Advertisement

How Alcatraz fugitives would look now – 60 years on from daring jail break

Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris
Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris

Sixty years after the most audacious prison break in the US, the US Marshals Service has released digitally aged mugshots of what the Alcatraz fugitives would look like now.

On June 11 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin launched a daring bid for freedom, which would later be immortalised in the Clint Eastwood film Escape From Alcatraz.

After getting out of the island prison, the convicts are widely believed to have drowned crossing the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay on a makeshift raft.

However, conspiracy theories that they survived still persist and police said the hunt for them remained “ongoing”, even though the men would all be in their 90s now.

The new images showed their faces deeply lined, but still with the same hardened criminal stares they displayed when first booked into Alcatraz for armed robbery.

A US Marshals spokesman said: “The ongoing investigation of the 1962 escape from Alcatraz federal prison serves as a warning to fugitives that, regardless of time, we will continue to look for you and bring you to justice.”

Alcatraz prison break mapped out

Alcatraz, on an island a mile offshore from San Francisco, was known as the “ultimate maximum-security prison” and was supposed to be impossible to escape from. Many tried and many failed.

Known as “The Rock”, it had fortified iron bars, guard towers and officers checking inmates a dozen times a day.

It hosted some of the US’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and Robert Stroud, the so-called “Birdman of Alcatraz”.

In the 1979 Hollywood retelling of the escape, in which Eastwood played Morris, the question of whether the men made it across the bay was left open.

Their elaborate escape plan, which took a year to prepare, involved digging through the back wall of their cells with spoons, using cardboard and suitcases to hide their work.

Dummy heads on bed
Dummy heads on bed

It gave them access to a utility corridor, which allowed them to get to the cell block roof.

They joined together 50 Second World War-era raincoats, with rubber linings, to create a raft measuring 14ft by 6ft.

In addition, they made wooden paddles and used a musical instrument as an air pump for the raft.

Flesh-coloured dummy heads were constructed using plaster, paint and real hair from the prison barbershop.

On the night of the escape, they positioned the dummy heads to make it look like they were asleep in their beds, fooling the guards.

That gave them a 10-hour window before they were found to be missing.

After climbing onto the roof, they descended down a pipe from the bakery, scaled a fence and reached the shore, where they set off on the raft.

Alcatraz - DeAgostini/Getty Images
Alcatraz - DeAgostini/Getty Images

Once they were reported missing, the prison went into a full lockdown and a massive sea, air and land search was launched. A sealed bag, containing addresses and numbers, was found in the water. It was concluded that they drowned, but their bodies were never found.

Potential evidence later emerged that the raft may have made it to nearby Angel Island. There were even reports that a car was stolen by three people on the night of the escape attempt.

A conspiracy theory also developed that the Anglin brothers attended their mother’s funeral in disguise in 1973. She had reportedly previously received flowers, with no card, while she was alive.

In 2013, a letter was sent to police by a man claiming to be John Anglin. It said that he was alive but suffering from cancer, and he offered to serve a year in prison in return for medical treatment.

Clint Eastwood portrayed Frank Morris in the 1979 film Escape From Alcatraz - Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount
Clint Eastwood portrayed Frank Morris in the 1979 film Escape From Alcatraz - Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount

In it, the man claiming to be Anglin said that his brother died in 2008, and Morris in 2005.

A photograph emerged in 2015 which was purported to have been taken of the Anglin brothers in Brazil in the Seventies.

The following year, police investigated a deathbed confession in which a man claimed to have been an accomplice.

He claimed to have picked up the escapees by boat in the bay and to have later murdered them.

Alcatraz closed down in 1963 on cost grounds, a decision which had already been taken before the escape attempt.