Escape(Harry Styles)

Reports

Three prisoners have made their way out of California's Alcatraz prison using spoons and a homemade raft.

Frank Lee Morris and two brothers, Clarence and John Anglin, all convicted of bank robbery, escaped last night from the notorious island prison in San Francisco Bay renowned for its high level of security.

The acting warden said they put dummy heads - made of a mixture of soap, toilet paper and real hair - in their beds to fool prison officers making night-time inspections.

They then cut through the back of their cells with sharpened spoons, crawled out and onto the roof through a ventilation duct, climbed down a pipe to the ground then made their way to the shore of the island.

Prison officials said they used a makeshift raft of driftwood and raincoats sewn together to make pontoons in order to float away from Alcatraz, also known as The Rock.

At least 100 armed troops have joined the military police in their hunt for the three convicts who are wearing blue prison uniform. Police have warned members of the public not to approach the men.

Alcatraz Island is only a mile from the mainland. But the waters of San Francisco Bay are treacherous and very cold and should the escapees fall in, there is little chance of survival.

Alcatraz, which houses around 270 hardened criminals, is famous for its high level of security thanks to the structure of the buildings, their isolation from the mainland and the frequent head counts - 12 a day.

~The San Francisco Morning Newspaper~

San Francisco (AP)—Three Alcatraz convicts vanished from the island rock prison Tuesday after months of chipping with spoons through a concrete cell wall.

Their escape from three separate cells, through air vents into a pipe tunnel, apparently was concealed for hours by life-like, plaster-headed dummies they left in their beds.

Prison officials expressed belief that they used a driftwood raft to get off the island. If the escape is successful, it will be the first to succeed in the 28-year history of the federal prison.

Alcatraz sits like a battleship in San Francisco Bay 1¼ miles north of San Francisco.

A widespread hunt for the three convicts included a military police search of Angel Island, a timbered state park 1¾ miles north of the bleak rock prison.

Eleven previous escape attempts ended in failure. Thirty-five men were involved. Two made the attempt twice.

Warden Olin D. Babyak told the Associated Press late Tuesday that it is “my personal opinion that if they tried the water they did not make it.

“I am told the water is 54 degrees out there with a current up to eight miles an hour. I do not believe that convicts, without training for such a feat, could swim for it and make it.”

After getting out of the pipe tunnel they climbed a drain pipe to the cell house roof. They removed a riveted section of an air duct and also removed bars from the duct to get out on the roof.

They crossed the mess hall roof and went 40 feet down a vent pipe to the ground at the northeast corner of the cell house.

~Dallas Morning News~

On June 11, 1962, three other convicts escaped off the island and may have made it to freedom: two brothers, Clarence and John Anglin, and Frank Morris. These three inmates described as “dangerous men,” spent more than a year working on an incredibly elaborate, well-conceived and well-executed escape attempt.

On the night of the escape there was a thick fog filling San Francisco Bay, and the three men dutifully turned off their cell lights at the required hour of 9:30. But instead of getting themselves into bed they placed false bodies made of pillows, topped with incredibly lifelike plaster heads (adorned with real human hair they had stolen from the prison barber shop), into their beds to fool the night checks. Then each man crept through the hole he had made in his back wall, entered the ventilation shaft, and climbed up onto the roof.