The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

The escape from Alcatraz story is one of my favorites.  I can't help but pull for the bad guys, because I really admire the ingenuity of their escape.

I think they drowned.  Those are some choppy ass waters and cold as shit. 

Have any of you seen the mythbusters try to see if an escape is possible.
They used same materials and raincoats to make the raft, and they made it across.
It is possible they lived.

Mythbusters had a show on it,and showed it was possible to do it....

oops didn't see Simeon was posting at the same time....

On mythbusters,they were showing that they went to Angel island  (I think that's where they forecasted they went to...)

Another show did the same thing and the raft failed. Also they put trackers on mannequins and threw it in to show the currents. The current would have pulled the bodies out into the ocean.

Shark Chow

^ Yep!

I ultimately think they died.  The Mythbusters tried to go a different route than conventional wisdom.  Something would've turned up eventually, I think, if they were alive.  ....a deathbed confession...something like that.

Anyone that has put their TOE into San Fran Bay knows this:  only a fool would jump in.  Freezing waters.  Shark infested.  Horrible currents.

They didn't make it.  Not without someone that picked them up in a boat about 20 yards from the jail.

I don't think they made it, but not because of cold water. They made a summer escape so that negated that aspect. I suspect they either drowned or were victims of a shark attack.

Sorry due to the Cold California Current, those waters are cold year round. SF is not a warm place even in summer, just read Mark Twain.

Been there, so true.

I was in SF in early July one year and it was the mid-60's - big difference from home where it was 90

No offense to the people talking about the cold water,We're not talking about taking a leisurely swim...We're talking escaping for your life.....

I compare it to someone having a rock falling on them,and they decide to cut a limb off to survive...

You can't escape hypothermia.

The root they took on mythbusters....They didn't even hit the water....and weren't on the water very long....

I doubt those guys were as smart or inventive as Adam and Jamie.  I also agree with Dave; someone would have talked eventually.

No, they just figured out how to tunnel out of their cells,make fake masks,Build tools out of common materials,build an inflatable raft out of raincoats,and work in total darkness for months,keeping it secret from the guards,and other inmates that might rat them out....they weren't smart or inventive enough ::)

It's a free country, believe what you want, but I belive they died trying to make it.  It's a circular argument because no one can prove their side, so I'll stop going around and around with you now.

Have a nice day!  :)

I am not sure if they made it or not, all I do know is that it is possible to do.
I would think somehow somebody would talk, but there are times when things go to your grave with you. Think about till this day nobody knows who DB Copper was, you would think somebody knows something.

I have no clue if they survived...Just that it was possible...and just food for thought...

A 7 year old kid can swim from alcatraz....
Monday, May 22, 2006
A 7-year-old Arizona boy on Monday became one of the youngest ever to swim from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco.


Braxton Bilbrey, a second-grader from Glendale who has completed several short-scale youth triathlons, completed the estimated 1.4-mile swim early Monday. His coach and two other adults joined him in the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2006/05/22/state/n082806D07.DTL (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2006/05/22/state/n082806D07.DTL)

Here's 50 kids doing it...just a few weeks ago...
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6115100 (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6115100)

I have heard the bay gets up to around 74 degrees but I am not sure the exact time of year. If that is freezing water to anyone they are sissies. I could be completely mistaken on this though, but that is what I have heard.

As someone that grew up on the Bay - that 74 degrees is misleading.  That's the surf, not the open water.  The open water average temperature in the summer is somewhere closer to 55 degrees.  That 74 changes dramatically the further from shore you get.

People swim the English Channel all the time and that's colder, so it can be done, but the English Channel doesn't have the same current and sharks.

I did my leap off the doubledecker ferry into Puget Sound on my 30th birthday, and that water was as cold as anything I've ever experienced. So cold it seemed hot...  If I'd had to swim more than a couple hundred yards, I might have had some serious problems.

Again...I think the aforementioned escapees became Shark Chow.

Seems like escaping from Alcatraz has become a sporting event. This proves without a shadow of doubt it is more then possible to do, and far as no bed side confessions, wouldn't be a first time someone died and brought their secrets to the grave.

Questions : 
What were the people wearing that do this for sport?
Did anyone need to be pulled from the water, unable to finish?
A triathelte/swimmer can do it, but can the average person?

I was about to ask the same thing.  We went boarding and we needed wet suits and even then it was cold as hell. 

Plus time of day, season and weather are some factors.  There is also the psychological factor of having help readily available.  Something the inmates did not have which could have affected them in some way.

it was June 11th 1962...


umm those were little kids.all of them made it....and they weren't swimming for their lives either.....

I think the possibility exists that they made it,and there are incredible stories of survival....

You're also assuming the Boat didn't float at all and they swam from shore to shore....

Questions in response<g>:

* Of the triathletes/swimmers that swim the alcatraz run, how many of them know without hesitation that, if they stop swimming, they'll die? Seems like a pretty solid motivator to me. ;)

* If you're serving life without parole in alcatraz, and you decide to escape by making the long frigid swim across the bay, wouldn't you likely work yourself into decent shape (if you weren't already) before you hop in the water?

;D

I'm just asking questions.  Other people having made the swim was not brought up by me. Who knows if they made it or not?  It's possible, but I don't think it's probable.

The people and kids who have made the swim have trained for it for awhile. As someone who competed swimming, your average person will not make a swim like that. You actually have to swim to build the level of endurance, both physically and mentally, to swim over a mile, in very cold waters, against the tide/currents.
When these swims are done, they do it when it is warmest, and when the current is not as strong. I doubt these guys had tide and current charts to plan their escape at the best possible time.

They could have gotten tide currents from the newspapers they were allowed to read daily.

I think you guys are mostly overlooking the hardest part of the escape -- staying hidden.  There isn't a doubt in my mind that it's possible to get across the water.  If they swam, it would have been easier, probably.  But, by using the raft, they were probably more susceptible to currents sweeping them off.  And it was nighttime, so falling out of that raft is probably pretty disorienting.

Anyway, if it weren't three men, I'd be more likely to believe that they got away, but people talk, or evidence shows up.  ...or they continue to commit crimes.  People who are serving life generally aren't the kind of people that lay low, or else they wouldn't be in jail in the first place.

That is exactly why I doubt they made it. Chances are a career criminal will run up against the law again somewhere.

For all we know, they did run up against the law- in Mexico, or Central America, or South America. Do you think these guys were smart enough to devise an escape from the most notorious prison (at the time), but were dumb enough to stay in the US, knowing their faces would've been plastered all over the newspapers? I think they pulled an Andy Dufresne, and lived out their lives in some warmer locale.

Personally if they survived..I'm not sold on all three made it....I hate to shoot my own one self in the foot,but there was a report of a body by a freighter,a week or so later floating in the harbor,wearing Denim. ( That's what the prison clothes were made of,but the body was never recovered. According to the FBI file...)

I don't think they lived very long after they escaped also....if they are alive,Frank Lee Morris would be 82,Clarence Anglin would be 77,john anglin would be 78....

Witness protection program ring a bell?

How many of you would believe someone you've known for long time suddenly says to you,I'm not who you think I am? I'm some notorious criminal...Say your Dad, tells you he got away with murdering 3 people?

When did you meet my dad?

Sorry to bring up something there phish.... :D

I don't blieve 95% of the stuff that comes out of my dads mouth unless I can verify it...Sad but true....