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WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Alcatraz Fugitives Still Sought After 40 Years Prison Notebooks, FBI Papers Detail a Daring Escape Includes FBI Documents March 7, 2000 By Tami Sheheri AP The island prison in its heyday NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- Close to 40 years after three inmates fled from the supposedly escape-proof Alcatraz island prison, the search for them -- dead or alive -- continues. The U.S. Marshal's Service says the Alcatraz escape is its oldest open case. Since 1979, it has continued to follow leads, mostly dead ends. FBI documents and a warden's notebook obtained by APBnews.com, in addition to two pages of an unfinished, unpublished memoir by former Alcatraz inmate Thomas Kent, provide insight into the prison's internal life and the investigation of the escape. Kent claims he was involved in planning the escape but declined to join the others because he could not swim. A successful breakout FBI files show agents were amazed at the escape; a warden's notebook and an inmate's memoir give an idea of daily life in Alcatraz. At 6 a.m. June 12, 1962, prison officials discovered that John William Anglin, his brother, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Lee Morris -- all considered dangerous criminals with long records -- had successfully escaped. Despite an immediate "all out investigation" by the FBI, the three have never been found. That morning, a prison guard, trying to rouse the three sleeping inmates, realized that what he had thought were heads were actually carefully crafted plaster dummies. They had been painted a fleshlike color and cleverly topped off with real human hair collected from the prison's barbershop. A land, sea and air search was launched, and hundreds of soldiers, military police and coast guard personnel helped comb the area. No bodies were found, though some wrapped personal belongings and a wallet stuffed with cash washed up on shore sometime later. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover offered his opinion, scribbled on a press clipping in the file: "It certainly looks like loose security on Alcatraz." Plan was 'fantastic' Whether security was loose at Alcatraz is debatable; the escape plot, however, was an elaborate and daring plan of genius. According to FBI files, one agent stated the inmates' preparation was nothing less than "fantastic." The official account is that for months prior to the escape, the three men had been scraping out the air vents in their cells using some stolen spoons. Once behind a 5-inch concrete wall, they began stashing supplies such as raincoats. They also had constructed fake grids to hide the holes they made. On the night of the escape, the three inmates placed the plaster dummies on their beds, leaving the heads poking out of the blankets on the pillows to look as if they were asleep. They left through the vents, which led them to a utility pipe tunnel then a ventilation shaft and ultimately, the roof. From the roof they headed down a drainpipe and climbed over two 12-foot-high fences, all the time hidden by the San Francisco Bay's fog and steep cliffs. >From clues left behind, authorities pieced together the inmates' next moves. A makeshift raft had been painstakingly constructed out of 55 raincoats. Each escapee was also equipped with a life jacket also crafted from more raincoats, most likely stolen from other inmates. Crude oars and other escape aids washed up on shore. The FBI files indicate the inmates "possibly made good escape." After all, the file states, "no evidence has been developed to indicate that subjects successfully made their way to the mainland. Likewise, however, there is no information to show that they did not." According to Kent, the escape was even more elaborate than the FBI revealed. The men had used the spoons together with a stolen vacuum cleaner to form a crude but evidently effective power tool to dig their way out. Further information about the plot came from another Alcatraz prisoner, Allen West, who was originally thought to be the mastermind of the plan. West was supposed to break out with the others, but the air ventilation hole he had dug with stolen kitchen spoons was simply not big enough for him to crawl through. By the time West did manage to crawl out, the three others had already left the island. On the roof, West realized his comrades had abandoned him, so he sneaked back to his cell, where he woke up the next morning. 'The underdogs actually got out' "Strange to say, but this unique, surreptitious escape was destined to become the most-successful, non-violent, joint-prisoner-venture, and longest running bustout ever engineered, from deep inside that rocky island penitentiary," Kent wrote in his never-before-seen memoirs. Art Roderick, now an inspector for the U.S. Marshal's Service in Arlington, Va., was just 7 years old at the time of the breakout, but he remembered the mood. "It made such a splash in the newspapers," he said. "It was one of those challenge things. The underdogs actually got out." The Anglins and Morris were three of 36 other inmates who made 14 separate escape attempts. Most died or were captured or killed. The Anglins and Morris make up three of five unsolved escapes in which inmates were classified as "missing and presumed drowned." The other two men disappeared into the Bay and were presumed to have died. Treacherous seas, hungry sharks and dangerous currents surround the island, while armed guards, barbed wire and countless other security methods on the island meant other escapees were either killed or returned to the prison. To the inmates, escapes were worth a grasp at freedom. "Most prisoners, like myself, elect to live with the sentence, hoping as here, for an escape, without ever knowing the future," wrote Kent. Investigation reactivated In 1993, the possibility that the three survived the escape was given new life. Kent went on national TV and claimed in an expenses-paid interview with America's Most Wanted that he, too, was part of the 1962 escape effort but pulled out because he couldn't swim. The TV appearance prompted the U.S. Marshal's Service to pursue new leads and offer a $1 million reward, which has now expired. Kent died in 1997. Thomas Testaverde, Kent's friend and publicist, said he "went to his grave with a basic philosophy that you didn't tell everything. To this day he hasn't told everything." Kent also alleged that West had misled authorities on some details of the escape. He said that while the escape plan -- a "deadly game of cat and mouse" -- was believed by officials to be a small operation, it actually included at least 38 inmates, with eight in an inner circle. At least 100 others who were knowledgeable about the plot. "It was an organized group ... a prison cartel. [Prison officials and the government] couldn't believe that in a structured environment, the prisoners could keep that a secret," Testaverde said. He also said the camaraderie of the prisoners was such that they all chipped in to help get things done, be it sewing and gluing the raft or simply transporting goods. Did they die free men? Clarence Anglin reportedly had arranged to meet an old girlfriend who was to drive the fugitives to Mexico. Prison records reportedly show Morris had borrowed a book to learn Spanish. In the late 1980s, a grandson of Clarence Anglin said he had died in Iowa in 1986, a free man. Clarence Anglin's mother, Rachel, said she and some other family members had received unsigned postcards and holiday cards. Kent "had no doubt in his mind that they made it," Testaverde said. "It was some serious connection from within the prison that was activated once they were able to get out of the prison itself. It wasn't going to be a surprise." "[Prison officials] stood there with egg on their face. The whole thing was so huge and it happened right under their noses," said Testaverde. Still following leads Forty years later, Roderick and a handful of other agents still follow leads on the case. Roderick provided APBnews.com with new age-enhanced photographs made from the original mug shots of the Anglins and Morris. Tips have led investigators to Alabama, Florida, Georgia and even to South America to check out graveyards and cemeteries. "Generally speaking, we don't like to say anything definite until we've found bodies or they're in custody, but they probably never got out of water," Roderick said. Roderick said that everything about the case goes against all the usual things that a fugitive will do to survive. Although they were career criminals, no post-escape crimes were ever linked to them. "The mere fact that we were never able to tag them to any type of crime since they got out ... and that's all they knew. They didn't have a whole heck of money." If they did survive, there is scant evidence that the three maintained ties with their previous lives. "No contact is very unusual," he said. Nestled among many other small islands in San Francisco Bay, "The Rock" is now a well-known government operated tourist attraction. In previous incarnations, it has been a fortress, a military prison and land claimed by Native Americans. Some people associated with the prison have made their homes on the island. In the prison's 29 years of operation, just over 1,500 prisoners passed through. The prison had 336 cells, but only about 260 of these were filled at one time. "Alcatraz was never no good for nobody," voiced the last prisoner to leave the island, Frank Wathernam. Inmates were shipped off to Alcatraz because they were too hardened and difficult for other federal prisoners. They were met with a strict set of rules and a 5-by-9 stone cell furnished with a cot, a basin and a toilet. There were three inmates to one guard, and the average stay was about eight years. Prisoners complained about psychologically harsh conditions, including "the hole" -- cold, dark pits in the belly of the prison that isolated prisoners from their fellow inmates and where conditions were reported to be torturous. An inmate could find himself there for days or even years. "What to do? That is the question. Commit suicide now and have done with it, or stay alive one more day and tough it out?" Kent writes in his memoir of the experience. In 1963 U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the crumbling, increasingly expensive prison closed. Not everyone was glad about that: "I'm going to miss the Rock. It's been a very pleasant assignment," said Olin Blackwell, the prison's last warden. He died in 1986 at 71. Inmates felt otherwise: "I was a man who was dead inside. ... And when you've got a man like that in prison, you've gotta get rid of him. And that's what they did -- they shipped me to Alcatraz," said former inmate and author Leon "Whitey" Thompson. If the fugitives were ever caught, Roderick said his first words to them would be: "Amazing feat, gentleman ... one for the record books." Is there any chance they made it and lived out the remainder of their lives as free men? "You never know," Roderick said. Tami Sheheri is a staff writer at APBnews.com *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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