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- [00:00]
Don Wildman
Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world, from the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland. There is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe to bring the Past Alive
- [00:32]
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- [01:54]
Jolene Babiak
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- [02:16]
Don Wildman
It is night here at this federal penitentiary. Outside, strong winds howl, whistling through cracked windows as the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay surge against the rocks inside. Here in the cell blocks, prison guards do their evening bed check, pointing flashlights into cells at the shapes of inmates curled beneath their blankets. Throughout the building, barred doors clang shut. B block all is calm. Just an ordinary night. Except listen closely. You hear that beneath the wind and waves, past the footfalls of the guards, there's a shuffling, a grunting, feet scraping on cement, hands grasping metal careful moves higher than higher in the space between the blocks. It is men climbing. It is the sound of an escape. Hello, I'm Don Wildman. Welcome to American History Hit, where today I am joined by Jolene Babiak, author of Brady Breaking the The Great Escape From Alcatraz, among other titles. Today we'll get behind the prison walls to find out how Alcatraz became the dark symbol it is today. What was it like to be a prisoner out there? What was the world of Alcatraz? And did anyone really escape as myth and legend would have? Jolene Babiak, welcome to American History hit.
- [03:56]
Jolene Babiak
Thank you very much.
- [03:57]
Don Wildman
You have a very personal relationship with the island of Alcatraz, more so than most people. You lived on the island in the mid-50s and then again in 1962, two chapters as a child. How is it that you arrived on Alcatraz?
- [04:11]
Jolene Babiak
My father was transferred there in 1954, and it was a magnificent change from Terre Haute, Indiana, a small prison town, to a major beautiful city. And moving onto an island overlooking San Francisco was just fabulous. We were there for about a year and a half when I was that age 7 to 9. Then we moved to the city and bought a house. And then his job required that we come back when I was just turning 15. And what was his job at that time? He was the associate warden. That's why we came back. Before that, he'd been what they call the superintendent of industries. And industries employed about 100 prisoners. And they made products for the government and they actually earned money. So it was a pretty important job on Alcatraz.
- [04:54]
Don Wildman
Let's be clear if anyone hasn't ever visited Alcatraz. It's much larger than you imagine. The first geography of this is that you can see it from the shores of San Francisco right there. It's startling to this day, still. Still shocks you a little bit in the line of sight. But it looks smaller, of course, at a distance. When you get out there, there's a lot of space there. And that's complex was quite large.
- [05:16]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah, it was about 22 acres. And it is about a mile and a half off of the shore of San Francisco. So it does appear to be much. People are really shocked that it's so close to the city because it has this reputation of being, you know, unswimmable and surrounded by sharks. And, you know, everybody imagines that it's a remote place, but it's not.
- [05:37]
Don Wildman
There were about 300 civilians, as I understand it, 60 families living out there. Right. Who were not incarcerated.
- [05:44]
Jolene Babiak
About 60 families. It fluctuated all the time. In the early years, about 30 families. In the later years, they built some new apartment buildings. And so there was enough room for 65 families. And it fluctuated all the Time, depending on a lot of factors, People were always moving on and moving off. The apartments were all furnished, so you didn't have to bring out a lot of stuff on the boat. You just brought your personal effects onto the island and moved into the apartment. It was really wonderful. Overlooking San Francisco.
- [06:15]
Don Wildman
Yeah. Nice. Nice view. A question you've answered a million times. What was it like for a kid to live on Alcatraz?
- [06:22]
Jolene Babiak
Well, in atmosphere, it was very much like living on a military base. And the first thing that your mother would tell you is that if you go into an area where you're not allowed, it could affect your dad's career. So we learned to be very mindful of not getting into trouble, not speaking to a prisoner, not sneaking into areas where we couldn't go, not going down to the shore where kids could literally fall into the bay and drift off and no one would even know. So there were a lot of rules on the island. But beyond that, we went to school in the city. We could bring our friends over. There were about 75 kids that lived on the island. So it was really a fabulous place. There was no traffic. You know, we weren't in any danger from the prisoners because they were focused on the opposite side of the island and they escaped in that direction, usually. So we were, you know, perfectly safe on a maximum security prison island.
- [07:18]
Don Wildman
Would you ever encounter these prisoners?
- [07:20]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah, I saw outside workers, which I estimate maybe there were maybe 12. I might have seen five or six of them. There were men who worked on the dock Monday through Friday. There were maintenance details, gardeners, which we might see men who came down, like with an officer who was a plumber or an electrician, to fix something in an apartment would always have an inmate helper with him. So we would see men coming and going. They picked up the garbage. In the early years, they dropped off milk for the residents, which was odd. I don't think they did that when I was there. So we would see prisoners.
- [07:56]
Don Wildman
Right. And you're referring to going into the city for school. People should know. Everything is done, of course, by ferry service out there. Even when you visit today, there's a dock down there. And it was a constant little, you know, that was a way of life. You got everything from the mainland, including your water, right?
- [08:11]
Jolene Babiak
Yes. The water was barged over about every three days, and it was water for 600 people. So it was a very expensive operation.
- [08:19]
Don Wildman
Were you allowed to go inside the cell blocks in any way or nearby?
- [08:24]
Jolene Babiak
No, no. The prison was at the top of the island, and we Were really not even allowed to go up to the top unless we were invited or we went with our fathers. I never saw my dad's offices. You know, he worked in the industries and then the admin wing of the prison. I never saw either of his offices.
- [08:44]
Don Wildman
But you would hear if something went wrong, right? Emergencies and so forth.
- [08:48]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah. There was a siren.
- [08:49]
Don Wildman
Yeah. Did it ever go off?
- [08:51]
Jolene Babiak
It did in 1962. It woke me up. I'd never heard it before.
- [08:59]
Don Wildman
And that's the escape we'll be talking about. Before we get into those details of that famous escape, tell us a bit about the history of Alcatraz. Where does Alcatraz get its name?
- [09:08]
Jolene Babiak
Ah, Spanish explorers in 1775. Or the actually the first people to see the harbor. Because the bay was always shrouded in fog, particularly in the summers, Explorers hardly ever came into the bay until 1775. And then Spanish explorer came in. And they are the ones who named angel island and Alcatraz and then the city of San Francisco, which they called Yerba Buena. Okay, so the name Alcatraz can either be a calla lily, which is a Spanish word. Alcatrazas means a calla lily. But it also could be a large sea bird, like an albatross or a pelican.
- [09:49]
Don Wildman
I see. Okay. How did it become a prison? There are many iterations, or at least a bunch of iterations as to how this island moves through its own history, isn't it?
- [09:58]
Jolene Babiak
Well, yeah. It started as an army fort established just after gold had been discovered to protect the city from foreign invasion. And it was a part of a triangle of forts in the Bay area. So that the idea is that if a ship came in to take over the city, you know, and San Francisco was the financial capital of the entire Pacific rim because of the gold. And so if a ship came in through the Golden Gate, you could bomb it with cannons from either side. So at its peak, Alcatraz had something like 180 cannons around the island. And, of course, it had staff. It had a citadel for the officers, and it had eventually a barracks for enlisted men. All forts have jails where you keep men who drink too much and have fights and attack a senior officer and worse. But the other forts in the bay area would look out at Alcatraz and see that it was surrounded by fog and potentially surrounded by sharks. And so they started sending their prisoners to the island. And the island's army prison grew into an established prison as a pacific branch of the U.S. army prison.
- [11:11]
Don Wildman
It's really a rock in the Middle of the water, isn't it?
- [11:14]
Jolene Babiak
Correct. It's shaped like a whale. It was just a large lump in the bay, kind of the top of a mountain. And the army had to come in and flatten it, and they turned it into three terraces. Eventually, the shoreline where the boat docked, parade ground where all the apartments were eventually. And then up top, the prison. And that was the first area that was flattened. And then there was constant construction on the island from the 1860s up until 1933, when the army gave up the property. And it was hard labor because it was rock and all of that. The island had to be flattened and then built on top of it. And there are numerous pictures of prisoners breaking rock and carrying rock down to the shore and dumping it into the bay. And so it was very, very hard labor that went on for about 70 years.
- [12:07]
Don Wildman
It really is a very forbidding place when you're on it. The sense of it being just stuck out there and barren is really palpable. It becomes a US Property after the Mexican American War and. And then is reserved by President Miller Fillmore for defense. Defense from what, you know, they worried
- [12:24]
Jolene Babiak
about, of course, Mexico and Spain, because it had become. California had become a state at about the time gold had been discovered. They worried about Russia. As people know who come to city, there's a Russian hill and there's a Russian fort north of the Bay Area. So they worried about Russia. They also worried about China because the Chinese were coming over to build the railroads. And because it was a financial capital, people really worried that the city, you know, you could come in and just take over the city. And once you did, you. You had the finances of California behind you.
- [12:57]
Don Wildman
Sure, those. Those vaults in the mint have evidence of enormous amounts of money. I mean, you go down in that San Francisco mint, the old one, and press your hand against the wall, and there are indentations of those silver dollars literally in the plastic. Oh, my God, it's amazing. So the fort was constructed about 1858. As I understand it, it becomes a prison for POWs. During the Civil War, the prison population grew from 26 to 450 around the 1898. The Spanish American War. When does it get converted into a federal penitentiary?
- [13:30]
Jolene Babiak
About that time, about 1904. You know, those buildings were largely wood and brick, and one of the. They were lit by lanterns, and one of the lanterns fell and burst into flames. And as you can imagine, there's nothing more fear inducing than being locked in a cell when there's a fire in the building. And so, fortunately, A quick thinking guard put the fire out immediately. But that's when the command staff started thinking that maybe instead of these ragtag, which one was built on top of another? They decided to build a real cell house. And that began around 1909 at the top of the island. And it was actually built by military prisoners.
- [14:15]
Don Wildman
Right. Maximum security becomes the thing in the 30s, the early 30s, because the federal government needed a place to house dangerous criminals. This was a very good place to put them. Right. Especially the ones who wanted to escape all the time.
- [14:28]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah, you know, it was the beginning of the Bureau of Prisons. They only had about four prisons. McNeil Island, Leavenworth, Atlanta, and then eventually Alderson, West Virginia, for women. They needed more facilities. And, you know, Alcatraz came open and it was already a prison. And the Bureau was looking for a crackdown on crime because of the depression and the bank robberies and the kidnappings and, you know, prohibition was still causing problems. And so they were looking for a symbol. And Alcatraz was an island. You know, it was fog surrounded. It had sharks, My God. It was just a fabulous publicity coup for them. It was already built. All they had to do was it had to be transferred from the US army to the Bureau of Prisons, basically. So it was a simple deal. And they got their publicity, you know, escape proof and remote and, you know, Al Capone, when Exactly.
- [15:28]
Don Wildman
I did TV shows there and. And boy, they let me climb all over that place and down into the Civil War basement, you know, which goes back to the fort down there.
- [15:38]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:38]
Don Wildman
Literally, I was the citadel. Yeah, I was literally down in pipes underneath of that because that was the show I was doing. I mean, there's so many layers to that structure that the cell block is basically sitting on top of. You saw this or at least heard about it at dinner. What was life like for prisoners at Alcatraz?
- [15:56]
Jolene Babiak
Well, I mean, you know, the. The overriding thing that you can say about it was that it was boring, very boring. In other prisons, particularly a minimum security prison, you could probably have a visitor every day if you wanted to. You had access to therapy or drug treatment programs or alcohol related programs or. But on Alcatraz, you only got a visitor once a month. And most prisoners, frankly, did not have visitors because people couldn't afford to come out to San Francisco, stay in a hotel, and then visit their loved one for an hour. You know, for an hour, once a month. There wasn't a lot of activity. There was no access to any kind of therapy or any kind of related programs. Like that there was very little psychiatry. You know, there was no treatment. It wasn't that it was being withheld. It was that there was no psychiatric treatment in those days. So you're talking about a very, very broad, boring prison. However, I want to say, on the other opposite side, it was regarded as having the best food in the entire system. I never ate it, so I don't know. But everybody bragged about how good the food was. And it was one man, one cell, which is a luxury apartment. In prison you have your own cell a lot of times the cells that were only five feet wide were two man cells. And in some prisons they could actually be four man. You have two bunk beds, get by. But on Alcatraz, it was always one man, one cell. It wasn't hot like Leavenworth, Kansas or Atlanta, Georgia, which were not air conditioned. It was actually cooler. It could be very beautiful. When you went out into the yard and went up into the bleachers, you could see San Francisco, you could see the bridges. So it was beautiful, you know, but it was boring.
- [17:47]
Don Wildman
How many prisoners are we talking about a large population?
- [17:50]
Jolene Babiak
No, we're talking about 280 on the average.
- [17:53]
Don Wildman
Okay. And most of these we've mentioned before were prisoners sent there intentionally because they could not be conformed. They couldn't conform at other federal institutions, either for reasons of violence or they were persistent escape risks.
- [18:07]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah, the escapes mostly took place in state prisons or jail lockups or juvie. When you look at the history and these files, it's not like they had were involved in these spectacular escape attempts. Most of the time they were caught next to a window that had been tampered with. And they had a history of one or two escape attempts. And, you know, escape artists is overstating it. It's totally overstating it. Most of the time they were behavioral problems. And I always think of Alcatraz as the top of the pyramid. It was the smallest institution in the system. It only housed about 1 or 2%. And they came there because of their behavior.
- [18:45]
Don Wildman
There was an interesting period. Up until the late 1930s, there was a rule of silence, as I understand, except for at meals and in recreation. I mean, this go hand in hand with what you're talking about, this structured, monotonous routine. In this case, not even able to speak.
- [19:01]
Jolene Babiak
You know, that was a very bad idea. And it was an ancient one that had been discarded probably by 1920, you know, so he was the first warden, James A. Johnson, was. Was harking back to an earlier era. And it caused him a lot of trouble. And you know what? I don't think they could talk when they were at dinner. I think the only time they could talk was in the yard. I don't think they could talk during work, at lunch or in their cells. Of course they did, and they learned to talk very quietly, but they got in trouble for it. So if you look at the history of Alcatraz, it operated for 29 years and there were 14 escape attempts. Ten of them occurred during Johnston's era. And I think originally because of the escape proof name and also because of the silent system.
- [20:02]
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- [21:04]
Don Wildman
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- [22:02]
Don Wildman
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- [22:49]
Jolene Babiak
It was a contrast. I didn't know it at the time. I mean, I probably sensed it, but I didn't think about it until many years later. The officers were all of our bosses and all of our fathers, and they were pretty benevolent for the most part. They were men you avoided. They were scary guys. And the lieutenants were always big and burly, and they carried the weight of authority, you know, and they told us what to do, but they also cared for us. They had lots of events for us on the island. The teenagers always had dances. We could bring kids over. You know, we could go on the boat and go get the kids and bring them over and have the dance and then take them back on the midnight boat. There was Halloween parties and Christmas parties, and I bobbed for apples down on in the officers closet club. My mouth wasn't big enough to win the contest, sadly, but. And there was a western party every year. And this is the funniest thing. The officers actually did burlesque skits, and they sometimes did drag shows. It's just. It became kind of a phenomenon over the years. It embarrassed the teenagers. And of course, the women all were tittering. They would usually put on prairie dresses and prairie hats, and they'd get up there and do a little skit, you know, the braver. The braver officers. But they would also participate with us. You know, we'd had this western party, and of course, it had a jail, and you. You could be imprisoned in the jail, but then you could be paroled and. And. And the women always brought food down, and we entertained ourselves with little record players, and there was a stage and the kids would also do little skits. It was wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful. And what was amazing to me years later is that I realized that absolutely none of the prisoners got those kinds of community affiliations and those kinds of a feeling of a community when they were growing up. They came from trauma. They were often moved around, and they did not have communities that cared about them. So right on that island were these two, you know, entities, us, who had A magnificent life on the island. All the kids love, love living there. And then the prisoners who had come from pretty miserable childhoods where communities didn't care about them at all.
- [25:17]
Don Wildman
Wow, what a contradiction. The famous inmates. Al Capone, Chicago mob boss, transferred here to curb his influence outside the prisons where he was previously kept. Machine Gun Kelly. George Kelly. Gangster, kidnapper. Robert Stroud. The Birdman of Alcatraz. One of my favorite movies as a child. I just. There was something magical about that idea of that man. Burt Lancaster played him so beautifully. Was he there in the time you were there?
- [25:44]
Jolene Babiak
Yeah, when I was seven to nine. He was. He was fast becoming the most famous prisoner in America.
- [25:49]
Don Wildman
Oh, my God, you must have been so curious about that. The Birdman of Alcatraz.
- [25:53]
Jolene Babiak
Oh, yeah, we did talk about him. We did ask about him. None of the officers were all of that enamored of him. Strauss, Publicity. He was a publicity hound, and he gathered publicity starting in the 1920s, and he got used to that. And he, you know, he was the most privileged prisoner in the federal prison system ever. At least up until Epstein's first imprisonment.
- [26:22]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [26:23]
Jolene Babiak
He also had enormous prisoners.
- [26:25]
Don Wildman
I guess we should explain this to anybody who doesn't know the Birdman of Alcatraz. He was very famous for having a collection of birds, right? I mean, he was. He had cultivated this whole thing throughout his time there.
- [26:34]
Jolene Babiak
Well, he was never the Birdman of Alcatraz. He was the Birdman of Leavenworth, Kansas, which is not as sexy a title. And he maintained an aviary for 22 years at Leavenworth, and he wrote books on bird diseases.
- [26:49]
Don Wildman
And did that not carry on with Alcatraz?
- [26:52]
Jolene Babiak
No, they brought him to Alcatraz to shut it down.
- [26:54]
Don Wildman
Oh, my God. You've destroyed my entire illusion.
- [26:57]
Jolene Babiak
Well, if you go back and see the movie, it mostly takes place in Leavenworth, and he comes out to Alcatraz later in the movie. So they got it right. But of course, you can't name it, you know, the Birdman of Kansas. It's just not going to work.
- [27:12]
Don Wildman
It was famously claimed to be inescapable for obvious reasons. In truth, there were many attempts. How many? And talk me through those different ones.
- [27:21]
Jolene Babiak
There were 14 escape attempts involving about 38 to 40 men. The reason why we don't have a real figure is because sometimes people got accused of going and they hadn't been involved in other cases. They went, but they weren't counted as having gone. So the number's a little nebulous, but around 38 men over the 29 years. Two of the most famous, of course, the 1946 battle, in which prisoners got guns and waged a battle with guards for two days. There were five or six prisoners involved in that. Three of them were killed, two of them were executed later. And then one survived, Clarence Carnes, who happened to be one of the first prisoners I met in the late 70s. Clarence was out there for 19 years and he paroled out from Leavenworth and I met him then, of course, the 1962 escape. Those are the two most famous. The 46 battle and the 1962 escape attempt.
- [28:16]
Don Wildman
A two day standoff. Two guards, three inmates were killed, several others are injured. But in terms of the fame, you know, and the, and the publicity of this, it pales in comparison to June 1962. So let's talk through the details of that most famous endeavor. This involves three or four, really four inmates originally. Frank Morris, John and Clarence Anglin, and Alan West. Where do they get the notion to even try this? Because it's an incredibly ambitious idea, isn't it?
- [28:48]
Jolene Babiak
It wasn't ambitious. I don't think it started out to be that ambitious. Allen west was the key to this escape attempt in my estimation. West had been there longer than the other three. He'd been there twice. He was extremely manipulative, quite dangerous. Unlike the other three, they weren't particularly dangerous. But west was a very manipulative guy. He was cell house maintenance and he knew the lore, which was in 46 because there was shooting going on. The staff invited the U.S. army officers to come out and they actually dropped grenades down the vents, the roof vents. Right. They dropped grenades down there. And because of that there were these large air blowers attached to the vents. And in many cases inmates and an officer would go up to the top of the block, pull out the air blowers and seal in the vents so that nobody ever again could get out that way. Well, when Allen west in 1961, 62 was doing his maintenance, he could see that there was one blower that still remained above B block. So he figured, and he was right, that that ceiling vent had not been covered over. And so his idea was to get into the utility corridor, somehow get at the top of the block and break through that ceiling vent. And you know, they thought they were going to maybe grab a guard and make them unlock the utility corridor. You know, they were going to grab people and get them down to the boat. They had a lot of different ideas and eventually they decided they had to dig. They had to dig through the Back of their cells to get into that utility corridor, to use the pipes as a ladder to get on top of the block. And then once they were up there, they worked for six weeks opening up that vent and building rafts and making the masks and those kinds of things.
- [30:47]
Don Wildman
Okay, but hold on. All of this is happening over a period of six weeks.
- [30:52]
Jolene Babiak
The digging took about four and a half months to get into that area. And then it was six weeks up there? Yes.
- [30:59]
Don Wildman
It's incredible. I just have to explain. I have actually done this climb weirdly, but I. I climbed up that on television. I climbed up that cell block, you know, which is a long way up. There are, I guess, three levels of those cells, and then you climb, basically using it like a jungle gym. Along that climb, there's all these pipes behind all these cells, all the plumbing and so forth. And so you can literally scale up that wall. It takes a lot of effort and it's really tight. It's also disgustingly dusty and everything else. So by the time you climb to the top of that. That cell block, you know, you've really had to work to get there. And that's where they were working for so long. They kind of did it in cat. I don't know, they. They had concealed themselves up there somehow. And then they. What were they using? Raincoats? Something to put together these rafts, right?
- [31:49]
Jolene Babiak
Yes. Okay. They all worked in opportune places. Allen west was maintenance, and west manipulated them up top. His job was to keep the cell house clean. And he went up to the top of the block once and he swept, you know, he swept off the dust that you're talking about the top of the block. He swept it off onto the floor. If you look at photographs of the cell house floors, they are spick and span, they're shiny. They were cleaned on a daily basis. The floors were spotless. Alcatraz was a very clean prison. It was very bright. It had skylights. It was very bright. It was very clean. And when Wes went up there and he swept that dirt off the top of the block and it fell down into. Onto the floor and officers walked on it and it crunched. They were quite upset. And so Wes says, well, why don't you let me hang some blankets up there? And then the dust won't come down and I can still clean. And they kind of thought, okay, you know, a long term cellhouse officer who was in charge was no longer there. And, you know, Wes can work it out so that certain guys were on vacation or, you know, their day off, and he could manipulate another guard. And that's what he did. He said, why don't you let me go up there and hang some blankets, and then the dust won't fall down, we won't have a problem. And that's exactly what he did. He hung blankets around the block, which kept the gun gallery officer from peering in and seeing that they were actually digging out.
- [33:26]
Don Wildman
Oh, my gosh. You've just given me information I've lacked for 20 years trying to figure that out. Thank you. But all the while your father was employed there, and I assume your father was very good at what he did live. He raised you. How were these guys missing, such an obvious thing going on?
- [33:43]
Jolene Babiak
Well, you know, escape attempts always involve usually two people. You have one watching and the other digging. You have the other digging and the other watching. And so, you know, they're able to make sure that the officers don't see that somebody's actually missing. Once they got up top, they had already made their masks and so they could put them in their beds. You had one guy, you know, you had four guys, one watching, one digging, and they would climb up there, and they were surrounded by those blankets to protect them while they. That became their workshop up there. That's where they made the raft. That's where they made the life jackets. I think they hid them in the blower. There was a duct between the blower and the ceiling, about two feet, you know, sheet metal duct. And I think they were able to take that out, stuff all the raft and the life jackets they were making into the duct, and then reattach it. Right. So that it was hidden every night. I think they went up there maybe three times a week, four times a week. Because you're right, I would never have climbed those pipes three stories to get up there. I just never would have done that. You know, it was too scary, and it was arduous. And you had to do it very, very quietly. And once you got up there, it had to be a silent work. But two men were always down in their cells watching for guards. Now, here's another thing. When you walked into the cell house as a visitor, well, when you walked in, like as my father would walk in, say, from the admin wing down Broadway, that main corridor, I don't think you would look up. I don't think you would look up and see those blankets. I think you would just look forward. You know, you might peer into a cell or another, but I don't think you're going to look up three stories and Even notice the blankets now. Not to excuse my father, I don't know if he knew about those blankets or not. By the time I got around to talking to him about it, he'd had a stroke. And I was never able. I was never really sure whether he knew. He knew later, certainly, but I'm not sure at the time he knew. It was a big controversy among the guards. Some of them claimed to have known and were shocked that had gone on, but others claimed, you know, they didn't know and had no idea what was going on. So a lot of it has to do with whether you would look up and see them and then whether you had the power just to go to the lieutenant or the man in charge and say, hey, what is that? Because you're just a lowly officer. Right. You wouldn't necessarily go to the CEO and.
- [36:17]
Don Wildman
Yeah, and jobs are very defined in. It's like the military, everything. Everybody knows their place in this. In this system. So you're not necessarily going to question something that might be someone else's territory and that might make them look bad. And so people keep themselves.
- [36:31]
Jolene Babiak
Exactly.
- [36:31]
Don Wildman
You stay in your lane, as you say, over a period of months, literally. Let's just review this for a moment. Over a period of months, they have made all the arrangements for this specific break, which we'll talk about in a moment. Up on top of the cell block, they've got this whole system down. They have loosened up the air vents and created the means to make this escape on 11th of June, 1962. It's going to happen now. One of these guys isn't going to make it to this deal, by the way. We haven't really explained that. They've dug with spoons. They've dug out the back of their cells, these holes to actually climb through. Very, very tight little holes. These guys were not big men and they were able to then climb out of there and climb up to the top of the cell block and be off and running after that.
- [37:16]
Jolene Babiak
That.
- [37:17]
Don Wildman
That's the whole idea of this. One of those guys doesn't make it. Alan West. Why?
- [37:21]
Jolene Babiak
So take your pick. Either chickened out or he couldn't get out of his cell, as he claimed. It's probably a little of both. When you make a hole in the roof, you've got to go tonight. You know, you can't wait around. You got to go tonight. And so they got up in the morning, they had breakfast and, and, and they said to him, we can see the moon, which was there. Signal that they had broken through the ceiling vent. And so they made their decided. You know, they decided and they got there, they gathered up all their things. The Anglin brothers gathered up photographs and put them in a bag that they had made. And, you know, they had each had their masks ready. And so they gathered up all their things and decided to go that night. Well, west couldn't get out of his cell because the Anglin brothers had tightened up the opening with some fresh cement. And that does appear to be true. I've gone back there and you can see where there's a layer of fresher or cement. It's different consistency than the original wall. And so that may have been true. He couldn't push it out that night. But also a lot of people thought that he didn't really want to go.
- [38:35]
Don Wildman
Right, exactly. So these three guys, Frank Morris and the two brothers, John and Clarence Anglin, we've skipped one important aspect of this, which is to say they left dummy masks behind in the beds so that during the night check, during the bed check, it would look like someone was in that bed. Where had they made those masks? I've seen them. They're kept in a drawer in the archives in San Francisco. And they're pretty obviously not a real head. It's incredible that they were missed.
- [39:02]
Jolene Babiak
The first mask was only a half mask. You remember that one. It just had basically eyes and a nose and hair, A little bit of hair. And I think they decided that four masks that look like that wouldn't fly. So Alan west got one of his buddies who also worked in the cell house as the electrician. His name was Glenn May. And Glenn was not only the cell house electrician who would do all electrical lights and be up on scaffolding. And he also happened to be one of the best artists in the cell house. And I think Allen west got Glenn May to build the second mask, which was a full head. It was a round head, and what was underneath was electrical wire. This is the reason why I think Glenn May did this. Then he made a second mask, but this time they didn't need a full head. They just needed half of a head because it was laying on a pillow up. So he made half the head. You remember that one. And then the last mask, those two were made out of cement powder, which was an easily accessible thing. There were bags of cement powder around for repair work. I think Glen May made the masks one at a time in his own cell, passed them to west, and then they were taken up top and hidden up there because you couldn't keep those in your cell, you had to hide them. It seems to me that they might have actually had to go up twice. They had to go up, get the mask, come back down, put them in their beds. Because they didn't use the mask just once. They used the mask for six weeks while they were working at the top of the block making the raft. And then the last mask was very rudimentary, and I think the Anglin brothers might have done that. That was made out of soap. Now, here was the genius of the masks. They used real human hair, and that was obtained by Clarence Anglin, who was a barber.
- [41:01]
Don Wildman
So let's explain what happens exactly the night of the escape. They get outside, they get into those rafts, and they are off and running into one of the most dangerous bodies of water in the world. In terms of the tide and the sharks, et cetera, et cetera. What direction did they try to go?
- [41:15]
Jolene Babiak
Well, theoretically, they were trying to go north. North to Angel Island? That's what everyone said. That doesn't make sense to me. But it was a largely uninhabited island and didn't seem that far away. However, the tides were going east and west, and that night was a. At the time they got in the water, it was a high, high tide and it was going out to Hawaii.
- [41:41]
Don Wildman
Exactly. I did this thing again. I hate to keep talking about it, but I did an Escape from Alcatraz show, which is why I was there so much, but it's really impossible to resist that tide. We ended up outside the Golden Gate Bridge to the horror of our security people. And they came and rescued us in our. In our ref. Three people cannot make it out of, you know, across San Francisco Bay. The water will determine where you're going. This is what the theory is, because officially, they are never found. These three guys. They do find the raft, I imagine, right?
- [42:15]
Jolene Babiak
No, they never found the raft. There was a piece of raft left behind, but they never found the raft.
- [42:21]
Don Wildman
Oh, interesting.
- [42:22]
Jolene Babiak
They found two life jackets.
- [42:24]
Don Wildman
Well, I'm gonna say they ended up out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That's kind of what happens. And you can't even get to the shore when you're, you know, trying to get out of this thing. It's amazing. They never found the bodies. They never found the raft, I guess. And so there you are. However, years afterward, there are photos of these guys. You know, this becomes a mythology down there in Georgia and even in Brazil, you know, photos of these guys at funerals and letters that are claimed to have been written. It's an amazing aftermath Isn't it?
- [42:54]
Jolene Babiak
Well, all mysteries are, you know, we're still talking about Jack the River. There's still books written about him that he might be a doctor, that yada yada, you know, we're still talking about DB Cooper, you know, and all the money that disappeared. And, you know, he augured in or he didn't, or he got away or he didn't. I mean, mysteries just spawn, you know, stories. There's been deathbed confessions. There have been letters to the FBI. But you know what? They're all allegations. And people neglect to understand there's a difference between an allegation and evidence. There was never any evidence. And the Brazil photograph has been touted by the family. They would like you to believe that the anglins made it 7,000 miles away without money, without aid, and to a Portuguese speaking country. I'm so sorry.
- [43:56]
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- [45:21]
Don Wildman
More importantly, what was it like for you that night when you heard this going on? You said that you heard the sirens and this was the big thing that everybody was afraid of.
- [45:30]
Jolene Babiak
You know, we didn't. We slept through it.
- [45:32]
Don Wildman
Oh, okay.
- [45:34]
Jolene Babiak
We all slept through it. No one was discovered missing until 7 o' clock in the morning when the dummies didn't stand up for the count.
- [45:42]
Don Wildman
Yes, there you go.
- [45:45]
Jolene Babiak
So I was asleep. My father, you know, a bunch of us had played Softball that night. And that was really fun because we rarely did that. And I was a big Willie Mays fan. And we played softball until about 9:00'. Clock. It was June, so it was still bright out. And then we all went to our homes and maybe watched a little television and then went to bed. I had another day of school, so I went to bed about 10 o', clock, and no one knew anything until 7 o' clock in the morning. And they called my dad because he was acting warden. Warden Blackwell was on vacation, and so my dad became the acting warden. They called our house, and he told me later that he reached to the phone with dread because he knew at 7 o' clock in the morning it wasn't going to be good news. And they told him that there were three men missing. And he authorized them to sound the escape alarm. And that's what woke me up. And I had never heard it before, but it was incredibly loud.
- [46:47]
Don Wildman
And then what. I mean, how long afterwards did your father know what had happened to these guys? That they had taken the raft and had gotten off the island?
- [46:55]
Jolene Babiak
It became clear almost immediately because Allen west was very anxious to tell details. And I later met the FBI agent who investigated that escape. He and I did a film together, and we both agreed that west wasn't a liar. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't a liar. And what he said sort of appeared to be true and could be easily corroborated. He talked about details of the escape. He told them where he thought they were going. You know, they could look at their files, see where their families lived. The FBI came out to the island immediately. But in the meantime, my father had his first interview, was with Allen West. And then they interviewed west three or four times that morning. And his story got more elaborate. But it just filled in the details. It didn't get more, you know, it was always. He always maintained the same story. He didn't alter the facts. They just became more, you know, detailed. And then the FBI came over and they interviewed him again. And they began to systematically interview a lot of prisoners who lived in the area. They were taking photographs all over the island. They were putting out the bolo. They were looking at their files and finding out where family was or friends lived or which, you know, which prisoners they'd been friendly with in prison and whether they were paroled, whether anybody could help. You know, the Coast Guard was called, of course, the bureau in Washington, D.C. was called. The newspapers were called, the television stations, the radio stations. By noon, the warden had come Back from his vacation, and the boat had started up again. The island had been cleared, and I got to go to school. I was late, but I got to go to school.
- [48:41]
Don Wildman
Looking back, are you surprised at the fame and this legend that has come out of this event, given that you were right there and you saw it yourself?
- [48:51]
Jolene Babiak
Well, you know, it had a big feel even at that time, because they were missing, you know, and because it had been so elaborate, the masks and the life jackets and the raft and they were missing. So it continued to be a story, an active story for almost a month, and then it periodically was a story. And then in December, there was a documentary on television about it. And, you know, it continued to be a story. And then, of course, Clint Eastwood got interested. There was a book written in 1963, mostly taken from newspaper accounts, and the movie came out. It's the movies.
- [49:29]
Don Wildman
Yeah, that always does it.
- [49:30]
Jolene Babiak
It's the movies.
- [49:31]
Don Wildman
The irony is that at the time, the. The process of shutting down Alcatraz was. Was underway. I mean, 1963, May of 63, it is shut down because of rising costs, deteriorating facilities. It's hard to keep any building functioning in the middle of a. Of a saltwater body, a body of salt water. It had also become extraordinarily expensive to operate. Right.
- [49:52]
Jolene Babiak
It always was extraordinarily expensive. Every drop of water had to be brought out to the island for 600 people, and that was expensive. The sewage had to be dumped in the bay, and that was occurring all over the bay. And it was starting to be a problem. People were starting to become aware that that was not environmentally a. A cool thing to do.
- [50:14]
Don Wildman
There's a famous occupation in 1969 of Native Americans. During that period, they claim ancestral land. This was a claim over the breaking of the treaty of the Fort laramie, which was 1868. In the end, this was really had become an obsolete prison. For so many different reasons, not the least of which, a new kind of supermax prison was created, one that is being used today out there in Colorado. It was kind of this amazingly unique situation that really. I mean, people don't really understand that how short the time that what. What made Alcatraz so famous really existed. It was just a matter of a few decades.
- [50:55]
Jolene Babiak
Well, you can argue that it was really one day. And that was the day Al Capone came to the island.
- [50:59]
Don Wildman
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
- [51:00]
Jolene Babiak
But I want to. I want to hasten to add. You remember, I talked about this construction that had gone on during the military years. Prisoner hard labor, breaking rock, carrying rock and wheelbarrows up and down the hills. I mean, it was hard labor. And all of those prisoners went back to their families and talked about that devil rock and how horrible the rock was. So I have always maintained there was a vast underground knowledge about Alcatraz already. And then when Al Capone came in onto the island, that solidified his fame. But the fame had been growing all of those years.
- [51:41]
Don Wildman
Well, Alcatraz will always be Alcatraz. It is the rock, the legend, a symbol of confinement. Jolene Babiak is a writer of several books about this place, including Breaking the Rock and Eyewitness on Alcatraz. But now I know what it was like for you to be a kid there, which is a whole nother angle. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jolene. Great to meet you.
- [51:59]
Jolene Babiak
Thank you. Nice to meet you.
- [52:07]
Don Wildman
Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American history hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much.
- [52:46]
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Jolene Babiak
Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
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Jolene Babiak
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
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Jolene Babiak
Liberty.
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