Greatest EscapesJD Pardo (Mayans M.C., The Terminal List) tags along for Arturo's tale of three escape artists (Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin) who attempted to escape the most infamous supermax prison of all time: Alcatraz.
Read this episode's transcript on Mental Floss: https://www.mentalfloss.com/columns/greatest-escapes
Welcome to Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest.
True escape stories of all time.
Now today we're going to get into a story of three escape artists who broke out of America's most infamous supermax prison, Alcatraz.
I'm Auto Rogastro, and I'm.
Here with the incredibly charismatic actor and wonderful human being and producer and buddy of mine J D.
Bard.
WHOA wow, what a great theme song by Ben Chug I fucking love it.
Do you like see oonsns? I see all the time? You come here often? Yeah, I've been here for three days.
Yeah, oh god, oh my goodness.
Thank you so much for being here. Brother, anything for you? Oh thank you? Brother? Are you two buttons down by the way, what are you?
Yeah? Yeah, I mean that's just my regular go to. I'm like a naturally hairless person. I know, so I've been able to like rock that low.
I've been thinking about getting like hair implants like on my chest.
You know what. I've always loved.
I've always loved those moments in films, like especially like in the seventies and like in the eighties, where like the girl is like laying on his chest and she's just like playing around with like his chest hair.
Oh.
I was just like, Oh my gosh, I was that guy. I wonder if there's like a Mrkan for that. You know what I'm saying is that what it's called a murcan my overlords producers, the thing that they put for pubic hair.
Pubic hair. Correct. It is a friend time a bitch. I'm so good at English. What do you consider to be your greatest escape? Yeah, there there was this. Well I'll take it.
I'll take it international since since there's no proof of this, and it was really weird, especially with like after I saw Hostel and everything like that.
I was in Milan, yeah, and uh.
Yeah and well yeah, I actually went to this club and I was like three ms after a job that I did a modeling gig back in my Zoolander days, one of the most Tommy hill Figer weren't you Tommy hill Figure campaign?
Uh?
And then I did a job for for Gucci in Milan and it.
Was a beautiful to get it. You're Jesus Christ j D Yes, I'm hot. I was so hot. So you're Milan? I do this thing right?
And uh, parties there like start like at two am. You know, and really late, and I was with a couple of guys and we're going back to the apartments and this guy just pulled up in a cab. It was just like, I'll take you guys back, and we're like okay.
So I'm in the middle. We hop in and we start going. Now, did you know these other two guys? I knew the other two. I knew him. Uh, and we all lived in the same place.
Okay, now we have been there for a few months now, so we know our way around. And we're talking and you know, we're kind of wasted, and then all of a sudden, one of the guys just.
Starts freaking out, says, where is he taking us?
And you're out the windows, just going I just want to die the thing what happened?
Okay, He's like you can sense there's something fucked up?
Well, yeah, you know, like one of the one of the guys like starts screaming like Italians. The guy like this is not the way, and then the other guy on my side like this is not where we're not supposed to go, Like where's he taking us? Where's he taking us that way? And the guy's like screaming at him. And then the driver starts screaming at us. No, He's like, where are you guys taking me?
Well, you're fucking driving.
The next thing I know, the guy on my left bolts out, jumps out of the car.
Oho.
The other guy jumps out. The driver slams on the brakes and grabs a bat.
That's right next he goes out to the left. I immediately, without thinking, just just jumped.
Out of the car to my right and he starts screaming at me, and I run down in alley.
Whoa, And I jumped behind.
Like this dumpster and like this car, and I just kind of like in the fetal position. I had no idea what was going on, Like this was. It just happened so quick, right where our guy called him out for taking us somewhere that we weren't supposed to go, and they were dude. It still kind of freaks me out to this day because I feel like I had someone like looking over me and the guy was walking through the alley and I could hear it was like a moment, dude, what a horror film fucking moment. And I'm just like, just don't breathe, just don't breathe, just don't breathe. And then he just turned around and went the other way and he just started swearing.
Got in the car, and you know, wow, Well, I'm glad.
You survived that. Thank you.
I want to check in on the taxi driver to see his side of the story, because I don't.
They're like, man, I don't know these guys. Just like, now, I got your side of the story.
Let me hear now, our next guest is actually will come here. All right, well listen, let's get ready for a big old escape.
How about that. I'm excited.
So we're headed to California's infamous island prison, Alcatraz.
Hollywood has loved this place for years.
Tons of classics like Berman of Alcatraz, A point Blank, The Enforcer, and The Rock, The fucking Rock, such a cool movie. And we're gonna talk a little bit about why, like the fact that Alcatraz was originally made into a federal prison as a pr stunt for the government. The reputation of Alcatraz was kind of just the point of it, you know, So we'll get into that. But some people haven't been fans, starting with the prisoners who were locked up on the island. Who was the first person you think of when I say prohibition.
I think of like Tom Hardy, Yeah, playing what al Capone?
Right?
Right?
So in nineteen thirty splashy stories about mobsters like al Capone had been super embarrassing for the government, so President Hoover decided that he needed to do something to save the government's reputation. His answer to these super criminals was to create a super prison. So in nineteen thirty three, the New Borough decided to create a superprison to hold only the worst of the worst. They selected this military prison on Alcatraz Island. They wanted it to be, you know, a symbol of a government power to mass organized crime. I don't know what accent that is, but I figure that's what people in power had a.
Lot in there. So those good you're covering all your bases.
It's for all our listeners everywhere in the world. So let me give you a little history on the island and kind of prison. So Alcatraz itself was originally named by Don Juan Manuel de a Yela, so when the Spanish were laying claim to California, he called it like Islae Lostrass or Island of the Sea Birds. So the island was held by the Spanish until Mexican independence.
Now the USA took.
It in eighteen forty seven, and the army built a fort there right where cannons were put to watch San Francisco Bay during the gold Rush, which I'm sure, I like that makes sense, right everybody during the gold Rush, being like, I'm sure it led to a lot of criminality and anxiety all for sure, did absolutely. Oh man, I see goal now I fucking go crazy.
Yeah.
And then in the American Civil War, Fort Alcatraz was packed with soldiers and guns guarding the harbor. Right since it was home to like two hundred soldiers. There are plenty of buildings, you know, barracks to ladge troops, separate housing for the officers, a bakery, a bowling alley.
Yeah, baby, I love it.
I love them, being just like, yeah, so listen, guys, we're gonna we're gonna have to have to shoot some people, right, But that does not mean that I can't strike a fucking perfect ninety eight Okay, you know, oh for sure, so listen. So there were also separate warehouses on this island where the Union Army stashed all their guns and ammunition to keep the equipment away from Confederate sympathizers on the mainline.
Right, So, over the.
Years, Alcatraz slowly became a military prison. One historian says that after the Civil War it became a holding pen for quote, assorted misfits and societal problems, which is what they would call us actors back in the day. Yeah, it sounds like normal. It was just a bunch of actors. Really like, these guys problematic.
Put them in there. So if the army captured someone.
And didn't want to deal with them, they just dumped them on Alcatraz and locked them up in the newly constructed jail house on the island.
Sounds about right.
That included military deserters, stowaways on American ships, and even war protesters during World War One. Now here's a really fucked up part. It also included Indigenous men trying to keep their children out of US government schools. It's a moment worth remembering, and it's actually really important in the history of the prison. There's a tribe that's fighting for the rights that the island belongs to them, to the state, So we hope they went. But how fucked up is this bro they like they put you away because you don't want your kids being indoctrinated by people that have come.
To fuck you over. It's very sad, very tragic. I mean, look, history is ugly. And I think I told you, I think you when we were filming Roadhouse that producing a show with FX called Bundito, and it takes place in this time in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. And what I was so fascinated to find, and I think it did have something to do with Alcatraz, was that during the gold Rush, this is where they wanted to push out the Indigenous. They wanted to push out the Mexican or the dark colored skin, you know, Natives who were considered Californio's right because it was separate. But during the gold Rush you had you know, people from New York, you had Irish, you had Australian, you had everybody coming over. And what they ended up doing, if I remember correctly, was passing a foreign tax law for gold.
If you were Indigenous.
Or Mexican like Native, you were considered a foreigner and you had to pay a tax law. And if you were caught taking gold without paying your taxes, you were thrown in prison. I think it had to do with Alcatraz. So the crazy thing to me was like, even then there were these laws that they were putting into place, Yeah, to man hold people down.
Yeah, man, this is great, But thank you for that, dude. I did not know most of that. So as the army added to the number of people locked up in Alcatraz, they eventually decided to clear the center of the island and build a huge cell house. The cell house was built as a massive space. Towers of cells were stacked on top of each other in the middle of the room. That was a prison that President Hoover wanted to be his main showpiece in the nineteen thirties. They planned to use Alcatraz to quote segregate degenerate minds.
These are his words, by the way, from the rest of the inmates in federal custody. That's what we want to do. He's ounded like this for some reason in my head.
Now, when the Borough of Prisons picked the island to be their new federal super prison, they decided it would be a prison for escape.
Peace right.
Almost half of the men sent there had tried breaking out of other prisons, and some had even succeeded Now, the guard station there were very aware of that fact, right, One senior officer I was quoted by saying.
The inmates job is to get out and our job is to keep them in.
I love it.
Yeah, they're like, this is our slogan at Alcatraz. Now, the prison was rebuilt to be escape proof, and yeah, I mean that's kind of always the fucking idea with prisons, isn't it.
But yeah, I loved that. They were like this one you can't escape from damn it. How did he do that? But with Alcatraz the stakes were super high, right.
The cells were built using toolproof steel and you steal bar doors and grates that were installed on every opening of the prison. The Rock, as its nickname, was selected precisely for the kinds of inmates who wouldn't be scared off by a high wall or some barbed wire. So when it opened in the nineteen thirties, prisoner was like al Capone and George Machine Gun Kelly were held in Alcatraz.
That was before he made a terrible album just kidding.
It made the prison the most infamous in the country, and the first major escape attempt came in nineteen thirty seven. Two prisoners secretly cut through the bars blocking a window of the building where they worked inside the prison, now carrying heavy tools from the model shop.
This is a shop where they built people like you, JD. The model shop. Wow, what a terrible dad joke.
So they broke through the lock on the gate, clambered down the cliffs and hit the water, where they dove in and swam towards a mainland. The men disappeared, but given the cold, choppy water that day in December and the tide running out to the Pacific Ocean, person officials assumed that the men died in an attempt to swim.
To the bay. How far does that swim?
By the way, I believe it's a mile overlords, the closest sland is a mile and a half mile and a.
Half, Thank you my lord. God.
Yeah, hey, I'm telling you bright, it's the best fucking thing in the work God, yes, my son, see.
Yeah, Okay.
So in nineteen forty six there was a super violent escape attempt that became known as the Battle of Alcatraz. It included a massive shootout between prisoners and marines that were called to the island to fight them. After that, the prison was no longer seen as a symbol of the government's power to win. No, Instead, it became a symbol of chaos and violence. Now, this was obviously exactly the opposite of what the government wanted. You know, it undermined their whole pr project because the Borough of Prisons responded by adding so many extra layers of security that no escapes were attempted for the next seven years. Eventually, though, prisoners would try to escape again. And the jail break in nineteen sixty seven is about as different as you can get from the battle. That's when three men, Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin actually made it out.
Of the Island prison. Let's move on to the escape.
So Frank, John and Clarence, these three guys weren't mobsters, you know, they weren't killers. They were the other kind of It made that Alcatraz was built for. They were the escape artists right now. Also, why I love that they get deemed escape artists.
I'm an artist.
It's the best rebranding that escapees have ever done. It's better than Mayo turning into aoli that rebranding Chef's kiss. So John and Clarence England were farm boys, good farm boys, right. Their parents were seasonal farm workers and lived much of their lives between farming towns.
Now.
One month they'd be picking tomatoes in Florida, and the next they'd be picking cherries in Michigan. They also bring along their thirteen children as they move from place to place.
That's tough, man, because I have two and I'm already on man on man defense, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like one more. I'm heading into the zone and some special through the seams.
Plus the traveling right, like you have to have a bus bro Anyway, it was in Lake Michigan that John and Clarence learned how to swim, and as the story goes, they would even go swimming in the freezing cold when the lake was still icy.
Oh have you ever done a polar plunge? I want to?
Yeah, I want the fad now. I love cold plunging.
Dude, It's a thing. Many As these guys grew older, they grew wilder.
Right. They hot wied cars, they stole tractor batteries, they broke into stores. Clarence even got locked up in a Florida juvenile detention center when he was fourteen.
No yeah, fourteen rough dud muffin.
So soon enough two of the brothers had four year sentences for breaking and entering. But they also started breaking out of the various jails where they were held. What account says that they broke out of jails in Fort Myers, in West Palm Beach, in Pompano Beach, Perry City, and Floral City.
They sound like resorts, so they got on they're all inclusive and timeshare and in Floral City and the escape from Floria City, Clarence sawt a hole through a wooden floor in the jail and was even shot on the shoulder as he jumped the prison fence.
So the Angland's biggest crime was the robbery of a bank in Alabama in nineteen fifty eight. John Clarence and another Angling brother all worked together and they used a toy gun to hold up the employees and got away with nineteen thousand dollars. Pretty good for you know, farm boys at the time. I mean, this is a fucking ton of money in it.
Nineteen geez, there you go.
Yeah, So for five days they went from place to place, staying with family, but then someone tipped them off to the police and they were caught in Hamilton on Hio, probably like a judgmental dea, you know, be like, oh no, listen, that's.
I would get rid it out so quick, broke My family'd be like, what the fuck? Grabbed myself shot.
I'm like, I'm just a very I'm like, I can't lie, dude, It hard for me to lie.
They narrowly ducked the death penalty in Alabama, so instead they got twenty five years each. That's that's that's a win, right, that's a win with even bigger.
Yeah, of course I didn't get it. It seems like they would. Yeah, like fuck it. I was goodn escape anyway.
After various unsuccessful attempts from other federal prisons, John arrived in Alcatraz in October nineteen sixty and Clarence Anglin followed him there in January nineteen sixty one. And once they got there together, they struck up a little bromance with a man named Frank Morris, and then the three of them cooked up a plan that put their jail break into the history books. Now thinking that there was no risk of them escaping the island, the prison warden put John and Clarence inside by side cells. So the cells were B block one fifty and B block one fifty two. Frank Morris was just a few cells down in one three to eight. Now, that wasn't the first time they had met Morris, though they had previously made his acquaintance at a federal penitentiary and Okay. Throughout his teens, Frank committed a series of arm robberies that had him locked up many times, but he had escaped custody over and over before he was finally shipped to Alcatras.
The Rock, The Rock, The Rock.
Now, together with a fourth man, Alan West, Frank and the Anglan brothers hatched a plan to break out of Alcatraz. So, knowing that you have to escape the island, what are some of the things that you would factor in to your island escape?
What do you think you would need? JD. I don't even know what I would need, you know? But what's impressive?
A few of them they were just farmers, right, and it's just your imagination.
It goes to show you that, like, yeah, being assertive and being creative is being as certain.
Being creative, and like looking at the walls around you and saying like, no, it's not holding me this.
Isn't holding me up in that moment of empowerment, looking at the walls around you and saying no, no, no, you will not catch me here.
No, I am not going for twenty five years whatever.
It is, Like, Yeah, that's impressive to me because you have to have such imagination about the other side. And not only that, like they used each other's minds and they read the room and they were aware.
They read the room.
Let me tell you how they actually started their escape, because it's fucking wild. Okay to me, they started So here's the thing, right, get in real close. They started their escape with spoons Okay, now almost Yeah, for almost a year they used them to scrape the concrete walls of their fucking cells.
Man, why didn't the.
Vent hole in the back wall until they could get in to the utility corridor behind?
Yep? Okay. The prisoners also had.
Access to all sorts of tools in the prison shops where they worked, right, so they used art supplies and putty to build decoy gates that they could put in place during the day. So basically they built it to make them decoy event cover so that the guards wouldn't know that they were actually breaking out. They stole a drill bit and a small motor from a broken vacuum. The dude and jury rig that shit to help to help them drill through the steel boats.
Like, can you believe I love it? One of them even, yeah, one of them.
Even lifted a flashlight from the pocket of a guard so they could work in the dark. Crazy, But listen, getting past the walls was only the first thing that they needed to do, right, Okay, So they started collecting rubber raincoats from all the prisoners.
In B Block. What do you think they're gonna do with raincoats? Build a raft? There you go, there you go. You see, I would fucking pick you on my escapee.
Right, hey man, you got not a stupid model and these four walls, I say, no, no, no, no, not gonna hold me.
Okay, So they built a raft.
Well, they took inspiration from the magazine Popular Mechanics, which was a nineteen sixty issue to describe how to use resin to seal lampshades. They didn't have resin, but they did have liquid plastic from the prison shops. Now, by melting the rubber raincoats together and sealing the edges, liquid plastic. They were able to make two rafts that they could use to float across San Francisco.
Okay, time out, time out, tomorrow, tomorrow. Yeah.
Where do they store this raft? Probably in their cells? Man, probably underneath their beds. I don't they toss cells? No, because okay, here's the thing. Since they've already gotten through to the other side and they have fake decoy gate things, they probably put him on the other side.
There you go. That's why you need me.
The So you're saying they had to go out several times and like not that we got out of it and like let's take off, but they had to like repeatedly set things up outside at leastly their cells.
Yeah, I like, okay, so is it today? No? Not? No raft day? Got it? Okay tomorrow? No, no, not tomorrow.
So then they use chair legs to make paddles for the rafts, and even cobble together a handpump so they could use it to inflate their makeshift rubber pontoon. Dude, people in this like in this like crafts. I thought they were geniuses, you know, like gosh, they're like pecassa. Alan West took the lead on assembling the rafts that left him behind schedule when it came to cutting open his escapehole, but he planned Yep, he planned to finish opening his cell on the night of the escape itself.
Alan, you're cutting it clothes, buddy, dude, that's that.
That just made me ancient, buddy, Like what, I don't even like showing up to the movie theater late. I know, I want to see the trailers, I want my popcorn, I want everything.
Like Yeah, Now, Clarence, who worked in the prison barbershops, started collecting human hair.
What do you think this is for human hair? Are they creating like a dummy to lay in the bed? Buddy? You got this, you got I have my job here is done. Like I said, it's never been proven that I've escaped, but that's right.
So using some men dust, toilet paper, and soap, the men sculpted full heads for their pillows.
They cover them with real human hair.
Uh huh, and painted on the skin tones with pain from the prison art kids.
Can you imagine like be being like, hey, arto, do you think this looks like me? No?
Too light? Too this light? Bro, You're not been in the sun. I've been in the sun all day.
So on June eleventh, nineteen sixty two, just over a year after the Anglans arrived at Alcatraz, they were already ready for the air escape. So John Clarence Frank climbed out of the vent holes in the back of their cells scaled the walls of the utility corridor. So you see they'd already cut Yeah, that's right, Dune. They had already cut the metal boats holding an air vent close. They pushed the vent open, and then boom they were out on that prison.
Who were like, okay, was this during the day or at night? God? I believe it was a night. God, this was at night.
Oh yes, okay, good because otherwise, like like the guards would be just like, what the fuck.
Are you guys doing?
The garden was supposed to be today, You're not supposed to So when they got there, they realized that Alan West, fucking procrastinator, was not with them, so wonder why.
Yeah, so one by one they climbed back down and try to help him out.
Oh that's nice, that's really nice.
And he had not he had not been able to finish cutting open the vent hole. So he found that there was actual steel reinforcing his.
Vent, just his look of the draw man.
I know.
Eventually Frank and the Anglins left him behind. They carrying their Yeah, I mean you have to write, carrying their raft. They slid down a smokestack to the ground.
Wow, this is crazy.
They jumped the prison fans and made their way to the water, but they did leave behind one raft in case Allen was able to cut his way out.
Hey, in case you get through the steel, I'm gonna leave.
A raft for you. It's gonna be here, don't worry about it.
And then they floated out off the northeast side of the island into the night. Yeah, okay, which I wonder if the I wonder if these rafts are made to just hold to a piece, you know, and like taking a third one was yeah, or for the weight purposes?
Oh yeah, Like they're going down like chompy water, you know, water getting in there.
Yeah yeah. Yeah.
So on June twelfth, nineteen sixty two, guards discovered the empty cells and the dummy heads. They sent up the alarm and began the search. Okay, guess what JD. These men were never found. What they were never found? They were never found. Prison officials declared that the men had drowned in the San Francisco Bay. The emphasized that the prison was very definitely inescapable, and that maybe.
That's why they wanted to come out and say no, they drowned and the med not.
Have escaped, because this is I love, I love that press conference.
Guys, they did not escape. This inescapable. We will not be taking any questions at this time.
Even if you get past the prison, you got to get past the water, and that's where they died.
Guys. You know, water kills people. So let's move on.
That was the kind of circular logic meant to defend the prison's reputation.
Right, that's trippy man.
Now, As for the potential getaway, Alan West said the three men were planning to break into a clothing store in marin so they could change out of their prison clothes, but no robbery like that was ever reported. It was clear that at the very least the men had escaped the prison and gotten out into the bay. When police interviewed the England's mother in Florida, she said that at least ten of her children turned out to be good.
I love that number, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. Hey, no, damn.
She stopped counting after attend to that I don't know, I don't even know them very well.
That they were too good tales good, three's good hours, Okay, five's good.
Raise your hand, you're shitty. Yeah. As for John and Clarence, she told police that she hoped they got caught. Ooh, that's cold, mom. The story made national headlines.
You know, No matter what the prison officials said, the inescapable Alcatraz home to violence and chaos, had been breached. Then, later that same year, another man broke out of the prison and swam the bay. Y.
Yeah, the guy fucking swam. I fucking swam. I don't need a raft sun. Yeah, that's right. So he reached the shore and was immediately caught.
And if you can believe this ship man, he swam naked in December. So this proved that the prison officials were wrong. It was definitely possible to get out and cross the water. The prison shut down in nineteen sixty three. A plan had already been under way since nineteen sixty one to close Alcatraz. It just needed extensive repairs, and it was already like a public relations disaster. But the escape of Morris and the Englands was a final nail in the atta'oud, which is spanished for coffin.
The mystery stayed alive because the story leaves us with a question did the escape he survive? And how can we know if they did?
Right?
So that inspired the Escape from Alcatraz movie in the nineteen seventies and it's been an open question ever since. In two thousand and three, Here we Go, the show MythBusters recreated the escape attempt, even making a rubber raincoat raft. They were able to land on the marine headlands and judge that the escape was possible.
Hey, over lords, I need my own er.
In twenty eleven, a supervising deputy of the US marshal who said that he thought that the three men had survived. I think probably the brothers lived. There's nobody recovered. I can't close the case, he said. This man also spoke like Colombo in my head.
Now.
In twenty twelve, the fiftieth anniversary of the escape, the England sister Marie said she never doubted that the two men had survived the escape. Also, we have to remember these guys are fucking incredible swimmers, right and reused to swimming in cold ass water right. The same year, the US Marshals revealed that an FBI report told them that the escapeece empty raft was found on Angel Island. It was a likely spot for the tides to deposit junk that was washing into the bay from merid Headlands. They also found a waterproof pack of photos on Angel Island. It held pictures of the Anglands and their loved ones now. Their report also included news that a blue Chevy had been stolen.
In Marin that night.
Alongside that, uh huh, a police reporting in later that night from Stockton, California, eighty miles inland. It was a sighting of a blue Chevy carrying three men on the road that were driving at reckless speed. Who guys more interesting. In twenty thirteen, the San Francisco Police got a letter claiming to be John and offering to turn himself in if he would do less than a year in jail. Give me twenty fourteen. Oh, give me twenty fourteen. I had it said that the other two men were dead. Right, So the FBI couldn't tell if the letter was authentic or not, but they also couldn't rule it out. Like the investigation of the original escape the best they could come up.
With was that it was inconclusive. Now, in twenty.
Fifteen, a photo circulated the tabloids with a report that it was taken in Brazil in nineteen seventy five. The two men in the pictures are matched to Clarence and John Angling. Buddy, Yeah, everybody, Pashomo.
Get you, get you, get you get together, at least by everyone who wants to believe that they escaped.
And by face recognition AI used to scan the photo in twenty twenty, it states that was Clarence and John Angling, and I love that they That's how they spent there.
You know, they're just like can read agen Arab love life? Oh for sure.
The US Marshals has still been working on the case, and in June twenty twenty two, they created a new age process image of all three men, Frank, Clarence and John.
They would be in their nineties today. Just fucking let them die, guys. Bro At this point, man, they're still.
Asking for anybody with information about the men to call the San Francisco office. But it's like you're getting a little cleaner to you, guys, You're getting you're looking a little thirsty, thirsty, today Alcatraz is a tourist attraction like we spoke about, and a bird sanctuary, so like is Los catrass.
Is once again an isla bird prison. That's right.
In some ways, this pr campaign by the Bureau of Prisons did work. Right, So the legend of Alcatraz became so strong that even after the government abandoned the prison because it didn't fucking work, we kept making movies about it as if it did.
Right.
Yep.
In fact, great point one of those key moments in Alcatraz's history actually came after the prison closed in nineteen sixty four, Indigenous activists took over the island. They were pointing out that under one of the treaties signed by the United States government, this is what I was talking about, all abandoned federal land was to be returned to the indigenous nation. Definitely a story what checking out it was a reminder of the way that the prison had been used in its earlier days and how power full symbol of the prison had become. Okay, JD, We're getting to the end of the story, and I want to ask you, Okay, after you heard all that, do you think that these guys survived?
I think they made it. Okay, I think they made it.
But also because I speak in movie terms, you know what I mean, Like, I just I love the I love the idea that they escaped, that they were in Brazil.
You know that they were just like, you know, traveling around doing this show.
What I've realized is that that when they fucking escape, instead of being like, all right, I'm gonna go lay low somewhere, they just commit stupid shit and they're just like kind of flashy about it. These guys sound like the type that would be like, fuck it, we made it through. We're getting the fuck out of here, and we're never speaking of this again. And it would make sense that as an old man, he would be like I got to get this off my chest.
Just it was me. Just please don't put me in prison, and then I'll tell you everything. And you know what I'm saying. They just seemed like more even keeled guys. But I don't fucking know them.
I'm asking myself now, I do believe that they escaped. I'm putting myself in those shoes and just wondering if I was going to die. What I want people to know that I did that I'm legendary. What you know what I mean, I don't know.
You're about to die, You're about to.
Night. Well I'm probably going to live to like one hundred and ten, but I.
Still have to get scenarios right in this area.
You're about to die, and you wouldn't tell people to the course, I can't forget about it, forget about like about to die yet dead.
So I'm dead.
I'm with God, and I'm like, just send me, just send me back down, so I could just let everybody know.
What's your what's your takeaway from the story. Do you have a takeaway with one part that really stood out to you.
I just love the creativity.
Yeah, it's almost controversial to say these days that you have a choice, but I believe in the power of choice, you know. And I was raised that way with my parents who were immigrants, you know, and came to this country. Like they didn't care what was in front of me, they didn't care what rules were around me. They didn't care that nobody hadn't done it before. Like that's the mindset that I had, right, you know, like there was always a possibility, there is a way. And what I love is that these men had the creativity, and like the information was all around them, whether it was popular mechanics or you know, whether it was trusting yourself to another human being and spitballing with them a little bit, you know, like but their mindset was like, eh, I'm not going.
To be here that long.
Well, to your point, what strikes me is the potential lost. You know, if these guys they're so creative, they didn't let it bring them down. They read the room, like you said, and fuck you. You just like wish that people like this could have like had the opportunity to become something amazing as opposed to like their biggest feed being escaping.
From a prison.
Right.
I know, brother, I love fucking talking to you, and I just want to ask you if if you have anything that we should look out for.
I'm home now from from Roadhouse Mayans season five.
People should binge watch the show if they haven't. You are incredible in Mayan's It's such a cool exploration of character. And also because you're a wonderful human being, dude, And it's been a fucking pleasure talking to you anyway.
For the Model Shops. For the Model Shop, my name is Arturo.
This is j D.
Yeah bye, guys, Love you guys, Thank you so much.
Radi's Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from me or Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka from Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Winning Donaldson from Gilded Audio, and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show was produced and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively, our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nikki Stein, Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next week.
