During the mid 30’s to early 60’s, San Francisco was home to one of the worlds highest security prisons in the world; Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, also known as just Alcatraz. Alcatraz was said to un-escapable, although one night that theory was proven wrong. This is the story of how three prisoners were able to do the impossible and escape the island of Alcatraz.
It was a cold and foggy February day in San Francisco, which to anyone who has been to or lived San Francisco that would seem to be a fairly normal day. My name is Joseph Timothy. My two friends Thomas Stevens, and Brian Charles, saw the greatest opportunity of our lives, the opportunity to successfully escape Alcatraz. We had a plan that we had taken a year and a half to create. On February 13, 1957, we decided to make our escape.
As the night drew closer and closer, the fog only got thicker. We had been waiting for about three months for a night such as this to carry out our plan to escape. Over a two-year period we devised a plan to dig holes in each of our cell walls, just big enough to fit a single body to fit in. The holes were hidden under each of our beds so the guards could not easily see the holes. The holes we dug lead to an unused maintenance hallway.
That afternoon, the three of us met outside in the cold prison yard, the three of us all decided that this night would be the best opportunity for an escape. At around 11 o’clock at night, just after the final guard check, all three of us began to make our escape. Because I was the mastermind of the entire plan to escape, it was my job to lead them out of the prison. Once we were all in the hallway, I led the other two into the air duct that would eventually lead to the roof of the prison.
The fog was so thick around the island that building itself was entirely engulfed in fog, making it nearly impossible to see where we were going let alone let a guard see us from a distance. Once on the roof of Alcatraz, I continued to lead us down a ladder on the east side of the building. Me and the other two prisoners managed to get around the guards along the fence and we were able to escape under the fence. Although we had gotten outside of the perimeter of the prison, the hardest part of the escape was only just starting.
It was too foggy to see where we were going. Because the island was built on a cliff, we had to crawl down the side of the cliff in the dark to the bay. The most challenging part for us would be getting to the main land. Just as we had begun to swim in the freezing bay, the guards had sounded the alarms and we knew the search was on for us. The nearest coast in the bay was about a mile away. The fog was so dense that we couldn’t even see which way we were swimming. But all we knew was that the search teams couldn’t even hope to find us.
We were about half way to the coast of San Francisco when the hypothermia started to set in. Thomas being one of the bigger of us was already behind us too far to see anymore, was suffering the worst from it. Of the three of us, Thomas was the only one that did not make it to the shore. That night, Brian and I became the first successful prisoners to escape Alcatraz.