Original subtitles

This program is about unsolved mysteries.

Whenever possible, the actual family members

and police officials have participated

in recreating the events.

What you are about to see is not a news broadcast.

[music playing]

Alcatraz, a rock.

For over 29 years, the nation's most notorious prison-- a home

for such master criminals as Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly,

and its Birdman, Robert Stroud-- Alcatraz

stands in the middle of San Francisco's icy cold bay,

a treacherous moat that was the best guarantee that nobody

would successfully escape.

And nobody did until June the 11th, 1962.

On that night, three men broke out of their cell house

and vanished into the waves of a homemade raft.

John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris,

the brilliant mastermind of the escape, were never seen again.

10 days later, authorities discovered pieces of the raft.

It had broken up at sea.

The three convicts appeared to have swum for it.

Did they make it?

The debate continues.

If they went into the water with the primitive flotation

equipment that they had, they were drowned within 30 minutes.

They succumbed to hypothermia and drowned.

I'd stake my life on it, that they're out there in the bar

right now.

Or their bones are out there.

I felt that they didn't make it.

But I thought we'd find a body.

And we didn't find a body.

I think they made it.

If you call the Bureau of Prisons today,

they will tell you no one escaped from Alcatraz.

They made it.

In the 25 years that have passed since that June night,

no trace of Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin

has ever been found.

They may still be at large and perhaps are still in hiding.

Tonight, in a special 90 minute edition of "Unsolved

Mysteries", we will see exactly how

the inmates conceived and executed

their ingenious escape.

We will follow the exact route they took as they broke

through the walls of Alcatraz.

And just as they faced the icy waters of the San Francisco

Bay, we have asked triathlon swimmer, Dave Horning

to attempt to duplicate their dangerous swim to freedom.

We've also got a replica of the convicts' makeshift raft

to see if they could possibly survive

the one of the half mile trip across the Bay.

Renowned endurance swimmer Diana Nyad

will closely track Dave and the raft's progress

from our camera boat just a few feet away.

We'll also take you inside the walls of Alcatraz,

where society's most incorrigible

criminals, including Al Capone, are finally tamed.

So join me for this 90 minute special edition

of "The Unsolved Mysteries from Alcatraz."

[music playing]

In August of 1934, Alcatraz opened its doors.

Its inmates, the most troublesome, escape prone

cons in the system, were gathered from prisons

around the country.

Alcatraz's first convicts were loaded

on special armored trains.

Shackled to their benches, they made the slow journey

to Tiburon on San Francisco Bay.

The guards were so concerned about an escape

that, once there, the railroad cars

themselves were loaded onto barges

and taken across to the Rock.

The men were not allowed out of these train cars

until they stepped on the dock of Alcatraz.

On Alcatraz, inmates who behave themselves

were given the privilege of working a few hours a day

in the industries building.

There in the laundry, Al Capone, who had once

made $100,000 a week looting Chicago's underworld,

earned $0.07 an hour pressing and folding

the clothes of military personnel and the inmates.

It was possibly the first honest job he ever had.

And Alcatraz was the first institution to truly

tame the cunning gangland boss.

Capone was convicted of income tax evasion in 1931.

Initially he was jailed in Chicago.

And then Atlanta, but was able to bribe authorities

for special privileges.

He had a carpeted cell, a smoking jacket,

and was even offered a ticker tape machine to keep

track of his investments.

At Alcatraz, however, he endured the same Spartan conditions

as everyone else.

Al Capone was a very good inmate on Alcatraz.

Unfortunately, some of the inmates

were very jealous of him because of his millions of dollars.

And he was treated very badly by the inmates.

One inmate stabbed him one time in the barbershop.

During Capone's first two years at Alcatraz,

the warden established a policy forbidding the inmates

to speak to one another.

This strict rule of silence was impossible

for the boisterous Capone.

On at least three occasions he was caught

talking to other inmates.

And it was here that he paid the penalty,

confinement on isolation row.

Its 200 pound doors of steel blocked out all the light.

They forced the inmate to sit in a tiny cell

in pitch black dark with no human contact

for 24 hours a day.

And if a convict was particularly troublesome,

his bed, blankets and clothes would be confiscated,

and he had to endure the ordeal naked.

When Capone entered Alcatraz, he was diagnosed with syphilis.

Capone wouldn't believe it, and paid other convicts

to take his medicine.

After a few years, the guards noticed that the syphilis

was affecting his brain.

His speech deteriorated, and from time to time

he would put his clothes on backwards.

Eventually, Capone was completely

disabled by the disease.

He died on January 25th, 1947, eight years after his release

from Alcatraz.

One of the Rock's most famous residents

was Robert Stroud, who served a life sentence

for two murder convictions.

Stroud initially was incarcerated at Leavenworth,

where he spent his time in solitary confinement studying

birds and wrote two books on their diseases.

His life was chronicled in a movie

called "The Birdman of Alcatraz,"

starring Burt Lancaster.

It painted a heroic picture of Stroud

as an oppressed convict tormented

by prison officials who wanted to confiscate

the 300 birds he had collected.

Robert Stroud was a surly, quiet, and morose individual.

he did very little talking.

Very few of the inmates talked to him.

And most of them disliked him.

Stroud was a very intelligent man.

With only a third grade education,

he could read and write about three or four languages.

But he was psychotic, very demented

man, and at most times, very difficult to get along with.

At Leavenworth, Stroud was caught hiding 3 and 1/2 gallons

of grain alcohol which he had distilled from bird seed

and from contraband smuggled to him

in the bottoms of bird cages.

For this and other offenses, he was transferred

to Alcatraz in 1942.

He had a lot of funny habits.

A lot of times he'd walk around in his cell quite naked.

He'd also shave every hair off his body.

And those were some of the things that were

different than most inmates.

On the Rock, Stroud was not allowed to keep

a single bird in his cell.

But apparently his biographers felt

the title Birdman of Alcatraz had a catchier ring

than Birdman of Leavenworth.

For 30 years, Alcatraz with the most

dreaded prison in America-- tough, cold and virtually

escape proof.

14 escapes were attempted.

10 men died, and all the rest were captured, except three.

Many former inmates believe those three made it.

One of these inmates was a suspected

collaborator, Clarence Carnes.

A confidential, close friend of the escapees, Clarence Carnes

spent 13 years on Alcatraz and was the youngest person

in confinement, arriving in 1946 when he was just 18 years old.

That same year Clarence became embroiled

in the bloodiest escape attempt in Alcatraz's history.

A desperate bid that resulted in the deaths of two

guards and three inmates.

Two other inmates were executed for their role in the murders,

but Carnes was spared and instead

received a life sentence.

Don DeNevi, a professor at Merritt College in Oakland,

co-wrote a manuscript with Clarence Carnes.

This was a first insider's account of the escape.

Clarence passed away last year.

But DeNevi shares his collaborator's opinion.

These guys made it.

They made it because Clarence said they did,

and I trust that.

If you call the Bureau of Prisons today,

they will tell you no one escaped from Alcatraz.

They made it.

This is an embarrassment.

Who's going to admit to that?

In Clarences' manuscript, he wrote, "cowardice at Alcatraz

was a thing you didn't run into very often.

Most had proven long before they got there

that they weren't cowards."

The daring escape of Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers,

against the longest odds that could possibly exist,

is telling proof that Clarence knew what he was talking about.

Alcatraz had a deservedly formidable reputation.

The ratio of guard to inmate was the highest

of any prison in the country, one

guard to every three convicts.

Alcatraz was the last stop in the federal prison system,

and only the worst troublemakers were sent there.

There were few privileges.

For the first two years of operation,

prisoners were not even allowed to talk to one another.

Out of a 24 hour day, 23 were spent in a solitary cell.

The inmates were counted at least 14 times a day.

But no man made security precautions could begin

to match Alcatraz's most distinguished feature--

the Bay that surrounds it.

Alcatraz were opened because it was hoped to be,

and we believe that has been, the inescapable prison.

Alcatraz was never considered escape proof.

It was considered to be a very difficult place

to escape from, for one reason and one reason only.

And that was the water that lay between the island

and the mainland.

Or in the other direction, from the island and Angel Island.

That was the only thing that made it difficult to escape

from Alcatraz, was that water.

The water was there.

That was the barrier.

Alcatraz's state of the art security included

a master control room that oversaw

the three-tiered cellblocks.

There each prisoner was assigned to his own cell.

Guards prowled restlessly, looking for signs of trouble.

25.

23.

27.

24.

You got so many counts you make a day.

And you've got to count bodies.

And we had a lot of official counts.

And then we had a lot of unofficial counts

which the office of [inaudible] was supposed to take.

So what my opinion is, if you can beat the count,

you can escape from any place.

If you can't beat the count, you're going to get caught.

One of the hallmarks of Alcatraz's rigid security

was the sporadic shakedowns of the prisoners' cells.

Want to open up 143?

Clarence Carnes was often targeted,

as he worked in the prison library

and distributed reading material to the board prisoners.

Come out of there.

Shakedown time.

Authorities suspected that he used this job as a cover

to circulate contraband.

Materials they were correct.

Carnes was the most important inmate on Alcatraz.

He had gained the respect of virtually all the other inmates

because he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

He was, in a sense, the godfather of Alcatraz.

Those who needed information, those who wanted advice

sought Carnes out.

OK, close it up.

Clarence was invited to participate in the escape.

But as he was under such close scrutiny, he declined.

He did remain close to the plot, a plot that began

with a robber named Allen West.

West was a close friend of Carnes,

and was assigned to paint the top tier

and ceiling of the cell block at the prison.

One day while working there, he discovered

a way to access the prison's roof

through a ventilation shaft.

West noticed that the ventilation duct

through the cell house roof was constructed in such a way

so that there were crossbars in between.

You couldn't cut the bars.

But West discovered that all you had to do

was cut the entire duct from its surrounding support

and just shove the whole thing out.

By October of 1961, West had begun planning his escape.

He enlisted the help of the Anglin brothers.

They had been at the prison for 1 and 1/2 years

and had a history of escapes from other institutions.

The Anglins were expert raftsmen because they'd

grown up in the Florida swamps.

They knew how to construct rafts.

They knew how to negotiate currents.

They were expert swimmers as well.

Perhaps the most pivotal figure in the plot

was another bank robber named Frank Morris.

According to prison records, he had an IQ of 133,

approaching the genius range.

His cell was next to West.

And once he was bought into the plan,

he put his intellect to good use.

Morris also had a record of other escape attempts.

He had been at Alcatraz for 1 and 1/2 Years

Morris, if you could use the term,

was the intellectual type.

He was a thinker.

Anything connected with this escape

that had any real brains behind it can be credited to Morris.

While they found a way to break through the roof,

the prisoners still had no way to get

to the top of the cellblock from their first floor cells.

But Clarence Carnes knew a way.

During those few hours of freedom during the 1946 escape,

Clarence had discovered this utility

corridor that ran the length and the height of the cellblock.

Inside the corridor were heating and water pipes

that formed a makeshift ladder.

It was a dangerous climb, but it was the only way the convicts

could reach the roof.

Word began to circulate through the prison grapevine

that an escape was on.

It seemed everyone but the guards

knew that something was up.

Carnes' job made it possible for him to pass information

to the four ringleaders.

It was not what might be called general knowledge,

but I think that there was quite a few

of the other inmates that were aware that an escape

attempt was being made.

And it's surprising to me that this could

be the case without some information

getting to the authorities.

The convicts on Alcatraz, even if the whole population

knew about it, you can almost be guaranteed that the guards

would never hear about it.

That's just the way the cons on the Rock were.

In preparing for their escape, the convicts

took advantage of one of Alcatraz's few luxuries.

In the early part of the evening,

there was what they call a music hour.

And anybody who had a string instrument could play.

When that music is playing, it kind of

has an effect of deafening the officer

who is making his inspections.

And the inmates that were digging were just digging away.

You think if somebody is going to escape,

they're going to escape out through the front.

It never entered my mind that somebody'd

go back through the corridor.

I don't know why.

It's like I guess you don't use the backdoor.

In between headcounts, the Anglins, West and Morris

dug out the rear of their respective cells.

West also used the time to craft false ventilation fronts

to hide their escape materials.

In order to evade the incessant headcounts

while they prepared their escape,

the convicts devised a brilliant ploy.

They decided that they would have to make dummy heads to be

in their bunks in case one of them

was not in there when the guard would go by.

And this was at a time when the lights were turned low,

and it would be difficult to recognize other than see

that a face was in the bed.

Morris asked me about how you mix flesh tone.

Because see I'm an artist.

I did a lot of oil painting on Alcatraz.

He asked me a number of times, and I began to wonder, why is

he so interested in flesh tone?

And then I begin to put it all together--

because they needed a flesh tone color for the dummy heads.

The construction of these dummies

took place after the lights had been extinguished.

The dummies themselves were made from soap, concrete powder,

and stolen paint.

One of the Anglins worked in the barbershop

and provided the hair that gave them an extra touch of realism.

This is one of the actual dummies the men created,

still preserved by the National Maritime Museum

across the Bay in San Francisco.

Now these are two drills used by the convicts.

They're constructed from barber shears and parts

from a vacuum cleaner.

They are thought to have been used

to drill through the huge duct leading to the roof.

These are the actual spoon handles, which

authorities believe were used to dig through the convicts' cell

walls.

By the time the convicts had crafted these items,

they'd managed to surmount many of the obstacles standing

between them and freedom.

But huge ones remained.

They still had to find a place to hide

while they used the drills to cut through to the roof.

Additionally, in the midst of the prison's tight security

and close scrutiny, they had to find some private space where

they could build their raft.

Allen West came up with a solution.

Hey, what's going on up there?

When West was painting, some material would get

down and get scattered around.

And so I don't know who gave the orders that he would be allowed

to hang some blankets up alongside of there

so that this material would not get thrown over the side.

In retrospect, it gave those people a place to work.

For eight months the cell house roof

is blanketed off, giving the inmates complete privacy

to drill out the ventilation shaft

and collect the items they needed for their escape.

Morris and the Anglins would take turns climbing

to this workspace, the dummies left

on their pillows enabled them to evade the nightly headcount.

Each night, with a look out in place,

they would make the hazardous climb to the roof.

In his manuscript, Carnes writes,

"many times through the years I had met

men who had tried to escape.

But their flaw had been too little planning and being

too hasty to try to get away.

They had not been thoroughly in their thinking,

and that's what defeated them on Alcatraz."

The four men who painstakingly prepared

their daring escape that winter in 1962 made no such mistakes.

They can hear you all the way up here.

Quiet.

Shut up and keep filing.

Yeah.

Making any progress?

Some.

Back in 1962, the Anglins, Frank Morris and Allen West

spent nine months preparing for their impending swim.

And as winter passed into spring,

they made their final plans.

For To patrolling guards, the spring of 1962

was like any other.

But the inmates knew differently.

And right under the gaze of their keepers,

they helped the four escapees in their preparations.

One by one, other convicts surreptitiously

passed the escapees the raincoats they needed to build

their raft and life jackets.

At night the men made their life preservers in their cells

and hid them in the partially dug out escape tunnels.

In this secret workspace hidden by the blankets,

the Anglins and Morris took turns assembling their raft.

They were getting close, very close to the time

when they would be ready.

June 11th, 1962-- the lights had been extinguished.

The time to escape had finally arrived.

Allen.

Allen.

Yep.

Time to go.

Quietly, the Anglins made the, by now,

routine trip to their workspace.

And for the first time, West tried to slip through the hole

in his cell wall.

Frank.

What the hell's the matter with you?

I can't get through.

The hole's too small.

Everybody's upstairs ready to go.

West had his exit carved out to the point

where all he needed was to punch his way through.

Suddenly there's an iron bar that

had been used as part of the reinforced masonry

when the cell house had originally been built

and that no one knew was there.

Where's West?

His hole's not big enough.

He needs more help.

No way.

We're leaving.

Leaving the instigator of the plan behind, the Anglins

and Morris finally, in the words of Clarence Carnes,

"saw the moon" for the first time in decades.

They were almost free.

The convicts descended from a corner of the roof

by way of an exhaust pipe adjoining the kitchen.

Ironically, though prepared for every security

breach inside the prison, security outside was weak.

Nobody noticed the men as they carried their raft and life

preservers closer to the beach, the last step

before the most grueling part of the journey.

Only one fence stood between them and the 54 degree

waters of San Francisco Bay.

It was so carefully planned.

The utilizing of dummy faces, the making of the life jackets,

the making of a raft-- I don't know of any escape

from a prison which had more ingenuity utilized.

The escapees were confronted by one final hurdle--

how to quietly inflate their huge raft.

Their solution was perhaps the most ingenious yet.

Frank Morris had received a small accordion

call a concertina for use during the daily music hour.

They had taken the keys out of the concertina.

And therefore, you could put your hand

on one strap of the concertina and push it up and down.

It would operate just like a bellows.

Very remarkable exercise of patience

and stick-to-itiveness.

The only weak point in this escape

was the failure to really take serious consideration

of that water out there.

The record of previous escapes should

have been sufficient to deter them from tackling that water.

It's impossible to beat that water.

That was the mistake.

Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin

made it off the Rock.

What happened to them next remains a mystery.

The following day it was business as usual

on Alcatraz, beginning with a morning headcount.

It's a dummy!

It's a dummy in 152!

Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris had escaped.

[helicopter buzzing]

Immediately an extensive search began,

one of the largest manhunts in the country since the Lindbergh

kidnapping 25 years earlier.

We were ordered to go out in the Bay and, of course,

start looking around the Island.

And then over on Angel Island, scanning the beaches

to see if anything that pertained to them

might have washed up.

And then it became evident that we weren't going to find them.

Whether they had made it or not, no one knew for sure.

Authorities believe that the men were

headed for nearby Angel Island.

But for 24 hours nothing was found.

Then remnants of the escapees raft began to surface,

and so, too, did a controversy on whether or not

the men survived.

The day after the escape, a homemade oar

was discovered floating between Alcatraz and Angel Island.

This paddle matched one that the convicts had

left behind in the cellblock.

On June 14th, two days after the breakout,

a rubber-wrapped packet was also discovered

floating near Angel Island.

It contained an address book, 80 family

photographs, and a money order that belonged

to one of the escapees.

My conclusion would be that it was

items that these people needed.

These were keepsakes of these men.

This was all they had in this world.

When I seen that, I said, well, I think they didn't make it.

Because I think it's something they would even possibly risk

their life to save.

On the 15th of June, a prison raincoat

was found floating near the North Shore of San Francisco.

On the 22nd, 10 days after the escape,

pieces of the convicts raft were found only 50 yards

off the east shore of Alcatraz.

I feel sincerely that the flotation equipment that they

had came apart on them.

And that instead of being able to ride above the water,

they were submerged in the water.

Don Eberly was the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.

Probably the earliest they could have gotten

into the water would be 10:30.

The outgoing tide started that night at 10 o'clock.

And that outgoing tide is very strong.

And I firmly believe that they were taken by the currents

into the Pacific Ocean.

The day of the escape, a Norwegian ship

spotted a body floating 20 miles past the Golden Gate Bridge.

Though unable to retrieve it, the description

matched that of Frank Morris.

They cited what he had on, and it coincided with the apparel

of the escapees.

There is some evidence to suggest that at least one

of the men survived.

The day after the escape, a man claiming to be John Anglin

called a San Francisco lawyer known

to represent Alcatraz inmates.

The attorney in question was out of the office.

So the call was transferred to another attorney,

Eugenia McGowan.

The person called, and the receptionist

put him through to me.

And he said, I'm John Anglin, and I

want you to contact the US Marshall's

office to set up a meeting.

And I said for what purpose?

And he said, in effect, don't ask questions.

Just do as I tell you.

Call the US Marshall's office to set up a meeting.

And I said, well, I'm not going to do that unless I know why.

And he said, do you know who I am?

And I said, no.

He said, read the newspaper, and he hung up.

The FBI set up a phone tap in Eugenia McGowan's office,

hoping the man would call back.

He never did.

And they eventually ended the surveillance,

dismissing the call as a prank.

A few weeks after the break, Clarence Carnes

claimed he received a postcard from the escapees.

In it they gave the pre-arranged code words

that confirmed their success.

The card read, gone fishing.

If they had made it to shore, the first thing

they would have had to do was to take something off of somebody.

They would have had to get a car.

Or they would have had to get money.

They would have had to do something that would

have certainly been noticed.

There were no reports of robberies or car thefts

attributable to the escapees.

However, the men may have been helped

by someone on the outside.

Players believe the convicts secure the aid of an Alcatraz

inmate named Bumpy Johnson.

Clarence shared with me that Elsworth "Bumpy" Johnson,

black Capone of Harlem, underworld King of Harlem,

had arranged for a boat to be out there to pick

the Anglins and Morris up.

Now it would have been pitch black out there,

but my guess is that they did get to that boat

that was waiting for them.

According to Clarence Carnes, the boat then

took the convicts to Pier 13 in San Francisco's

Hunters Point district.

My feeling is that that's just something that Carnes has

dreamed up and that there is not the slightest possibility

there's any truth in it.

My opinion of Clarence Carnes is

that he's an inmate of Alcatraz and any information we received

from him would have to be taken with a grain of salt,

because of his background.

And that you would have to assiduously

verify everything that he said.

So far there's never been any indication

that what he had said has any truth concerning the fact

that they have escaped.

Come on, West.

Co-conspirator Allen West was questioned

about these outside contacts.

He denied they existed.

[cell closing]

West wouldn't have copped out.

He wouldn't have copped out.

You know, West was people.

He was solid people.

And I don't believe he ever, to this day,

I don't believe he ever told them nothing.

Today the FBI and prison authorities

have not changed their opinion.

They believed the men drowned within minutes

of hitting the water.

The escape was just another dismal failure in our opinion.

Of course, we never are cocksure enough to say,

well, we know they're dead.

But we were pretty sure that they

were dead, because there was no trace of them whatsoever.

However, they're still on the missing list

and not the dead list.

Six months after the escape of Morris and the Anglin brothers,

another attempt proved that they could have survived the swim.

It began in the store room, located underneath the kitchen.

Over a period of time that must have been years,

a succession of convicts sawed away at the bars on a window.

Some believe they used a spatula stolen from the kitchen.

Another theory is that the inmates used pieces of string,

covered them in wax, and then dipped them

into ordinary kitchen cleanser, making

a crude and fragile file.

Imagine the frustration of trying to saw through steel

with a piece of string.

But by December of 1962, two men were

ready to make the final cut.

John Prescott and Lee Parker, two convicted bank robbers,

made the last cuts on the bars on December 14th, 1962.

The cold waters quickly convinced

Parker to give up the swim.

But Scott was undaunted.

He was carried by the current over three miles

to the south base of the Golden Gate Bridge,

where he washed ashore half frozen and nearly dead

onto a rocky beach.

Some children, thinking he had fallen off a boat,

alerted authorities.

Scott was immediately taken into custody.

His escape attempt is the only known case

of an inmate surviving the frigid waters, which

that December would have been the same temperature

as the water in the Bay today.

On Alcatraz, one of the few privileges

granted to inmates was a prison library.

And it was here, according to authorities,

that the Anglin brothers and Morris

had access to two magazines that may have aided their escape.

The March 1962 issue of "Popular Mechanics"

continued an article on water-tight sailing jackets.

And the May 1962 edition of "Sports Illustrated"

featured an article on makeshift rubberized boats.

Police authorities believe that the men

modeled their life jackets and raft on these articles.

Was this crudely made raft sturdy enough

to survive the forceful currents of the Bay?

And if the raft did fail, could the escapees have

made it to shore by swimming?

To test the likelihood of the raft's survival,

we've constructed a similar raft out of raincoats.

Three experienced kayakers will attempt

to paddle this raft to shore.

To test the theory that the convicts had to abandon

the raft and swim to shore, we've

asked endurance swimmer Dave Horning

to brave the frigid waters surrounding Alcatraz

and swim to a San Francisco beach.

Diana Nyad is standing by with our team

of rafters who are just about ready to begin their journey.

The only thing that we're not duplicating

accurately from the day of the escape is the time of day.

They left at night.

Would that have made a tremendous difference?

I don't think a tremendous difference.

But I think it is to our advantage in that we can see

and make a plan for the first few obstacles

that they had to overcome.

First of which is this eight foot seawall,

which has these very sharp and slippery,

leg-breaking rocks below.

The second is that we can see the swirling eddies

and currents that are around Alcatraz,

and we can make a plan as to how to get out of here.

I think the convicts really didn't know where the current

was going to take them.

Well, I thank you all very much

for your adventuresome spirits.

And we'll be checking in with you all the way along.

We've switched now to our swimmer Dave Horning.

And Dave has swum some of the coldest bodies of water

in the world, including in the Soviet Union.

Tell people at home who have never

been immersed in dangerously cold

water what happens to the body.

As I go into the water here this morning,

it will be like an embracing shock

which will go through my body initially when I hit the water.

And there will be some question in my mind in regards

to how long I'll be able to last in this 47 degree water.

OK, now that's you.

You're very experienced in cold water.

Now what about these three convicts?

I understand that they were not even

allowed to take cold showers on Alcatraz,

for fear that they might acclimate

themselves to the Bay.

So what do you think their chances might have been?

Well, I think they had a chance

to stay in the water for a certain amount of time because

of the fact that they had a certain thing going for them

known as motivation, motivation to get off of Alcatraz

and escape from the Rock.

Once they hit that water, that motivation

would concentrate them into being

able to generate some adrenaline to keep them going.

And once that adrenaline sunk in,

that would help keep them insulated

for a certain period of time.

But once they started to really succumb

to the effects of the cold water,

who knows what would happen?

OK, well, we thank you very much and good luck to you.

The swimmer and rafter will be off in just a few minutes.

And Bob, all I can really say is that I'm

just so very happy it's not going to be me in the water

today.

Back to you.

Thank you, Diana.

The route these men will be taking

will be the same route it is believed

the 1962 escapees followed.

The escapees left from the eastern shore of the island,

approximately here.

If they were attempting to swim to Angel Island,

about 1 and 1/2 miles away, as the authorities believe,

the currents would have carried them away from the island,

out toward the Pacific Ocean.

If they were lucky, they made it ashore

at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Dave is facing the same conditions,

but his plan is to cut across the strong currents here

and swim ashore at Crissy Field.

Our swimmer and rafters are now in position.

Diana will give them the signal to start.

Diana, is everyone ready?

Well, Bob, I'd say we're just less than a minute away

from getting under way here.

Let me quickly set the scene for you.

We have a number of camera crews out here,

including one up in a blimp to get the aerial view.

We also have a couple of paramedic teams.

And this is why-- the water temperature at 47 degrees

is colder than the ice water you keep in your refrigerator.

And that means that upon entry, the body dramatically

and immediately loses heat.

And if you're in there for too long,

you go into a state of hypothermia,

meaning that the bloodstream and the core organs cannot function

properly anymore, and literally you can go

into a state of cardiac arrest.

So I don't care how expert a swimmer you are,

you take this situation very seriously.

Let me check on shore now to see if Dave and our three rafters

are just about ready to embark.

Dave, are you ready?

Rafters, all set?

Good luck, be safe, everybody.

And we'll count from three, two, one, go!

We have asked Dave to wear an underwater microphone

so that we can communicate with him

if any problem should arise.

You'll notice from the very beginning

that Dave will keep up a very, very rapid stroke pace.

And that's because he is going to be chilled, almost shocked,

when he first enters the water.

And he wants to generate a great deal of heat.

The rafters are going to have even more problem staying warm,

because they've got to just kind of float

and kick behind them with that cumbersome raft.

Now David told me before that he's probably going to get

to shore in about 45 minutes.

But let's be accurate about the convicts.

We look at Dave over here stroking very powerfully,

and even though a couple of the convicts, the Anglin brothers

were from Florida, and I understand very good swimmers,

still they weren't in this kind of condition.

Obviously, they hadn't swum in years.

They weren't used to cold water.

So they were not going to be stroking as powerfully as this.

Now if you look back at the rafters

and see just how slowly they are progressing,

this is probably more realistic to what went on that night

in 1962.

You might have had three powerful people,

but still they weren't used to the cold.

It was nighttime.

They didn't know precisely where they were going.

So I think that this progress that the rafters are doing

is probably very similar to what we could expect.

And they're probably, if they make it, going

to take more like two hours.

And that would be just at the edge of hypothermia.

Later on, we'll be able to see if we talk to him

that his face will be quite stiff.

His mouth will look as if it's somewhat frozen.

And the signs of hypothermia that a trainer would look

for as he's swimming is if he becomes confused,

if he swims around in circles, if he hallucinates and is

telling you that he's seeing things that aren't really

there, that's your sign to take your swimmer out and get

him warm.

We are now 20 minutes into Dave Horning's attempt to swim

from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

For years, the guards on Alcatraz

told inmates that the Bay was infested

with man-eating sharks.

Marine biologist Leighton Taylor says that that is a myth.

There are not man-eating sharks

here in San Francisco Bay.

There certainly are just outside the Golden Gate

on the outer coastal beaches.

And I'd really guess that the guards probably

told the prisoners about the attacks in the 1950s

and so forth and probably really put the fear of God

in the prisoners about sharks.

But it's not true that San Francisco

is a shark-infested bay.

Has there ever been a shark attack inside the Bay?

No.

There are sharks in San Francisco Bay.

But they're mud dwellers, and they're on the bottom.

And by the time a prisoner got to the bottom,

he was out of the picture by then anyway.

Thank you.

Even though inmates believed there were sharks in the Bay,

this didn't stop some convicts from trying

to make a break for freedom.

The first escape attempt was in 1936, just two

years after the prison opened.

Joseph Bowers received a 25 year sentence for stealing $16.63,

because he robbed a store in the same building

as a post office, a federal offense.

He was given the maximum sentence with little likelihood

of parole.

From the island of Alcatraz, the city of San Francisco

seems just an arm's reach away.

On April 27, 1936, Bowers was working at this incinerator.

This must have been one of the most tempting spots

to try to escape.

Suddenly, Bowers appeared to go berserk

and began to scale the fence.

An alert guard spotted Bowers from a catwalk close by.

He yelled at him to stop and fired two

warning shots over his head.

Bowers made it over the top of the fence

and began to clamber down the other side.

The guard, now aiming to stop him, fired again.

Bowers was hit.

Wounded, he relaxed his grip on the fence

and fell 60 feet to his death.

In December of 1937, another escape was tried.

This was no impulse-- rather, a carefully planned scheme that

might have been successful.

Theodore Cole was 25, with a 50 year sentence for kidnapping.

His partner was Ralph Roe, a 37-year-old bank

robber with a long criminal record and a 99 year sentence.

On December 16th, 1937, the two men

were making mats in the industrial building

north of the cell block.

Even for San Francisco, it was a foggy, cool day.

At approximately one o'clock in the afternoon,

they sawed out a shop window and broke through a fence.

The current was swift that day, running

at eight miles per hour.

Grabbing hold of a five gallon can,

they attempted to swim to freedom.

The Roe and Cole escape in 1937

was one that I think was impossible to make.

The tide was running very swiftly

out towards the Golden Gate.

The water is 55 degrees.

Alvan Carpus, an inmate, told me that he

watched Roe and Cole escape.

And as he looked out, he could see the bodies

slipping into the Bay.

And he believed they drowned.

Just recently, John Stanley, a San Francisco reporter,

discovered this 1941 article in the files of "The San

Francisco Chronicle."

It claims that Roe and Cole survived, fled to South

America, and then using a secret code,

contacted their confidants back at Alcatraz.

Federal officials still maintain that Roe and Cole had perished.

Perhaps the story was a hoax concocted by inmates.

But to this day, Roe and Cole are

officially listed as missing.

This newsreel documents the bloodiest of all the escape

attempts on Alcatraz.

It began on May 2nd, 1946.

San Francisco Bay.

Here for nearly 40 hours of murderous mutiny,

armed convicts shot it out with guards.

Ringleaders were Bernard Paul Coy, Louisville bank robber;

Joe Cretzer, in cold blood, he shot down

an armed guard in an orgy of murder;

Marv Hubbard, a Tennessee kidnapper.

With one rifle and one automatic,

they waged a desperate but futile fight.

You can see the smoke from rifle fire

and tear gas bombings as guards fought

to rescue prison officials held as hostages in cellblock C.

It all began here on the north end of the cellblock,

when convicts Coy and Hubbard jumped on armed guard

William Miller, taking his keys and locking

him in an empty cell.

Coy greased his body and climbed to the top of the cellblock

where the bars were weakest.

Using a homemade tool, he managed to spread the bars

and squeeze through into the gun gallery.

Over the next few hours, the convicts captured nine guards

and held them hostage here in these two cells.

Hour after hour, guards and convicts

exchanged gunfire as crowds gathered

to watch from the hills of San Francisco.

a detachment of Marines scaled the walls

and dropped concussion grenades into the cellblock

from the roof.

On the second day, two teams of guards entered the cellblock.

In a furious shootout, the hostages were rescued

and the ringleaders killed.

To the guards, all credit.

Two of their number were killed, 15 wounded.

Assistant Warden Miller shot by Coy, scarred, perhaps for life.

For the criminal ringleaders, this gruesome end.

Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard fingerprinted as they

lie on slabs in the morgue.

Theirs is the final reward for a life of crime.

Here's a quick update on both the swimmer and rafters.

Dave Horning, just off my shoulder here,

is about 35 minutes into the swim.

And I would say he's made it 2/3 of the way,

just taking a quick look back there to see

just how far he had gone.

Quickly, to let you know how the rafters are doing

at the moment, now that they have broken free

from the shore of Alcatraz, they're actually

making much better progress.

I keep going back and forth with the potential scenario

of those convicts that night.

Just a few minutes ago I thought, they're barely moving.

They're never going to make it to land anywhere.

Now they've actually been able to catch the current somewhat.

They're going maybe a mile and a half

to maybe even close to two miles an hour.

So I'm switching back the other way again and thinking

maybe they could have made it.

I understand that the rafters are getting very cold

and frustrated that they aren't making much progress--

that they're only still a quarter

of a mile away from Alcatraz.

Let's go to Diana.

We have three men here who have

kayaked all over the world.

They're young.

They're strong, in excellent shape.

And they're having a great deal of difficulty

making any progress.

And you can see they're being thrown around

by the tide, left and right.

Probably what was happening that night to the convicts out here

was just some desperation, not a goal of getting somewhere,

but just to get anywhere.

I'm sure the convicts didn't have much traffic out here

on the Bay, but our swimmer and rafters today are

having a great deal of traffic.

We've got barges, tugboats, tourist boats, et cetera, not

to mention a number of seals.

So it's somewhat entertaining, though they're

casting quite a bit of wake.

Just to check on Dave's medical condition,

we've asked him a few simple questions like his name.

The same way that referees in boxing

ask the fighters if they're coherent.

He's responded very well, but evidently he

is cramping in one leg.

Cramps can be very, very serious in the water,

but we still assume that he's going to be OK.

Dave is only a few yards away from completing his swim.

Diana, how's he doing?

The one thing I'm concerned about

is not the cold but the cramp in his leg.

We still assume that, since he's closing in on the beach,

that he's going to be OK.

And we should mention here, we've talked

so much about hypothermia.

Your core temperature actually goes

down even further once you get out from a spell in cold water.

So when he gets out of here, we're

going to be able to talk to him very briefly.

But three or four minutes after that,

he's going to have to get warm.

And the way he does it is put on a pair of running shoes

and go for a jog and generate his own heat.

It's actually the best way to do it.

Well, it looks conclusive.

Dave is literally 20 yards from the shore.

Lifeguards have now entered the water

with him for the last few feet, especially

having reported a cramp.

Just to make sure that he's able to walk out.

He seems to be just fine.

We'll have a word with him in just 30 seconds or so.

[applause]

That was really cold.

All right, Dave.

I know we don't have much time before you

get your running shoes on.

Tell me your experience.

First of all, you came in in just a little bit over an hour.

How was it out there?

It was great.

When I first hit the water, the cold shock of the water

definitely was embracing.

Halfway through the swim, my feet and legs went numb.

And in the final 10 to 15 minutes,

both legs totally cramped up, and I

really had to wonder whether I'd be able to make it in.

I can hear just the way you're talking in a slightly bit

of slurred speech.

Is your mouth quite frozen in place?

Slurred definitely due to the cold chin.

I'm glad I didn't have to stay in more than at least

another hour.

Well, listen, this brings us to your opinion

now that you've done it.

Do you believe they could have made it.

There's no question in my mind that they could have made it.

The question is how they would have felt.

It's the coffee that probably would

have been their motivation.

OK, well, listen, we thank you so much for your brave effort

today.

And I'm going to reserve my opinion later.

Because Dave Horning is one thing.

The rafters are another thing.

So we're going to go back out and check

and see how they actually do.

Wow, what a beautiful day.

Dave has succeeded in the swim to Crissy Field.

However, the rafters have only reached this point,

a quarter mile off Alcatraz.

Let's go back to Diana for an update on the rafters.

They are not doing well.

They just haven't made much progress.

They came around Alcatraz very quickly,

but now they're kind of stuck in the front

of the island, maybe kept in by that incoming flood tide.

Come on over, Bill.

Yeah.

So I know you're strong.

It must not be you guys.

What's happening out there?

We're actually fairly comfortable,

but we're not getting anywhere.

And the boat is starting to fall apart.

And we think even with the-- we have certain advantages

with the type of rig we have.

And if we're trying to really assess how the convicts did,

we don't think they did very well.

We have a little more modern clothing on.

And think that given the situation when they left,

at night, didn't know where they were going.

They're in pretty weak condition from not having

much exercise at the prison.

They probably at least were very uncomfortable,

more likely got hypothermia, and just didn't get anywhere.

We were actually very confident when we were leaving Alcatraz,

and the boat was in good condition.

But the more-- the more time we had to think about it,

the more unlikely the whole possibility of them

surviving seems.

These guys were career convicts and they

haven't shown up since.

And you would think over 20 some odd years,

they would have probably committed another crime

and gotten caught.

So I have a feeling they were pretty screwed.

Did the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris

survive their daring escape?

Based on what we've seen today, it certainly is possible.

Yet it seems odd that in the last 27 years,

so few clues have surfaced to prove that they made it.

Whether or not the men survived, their escape

compromised the reputation of Alcatraz,

and less than a year later the prison closed.

For that reason alone, it can be said the men did beat the Rock.

Our thanks to Diana Nyad.

Congratulations, Dave.

Thank you very much for you brave men on the raft.

Join us again next week for another edition

of "Unsolved Mysteries."