Modern Mysteries

1962 Alcatraz escapees might have survived

By T.K. Randall
December 15, 2014

Image: Alcatraz Island
Credit: Meburian / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) Alcatraz, the infamous prison located in San Francisco Bay, was long thought to be inescapable. In addition to the building's impenetrable walls and closely guarded cells it was also situated right in the middle of the bay where strong tidal currents made the water extremely treacherous.

None of these things however stopped bank robbers Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris from escaping in 1962.

Their escape plan was a work of genius that took an immense amount of preparation to pull off.

To escape their cells the men spent six months painstakingly digging a tunnel out of the concrete using sharpened spoons. To keep the guards off their backs on the night of their escape they fashioned dummy heads from soap, paper and hair to place in their beds.Once they managed to reach the water's edge the men then put together an inflatable raft made from raincoats and set off in to the fast-flowing water in an effort to reach safety. All three of them however disappeared that night and to this day nobody knows exactly what happened to them.

Now in a renewed effort to solve the mystery a team of scientists from the Netherlands has been using a hydraulic model to simulate the path of the escapees' raft as it was paddled across the bay.

Their findings suggest that it might have been possible for the men to have made it to shore but only if they had embarked on their journey at around midnight and paddled hard in a northerly direction. Departing at any other time would have seen them spend so much time in the water that they would have succumbed to hypothermia before being able to reach dry land.

Whether the men actually managed to do this however is a mystery that may never be solved.

Source: BBC News

Tags: Alcatraz, Prison Escape