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 must understand how to hide in darkness in order to escape the gnat-swarms of utterly annoying admirers.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We know how powerful our mother was when we were little, but is our wife that powerful to us now? Must we relive our great deed of escape from Mama with every other woman in our life?”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)