I believe when that when they jumped into the bay they jumped to their death. There wasn’t any boat there to meet them and the impenetrable curtain of fog that hampered the visibility of the guards, also made it impossible for them to see anything and they just floundered until they were no longer able to keep up and then sank to the bottom of a bay that seldom gives up its victims. 

The press continued to cover the escape with great interest. Johnston worked to defend the integrity of the island’s security, and was harshly critical in his response to any comments that might lead the public to believe that the prisoners had successfully escaped. On February 18, 1938, the Associated Press ran an article claiming that the Bureau of Prisons was “chagrined and embarrassed” over the escape attempt by Roe and Cole. The article suggested further that the security at Alcatraz was not up to “required standards” and Bureau Director Bennett subsequently asked the House Appropriations Subcommittee to increase the institution’s budget from $305,600 to $309,535 for the 1939 fiscal year. The additional funding was approved and it allowed for an additional captain and two junior officers to man additional fixed sentry posts.

The San Francisco Chroniclewould later run several reports of various sightings of the escapees, and all leads were rigorously investigated, with no fruitful results. Nonetheless, the articles kept alive the idea that such a discovery was possible, since both inmates remained listed as unaccounted for. In an article published following the date of the escape, the closing statement read simply:

With long years of prison ahead of them, Ralph Roe, Muskogee, Okla., robber and Theodore Cole, Cushing, Okla., kidnapper, defied science, the natural hazards and the guns of guards, escaped and shattered a national byword, the legend of "escape proof" Alcatraz.

ESCAPE ATTEMPT #3

Date:

May 23, 1938

Inmates:

Thomas Robert Limerick

James Lucas

Rufus Franklin

Location:

Model Industries Building

The third escape attempt at Alcatraz would forever stand as one of the most vicious and violent ever seen on The Rock. It would result in the tragic murder of a well-liked senior correctional officer, and the death of an Alcatraz inmate. The plan was uncomplicated and essentially required no more than a few simple tools. These circumstances, combined with the desperation of the convicts, created a deadly formula for tragedy.

Thomas Robert Limerick

Thomas Limerick

Thomas Robert Limerick was born in Council Bluff, Iowa on January 7, 1902. It was recorded that he lived in a harmonious family environment until his father’s death, when Robert was only fifteen years old. His father worked as a farm equipment mechanic, and the family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle until his untimely death. Thomas was the oldest of one brother and three sisters, and the family quickly fell into extreme poverty living in a “tar-paper shack” in a poverty-stricken farming community. Thomas was forced to leave school, and took a job as a laborer in a self-sacrificing attempt to help support his stricken family. The circumstances of his father’s death are sketchy, but Thomas would later assert that his father had been “murdered” by the police, and that because “nothing was done about it” he had decided that he would “even the score” himself.

At the age of nineteen, Limerick found himself convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to serve five years at the Iowa State Reformatory. Records also show that Limerick had difficultly adjusting to the conditions of his confinement. Immediately upon his release he again found his way into more trouble when he traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, violating his parole and stealing an automobile. He served seven years in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, after which was sent back to Iowa to serve additional time for his parole violation.

Following his release on June 20, 1934, Limerick continued to be implicated in various crimes throughout the state. He was retained for questioning in Sidney, Iowa for the suspected burglary of a railroad boxcar, but no charges were filed. A string of robberies followed, and officials were starting to close in on Limerick as the culprit. Then at thirty-two years of age, Limerick met Catherine Cross and they married in September of 1934. The couple had been married for less than two months when Limerick would permanently seal his fate.

On November 7, 1934, using a sawed-off shotgun and a pistol, Limerick and an accomplice “forcibly, violently, and feloniously” robbed the First National Bank in Dell Rapids, South Dakota. They were able to secure $4,812.51 in cash, and $6,900 in stocks and bond certificates. Limerick and his accomplice took three bank employees hostage at gunpoint, and fled. By 1935, Limerick was known as the “No. 1 bank robber of the Northwest.”  He was captured that year and sentenced to life in prison. Limerick arrived at Leavenworth Penitentiary as inmate 47036-L on June 4, 1935, and was transferred to Alcatraz in October of the same year as AZ-263.

James C. Lucas

James “Tex” Lucas

Another accomplice in the escape would be twenty-six-year-old career criminal James “Tex” C. Lucas, who was serving out a thirty-year sentence for bank robbery, in addition to sentences for attempted murder in Texas and an escape while incarcerated in Huntsville. His prison record featured a series of violent outbreaks. In June of 1936, Lucas attempted to stab Al Capone with a single scissor blade while Capone was working in the clothing room. Without warning, Lucas pulled the concealed shear from a handkerchief and started jabbing at Capone, managing to inflict several minor stab wounds. He would later claim that Capone had threatened to have him “ snuffed.” Capone denied the allegation, stating that Lucas had earlier demanded money, which he had refused to give. As a result of the stabbing, Lucas had all of his “ good time” earnings revoked and was sent to serve time in solitary confinement.

Rufus “Whitey” Franklin

A mug shot series of Rufus Franklin. Rufus was a violent criminal who spent nearly his entire adult life behind bars.

The third accomplice, Rufus “Whitey” Franklin, was born on January 15, 1916 in Kilby Alabama, and began his career in crime when he stole an automobile at only thirteen years of age. He was born into a large family of ten siblings as the middle child. At age sixteen Rufus was arrested for carrying a pistol, and only one year later he was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder. When he was allowed a temporary parole to attend the funeral of his mother, he and an accomplice named John Austin Cooper held up a bank in Cedar Bluff, Alabama, taking $558.65 in cash.  Because of his long criminal record, the nature of his offenses, and what was documented as “an assaultive and vicious demeanor,” he was sent to Alcatraz in August of 1936, and there he was registered as inmate AZ-335.