They said it couldn't be done - then three men did it. They escaped from Alcatraz.
Alcatraz - "The Rock" - was a maximum security prison in the San Francisco Bay that at one point was home away from home to gangsters Al Capone, Mickey Cohen, Whitey Bulger and the "Birdman of Alcatraz," Robert Franklin Stroud, according to Live Science and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Alcatraz operated for about 30 years and according to the F.B.I., 14 escape attempts were made by 36 men, but nearly all were captured or died in the process. Those statistics changed on the night of June 11, 1962 when John Anglin, his brother Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris made a prison break so mysterious, it was made into a movie.
The three men tucked dummy heads made of plaster and flesh-toned paint into their beds and snuck out of holes in their cells that they drilled with an old vacuum motor. After getting to the prison roof, they climbed down the smoke stack and over the fence. They launched from the northeast side of an island on a raft fashioned from 50 stolen raincoats inflated by a musical instrument, according to the F.B.I. website.
The plan was "ingenious," according to the F.B.I., and had many intricate and creative components. The part they can't figure out is how the men survived once they got off the island.
Dutch hydraulic experts made a model of the San Francisco Bay to study flood risk and the impact of sea-level rise when they decided to take a crack at this closed case, according to Live Science.
"We didn't know exactly when the inmates launched their boats, or their precise starting point, and so we decided to release 50 'boats' every 30 minutes between 20:00 and 04:00 (8 p.m. and 4 a.m.) from a range of possible escape spots at Alcatraz to see where they would end up," Fedor Baart, a hydraulic engineer at the research institute Deltares, said in a statement, according to Live Science. "We added a paddling effect to the 'boats,' as we assumed the prisoners would paddle as they got closer to land."
Before 11:30 p.m., the escapees would have been overtaken by sea currents in the rough Pacific, but researchers found that if the escape occurred between 11:30 p.m. and midnight, the prisoners could have landed north of the Golden Gate Bridge, at Horseshoe Bay. Ay debris could have drifted to Angel Island, north of Alcatraz (which is where a paddle and items belonging to the men were found by the F.B.I.).
"Of course, this doesn't prove this was what really happened, but the latest and best hydraulic modeling information indicates that it was certainly possible," study author, Rolf Hut, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, said in a statement, according to Live Science.
From the F.B.I.'s website:
"We officially closed our case on December 31, 1979, and turned over responsibility to the U.S. Marshals Service, which continues to investigate in the unlikely event the trio is still alive. If you have ANY leads or information to share, please call Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke of the Northern District of California at (415) 436-7677. It's one mystery we'd all like to solve!"
