Escape from Alcatraz letter ‘inconclusive’
The U.S. Marshals Service said handwriting samples were “inconclusive” from a letter sent to San Francisco police by a man claiming to be one of three Alcatraz inmates whose daring breakout from The Rock was the subject of lore and the film Escape from Alcatraz.
Legend has it that no one ever successfully escaped the grim, federal island prison in San Francisco Bay, shuttered in the early 1960s after three decades of service.
There is one asterisk: the matter of John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris, who disappeared on a night in June 1962 and were never found. The working theory was that the men, who apparently fled on an improvised raft, drowned in the bay’s unforgiving waters.
The letter, sent to police in 2013 and recently obtained by CBS affiliate KPIX, was from a man claiming to be John Anglin.
“I escape from Alcatraz in June 1962 with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris,” the letter says. “I’m 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer. Yes we all made it that night but barely!”
It goes on to say that Frank Morris died in 2008 and Clarence Anglin three years later. And it makes an offer.
“If you announce on TV that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke,” the letter says.
The FBI officially closed the case in 1979, saying, “No credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the U.S. or overseas.” The U.S. Marshals Service took jurisdiction of all federal escapes in 1978 and considers the case an open one.
The Marshals Service reviewed the letter, and a statement from Donald O’Keefe, U.S. marshal for Northern California, fell far short of putting the matter to rest.
“Handwriting samples of all three escapees, John Anglin, Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris, were compared to the anonymous letter, and the results were deemed inconclusive,” O’Keefe said. “At this time, there are no leads stemming from the 2013 anonymous letter.”
O’Keefe said that because of the high profile of the escape, the service receives many leads, the vast majority of which “have been thoroughly investigated and subsequently ruled out.”
The FBI’s website says the prisoners gathered more than 50 raincoats they converted into makeshift life preservers and a 6-by-14foot rubber raft.