A story I researched but didn't include in my “A World of Crime” blog series concerns the mystery surrounding a famous prison escape in 1962. (I did mention Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly who were both incarcerated there: see GANGSTERS and GOODFELLAS and ALPHONSE CAPONE ) Alcatraz seemed an appropriately unusual beginning to the AtoZChallenge2021.
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| ALCATRAZ |
According to federal officials, the mastermind of the escape from “The Rock”, a maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco Bay, had an I.Q. ranging in the top 2% of the nation during the early 1900s. His plans for the escape were elaborate.
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| Theater billing for Escape From Alcatraz |
In the movie, Escape from Alcatraz, Clint Eastwood portrays the mastermind and makes a successful escape. This is one interpretation of events. Another is that the three prisoners who attempted the escape probably drowned in the riptides and undertows of the bay.
While the movie is entertaining, I find the history of the mastermind disturbing. An orphan before his teens, he lived in foster homes before a theft conviction. From there he moved up to robbery and narcotics, which led to jail, a penitentiary, and finally Alcatraz.
The intellect of this male was wasted as he slipped through the cracks of society’s awareness. As was the intelligence of Theodore Kaczynski, considered a prodigy in his youth but known by today’s society as the Unabomber. One man spent his teens in reform school. The other received a degree from Harvard and earned a PhD in mathematics. Both ended up in prison.
We know the Unabomber pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and received eight "life sentences". It isn’t so clear what became of Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin brothers, Clarence and John, who attempted an escape from an escape-proof federal prison. Were their remains strewn along the seabed after being swept under the Golden Gate Bridge?
Or, having been whisked away by a girlfriend after struggling to shore, were they transported alive to reside in Mexico - only to have Frank and one of the brothers die in obscurity, with the other brother attempting in 2018 to turn himself over to authorities in exchange for medical treatment for cancer?
Some mysteries never die.
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