Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

[STATIC]

[INDISTINCT TALKING OVER RADIO]

[TYPEWRITER CLACKING]

Hello, my name is Danny Trejo,

and the following is a deathbed confession of John Leroy Kelly

about the escape from Alcatraz Island in 1962.

ED O'ROSS: The greatest mysteries of the 20th century include

the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa,

the JFK assassination...

And the Alcatraz Prison escape.

In 1962, three inmates escaped from Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary.

This was thought to be impossible.

Their bodies were never found, and they were never captured.

Until recently, there was a one million dollar reward

for information that led to the capture or discoveries of the bodies

of Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin,

who escaped on June 11th 1962.

No one knows if they drowned in the chilly waters

of Alcatraz that night

or truly made it off The Rock.

Recently, a new document was uncovered.

A deathbed confession of a low-level criminal

claiming involvement in the escape,

which sent Art Roderick, the head of the US Marshals, and his partner, Mike Earp,

descendant of legendary lawman, Wyatt Earp,

cross country with filmmaker Daniel Zirilli,

to investigate the oldest open case in US Marshals' history.

[TYPEWRITER CLACKING]

KELLY: I really don't know how to start this except to just tell it.

I guess you could say I'm a very famous person.

It's just that no one knows who I am.

Or what I did.

I, along with a man named Robert Michael Kyle,

helped to pull off one of the most famous prison escapes

in the United States' history.

ED O'ROSS: There was a lot of people involved

in the escape from Alcatraz Prison.

I know for a fact that high-ranking guards

were paid for their part in the escape.

I believe, from what the convicts told us,

that the prison officials had to know or strongly suspect

that guards at the prison took part in this escape.

On Monday, June 11th, with Robert at the wheel,

we picked up escaped inmates, Frank Lee Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin.

We took them north to Seattle on the boat.

In the first two or three years after the prison escape,

my Uncle Donald, the one that got me involved in the escape,

said that the convicts' family members called him, wanting to know what happened.

I always told my Uncle Donald

that me and Robert left the convicts in Canada

and never saw them again.

I don't think he really ever believed me.

Please forgive me for what I did.

NEWS REPORTER: A spoon proves mightier than the bars

at supposedly escape-proof Alcatraz Prison.

Three bank robbers, serving long terms,

scratched their way through grills covering an air vent, climbed a drainage pipe,

and disappeared from the forbidding rock in San Francisco Bay.

It appears to be the first successful escape

in the history of the maximum security prison.

And the flight is attributed by warden Olin Blackwell

to the deteriorating condition of the prison,

crumbling concrete and eroding metals

with five million needed for repairs.

[DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]

The men the walls couldn't hold

are Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin.

Authorities believe that Morris, who has a superior IQ, masterminded the escape.

Ironically, the wanted posters offer only the nominal reward

of 50 dollars each for information leading to the arrest of the prisoners.

They painstakingly fashioned dummies of plaster

with hair of paintbrush bristles to stand in for them

during cell check

while they covered an escape hole with a cardboard grill.

All of this was within easy visual range of the guards in the gun galleries.

They climbed drainpipes to the top of the cell block

and then slid down vents to the ground.

Again, all of this within sight of guards.

The escape triggered the greatest manhunt in San Francisco's history

as agents of the FBI, Coast Guardsmen, highway patrol,

sheriff's deputies, and local police joined in the search.

Whatever their fate, the three convicts have apparently accomplished a feat

that many have tried with no success.

O'ROSS: For most, the name Alcatraz

evokes images of iron bars, hard concrete

and brutal guards.

A purgatory for anyone trapped inside.

Although this is what Alcatraz became,

it started as something very different.

Isla de los Alcatraces, or Pelican Island, was first surveyed in 1847.

Devoid of any real natural resources,

and only one or two landable beaches,

it seemed an unlikely asset to the newly acquired Republic of California.

The US Army, however, quickly saw the value of the barren rock.

Sitting at the heart of the bay, the island was seen as an ideal location

for artillery batteries that could protect

the recently renamed hamlet of San Francisco.

In 1853, construction began on Camp Alcatraz.

Completed in 1859,

the island became the first permanent harbor fortification

on the United States West Coast.

Declaration of civil war in 1861

left California fighting on the side of the northern States.

Three hundred Union soldiers were stationed at Fort Alcatraz

to fend off any possible Confederate assault on the San Francisco Bay.

These soldiers waited for an attack that never came.

Never once did the canons of Alcatraz fire on an enemy.

The camp did, however, find its use during the war.

It began serving as a military prison

for captured Confederate soldiers and sympathizers.

It continued to operate as both fort and military prison for another 40 years.

In 1900, it was decided

that the fort would resign all defensive duties

and would operate solely as an army prison.

Over the next 30 years, the inmates at Pacific branch US Military Prison Alcatraz

transformed The Rock, as they called it,

into the world's largest and most modern prison.

Finally, in 1934, the war department said goodbye to Alcatraz

and handed the island over to the Department of Justice

where it remained until its closure in 1963.

This is the era that the island prison is most famous for.

The worst of the worst of all maximum security prisons.

The most difficult time that any inmate could do.

Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary.

In its almost 30 years as an operational facility,

Alcatraz was home to the nation's most dangerous and notorious criminals.

Gangsters like Chicago crime boss Al Capone

and Los Angeles based mafioso Mickey Cohen

both found themselves locked inside the walls of The Rock.

Other most wanted criminals like Machine Gun Kelly and Doc Barker

were also sent to Alcatraz.

A veritable laundry list of the nation's most famous criminals

declared residence on The Rock at one time or another.

Given the miserable conditions at Alcatraz,

combined with the nature of its inmates,

it was inevitable that there would be escape attempts.

However, in its 29 years of operation,

Alcatraz claims that no prisoner ever successfully escaped.

ZIRILLI: This is the Alcatraz prison escape statement.

And I faxed it to both the FBI and the US Marshals,

and they deemed it credible enough for follow-up.

So two US Marshals and a tracker and myself

are actively looking for the site

that's mentioned in this statement.

[TYPEWRITER CLACKING]

NURSE: I am typing this statement for my good friend and patient John Leroy Kelly

who was born near Greenville, Mississippi,

on or about September 3rd, 1944.

He says that he does not have a birth certificate on file,

and he never learned to write much more than his name

and states that he cannot read at all.

John has asked me not to release this to anyone until he is dead.

He is afraid of going to jail or prison

for the part he played in the 1962 Alcatraz prison escape

of Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin.

EARP: When we get in these type leads,

we love to say... You know, we can't say, "Okay, this is it, it's a home run."

"Is this possible?" And this was possible.

So that's why we're here.

We weren't involved... The Marshal Service as an agency

wasn't involved in this case.

ZIRILLI: For 18 years.

Right, right. We didn't get it till 1979.

'80, I think. '80, 1981.

When the Attorney General made the Marshal Service responsible

for what they call the escape and rescue statutes,

which are the federal statutes that an individual's charged with

for escape or aiding and abetting an escape and all that.

So that...that case came over to us,

uh, when the Attorney General gave us that authority.

More or less moved it from the FBI to us.

So we have...we didn't go back and, like, try and recreate the investigation.

Because, let me tell you, the Bureau...

Seventeen hundred pages...

They did a lot of stuff. Right.

I mean, surveillances, interviewed family members.

Year after year, they went back and...

I mean, they did a perfect... a real good investigation.

So we weren't going to go back and recreate that.

Basically, what we've done up to this point is

if something comes up, we'll follow the lead out till the end.

O'ROSS: Thousands of people visit Alcatraz Island every year

to see Al Capone's cell and hear about the Birdman of Alcatraz.

They come to see how Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers escaped.

What they hear are the tour-guided facts,

a rehearsed and recited account based on speculation,

as to how the escape actually happened.

Never before has Alcatraz revealed everything

that it knows and doesn't know about what happened that fateful night.

ZIRILLI: So I just got off the phone with Art.

Apparently, Craig at the Ranger's Office at Alcatraz

called to verify if Art was working with us on the Alcatraz statement.

And Art told the guy to give them, Daniel and Neil,

all access to everything they have on Alcatraz.

When I talked to the US Marshal Service this morning,

they indicated that this was the first time that Art's been on the case

in 12 years, I believe he said,

that they had anything really worth pursuing.

They felt that it had enough possibilities

to dedicate some time to it.

Alcatraz was designed and run as a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary.

That meant our inmates received no tailor-made cigarettes,

candy bars, chewing gum, soft drinks, radio, television,

newspapers, paroles, or rehabilitation programs.

That none of that was being sent here.

In fact, none of our inmates were sent from a court.

They were all sent from another prison having a problem.

And someone told me from the prison they came from, the warden in the institution

would have a picture of Alcatraz behind his desk,

and he'd point to that picture and say,

"If I see you one more time, that's it, you're going... You are going to Alcatraz."

And you knew you were going to do some tough times.

Now, you come and visit the island,

you look out and see all these beautiful views.

You see San Fransisco, the East Bay, Marin County.

You say, "Gee, that's not so bad."

But how'd you like to have water held out to you and you can't drink it?

You know, it's a city so close and yet so far.

ZIRILLI: Is there any way you think they made it?

Ah, at first, I would have said yes,

but since they haven't showed up in all these years, I doubt it, no.

Given the bay and the tide conditions that night

and what physical evidence was discovered over the next couple days by the FBI,

most of the staff on the island have been of the opinion

that they probably didn't survive the swim.

I don't think there's been any trace of them found.

Which in a way is kind of unusual

because bodies do turn up in the bay here mostly when somebody drowns,

they'll find pieces of them, they'll find parts of their clothes.

It's 50 degrees out there or about 10 to 12 Celsius.

It's very cold.

Although 400 people a year swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco,

in at least two, maybe three, swims a year.

Most people can't handle it.

If you can't do it in 35 or 40 minutes,

um, you know, you're gonna be in trouble.

So it can be done.

It definitely can be done. It's done all the time.

One of the stories that's most often been told

was that they planned to steal a boat in Angel Island

and given that that didn't happen,

that sort of led to a general belief

that the chances are that they didn't make it.

However, we know of many swims,

organized swims, that do that bay every year,

so we always sort of leave the story with an open end

that, well, one never knows, after all, they were pretty highly motivated.

You know, the point that they left their cells that night,

at that point, they were escaped convicts, they had nothing left to lose.

Once a federal inmate escapes from prison,

that becomes an FBI case apparently.

You know, it comes under their jurisdiction.

However, as a fugitive from justice,

the US Marshal Service has jurisdiction too.

The Bureau of Prisons would still of course, you know, potentially be involved in this.

In the sense, they are fugitives from the Bureau of Prisons.

They would still have time on their original sentences.

There's no statute of limitations.

So there's various law enforcement agencies should evidence pan out,

and there'd be more to the story that we now know.

There'd be several federal agencies ultimately

that will probably be interested in it.

If you talk to any of the former prisoners,

they'll, of course, all of them say they got away.

And if you talk to the former guards,

they'll all of them say they're dead, they drowned at sea.

But they're still on the wanted list of the FBI

and so they're not gonna give up until there's some proof

that they actually died.

ZIRILLI: Is there any way you think they made it?

Absolutely.

Really?

Yeah, I helped them with some tools to do that,

and I know John and Clarence swam before they could walk.

They were born and raised in the Everglades, so...

I... Personally, I think they made it.

[TYPEWRITER CLACKING]

NURSE: John has told me that he and a friend

helped the three convicts to escape from Alcatraz Federal Prison

in San Francisco.

KELLY: At 11:15 p.m. on Monday June 11th,

Robert and I were in a boat off Alcatraz Island Prison.

At approximately 10 minutes to midnight,

we moved to the area just outside the city marina.

At about midnight, I heard splashes in the water.

They were lying across a homemade life raft.

We picked up escaped inmates Frank Lee Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin.

I remember one of the men, Frank Morris, laughed

and asked if we were their ride.

Robert asked where was the other two.

Frank Morris said they were it.

We took them north of Seattle on the boat.

When we got back to Bellingham,

we had the three convicts get into the back of the truck that we used for painting

and had them lie down in the back.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

[GATE CLANKS SHUT]

GLASSNER: Alcatraz had a reputation, I think it was

to a large degree deserved of being run more by the book than any other facility.

It was part of the reason they created Alcatraz in 1934

because of problems that did exist in other federal prisons.

But there are certainly stories of pay-off.

I mean, at a low level, there were guards that broke some of the rules,

inconsequential rules like you're not allowed to have candy.

There was no commissary to buy candy on the island.

Yet, there was a correctional officer that worked in the shop

that would sometimes slip an inmate a piece of candy

if they'd done a particularly good job on the line.

One day, one of these inmates got caught with that candy

and rather than turning the guard in,

he did 19 days in solitary, I guess it may have been a bit more.

Punishment for refusing to inform...

'Cause they knew this had to come from the correctional staff.

We know of, again, religious staff on the island

that came out here,

in at least one case, smuggling letters off the island

because they felt the inmates had more of a right

to private correspondence with their lawyers than what the law allowed at that time.

ZIRILLI: Craig, one of the ranger sheriff, said that

the religious staff sometimes thought

that conditions were a little tough

and that sometimes priests or the religious staff

would help give information and letters,

bring letters to the families and such.

Do you know anything about that?

No, I would say that the religious staff, as I understood it,

and certainly myself as a part of the religious staff

and a priest, the priest that I worked with coming out here

were scrupulous about that.

We were instructed in a number of ways

that we're never to take any contraband in or out.

And also, there was a no-hostage policy.

So when we went down into the yard to walk around and talk with them down there,

we knew that if they ever grabbed us and captured us in any way at all,

the guards on the towers would start shooting.

And so you kinda took your life in your hands

if you ever did go down in there.

But I never ever felt insecure around the prisoners.

They were always extremely kind to me

and also very respectful of me.

And I think part of it had to do with the fact

that we were able to get in here from the outside.

Very, very few people including their wives and children

couldn't get into this prison. They talked to 'em through those walls, you know,

with those two-inch thick glass windows and through telephone.

And we would actually walk in here.

We could touch them, they could touch us.

They could ask us questions. We would tell them about the outside world.

And so we were kind of a breath...

I was and chaplain service people were a kind of a breath of fresh air for them

and a kind of a bright spot in their life.

They were not about to hurt us or take us hostage.

I never had any experience like that.

And I also never heard of any chaplain ever taking contraband in or out.

Sometimes, we took messages in the sense that, uh...

They'd say, "Well, say hello to my wife" or somebody

if you knew the person, but you'd just say hello, that was all.

ZIRILLI: Apparently, there was a woman on the outside

that was helping make arrangements for their escape.

Well, that's what they said.

KELLY: My uncle, Donald Leroy Robertson,

is the one that got me involved in the Alcatraz Prison Escape.

He had been a driver for several big-time bank robbers

at one time or another in the 1930s and 1940s,

and he knew Frank Lee Morris.

In October of 1961,

my Uncle Donald had me go to San Francisco

to meet a woman named Eugena McGowen

in St. Anthony's Catholic Church in the San Francisco Tenderloin District.

That day changed my life forever.

Many times over the years, I have wished that I had not went to that meeting.

She told me that day

that five convicts were going to escape from Alcatraz

and that she needed me to provide a boat

to pick them up and take them to safety.

She told me that the convicts' families

had come up with over $60,000 to help them escape,

and that six guards at Alcatraz Prison were receiving payoffs

to look the other way or to help the convicts.

She said that she was telling me all of this

so I and my partner Robert

would know that the escape would be able to happen without any problems.

She gave me 5,000 cash in 20s in an envelope that day,

and she was to give me another 5,000

when she found out the exact night the convicts would be able to get out.

Eugena never knew it,

but she had sealed the convicts' fate

when she told me that the convicts would be picking up $50,000.

Robert was obsessed with trying to figure out some way

to separate the convicts from the $50,000

when we got them back to Seattle.

I can't believe now that I went along with Robert's wild scheme.

According to all the evidence available,

most importantly, the FBI's investigation,

the point at which the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris went into the bay

is just around the corner from the point you see it from here.

But their choice of location to go into the water

would have been very important to take into account, this tower being here.

Other towers were by and large at the back end and other side of the island.

There used to be a tower on the roof of the cell house

from which they made their escape from the building.

That had been closed down due to budget cuts and staff shortages years earlier.

GLASSNER: Here we have the cell house at the top of the island,

originally constructed by the army when this was a military prison.

The Anglins made their escape from an air vent approximately in this area.

By all accounts, they made their way down here

where they were able to slide down an exhaust vent

from one of the kitchen stoves down below.

This was the mess hall and food preparation area and the hospital.

GLASSNER: Remember, as you look at the island,

the plush vegetation all over the islands, they didn't exist back then.

They didn't want a shrubbery this tall

in the days that this was a prison,

Everything was very low and trim.

There were gardens, there were flowers, there were trees,

Everything was trimmed in a way to prevent there from being places to hide.

But certainly by this time,

staffing shortages and budget cuts had an effect on security.

The roof tower had been shut down completely.

Had there been a tower on the roof...

Had that still been there, this escape never could have happened.

The road tower would have been the tower over on this side of the island,

which according to all the physical evidence

is the side of the island that the three left from that night.

From the road tower, the view of the point that they went into the water

would have been right around the corner.

KELLY: On May 11th, I met Eugena

in front of St. Anthony's Catholic Church.

We walked to the waterfront, and we met a man in the shadows there.

He showed me where the water was likely to carry the convicts on a raft to,

and he told me to expect them just after midnight on June 11th.

He told me that the convicts would run into no trouble

because he was going to make sure

that there was no guard in the road tower that night.

He said that we should have till 8:00 a.m. at the earliest

to get away before the alarm was sounded.

Later on, I discovered that the man we met that night

was Alcatraz Prison guard Captain Bradley.

I'd always wondered how no one ever found out

that something wasn't right at Alcatraz Prison that night.

One thing that Morris figured was sure to get the guards caught

was all the things that were hid on top of the cell house.

He said that at least 50 to 60 raincoats were used to make the rafts.

When two of the convicts didn't take part in the escape,

one of the rafts was left on top of the cell house.

Morris said that several guards, not just one or two,

turned their heads or just didn't say anything

about the things they had seen in the weeks leading up to the escape.

Frank Morris told us that Captain Bradley

had gone as far as to order blankets

to be hung up over the top of the cell house

to keep paint from falling into the cells and the floor below.

But the real reason the blankets were put up there

was to give the convicts unrestricted access

to the rooftop of the cell house,

and to allow the convicts to escape.

I mean, ironically, even though everyone knew those blankets were there,

it's not in the official Bureau of Prison's report.

The fact that those blankets that were up there,

blocking the guard's view of that area on the roof of the cell block,

allowing them to make their escape that night...

The fact that those were up there for months.

Arguments amongst the guards who has authority

to okay those blankets being there or not.

But what it was is some of the guys planning the escape

worked in the cell house,

and they pointed out how badly that area

where there were some utility pipes

between the top of the cell block

and the actual roof of the building, there was a gap there by design.

So each cell block is a building within the cell house,

but no part of the cell block touches the exterior surface of the building.

Well, they needed some way to work up there to get through the air vents

and so they said, "Well, we need to paint this area."

But with all the dust and debris and paint chips that are gonna be flying around,

"Gee, can we get some blankets from the army supply

"that we wash out here and hang them up

"to contain all the dirt and debris."

One correctional officer said, "No way."

The other one pulled rank and said, "No, you're gonna have it.

"We don't want all that stuff floating around the cell house and people,

"you know, being... getting eye irritations from this," and stuff.

"So go ahead and do this."

ZIRILLI: How many people do you think knew about the planning of the escape?

Everybody. Everybody but the guards.

One of the inmates that was in the cell house at the time

that was marginally involved in the plan...

He, the night of the escape...

And this is fairly well documented.

Some tools or other implements were dropped down through the utility corridor,

bounced off some of the water or sewage pipes that were back in the area.

What surprised him was the lack of response.

I mean, these guys were climbing up and down the pipes every night,

in the backs of other guys' cells,

and so they had to make all kinds of arrangements with these people

because there was a group of black prisoners

and these were all white guys.

And they had to climb... And they were white Southern prisoners too.

And they were climbing up the back of these black guys' cells to get up on the roof.

Well, it didn't take them very long to figure out what was going on,

and so they had to make some compromises and deals

with the other prisoners around here.

So word kinda got around and got around and got around.

I must say I was surprised, believe it or not,

I was surprised that I didn't know anything about it.

KELLY: The real surprise of the trip

came when we got back to my Uncle Donald's house.

He was the one holding the hidden 50,000.

We received our 10,000 more

with my Uncle Donald getting 4,000 of the 40.

We stayed at Uncle Donald's for over a week.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers

were sure the guards would be arrested

and kept listening to the radio and watched the newspapers

to see the story about the arrest of the guards, but it never happened.

When they read the story in the newspapers

that spoons had been used to dig out of the cells,

they broke down laughing.

They said that shortly before the escape,

jackhammers were used to replace the toilets in the cells.

The jackhammer was operated by Alan West,

who they said had been assigned to prison maintenance

since May of 1961.

He was allowed to work in the space behind the cells alone

because the guards didn't want to get dirty.

While he was back there,

he used the jackhammer to cut the air vent open.

The three convicts said they would have never been able to get out

if it hadn't been for Alan West with the jackhammer.

Alan West is generally credited with being very involved in the plan

and with the escape attempt.

He... his statement to the FBI

was the night of the escape, he had trouble opening up the fake air vent

that they'd drilled in his cell and then trouble getting out.

That's why he didn't escape that night.

By the time he got out and went up to the roof, the other three were long gone.

If you've ever been up there, it's interesting getting on top of the cell block

and to take a look at what they actually did up there,

which is phenomenal,

when you see what they had to do under the scrutiny of the guards.

We know other inmates that were here that aided and abetted

in other ways in the escape plan.

It was real obvious talking to inmates that were on the island at the time

that there was a lot of people that were aware of what was going on

and in various ways supporting them.

June 12th, 1962,

the escape had occurred the night before,

but none of us knew it.

Because the masks worked, the dummies worked.

GLASSNER: You know, we know people that helped them getting the flesh tones right.

And little rouge to make the cheeks look more realistic.

Hair from the barber shop.

Tools and implements from around.

The material... I mean, it had to be a significant amount of fabric,

raincoat material from their vests and their pontoons

that they were using to build some sort of a raft.

Out of those four men, Alan West was the most dangerous.

He got the men out of there.

If it wasn't for him, they'd have never gotten to the roof.

Alan West is generally credited for being

one of the main brains behind the escape.

You know, others say other things too.

But, you know, he certainly was involved...

Certainly had an opportunity that night to be the fourth man...

But he didn't go in the end.

And people always wonder why. He was either...

Either couldn't get out of his cell as he claimed

or he chickened out, take your pick.

I kinda thought about the idea

that maybe he had decided this was a suicide attempt rather than an escape attempt,

Didn't wanna say to the other guys that were very involved in this,

"Hey, I don't think it's gonna work after all."

And maybe just backed out and didn't try to get out that night

knowing that they wouldn't wait for him.

Whether or not that's true, I have no reason to know one way or the other,

but that seemed like another possible scenario

to why he was still in his cell that morning

when the other three were long gone.

ZIRILLI: What more could they get,

just more time if they were caught trying to escape?

What they would have had was probably some time in isolation

in D Block at that time.

And then certainly time could be added to their sentence for the escape attempt.

ZIRILLI: Can you describe what D Block was like, if you were put in there.

GLASSNER: Ironically, it had the best views of the cell house and larger cells,

'cause it was the most recently renovated area.

What made D Block tough was that good view

because that was the view of freedom you didn't have.

And the fact that you were locked in there 24 hours a day.

It was a larger cell than the regular inmate cells

because they were newly renovated in the 1940s.

But you were on lock down, you know, 24 hours a day.

You didn't have any of the privileges that...

the mess hall, you know, any of the other privileges that the other inmates got,

which were a lot less than other prisons.

D Block was, you know, mentally, it was a tough time

to spend 24 hours a day looking at the same three walls and a set of bars.

KELLY: While we were at my Uncle Donald's,

the three convicts told us that Clarence Carns

had not been able to get out of his cell.

And that Alan West had just flat chickened out.

He told them he was going all along,

then at the last minute, he told them that he was afraid of the water.

He was also concerned that they would get in the water

and there wouldn't be any boat out there.

They didn't know it, but that made things a lot easier for us,

the fact that there were three convicts, not five.

NURSE: This week I arranged for a local priest to start counseling John

and hear his confession.

It seems to have improved his spirits greatly.

I cannot sign this statement or give my name

because I have broken patient confidentiality

by giving some of the information I have in this account.

I could be fired from my job or lose my nurse's license.

So for that reason, I must remain anonymous,

but I will do my best after John's death

to ensure that this statement and John's statement get into the right hands.

Do you know if the nurse

that took the statement from John Kelly,

if she took...

There's something in there that says "Put it in a safety deposit."

ZIRILLI: I've got the original document.

Is it handwritten or is it typed? It's typed.

I know she says, "I typed," but I don't know if originally she took...

She was trying to turn it over to John's sister,

but she didn't want it.

RODERICK: So she gave the whole thing up.

Yeah, and I mean, it's weird for somebody to send me

an original typed, typed or printed...

I mean, it was the '80s, so there were computers.

I mean, this is it. I mean, it feels like, you know...

It's a Xerox. That's just a copy. An exact copy.

This looks like a term paper.

Yeah, right.

So, I mean, it... You know, that's supposedly the original.

So, I mean, I would like to keep that, if possible,

because I'm a collector of documents.

But that's the supposed original

that was overnighted to me with some other material.

Well, if you hold onto to it for now,

let's see where the other end plays out.

Cool.

We may be asking you for the original.

Now, in the late '80s, early '90s,

there were a couple of shows that came out.

Unsolved Mysteries.

I know the History Channel has done some stuff, Discovery Channel.

And those tended to generate more leads.

And we would always end up following up on those leads.

We would run their fingerprints every year, nationwide.

So if they were under an alias,

we could find out if they had committed any crimes.

It would have been printed by some police department.

Same thing with Canada,

who has a mutual relationship with the US.

You know, none of that turned up.

There was a lead a year and a half ago in Texas, right?

With a guy that looked like him, we got something...

Oh, really?

The lead got sent to us. We got hold of his driver's license.

It was after...

There was a History Channel show where we age-enhanced...

Right. Did you guys do that? I noticed it on the Internet.

Yeah. And we went and sent those out there,

and somebody came back and said, "Jeez, it looks just like this old guy."

So, you know, we went and followed the lead up.

In Texas, I guess, you have to have your fingerprints or a thumb print

on the driver's license.

And we actually were able to verify that it wasn't him.

Right. Based on his fingerprints.

NURSE: Today is March 17th.

John Leroy Kelly died at 3:00 a.m. this date

of AIDS-related pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

He died quietly in his sleep.

John received the last rights of the Roman Catholic church just after 11:00 p.m.

So, I got some information that we can go check out,

a death certificate, down the street,

on John Leroy Kelly.

If he died in this area,

apparently, it will be on record,

and that's where we're going next.

NURSE: John was a no-code patient

so we did not attempt to resuscitate.

I am truly glad for John that his long struggle is over.

May he rest in peace.

I basically narrowed it down to about five hospices in the area.

From that, we're going to go back to the hall of records and find out

if there's a death certificate.

But even without a death certificate,

we can get a lot of great information now.

NURSE: Sarah Lang of Vancouver, British Columbia,

called me on the phone and asked if she could come down

and talk to me about her brother.

I said yes, if she could agree to complete confidentiality concerning my identity.

She agreed and I met her at the Downtown Public Library.

During our meeting, she brought up the Alcatraz Prison Escape

and asked me what her brother John had told me about the Alcatraz incident.

I gave her a copy of everything

and she stated that it was the same story

that John had told her for years before.

She stated that she had heard the same story

over and over many times from John

and felt she almost knew it by heart.

That he and a friend

helped the three convicts to escape

from Alcatraz Federal Prison in San Francisco.

They then killed the three escaped convicts

to keep all of a large sum of money.

KELLY: While we were at my Uncle Donald's,

we finally decided that we would get the convicts

into the back of Robert's pickup truck,

drive them into the woods,

and shoot them real quick

and bury them.

Robert picked a good spot along the highway

and we even dug a big hole before we picked them up.

Robert went somewhere and got two .38 caliber pistols

which he hid in a toolbox under the driver's seat of the truck.

NURSE: I told her about John making his confession to the Catholic priest

and that I felt it had helped John's peace of mind tremendously

and I told her that I believe John had died in peace.

I offered her these papers

including John's statement,

but she said she did not want to get involved.

She told me that it was true about their Uncle Donald

being a driver for big-time bank robbers.

She said that back when he as doing this

that it worked out very well.

She said that there was a family rumor

that Uncle Donald had at one time been sentenced

to a lot of time in Angola State Prison in Louisiana,

but that he escaped after a very short time

and fled to the Pacific Northwest.

According to her, no one ever found Uncle Donald

and he died of an old age in Seattle.

One interesting thing she said

was that John had trouble getting rid of some of the money

they took off the convicts because it was so old.

She said that some of the bills were very large,

but were still legal tender and could be spent.

When she got up to leave

I again tried to give John's papers, but she refused and left.

I don't really know who to give John's statements to.

I have thought about mailing it to a news agency or the FBI,

but I'm not really sure what to do with it.

Like John, I feel the time had come

for the truth about the Alcatraz Prison Escape to come out.

I miss John at times.

He probably was right about being famous

if everyone knew the truth about what he did.

This is a request for the death certificate

for John Leroy Kelly.

I'm obviously very curious if there's a death certificate on file

because this is another piece of the puzzle

that I'm trying to put together.

Typically, in an escape, couple things happen.

For example, in the case of Henry Young,

they made a movie real loosely based on him a few years ago,

When he escaped from Walla Walla State Prison,

the first thing he did was go home.

One thing that has led,

circumstantially, to our belief that they probably didn't make it,

based on what we knew so far,

was the fact that there were no crimes later on that were attributed to them.

There was no... Although family members have talked to us

and claimed there were things going on,

they're not gonna wanna spill the beans, as it were, on that.

The typical escape would leave a trail.

And that's not to say that there aren't exceptions,

but, you know, to go home, to rob another bank,

to commit another crime, do something to leave a fingerprint somewhere

is not at all uncommon.

And it's been lacking that over the years.

Since it's been so many years

and nothing credible so far had shown up,

that added to the likelihood that our opinion, or my opinion, I should say,

that they didn't survive the bay.

It just added to that, the fact that these guys never surfaced

and the fact that they were never connected to any crimes again.

Um, not to say that...

Well, people say, "Well, if they were smart they wouldn't do those things."

Well, if they were smart,

they probably wouldn't have been doing what they were doing, to begin with,

is another way to look at that. Right.

Because we always stuck to the theory

that if they had escaped and got away,

they would be committing crimes,

so they would eventually get caught.

The only thing they knew to do was bank robbery.

I mean, the were career criminals.

So, we knew that they...

If they did get away, they weren't in the US.

ZIRILLI: Right. And they probably weren't in Canada

because Canada has the same type

of law enforcement program that we do

and they eventually would have got caught doing something over there.

So, that's why we really looked at anything internationally,

and we weren't really concerned with the historical...

We've had cases like this before

where somebody's actually gone back, dug the bodies up

and then spread the bones some place.

I mean, all we end up with is fragments of bones in there.

They're never going to get up all of the bones.

I mean, there's going to be...

If there were bodies buried in there

and somebody came back to get the bodies up,

there's going to be something left in there, okay?

It's just impossible to get everything

once you put something in the ground like that.

ZIRILLI: What would be the method of forensically finding out?

Are there dental records or is there DNA of any kind?

We'll have to make that determination

with whichever state or local authority

we will be dealing with.

We do have records. Yeah.

I've got records of them.

Dental record?

Medical and dental records from the Bureau of Prisons.

We can use that.

But we'll make determination...

Of course, I know we're ahead of ourselves.

This is fluid. We're gonna have to play a lot of this by ear as we go.

So, we just met with Mike Earp

and Art Roderick, the US Marshals.

We're caravaning right now to meet with a local guy who knows the area.

We're leaving Seattle.

It's about an hour outside of Seattle.

According to the statement,

it's gotta be about a mile and a half.

On the left hand side, there used to be a dirt road.

Apparently, in 1962,

that dirt road was not blocked by a guardrail,

but now we're gonna have to walk over the guardrail.

From that point, we go down the dirt road

and apparently there's going to be some big rocks

that we'll look for and some trees.

On the rocks, as of 1993,

there was paint to mark the rocks.

And then at one point in the '80s,

um, John, the guy who gave the statement,

actually nailed horseshoes

into trees around the area

and apparently buried a box of horseshoes

right over the bodies where they were buried.

So, underneath the horseshoes, if we find them,

there may be the bodies of the Anglin brothers, John and Clarence,

and Frank Morris.

So, the initial thing we're looking for is the landmarks.

So, wish us luck.

NURSE: Over the last weekend,

me and my son took John up to the spot

where he says the three convicts are buried.

There were still some splotches of yellow paint on the big rocks

just like John told me there would be.

We took four gallons of red deck paint with us

and my son made a big circle and an "X"

over where John says he and his friend Robert

buried the three convicts in 1962.

ZIRILLI: His name's Al Davis.

He's an old timer, he's lived in this area forever, for his whole life.

He's at least 70 or 80 years old.

Really funny, nice guy.

He said, though, if you go back even 10 years, 10, 20 years,

everything's changed about this location.

He said, "Even for myself,

"because that can describe four or five roads

"that aren't even there in existence anymore.

"So it's just, it's going to be really hard for you to find

"what you're looking for."

He said that we're, like, five miles off base.

He said most likely that we should go back up

and turn to the right, sort of the area

near the lake where we went.

And there's actually another right turn that kinda just...

I let him read the one paragraph about the directions.

He said, "You'd have better luck in that area."

But he just said there's just four or five places

in this area that have changed

and it's just going to be hard to find based on this.

Somewhat vague... It sounds like vague directions to him

because there's too many options.

NURSE: You can no longer turn off the highway at that location.

There is now a guardrail

and you have to park on the roadside and walk from there.

We were able to find two of the horseshoes nailed to the trees.

Okay, so, we've good news and bad news.

The good news is we met with a tracker

who knows exactly the area

and exactly the turnoff where he thinks,

you know, the statement is pointing to.

The bad news is that he said it's a big area,

it's going to be hard to find

and that it might be snowing,

so there might be snow on the ground.

So, anyways, we'll see.

This must be the 30-foot.

Yeah. This is the closest.

Can you pull a truck up in here?

We'll stand on the roof and look at this mark on the tree here.

Pull yours.

I can't... Oh, okay.

First it was yellow paint and then it was red deck paint.

Does this look like paint to you?

It looks like yellow paint.

And does this look like red deck paint?

It sure does. Holy shit!

And does that look like it could be knot

looking like a horseshoe right up there?

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

Let's say 30 feet off the ground.

I mean, that's totally unnatural, is it not?

I mean, it can be analyzed, of course.

But I think it's worth bringing in a metal detector in this area.

Look at that.

Well, sure it's rusty. It came off of it right here.

I mean, that many rounds.

You know, they blasted them. They blasted them.

KELLY: On June 21st, we started driving towards Canada

in the truck with the convicts.

At a few minutes past 5:00 p.m.,

Robert hit me on the leg,

which was a signal we had arranged.

He told them we were stopping to pee.

He had a made a point over the last few days

of complaining about his weak kidneys.

Less than 30 feet away, the big hole we had dug waited

and two shovels.

I heard him get into the toolbox

under the driver seat for the pistol.

And he handed me one of the pistols down by his side.

We walked to the back of the truck.

Robert opened the truck's tailgate.

Frank Morris must've seen the pistol in Robert's hand,

because I heard Morris say, "You sons of bitches,"

but in almost the same instant,

we were both shooting into the back of the truck.

[GUNS FIRING]

I've never been able to forget the way they jumped around

and the sound the bullets made when they hit their bodies.

It was the worse thing that I did in my life.

Robert reloaded his pistol

and I pulled the convicts out by their feet.

John Anglin was the last one I pulled out,

and he was alive and talking

even though he had been hit several times

and had to be hurting very badly.

He begged not to die,

but Robert shot him three or four more times.

[GUN FIRING]

We dumped them into the big hole we had dug, one at a time.

We threw our pistols into the hole

along with the bloody canvas they had been lying on in the back of the truck.

We covered them up and spread a bag of grass seed all over the dug-up ground.

ZIRILLI: Can you do it this close?

Of course, this is more secluded than down there with the houses.

Yeah, and then in the '60s,

there was probably not as much traffic.

Were all the horseshoes on one tree?

ZIRILLI: No, there were four before

in sort of a circle.

And then when they came back in the '90s, there were only two left.

I'm looking up at a tree, and if you look closely,

it looks like potentially where a horseshoe could have been at one point.

Either the tree could have grown around it

or the tree could have pushed it out of its bark.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

It's just the spot here we're going to have to... Yeah.

ZIRILLI: They buried a box of horseshoes...

He came back in the '80s and buried a box of horseshoes

so that they could find the spot.

This is one potential site

that's about 30 feet off the road, off the 90.

There's a guardrail over there.

There's also evidence that could be a horseshoe up on a tree.

About 14 feet high.

We'll see.

It's not far.

I think it's got potential like crazy with those paint chips

and that little place that could have been a horseshoe at one time.

I don't know.

So we're calling it a day. It's getting dark.

We found one spot that had a lot of potential with

couple markings and a horseshoe-shaped indentation in a tree.

So we're gonna come back tomorrow at the spot

and see what else we can find out.

Yesterday, we were a little discouraged when we went to the location

because the rocks weren't quite as big as we expected.

And there were few things about the statement that Mike Earp had pointed out

that troubled him in some manner.

I mean, most of the things about the statement turned out to be...

Looked like they were totally correct and accurate.

But some of the questions he posed, I gave it a little thought

over the last 12 hours

and this is my idea of the answers maybe.

One of the things that he said

was that it was very unlikely

that they would trust somebody with 40 or 50,000 dollars,

this person Uncle Donald.

'Cause in the '60s that was a ton of money.

Now, I thought about that

and number one, Frank Morris,

he was friends with this Uncle Donald.

And Uncle Donald was 78 years old at the time.

So, I just don't see

that some 78-year-old guy

would necessarily run off with the money

from a friend of his at that age.

The other part about it being a large, large amount of money,

you know, for sort of like two big thieves to put together.

When you think about it, there were supposed to be five people.

Five convicts escaping out of Alcatraz.

So, five people...

Let's say 40 or 50,000 dollars, their family,

some of the money they got in bank robberies.

That's only about 10,000 dollars a piece.

Approximately about 10, 12,000 dollars.

So, to start a new life in Canada,

which was obviously the idea, according to the statement,

10, 12,000 dollars a piece split by five men

seems like a reasonable amount of money to put together,

especially if you've got a loved one in jail.

Back to the location.

So, we went to the location yesterday,

and, you know, in our mind's eye,

we sort of maybe thought these rocks were gonna be bigger.

Um, we did find some really interesting evidence.

We found a really cool-looking, horseshoe-shaped indentation in a tree.

We also found some paint scraps in yellow and red,

which is, again, we didn't find exactly paint on the rocks.

But we found some evidence that, you know, is circumstantial

and enough to follow up on.

So today we're going to go back

and I'm not sure what else... We'll ask the US Marshals what else we're gonna do,

but we've identified a really highly potential site.

Okay, we're back at the spot

and I just found a few interesting things.

Okay, originally, they said that they nailed or he nailed

four horseshoes into a tree.

Just bear with me.

Look at that nail. One.

See the nail?

And over here. Two.

A second nail.

Three.

So, we're looking for horseshoes.

Now, you know, when she came back,

apparently, there were only two left,

but now there are no horseshoes,

but look, there are one, two,

three over there and four nails.

And this is the area that I said looks like

somebody maybe came back at some point...

Just point the camera right down there.

I'm not saying this is where the hole was dug,

but maybe this is where he came back

and dug this little ground up to bury the horseshoes.

It's not like... This area looks to me a little unnatural to the rest.

It looks like something was dug out

and it's all uneven here.

This feels like anywhere could be the spot.

You know, this has got a lot of potential.

There are four nails in somewhat of a circle in this spot

and it's exactly what we're looking for.

Now, come over here and look at these rocks.

Yellow and red paint.

I'm hoping that we'll come back and survey this whole area

because this ground, this area, and those markings

look good to me.

ZIRILLI: You know, George Clooney is gonna play in the movie version, right?

[CHUCKLING]

Pretty good.

Some research on it, I gotta find out...

I have to get the GPS coordinates

in that particular location.

I will probably do that today.

Um, but if I know the name of the individual you got the statement from,

if we could just do a background...

We can run a background on him right now.

We could call... and find out

if he is connected to... What his mother's name is.

Where she's from, where he's been.

He's got to be some... I mean, he's got to...

ZIRILLI: Yeah, he's real paranoid about his identity.

RODERICK: You know, we're at that point.

I mean, we don't even know if she's alive.

ZIRILLI: Right, right.

RODERICK: If you're telling me this guy sounds like he's in his 50s,

and this is his mother,

then she's gotta be at least in her 70s or 80s.

ZIRILLI: Yeah.

You know? So... Right. I got you.

Okay.

They gave their statements, let's be honest about it.

They are the ones providing statements of reference

of this guy confessing to homicide and whatnot.

Yeah.

But there are law enforcement officials

that could be investigating that, yeah.

Their names are gonna have to be known,

they're gonna be questioned, they're gonna be interviewed,

they're gonna be possibly compelled to testify

for the accuracy of the statement.

Right. There's no doubt.

I won't mislead you on that.

I mean, as far as we're concerned, the public's not gonna be informed.

No, we're not gonna release it.

[CELL PHONE RINGING] But the law enforcement, yeah.

Right. This is Mike.

O'ROSS: Who was this man, John Leroy Kelly?

A phantom? A charlatan? A phony?

Or was he telling the truth?

Did he and his partner take part

in one of the most well-planned and coordinated escapes in history.

An escape that could only have been successful

with help from inside and outside the walls of the Rock.

What is irrefutable

is that the three men made it out of their cells

and into the water that night.

It is only speculated that they drowned at sea.

Was the culmination of their complex plan

merely to swim across the bay,

risking hypothermia and drowning,

only to come ashore in bustling downtown San Francisco?

Or did they have something more sophisticated in mind?

For now, their fate still remains a mystery.

Or does it?