After months of preparation, the inmates had fashioned all of the gear they needed to aid them in their escape, and they had meanwhile continued loosening the ventilator grill on top of the cellhouse. John carefully completed the valve assembly on a six-by-fourteen-foot raft constructed from raincoats. Morris modified an accordion-type musical instrument called a concertina, which would be used to inflate the raft. While the others progressed well in their activities, West fell behind in digging out the ventilator grill at the rear of his cell. His primary role had been to construct the life preservers and special wooden paddles for the raft, which didn’t require him to leave his cell.

On the night of June 11, 1962, Morris indicated that the top ventilator was loose enough, and he felt that they were ready to make their attempt. At 9:30 p.m., immediately after lights-out, Morris brought down the dummies from the top of the cellblock and announced that the escape would take place that night. Clarence Anglin attempted to assist West with his grill from the utility corridor, but was unsuccessful. Applying great force and dealing hard kicks to the grill proved futile. In the end, Morris and the Anglins had no choice but to leave West behind. The inmates made their final thirty-foot climb up the plumbing to the cellhouse roof, traveled one hundred feet across the rooftop, and then carefully scaled down the fifty feet of piping to the ground. This would be the last anyone ever saw of Morris and the Anglin Brothers.

By 1:45 a.m. West was finally able to complete the removal of his grill and climb to the rooftop, but by then all of his accomplices had disappeared. With no raft or other means to escape, he was forced to return to his cell. Some of the inmates would later report that they had heard an unusual disturbance among the seagulls during the late evening hours.

A Photograph of Frank Morris’s cell taken on June 12, 1962. This view shows how the cell appeared as the officers conducted their counts on the night of the escape. After lights out at 9:30 p.m., the cellhouse was considerably darker, and the heavy blanketing likely made it difficult to discern the mannequin figures.

The cellhouse utility corridor where inmates Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin emerged from the tunneled openings in the back of their cells, and ascended through the maze of plumbing to the top of the cellblock.

On the morning of June 12, 1962 at 7:18 a.m., Correctional Officer Lawrence Bartlett discovered that Frank Morris was missing from his cell. After some verbal prodding, Bartlett had nudged what he thought was Morris’ head. When it shockingly rolled off the bed and onto the floor, he realized that it was only a decoy. Alcatraz immediately went into complete lock-down status with scores of officers deployed in search of the missing inmates. The FBI quickly arrived on Alcatraz, and using bloodhounds they successfully tracked the inmates’ path to the water’s edge.

The rooftop ventilator through which the inmates made their final exit from the cellhouse.

The inmates quietly trekked across the rooftops of the cellhouse and the hospital before making their descent down a pipe along the west wall of the prison.

In one of the interviews he gave after the escape, Allen West described how their plan had been to use the raft to make their way to Angel Island. After resting, they would reenter the bay on the opposite side of the island and then swim through a waterway called Raccoon Straights and on into Marin. They would steal a car, burglarize a clothing store, and then venture off each in their own direction. West told a correctional officer that he had in fact been the mastermind of the escape. He was immediately taken to A Block under strict isolation precautions. FBI Agents and military personnel combed the bay waters in search of potential leads. The FBI would find several significant pieces of evidence in the bay waters of San Francisco.

The perimeter search map utilized by the prison officials and the FBI. Investigators plotted the presumed path of the escapees to the water’s edge.

On June 14, 1962 one of the search boats found a small eight-by-ten-inch rubber packet floating in an active whirlpool about two or three feet below the water’s surface. The location of the find was approximately 2,700 yards off Angel Island, which is a little more than a mile north of Alcatraz. The container was made from the same olive drab material as the inmates’ raincoats, and held several personal items believed to have belonged to Clarence Anglin. Inside were seventy-nine photographs of family and friends, many with personal inscriptions to Clarence, and several other miscellaneous slips of paper with addresses and phone numbers.

An officer examining the false grill sections behind Allen West’s cell.

A frontal view of Clarence Anglin’s cell following the escape.

John Anglin’s cell (B-158). The towels and clothing were used effectively to hide the ventilation grill.

Allen West’s cell, with a section of the fake ventilation grill visible on the bed. The inmates used cardboard tobacco boxes to create the false grills, and carefully measured and cut the grill patterns using contraband razorblades.

Frank Morris succeeded in covering the ventilation grill inside his cell with the case of his concertina, thus diverting any suspicion from the planned escape.

An officer seen examining the opening where the ventilation grill was originally located.

Also found floating was a makeshift oar, which was later confirmed to have been constructed by the inmates. The Coast Guard of Angel Island located the oar floating just off the Stuart Point Lighthouse on the northwest side of the island. One of the rafts that had apparently been used by the inmates was found just offshore in the same vicinity. It had deflated, apparently due to a breached seal along one of the seams. Another raft was also found in the same condition near the Standard Oil Wharf at Point Richmond on the other side of the bay.

A life jacket was found about fifty yards east of Alcatraz by the prison launch during its routine trip to Fort Mason. The Mae West style life preserver was identified as being fabricated from the same materials as the one found on top the cellblock, and it also contained other interesting clues. It had brown stains, which originally thought to have been blood but was later ruled out.   The air valve bore teeth marks, likely indicating that the convict had held it with his teeth to prevent air leakage. This tended to support the theory that the clip may have come off in the icy waters, thus contributing to the inmate’s exhaustion and eventual drowning.