Escape
By September 1961 Morris, West, and the Anglin brothers were planning an escape attempt, which they carried out on the night of June 11, 1962. They fabricated dummy heads from a mixture of soap, toilet paper and real hair, and left them in their beds to fool prison officers making night-time inspections. They escaped from their cells by crawling through holes in the cell walls which they had dug with spoons over the course of a year. This put them into an unused service corridor. West could not make it out of his cell and was left behind.
From the service corridor they climbed a ventilation shaft to reach the roof. The trio then climbed down from the rooftop, scaled the prison's fence and assembled a raft from the prison's standard-issue raincoats and contact cement. They pumped up the raft on the northeastern coast of the island. At around 10 p.m. they climbed aboard, shoved off, and started paddling.
Read more about this topic: June 1962 Alcatraz Escape
Famous quotes containing the word escape:
“We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“Our thoughts are always elsewhere; we are stayed and supported by the hope for a better life, or by the hope that our children will turn out well, or that our name will be famous in the future, or that we shall escape the evils of this life, or that vengeance threatens those who are the cause of our death.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)