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The Alcatraz escape of 1962 remains one of the most famous unsolved prison escapes in American history, a true crime mystery that has never been officially solved. On June 12th, 1962, prison guards at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary discovered that three inmates, convicted bank robber Frank Morris and brothers John Anglin and Clarence Anglin, had vanished overnight during one of the most daring prison breaks ever attempted, leaving behind realistic dummy heads made from soap, toilet paper, and real human hair to fool the nightly prison bed check.

For sixteen months before the Alcatraz prison break, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers used sharpened spoons to dig through the ventilation shafts at the back of their prison cells, disguising the escape tunnel with fake cardboard panels painted to match the cell walls. On the night of the escape from Alcatraz, the three inmates climbed through the prison roof, slid down an exterior pipe, cut through the perimeter fence, and paddled into the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay using a homemade raft built from more than fifty stolen prison raincoats.

What makes the Alcatraz escape one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in prison history is what happened after the escape itself. The FBI Alcatraz investigation eventually concluded that Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers drowned in the bay, officially closing the Alcatraz case file in 1979. But the U.S. Marshals Service disagreed with the FBI's conclusion and kept the Alcatraz escape case open, and a 2014 scientific study from Delft University in the Netherlands used hydraulic modeling of the bay's tides to argue that survival may have actually been possible, a theory reinforced by a real, documented case of another Alcatraz inmate successfully swimming the exact same waters just months after the original escape.

This true crime documentary covers the complete story of the 1962 Alcatraz escape: the prison break planning process, the actual escape night, the massive FBI and Bureau of Prisons manhunt that followed, the tidal study that reopened questions about the case, and the decades of unconfirmed sightings, letters, and theories that have kept the Alcatraz mystery alive for over sixty years.

🔍 Uncovered Cases is a true crime documentary channel covering real, verified unsolved mysteries, prison escapes, unsolved disappearances, cold cases, corporate scandals, and historical crimes the world never fully solved. New true crime investigations and documentary videos every week.

Chapters:
[0:00] Cold Open
[1:20] Chapter One: The Island Built to Break You
[3:12] Chapter Two: The Plan That Started With a Spoon
[4:50] Chapter Three: Nine Hours in the Bay
[6:05] Chapter Four: A Manhunt That Found Almost Nothing
[7:30] Chapter Five: The Sightings That Refused to Stop

Sources:

FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and...
Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/event/Alca...
History.com: https://www.history.com/articles/esca...
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_19...
(2014 Dutch study): https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/17/us/fea...

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