that it was like no way. Um, and again I
46:26
Speaker 1: found myself being like, yeah, man, I hope these guys
46:28
Speaker 1: made it to Brazil and they're should Robin Banks there
46:32
Speaker 1: to this exactly right? I have them raising cattle in Brazil.
46:36
Speaker 1: That's my that's my idea. Uh. In two thousand thirteen,
46:39
Speaker 1: there was a letter sent to the San Francisco Police Department, UH,
46:42
Speaker 1: supposedly from J. W. England saying, Hey, we made it, guys,
46:47
Speaker 1: but just barely. Morris died in two thousand eight. We
46:50
Speaker 1: kept in touch, great guy. Um Clarence died in two
46:54
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, and I'm still alive, but I got cancer.
46:57
Speaker 1: I need help and I'm gonna come for if you.
47:01
Speaker 1: If you promise in pinky swear until the public that
47:04
Speaker 1: you're not gonna send me to jail for more than
47:06
Speaker 1: one year and you're gonna heal my cancer. Yeah, and
47:10
Speaker 1: apparently they analyzed the letter and like, this is inconclusive.
47:13
Speaker 1: But the FBI was like, we close this case in
47:15
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, We're not about to open it up.
47:18
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The the idea that they survived
47:22
Speaker 1: is at least possible enough that for this whole time,
47:25
Speaker 1: the U. S. Marshall's Office, who took over the case
47:28
Speaker 1: from the FBI in nineteen seventy nine, um, they have
47:31
Speaker 1: have kept it open. Like these guys are wanted outlaws
47:34
Speaker 1: still to this day, even though they would be eight
47:37
Speaker 1: nine five. I think by now they are considered wanted
47:40
Speaker 1: fugitives in the cases open. Even though I believe the
47:43
Speaker 1: Marshall Service typically believes that they're dead, they haven't closed
47:47
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah. Here's my deal. If you do something
47:50
Speaker 1: like this and you don't leave some rock solid deathbed evidence,
47:55
Speaker 1: then you're just selfish, You really are. You owe it
47:58
Speaker 1: to the world to to have this be a lead
48:01
Speaker 1: story and be like Frank Morris died and you know,
48:05
Speaker 1: here's the evidence. Here's that little flower from the movie. Yeah, exactly,
48:08
Speaker 1: teach teach your smartest head of cattle to stamp out
48:12
Speaker 1: a message in morse code. That's what I want you
48:15
Speaker 1: spending your dying days doing, teaching that cow. The marshals
48:18
Speaker 1: say that they don't think they survived and went on
48:22
Speaker 1: to lead lives of solitude because they're like, these guys
48:25
Speaker 1: are career criminals. They would have done something again, they
48:28
Speaker 1: would have gotten caught again. It's a good point arguments
48:32
Speaker 1: for is that. And they don't know if they planned
48:35
Speaker 1: this that way or not. But when they went on
48:37
Speaker 1: the day they went, and during the hours they went,
48:40
Speaker 1: they actually had a few good hours of pretty calm
48:43
Speaker 1: bay currents. Um the you know, it could be so
48:47
Speaker 1: bad that they're going to pull you out to see
48:49
Speaker 1: or so bad that they take you in the wrong direction,
48:52
Speaker 1: completely away from land. And they said that, you know,
48:55
Speaker 1: whether it was just providence or whether they planned it
48:58
Speaker 1: this way. They had cloudy night, so there wasn't much
49:01
Speaker 1: light from the moon, and they had a really calm bay.
49:04
Speaker 1: So in theory they might could have done this. They
49:07
Speaker 1: could have, but the winds were really terrible that night too. Um,
49:10
Speaker 1: I think they were gusts up to like twenty one
49:13
Speaker 1: sustained winds of like ten miles an hour. That's tough
49:16
Speaker 1: to row. Um. Who knows. If if it was lucky,
49:20
Speaker 1: then yeah, if it was blowing them towards Angel Island
49:23
Speaker 1: and that was in their favor. It was blowing in
49:24
Speaker 1: any other direction, that would make it very very and
49:28
Speaker 1: then maybe maybe so they're like, well, that was fortunate.
49:31
Speaker 1: I didn't even have to steal a car um. The
49:35
Speaker 1: The other problem is the water. The water temperature is
49:38
Speaker 1: like fifty degrees fahrenheit, which is very very cold, and
49:41
Speaker 1: you get very um numb and eventually uh sent into
49:46
Speaker 1: shock and an exhaustion pretty quickly after being in this
49:49
Speaker 1: water for thirty minutes or last. But people swim in
49:53
Speaker 1: that thing, and it's happened before. They had triathlons in
49:58
Speaker 1: the in that water, and people do it. So it's
50:01
Speaker 1: not to say that these guys could not have done it.
50:03
Speaker 1: It wasn't so frigid that science would say, oh, no,
50:06
Speaker 1: you would die inside five minutes in this water exactly.
50:09
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if they were operating on the adrenaline
50:12
Speaker 1: that they surely would have had from the escape. Shimmying
50:15
Speaker 1: fifty ft down a drain pipe alone will pump you
50:17
Speaker 1: full of some pretty decent adrenaline, So who knows what
50:20
Speaker 1: they were capable of at the time. I have a
50:22
Speaker 1: theory is that the Anglands killed Frank Morris out there
50:27
Speaker 1: on that raft, and that was the body they saw floating,
50:31
Speaker 1: and that's why they made it to Brazil and we
50:33
Speaker 1: never heard from Frank Morris. Again. I don't like your theory.
50:37
Speaker 1: You don't think turning on them at the last minute. No, No,
50:42
Speaker 1: My theory is that that body was actually Seymour Web,
50:46
Speaker 1: that he was wearing Denham jeans under pants that got
50:49
Speaker 1: taken off of his other pants, and that he wasn't
50:53
Speaker 1: actually dead, but he met a mermaid um or merman
50:57
Speaker 1: who he fell in love with and spent the rest
51:00
Speaker 1: of his life under the sea with. Well that's lovely
51:03
Speaker 1: like that theory. But the cherry on top here is
51:05
Speaker 1: that those prisoners who wanted to help them escape because
51:08
Speaker 1: they thought the prison would close. We're right. The prison
51:12
Speaker 1: was shut down the following March, and the Bureau prison said,
51:15
Speaker 1: you know what, we were gonna shut this thing down anyway,
51:18
Speaker 1: because Alcatraz is just too much to keep up. This
51:21
Speaker 1: this big concrete block on a rocky island is too
51:24
Speaker 1: expensive to keep up with very few guards. Uh so,
51:28
Speaker 1: who knows, but in the movie they definitely sort of
51:29
Speaker 1: portray it as is. That's the reason why, Yeah and
51:33
Speaker 1: the Warden never had a happy day again. It's right,
51:37
Speaker 1: pretty satisfying film, Pretty satisfying film. And Chuck, I guess
51:40
Speaker 1: we said all this to say this. We have a
51:43
Speaker 1: book coming out that we would love for you to preorder. Yeah,
51:47
Speaker 1: that's right. Stuff you should know, an incomplete compendium of
51:52
Speaker 1: mostly interesting thing and guys. One of our lifelong dreams
51:55
Speaker 1: is to be on the New York Times bestseller list
51:58
Speaker 1: and they give you a T shirt. We really want
52:00
Speaker 1: to get on that list, and if that list came
52:02
Speaker 1: out today, we wouldn't be on it. So we would
52:07
Speaker 1: love for you to step up and help our dreams
52:08
Speaker 1: come true. Sure, how's that for a plea? I think
52:12
Speaker 1: that's a great plea, A plea and a plug all together.
52:15
Speaker 1: It's a pleague. Was this in cost twenty bucks? I
52:19
Speaker 1: think so? And it's worth every penny. I can tell
52:21
Speaker 1: you because we wrote it. That's right. So, um, that's it.
52:26
Speaker 1: If you want to go order our book, you can
52:28
Speaker 1: pre order anywhere you get books, Thank you in advance.
52:31
Speaker 1: And I think that's it for Escape from Alcatraz to right. Uh.
52:35
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about escaping from Alcatraz,
52:38
Speaker 1: there's some really great articles and books and all sorts
52:41
Speaker 1: of stuff out there in the Internet for you to
52:42
Speaker 1: dig into. So get digging. As I said, get digging.
52:45
Speaker 1: It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Delaware response.
52:51
Speaker 1: We kind of poked fund of Delaware a little bit.
52:54
Speaker 1: We now, I guess it was me, but Delaware reends
52:59
Speaker 1: Delawareans delawar in Delaware. They are lovely people, as it seems,
53:05
Speaker 1: because we've gotten quite a few emails, and they'll have
53:07
Speaker 1: good humor about their their lovely little state. Hey guys,
53:11
Speaker 1: our Delaware family had to laugh at your pirate radio podcasts. Delawareans,
53:14
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's right. There would be proud to be
53:17
Speaker 1: known as the Luxembourg of the United States. Most people
53:20
Speaker 1: drive through our state on nine five and less than
53:22
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, but if you do stop by. Our state
53:25
Speaker 1: is rich in history and agriculture, and we have a
53:27
Speaker 1: few nice beaches. What you should know is the ark
53:31
Speaker 1: on the top of our state. I guess it's an
53:34
Speaker 1: arch is made by a twelve mile radius from Newcastle,
53:40
Speaker 1: uh in historic town. What many people do not know
53:43
Speaker 1: is the bottom of the arc formed a wedge betwixt Pennsylvania, Maryland,
53:47
Speaker 1: and Delaware. The ownership of that land was in dispute
53:50
Speaker 1: between Delaware and Pennsylvania for decades, only to be resolved
53:53
Speaker 1: in Rumor has it that the disputed land was a
53:57
Speaker 1: haven for unsavory types who capitalized on the uncertain jurisdiction.
54:02
Speaker 1: Thanks for the show and informs and entertains my family
54:05
Speaker 1: and we wish you well from Delaware, the first state
54:07
Speaker 1: to ratify the constitution, That is from Doug Wazgat and family.
54:13
Speaker 1: Nice Doug, thank you. I would have led with the
54:15
Speaker 1: first state to ratify the constitution. Thing. I bet Dave
54:18
Speaker 1: tout that a lot. That's it's a good thing to doubt.
54:22
Speaker 1: H Well, if you want to be like Doug and
54:24
Speaker 1: defend your state, whether it's Delaware or not, we want
54:28
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54:30
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54:38
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