By John Metcalfe
Bay Area News Group
SAN FRANCISCO — Everyone knows the story of the famous 1962 Alcatraz escape: How three inmates led by bank robber Frank Morris – handsomely played by Clint Eastwood in the 1979 movie – used dummy heads to fool guards and flee in a homemade raft across the Bay, either to freedom or death in the briny deep.
The FBI closed the case in 1979 and today maintains that “with the strong currents and frigid Bay water, the odds were clearly against these men.” But now comes a bombshell from Ken Widner and Mike Lynch, who use historical documents, expert-analyzed photo evidence and family interviews in the new book “Alcatraz: The Last Escape” ( Lyons Press, 2024).
It wasn’t the high-IQ Morris who led the escape, they say, but John Anglin, the son of poor farmworkers and brother of third escapee, Clarence Anglin. And instead of the men drowning or — as one theory has it — getting murdered after a double-cross near Seattle, they supposedly flew to South America, where they married the locals, raised children and tended a farm in the mountains.
Wait, what? To believe this narrative, it helps that the authors aren’t crackpots. Lynch is a seasoned writer from San Jose who helped re-create the presumed escape across the Bay for a 2022 episode of Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown.” Widner is the Florida -based nephew of the Anglin brothers with intimate knowledge of their upbringing and prison connections, which he gleaned partly through a pen-pal relationship with crime lord and former Alcatraz inmate James “Whitey” Bulger.
Widner hopes to correct the record about his uncles, who are portrayed in popular culture (especially in Eastwood’s “Escape From Alcatraz”) as country hicks along for the ride.
“Although I love the movie, it’s not accurate at all,” says Widner, a retired I.T. professional who lives in Panama City Beach, Florida. “Nobody from Paramount or Clint Eastwood ever contacted any of the (Anglin) family members. I’m not going to try to glorify them – they were bank robbers, just like Frank Morris was – but if you’re going to give credit, then give it to the person who actually constructed the escape and did most of the planning.”
To humanize the brothers, the book kicks off with their childhood in Ruskin, Florida, with parents who were seasonal farmworkers.
“You think of poor today, multiply that by a hundred,” says Widner. “The house they lived in they built themselves, and it was a four-room house – not four bedrooms, just four rooms – with no plumbing, no electricity and a wood-burning stove they cooked off of. There were 14 kids who lived there, and they took baths on the back porch in a wash tub with water leftover from when their mom washed clothes.”
“John and Clarence were sort of viewed as the white trash of their community, because they were so poor, and were looked down on and made fun of,” says Lynch. “They wanted to be respected in their culture and looked up to – but for them, it was through crime. It was through instant wealth, like, ‘If we steal stuff and have money, people are going to respect us.’”
In 1958, John and Clarence and a third brother, Alfred, robbed a bank in Alabama using a toy gun and were sent to prison. After attempting to escape, they wound up in the place reserved for those who wouldn’t follow prison rules, Alcatraz. There they met Morris and began scheming how to get out.
The immediate challenge was cracking through the building’s infrastructure. They fashioned an arsenal of tools, including sharpened spoons to dig through their cell walls, a periscope to peep around corners and even a homemade flashlight to illuminate crawlspaces. Growing up poor and unable to buy stuff from the store, it turned out, had its advantages.
“I like to say that John and Clarence were the MacGyvers of the 1940s and ’50s. It didn’t matter what it was, they knew how to take nothing and make something out of it,” says Widner. “My mom said one time, they created their own bicycles. And I remember she told me how they built this car and took the tires and filled them full of moss off the trees, so the tires could roll.”
The escapees crafted dummy heads, using paint and real hair smuggled from the prison barbershop, to prop on their pillows and make it seem like their cells were occupied. What’s not commonly known is that this was a favorite ploy of the Anglins, who made fake heads as youngsters to help break out of a Florida reform school.
“The first time they actually used them was when they would sneak out of the house as kids,” says Widner. “Their older sister had one of those Styrofoam heads you’d put a wig on, and they would take it and stick it in the bed and sneak out.”
One of the most daunting challenges was dealing with the icy waters of the Bay. The showers at Alcatraz poured hot water, so inmates wouldn’t get used to the cold and get ideas about taking a swim to freedom. But the Anglins had an ace in the hole – Whitey Bulger, who was reportedly interested in SCUBA diving and had some helpful advice.
“Whitey was the one who told them that in your cells, you have a sink and toilet, and that water is cold,” says Lynch. “So get some towels and soak them with cold water and wrap yourselves in them, then lay on the cement floor, and that’ll get you used to the cold water when you pull off your escape.”
Bulger also reportedly instructed them on how to fashion rudimentary wetsuits from prison clothing. These details come from Widner’s years-long correspondence with Bulger, which began when the crime boss reached out to Widner’s mother to reminisce about life with her brothers at Alcatraz.
And what was it like being pen pals with a ruthless murderer?
“I didn’t share my actual home address – I always used a P.O. box,” says Widner. “But it was cool. I learned a lot about him. I learned the old mobsters – they were killers, I don’t want to glorify that in any way – but they were dedicated, loyal-type people. The thing he hated more than anything was a snitch. And he told me, ‘The FBI didn’t use me, I used them.’”
Once the convicts had made holes in their cell walls – obscuring them with fake vent covers they’d carved from cardboard – they climbed to the roof and then down to shore. They whipped out a life raft they’d built with rain coats donated by other inmates and blew it up with a concertina. Here, the conventional narrative has them sailing off the island to an unknown fate.
But the authors get very specific about what happened next.
“They stole electrical cords and tied one to a transport boat, let it out a hundred feet and were towed into the middle of the Bay,” says Lynch. “When the brothers were young boys, they used to do that for fun. They lived near the Little Manatee River (in Florida ), and there were a lot of power boats there, because it was a tourist area. The boys used to tie themselves to the back of these boats and get towed down the river.”
The authors reconstructed this story from conversations shared to Anglin relatives by a drug smuggler called Fred Brizzi, who was known as “Waterbed Fred,” because he had a fuel bladder on his plane so he could fly farther distances. According to Brizzi, after getting towed into the middle of the Bay, the trio met a boat that was in on the escape, made their way to a small airport in Marin County and were in Mexico by the very next morning.
There, they supposedly worked on a marijuana farm operated by Mickey Cohen for a couple of years – they’d worked together in Alcatraz’s clothing issue room – before fleeing to Brazil in 1964. What spooked them was the death of their brother Alfred, who they feared might have shared their whereabouts.
“Alfred was at Kilby State Prison (in Alabama ), and they had a yellow electric chair there called Yellow Mama,” says Lynch. “Sometimes, they would use it for interrogation purposes. If they wanted information, they would strap them in the chair and start to turn it on to let them feel the electricity and then ratchet it up a little more and more. That’s what Ken believes happened to his uncle Alfred – that after the escape they were interrogating him, and he died.”
Widner maintains his family was in contact with the brothers in Brazil at least up until the early ’90s. And he has a unique bit of photographic evidence to support the claim: a picture of two ’70s-kitted-out men who look very much like John and Clarence, standing among termite mounds in a jungle.
“To me, that photo is probably the biggest game-changer in the history of the Alcatraz escape,” says Widner. “It’s been analyzed by five independent facial-recognition software companies, and they all come back for an exact match on John Anglin. With Clarence, it came back close, because (his face) wasn’t turned in a certain way.”
Widner and Lynch have traveled to the Brazilian town of Monteiro Lobato, where they believe the brothers and Frank Morris wound up. (Morris would later disappear from the narrative: “He kind of just ghosted out at some point,” says Lynch.) They interviewed elders who recalled Americans being in the area in the 1970s. High up on a mountain deep in the forest, they found remnants of a structure, some tools, a shell casing, a lighter and a 1950s penny.
“That trek up that mountain was so hard, like a mile up, literally a teeny path cut out of jungle like a Tarzan thing,” says Lynch. “No one’s going to find you up there.”
Widner doesn’t think his uncles, who would be in their 90s now, still are alive. “Clarence was a very heavy smoker,” he says. “And none of the Anglin boys lived past their mid-80s.”
But for a time, the authors believe, they had a decent life after their escape from the Rock.
“Fred Brizzi talked about them having a large farm with animals, cows and orchards,” says Lynch. “They would sell their fruit in the local market, hired about 20 employees and were just living very peacefully and quietly – kind of the life they always wanted.”
Details: Find Ken Widner and Mike Lynch’s “Alcatraz: The Last Escape” ( Lyons Press, $30) at local bookshops via Indiebound.org and other online sources.
To explore Alcatraz for yourself, take an Alcatraz City Cruises ferry from San Francisco’s Pier 33 to the island, followed by a cellhouse audio tour. Make reservations and buy tickets for a day tour ($27.55 to $45.25), night tour ($33-$56.30) or guided behind-the-scenes tour ($94.25-$101.30) up to 90 days ahead at www.alcatrazcitycruises.com.
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