EPIC TRUE CRIME DOC! | Alcatraz Prison Escape | FULL MOVIE | 2015 | Crime, Documentary | Danny Trejo

[Music] let's see here [Music] hello my name is danny drejo and the following is a deathbed confession of john leroy kelly about the escape from alcatraz island in 1962 [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] the greatest mysteries of the 20th century include the disappearance of jimmy hoffa the jfk assassination and the alcatraz prison escape in 1962 three inmates escaped from alcatraz island federal penitentiary this was thought to be impossible their bodies were never found and they were never captured until recently there was a one million dollar reward for information that led to the capture or discoveries of the bodies of frank morris john anglin and clarence anglin who escaped on june 11 1962. no one knows if they drowned in the chilly waters off alcatraz that night or truly made it off the rock recently a new document was uncovered a deathbed confession of a low-level criminal claiming involvement in the escape which sent art roderick the head of the u.s marshals and his partner mike erp descendant of legendary lawman wyatt cross country with filmmaker daniel zareli to investigate the oldest open case in u.s marshals history i really don't know how to start this except to just tell it i guess you could say i'm a very famous person it's just that no one knows who i am or what i did i along with a man named robert michael kyle helped to pull off one of the most famous prison escapes in united states history there was a lot of people involved in the escape from alcatraz prison i know for a fact that high ranking guards were paid for their part in the escape i believe from what the convicts told us that the prison officials had to know or strongly suspect that guards at the prison took part in this escape on monday june 11th with robert at the wheel we picked up escaped inmates frank lee morris john anglin and clarence anglin we took them north to seattle on the boat in the first two or three years after the prison escape my uncle donald the one that got me involved in the escape said that the convic's family members called him wanting to know what happened i always told my uncle donald that me and robert left the convicts in canada and never saw them again i don't think he really ever believed me please forgive me for what i did the spoon proves mightier than the bars have supposedly escaped alcatraz prison three bank robbers serving long terms scratched their way through grills covering an air vent climbed a drainage pipe and disappeared from the forbidding rock in san francisco bay it appears to be the first successful escape in the history of the maximum security prison and the flight is attributed by warden olin blackwell to the deteriorating condition of the prison crumbling concrete and eroding metals with five million needed for repairs [Music] the men the walls couldn't hold are frank morris and john and clarence anglin authorities believe that morris who has a superior iq masterminded the escape ironically the wanted posters offer only the nominal reward of fifty dollars each for information leading to the arrest of the prisoners they painstakingly fashioned dummies of plaster with hair of paintbrush bristles to stand in for them during cell check while they covered an escape hole with a cardboard grill all of this was with an easy visual range of the guards in the gun galleries they climbed drain pipes to the top of the cell block and then slid down vents to the ground again all of this within sight of guards the escape triggered the greatest manhunt in san francisco's history as agents of the fbi coast guardsmen highway patrol sheriff's deputies and local police join in the search whatever their fate the three convicts have apparently accomplished a feat that many have tried with no success [Music] for most the name alcatraz evokes images of iron bars hard concrete and brutal guards a purgatory for anyone trapped inside although this is what alcatraz became it started as something very different isla de los alcatrasas or pelican island was first surveyed in 1847 devoid of any real natural resources and only one or two landable beaches it seemed an unlikely asset to the newly acquired republic of california the u.s army however quickly saw the value of the barren rock sitting at the heart of the bay the island was seen as an ideal location for artillery batteries that could protect the recently renamed hamlet of san francisco in 1853 construction began on camp alcatraz completed in 1859 the island became the first permanent harbor fortification on the united states west coast declaration of civil war in 1861 left california fighting on the side of the northern states 300 union soldiers were stationed at fort alcatraz to fend off any possible confederate assault on the san francisco bay these soldiers waited for an attack that never came never once did the cantons of alcatraz fire on an enemy the camp did however find its use during the war it began serving as a military prison for captured confederate soldiers and sympathizers it continued to operate as both fort and military prison for another 40 years in 1900 it was decided that the fort would resign all defensive duties and would operate solely as an army prison over the next 30 years the inmates at pacific branch u.s military prison alcatraz transformed the rock as they called it into the world's largest and most modern prison finally in 1934 the war department said goodbye to alcatraz and handed the island over to the department of justice where it remained until its closure in 1963. this is the era that the island prison is most famous for the worst of the worst of all maximum security prisons the most difficult time that any inmate could do alcatraz island federal penitentiary in its almost 30 years as an operational facility alcatraz was home to the nation's most dangerous and notorious criminals gangsters like chicago crime boss al capone and los angeles-based mafioso mickey cohen both found themselves locked inside the walls of the rock other most wanted criminals like machine gun kelly and doc barker were also sent to alcatraz a veritable laundry list of the nation's most famous criminals declared residents on the rock at one time or another [Music] given the miserable conditions at alcatraz combined with the nature of its inmates it was inevitable that there would be escape attempts however in its 29 years of operation alcatraz claims that no prisoner ever successfully escaped is the alcatraz prison escape statement and i've faxed it to both the fbi and the u.s marshals and they've deemed it credible enough for follow-up so two u.s marshals and a tracker and myself are actively looking for the site that's mentioned in this statement i am typing this statement from my good friend and patient john leroy kelly who was born near greenville mississippi on or about september 3rd 1944. he says that he does not have a birth certificate on file and he never learned to write much more than his name and states that he cannot read it all john has asked me not to release this to anyone until he is dead he is afraid of going to jail or prison for the part he played in the 1962 alcatraz prison escape of frank morris clarence england and john england [Music] when we get in these type leads we look to say you know we can't say okay this is it it's a home run is this possible and this one's possible so that's why we're here we weren't involved the marshall services agency wasn't involved with this case for 18 years right right we didn't get it until 1979 80 1981 when the attorney general made the marshal service responsible for what they call the escape and rescue statutes which are the federal statutes that an individual is charged with for escape or aiding and abetting and escape and all that so that that case came over to us uh when the attorney general gave us that authority or unless moved it from the fbi to us so we have we didn't go back and like try and recreate the investigation because let me tell you the bureau 1700 pages they did a lot of stuff i mean surveillances interviewed family members year after year they went back and i mean they did a perfect a real good investigation um so we weren't going to go back and recreate that right uh basically what we've done up to this point is if something comes up right we'll follow the lead out till the end thousands of people visit alcatraz island every year to see al capone's sail and hear about the birdman of alcatraz they come to see how frank morris and the anglin brothers escaped what they hear are the tour guided facts a rehearsed and recited account based on speculation as to how the escape actually happened never before has alcatraz revealed everything that it knows and doesn't know about what happened that faithful night so i just got off the phone with art apparently craig at this rangers office at alcatraz called to verify if art was working with us on the alcatraz statement and art told the guy to give them daniel and neil all access to everything they have on alcatraz when i talked to the u.s marshal service this morning they indicated that this was the first time that art's been on the case in 12 years i believe he said that they had anything really worth pursuing they felt that it was had enough possibilities to dedicate some time to it alcatraz was designed to run as a maximum security minimum privilege penitentiary that meant our inmates received no tater-made cigarettes candy bars chewing gum soft drinks radio television newspapers paroles or rehabilitation programs they had none that might be sent here in fact none of our inmates were sent from a court they're all sent from another prisoner having a problem and some told me from the prison that came from the word of an institution would have a picture of alcatraz behind his desk and he points a picture saying if i see you one more time that's it you're going you are going to alcatraz and you knew you're going to do some tough times now you come and visit the island you look out you see all these beautiful views you see san francisco the east bay marin county say gee that's not so bad but how'd you like to have water held out in you and you can't drink it you know it's a city so close and yes so far [Music] is there any way you think they made it uh at first i would have said yes but since they haven't showed up in all these years i doubt it now given the bay and the thai conditions that night and what physical evidence was discovered over the next couple days by the fbi most of the staff on the island have been of the opinion that they probably didn't survive the swim i don't think there's been any trace have been found which in a way is kind of unusual because bodies do turn up in the bay here mostly when somebody drowns they'll find pieces of them they'll find parts they're closed 50 degrees out there are about 10 to 12 celsius it's very old although 400 people a year swim from alcatrax of san francisco have at least two maybe three swims a year most people can't handle it if you can't do it in 35 or 40 minutes you're going to be in trouble so it can be done it's a myth that it can't be done it's done all the time one of the stories that's most often been told was that they planned to steal a boat in angel island and given that that didn't happen that sort of led to a general belief that the chances are that they didn't make it however you know we know of many swims organized swims that do that bay every year so we always sort of leave the story with an open end that well one never knows after all they were pretty highly motivated um you know at that point that they left their cells that night at that point they're escaped convicts they had nothing left to lose once a federal inmate escapes from prison that becomes an fbi case apparently it comes under their jurisdiction however as a fugitive from justice the u.s marshals service has uh jurisdiction too the bureau of prisons would still of course you know potentially be involved in this since they are fugitives from the bureau of prisons they would still have time on their original sentences there's no statute of limitations so there's various law enforcement agencies should evidence pan out and there be more to the story than we now know there would be several federal agencies ultimately that would probably be interested in it if you talk to any of the former prisoners they'll of course all of them say they got away and if you talk to the former guards they'll all of them say they're they're dead they drowned at sea but they're still on the wanted list of the fbi and so they're not going to give up until there's some proof that they actually died is there any way you think they made it absolutely really yeah i i helped him with some tools uh to do that and i know john the clarence swam before they could walk they were born and raised in the everglades so i personally had john has told me that he and a friend helped the three convicts to escape from alcatraz federal prison in san francisco at 11 15 p.m on monday june 11 robert and i were in a boat off alcatraz island prison at approximately 10 minutes to midnight we moved to the area just outside the city marina at about midnight i heard splashes in the water they were lying across a homemade life raft we picked up escaped inmates frank lee morris john anglin and clarence anglin i remember one of the men frank morris laughed and asked if we were their ride robert asked where was the other two frank morris said they were it we took them north to seattle on the boat when we got back to bellingham we had the three convicts get into the back of the truck that we used for painting and had them lie down in the back alcatraz had a reputation i think it was too large to be deserved of being run more by the book than any other facility it was part of the reason they created alcatraz in 1834 because of problems that did exist in other federal prisons but they're certainly stories of um paid off um i mean at a low level you know the regards that broke some of the rules and inconsequential rules like uh you were allowed to have candy there was no conversation by candy there yet there was a correctional officer i worked in the shop that sometimes slipping and made a piece of candy if they've done a particularly good job on the line um one day one of those inmates got caught with that candy and rather than turn the guard in he did 19 days in solitary i guess it's a little bit more punishment refusing to inform because they knew this had to come from the correctional staff we know of again religious staff on the island that came out here uh in at least one case smugly letters off the island because they felt the inmates had more of a right to private correspondence with their words than with the law allowed at that time craig one of the rangers here said that the religious staff sometimes thought that conditions were a little tough and that that sometimes priest or the religious staff would help give information in letters bring letters to the families and such do you know anything about that no no i would say that the religious staff as i understood it certainly myself as a part of the religious staff and a priest the priests that i worked with coming out here were scrupulous about that we were instructed in a number of ways that we were never to take any contraband in or out and also there was a no hostage policy so when we went down into the yard to walk around and talk with them down there we knew that if they ever grabbed us and captured us in any way at all the guards on the towers would start shooting and so you kind of took your life in your hands if you ever did go down in there but i never ever felt insecure around the prison they were always extremely kind to me and also very respectful of me and i think part of it had to do with the fact that we were able to get in here from the outside very very few people including their wives and children couldn't get into this prison and talk to them through those walls you know with those two inch thick glass windows and through telephones and we would actually walk in here we could touch them they could touch us and they could ask us questions we tell them about the outside world and so we were kind of a breath i was and chaplain service people were a kind of a breath of fresh air for them and uh and in a kind of a bright spot in their life and they were not about to hurt this take us hostage i never had any ever experienced like that and i also never heard of any chaplain ever taking contraband around now sometimes we took messages in the sense that um you'd say well say hello to my wife or somebody if you knew the person but they need to say hello that was all apparently there was a woman on the outside that was helping make arrangements for their escape well that's that's what they said my uncle donald leroy robertson is the one that got me involved in the alcatraz prison escape he had been a driver for several big time bank robbers at one time or another in the 1930s and 1940s and he knew frank lee morris in october of 1961 my uncle donald had me go to san francisco to meet a woman named eugenia mcgowan in saint anthony's catholic church in the san francisco tenderloin district that day changed my life forever many times over the years i have wished that i had not went to that meeting she told me that day that five convicts were going to escape from alcatraz and that she needed me to provide a boat to pick them up and take them to safety she told me that the convicts families had come up with over sixty thousand dollars to help them escape and that six guards at alcatraz prison were receiving payoffs to look the other way or to help the convicts she said that she was telling me all this so i and my partner robert would know that the escape would be able to happen without any problems she gave me five thousand cash in twenties in an envelope that day and she was to give me another five thousand when she found out the exact night the convicts would be able to get out eugenia never knew it but she had sealed the convict's fate when she told me that the convicts would be picking up fifty thousand dollars robert was obsessed with trying to figure out some way to separate the convicts from the fifty thousand dollars when we got them back to seattle i can't believe now that i went along with robert's wild scheme according to all the evidence available most importantly the fbi's investigation the point at which the england brothers frank morris went into the bay it's just around the corner from the point you see from here but their choice of location to go into the water would have been very important to take into account this tower being here um other towers were by and large at the back end and other side of the island there used to be a tower on the roof of the cell house from which they made their escape from the building that had been closed down due to budget cuts and staff shortages years earlier here we have the salt house at the top of the island originally constructed by the army and this was a military prison the anglins made their escape from an air vent approximately in this area why all accounts made their way down here where they're able to slide down an exhaust vent from one of the kitchen stoves down below this was a mess hall and food preparation area and the hospital remember as you look at the island the plush vegetation all over the island today didn't exist back there we didn't want a shrubbery this tall in the days that this was a prison everything was very low in shrimp gardens there were flowers there were trees but everything was trimmed in a way to prevent there from being places to hide but certainly by this time staffing shortages and budget cuts had an effect on security the roof tower had been shut down completely there hadn't been a tower on the roof had that still been there this escape never could have happened the road tower would have been the tower over on this side of the island which according to all the physical evidence is the side of the island that the three left from that night from the road tower the view of the point they went into the water would have been right around the corner on may 11th i met eugenia in front of saint anthony's catholic church we walked to the waterfront and we met a man in the shadows there he showed me where the water was likely to carry the convicts on a raft to and he told me to expect them just after midnight on june 11. he told me that the convicts would run into no trouble because he was going to make sure that there was no guard in the road tower that night he said that we should have till 8 am at the earliest to get away before the alarm was sounded later on i discovered that the man we met that night was alcatraz prison guard captain bradley i've always wondered how no one ever found out that something wasn't right at alcatraz prison that night one thing that morris figured was sure to get the guards caught was all the things that were hid on top of the cell house he said that at least 50 to 60 raincoats were used to make the rafts when two of the convicts didn't take part in the escape one of the rafts was left on top of the cell house morris said that several guards not just one or two turned their heads or just didn't say anything about the things they had seen in the weeks leading up to the escape frank morris told us that captain bradley had gone as far as to order blankets to be hung up over the top of the cell house to keep paint from falling into the cells and the floor below but the real reason the blankets were put up there was to give the convicts unrestricted access to the rooftop of the cell house and to allow the convicts to escape i mean ironically even though everyone knew those blankets were there it's not in the official bureau of prisons report the fact that those blankets that were up there are blocking the card's view of that area on the roof of the cell block allowing them to make their escape that night the fact that that was those sat up there for months arguments amongst the guards who has authority to okay those blankets being there or not but what it was is some of the guys coming to escape worked in the cell house and they pointed out how badly that area where there's some utility pipes between the top of the cell block and the actual roof of the building was a gap there by design so each cell block is a building within the cell house but no part of the cell block touches an exterior surface of the building well they needed some way to work up there to get through the air vents and so they said well we need to paint this area but look at all the dust and debris and paint chips they're going to be flying around gee can we get some you know blankets from you know the army supply that we wash out here and hang them up to contain all the dirt and debris one correctional officer said no way the other one pulled rank and said no but i had this you know we don't want all that stuff floating around the cell house and people you know being you know your my irritations from this and stuff so go ahead and do this how many people do you think knew about the planning of the escape everybody everybody but the guards um one of the inmates that was in the cell house at the time that was marginally involved in the plan he the night of the escape and this is fairly well documented some tools or other implements were dropped down through the utility quarter bounced off some of the water or sewage pipes they're back in that area what surprised him was the lack of response i mean these guys were climbing up and down the pipes every night in the backs of other guys cells and so they had to make all kinds of arrangements with these people because there was a group of black prisoners over here these were all white guys and they had to climb and they were white southern prisoners too and they were climbing up the backs of these black guys cells to get up on the roof well it didn't take them very long to figure out what was going on and so they had to make some compromises and deals with the other prisoners around here and so word kind of got around and got around and got her i must say i was surprised believe it or not i was surprised that i didn't know anything the real surprise of the trip came when we got back to my uncle donald's house he was the one holding the hidden 50 000. [Music] we received our 10 000 more with my uncle donald getting 4 000 of the 40. [Music] we stayed at uncle donald's for over a week frank morris and the anglin brothers were sure the guards would be arrested and kept listening to the radio and watch the newspapers to see the story about the arrest of the guards but it never happened when they read the story in the newspapers that spoons had been used to dig out of the cells they broke down laughing they said that shortly before the escape jackhammers were used to replace the toilets in the cells the jackhammer was operated by alan west who they said had been assigned to prison maintenance since may of 1961 he was allowed to work in the space behind the cells alone because the guards didn't want to get dirty while he was back there he used the jackhammer to cut the air vent open the three convicts said they would have never been able to get out if it hadn't been for alan west with the jackhammer allen west is generally credited with being very involved in the plan and with the escape attack he his statement to the fbi was the night of the escape he had trouble opening up the fake air vent that they put over his cell and then trouble getting out um that's why he didn't escape that night by the time he got out and up to the roof the other three were long garden if you ever been up there it's interesting to get on top of the cell block and take a look at what they actually did up there which is phenomenal uh when you see what they had to do under the scrutiny of the guards we know other inmates that were here that aided and in other ways escaping it was real obvious talking to inmates around the island at the time that there was a lot of people that were aware of what was going on in various ways supporting them june 12 1962 the estate occurred at 94. but none of us knew it and because the masks were the dummies weren't you know we know people that helped them with uh getting the flesh tones right had a little rouge to make the cheeks look more realistic hair from the barber shop tools and implements from around the material i mean it had to be a significant amount of fabric raincoat material for the rest and their pontoons that they were using to build some sort of a raft those support men and west was the most dangerous he got the men out there if it wasn't for him they'd have never gotten to the roof allen west is generally credited for being if you will one of one of the main brains behind the escape now others say other things too but you know he certainly was involved certainly uh had an opportunity that night to be the fourth man but he didn't go in the end and people always wonder why he was either either couldn't get out of the cell like he claimed or he chickened out take your pick i kind of thought about the idea that maybe he had decided this was a suicide attempt rather than an escape attack didn't want to say to the other guys now i'm very involved in this hey i don't think it's going to work after all and maybe just backed out and didn't try to get out there right knowing that they moved away from whether or not that's true i have no reason there's no one way or the other but that seemed like another possible scenario to why he was still in the cell that morning when the other three were long gone what more could they get just more time if they were caught trying to escape what they would have had was probably some time in isolation um d-block at that time um and then certainly time could be added to their sentence for the escape attempt what is uh can you describe what d block was like if you were putting ironically it had the best views in the cell house and largest cells because it was the most recently renovated area what made d-block tough was that good view because that was a view of freedom you didn't have and the fact that you were locked in there 24 hours a day it was it was a larger sell than the regular inmate cells because they were newly renovated in the 1940s but you were on lockdown [Music] mentally it was a tough time to spend 24 hours a day looking at the same three walls inside bars [Music] while we were at my uncle donald's the three convicts told us that clarence carnes had not been able to get out of his cell and that alan west had just flat chickened out he told them he was going all along then at the last minute he told them that he was afraid of the water he was also concerned that they would get in the water and there wouldn't be any boat out there they didn't know it but that made things a lot easier for us the fact that there was three convicts this week i arranged for a local priest to start counseling john and hear his confession it seems to have improved his spirits greatly i cannot sign the statement or give my name because i have broken patient confidentiality by giving some of the information i have in this account i could be fired from my job or lose my nurse's license so for that reason i must remain anonymous but i will do my best after john's death to ensure that this statement and john's statement get into the right hands do you know if the nurse that took the statement from john kelly if she took there's something in there that says that put it in a safety deposit i've got the original document is it handwritten or is it tough it's tight i know she says i type but i didn't know if originally she took but she was trying to turn it over to john's sister but she didn't want it so she gave the whole thing up yeah and i mean it's weird for somebody to send me like an original typed typed or printed i mean it was the 80s so there are computers i mean this is it i mean it feels like you know which is not clear that's just a copy okay that's that copy i mean this looks like a turtle paper yeah right so i mean it you know that's supposedly the original so i mean i would like to keep that if possible because i am a collector of documents but that's the supposed original that was overnighted to me with some other material well if you hold on to it for now let's see where the other end plays out cool now in the late 80s early 90s there was a couple of shows that came out unsolved mysteries i know the history channel has done some stuff the discovery channel right and those tended to generate more leads and we would always end up following up on those leads we would run their fingerprints every year nationwide so if they runner and alias uh we could find out if they committed any crimes and have been printed by some police department same thing with canada who has a uh mutual relationship with the u.s so yeah none of that turned out we just didn't lead a year and a half ago in texas right with the guy that looked like him we got something oh really elite got sent to us we got a hold of his driver's license uh it was after there was a history channel show on where we aged agent right did you guys do that yeah i know there's not on the internet yeah and we went and sent those out to everybody and somebody came back and said geez it looks just like this old guy so you know we went fall deleted in texas i guess you have to have your fingerprints or a thumbprint on the driver's license and we actually were able to verify that it wasn't him right based on fingerprints today is march 17th john leroy kelly died at 3 a.m this date of aids-related pneumocitis carini pneumonia he died quietly in his sleep john received the last rites of the roman catholic church just after 11 pm [Music] so i got some information that we can go check out a death certificate down the street on john leroy kelly if he died in this area apparently it will be on record and that's where we're going next john was a no-co patient so he did not attempt to resuscitate i'm truly glad for john that his long struggle is over may he rest in peace i basically narrowed it down to about five hospices in the area and from that we're going to go back to the hall of records and find out if there's a death certificate but even without a death certificate we can get a lot of great information now sarah lane of vancouver british columbia called me on the phone and asked if she could come down and talk to me about her brother i said yes if she could agree to complete confidentiality concerning my identity she agreed and i met her at the downtown public library during our meeting she brought up the alcatraz prism escape and asked me what her brother john had told me about the alcatraz incident i gave her a copy of everything and she stated that it was the same story that john had told her for years before she stated that she had heard the same story over and over many times from john and felt she almost knew it by heart that he and a friend helped the three convicts to escape from alcatraz federal prison in san francisco they then killed the three escape convicts to keep all of a large sum of money while we were at my uncle donald's we finally decided that we would get the convicts into the back of robert's pickup truck drive them into the woods and shoot them real quick and bury them robert picked a good spot along the highway and we even dug a big hole before we picked them up robert went somewhere and got two 38 caliber pistols which he hid in the toolbox under the driver's seat of the truck i told her about john making his confession to the catholic priest and that i felt it had helped john's piece of mind tremendously and i told her that i believed john had died in peace i had offered her these papers including john's statement but she said she did not want to get involved she told me that it was true about their uncle donna being a driver for big time bank robbers she said that back when he was doing this that it worked out very well she said that there was a family rumor that uncle donald had at one time been sentenced to a lot of time in angolan state prison in louisiana but that he escaped after a very short time and fled to the pacific northwest according to her no one ever found uncle donald and he died of an old age in seattle one interesting thing she said was that john had trouble getting rid of some of the money they took off the convicts because it was so old she said that some of the bills were very large but were still legal tender and could be spent when she got up to leave i again tried to give john's papers but she refused and left i don't really know who to give john's statements to i have thought about mailing it to a news agency or the fbi but i'm not really sure what to do with that like john i feel the time had come for the truth about the alcatraz prison escape to come out i missed john at times he probably was right about being famous if everyone knew the truth about what he did [Music] this is a request for a death certificate um for john leroy kelly i'm obviously very curious that there's a death certificate on file because it's another piece of the puzzle that i'm trying to put together typically an escape a couple things happen for example in the case of henry young they made a movie real loosely based on him a few years ago when he escaped from all the walla state prison the first thing he did was go home one thing that has led circumstantially to our belief that they probably didn't make it based on what we knew so far uh was the fact that there were no crimes later on that were attributed to them uh there was no although family members have talked to us and claimed everything was going on they're not going to want to spill the beans as it were on that you know there the typical escape would leave a trail and it's not to say that there aren't exceptions but you know to go home to rob another bank to commit another crime you do something to leave a fingerprint somewhere is not at all uncommon and it's been lacking that over the years since it's been so many years and nothing incredible so far had shown up that added to the likelihood that our opinion or my opinion i should say um that they didn't survive the bay and they just added to them the fact that these guys never surfaced to get the fact that they never were you know connected to any crimes again um not to say that well you know people say well if they were smart they wouldn't do those things well they were smart they probably wouldn't have been doing what they were doing to begin with there's another way to look at that because we always stuck to the theory that if they had escaped and got away they would be committing crimes right so they would eventually get caught the only thing they knew it was bank roughers i mean they're career criminals so we knew that the if they did get away they weren't in the u.s right and they probably weren't in canada because canada has the same type of law enforcement program that we do and they eventually got caught doing something right there so that's why we really looked at anything internationally and we weren't really concerned with the historical and we've had cases like this before where somebody's actually gone back dug the bodies up and then spread the bones someplace i mean you know all we end up with was fragments of bones in there they're never gonna get up all the bones i mean there's gonna be if there were bodies buried in there and somebody came back to get the bodies up there's gonna be something left in there gotcha okay you just it's impossible to get everything once you put something in the ground like that what would be the method of um forensically finding out yeah is there dental records or is there dna of any kind we'll have to make that determination whichever state a local authority we will be dealing with that we do have records yeah i've got records of them dental records and medical and dental records uh from the bureau of prison so we can use that but we'll make determinants of course i know we're ahead of ourselves this is this is fluid we're gonna have to play a lot of this right here as we go [Music] so we just met with mike irf and art roderick u.s marshals we're caravanning right now to meet with a local guy who knows the area we're leaving seattle it's about an hour outside of seattle according to the statement it's going to be about a mile and a half on the left hand side there used to be a dirt road apparently in 1962 that dirt road was not blocked by a guard rail but now we're going to have to walk over the guardrail from that point we go down the dirt road and apparently there is going to be some big rocks that we're going to look for and some trees on the rocks as of 1993 there was paint to mark the rocks and then at one point in the 80s john the guy who gave the statement actually nailed horseshoes into trees around the area and apparently buried a box of horseshoes right over the bodies where they were buried so underneath the horseshoes if we find them there may be the bodies of the anglin brothers john and clarence and frank morris so the initial thing we're looking for is the landmarks so wish us luck over the last weekend me and my son took john up to the spot where he says the three convicts are buried there was still some splotches of yellow paint on the big rocks just like john told me it would be we took four gallons of red deck paint with us and my son made a big circle and an x over where john says he and his friend robert buried the three convicts in 1962. [Music] his name's al davis he's an old timer he's lived in this area for ever for his whole life he's at least 70 or 80 years old really funny nice guy he said though if you you go back even 10 years 10 20 years everything's changed about this location you said even for myself because that could describe four or five roads that aren't even there in existence anymore so it's just it's gonna be really hard for you to find what you're looking for he said that we're we're like five miles off base said most likely that we should go back up and turn to the right sort of where that area that near the lake where we went and there's actually another right turn that kind of just i let him read the one paragraph about the directions he said you have better luck in that area um but you know he just said there's just four or five places in this area that that have changed and it's just gonna be hard to find based on this semi-vague it sounds sounds like vague directions to him because there's too many options you can no longer turn off the highway at that location there is now a guard rail and you have to park on the roadside and walk from there [Music] we were able to find two of the horseshoes nailed to the trees okay so we have good news and bad news the good news is we met with a tracker who knows exactly the area and exactly turn off where he thinks you know the statement is pointing to the bad news is is that he said it's a big area it's gonna be hard to find and that it might be snowing so there might be snow on the ground so anyways we'll see [Music] this would be the 30 foot yeah this is the close yes you pull the truck up in here i'll stand on the roof and look at this mark on the tree here oh yours let me looks like yellow pink and does this look like red deck paint it sure does holy and does that look like it could be a knot i mean it could be analyzed of course but i think it's worth bringing a metal detector in this area look at that well here's the rest of here's where it came off right here i mean that many rounds you know they blasted they blasted them on june 21st we started driving towards canada in the truck with the congress at a few minutes past 5 pm robert hit me on the leg which was a signal we had arranged he told them we were stopping to pee he had made a point over the last few days of complaining about his weak kidneys less than 30 feet away the big hole we had dug waited and too shoveled i heard him get into the toolbox under the driver's seat for the pistols and he handed me one of the pistols down by his side we walk to the back of the truck robert opened the truck's tailgate [Music] frank morris must have seen the pistol in robert's hand because i heard morris say you sons of but in almost the same instant we were both shooting into the back of the truck [Music] i'd never been able to forget the way they jumped around and the sound the bullets made when they hit their bodies it was the worst thing i did in my life [Music] robert reloaded his pistol and i pulled the convicts out by their feet [Music] john england was the last one i pulled out and he was alive and talking [Music] even though he had been hit several times and had to be hurting very badly he begged not to die but robert shot him three or four more times [Music] [Music] we dump them into the big hole we had dug one at a time we threw our pistols into the hole along with the bloody canvas they had been lying on in the back of the truck we covered them up and spread a bag of grass seed all over the dugout ground [Music] [Music] did you do it this close of course this is more secluded than down there with the housing yeah and then in the 60s there's probably not as much traffic all the horseshoes on one tree no there were four before in a circle some sort of a circle and then when they came back in the 90s there were only two left we're looking up at a tree and if you look closely it looks like potentially where a horseshoe could have been at one point either the tree could have grown around it or the tree could have pushed it out of its bark [Applause] he came back in the 80s and buried a box of horseshoes this is one potential site that's about 30 feet off the road off the 90. there's a guardrail over there there's also evidence that could be a horseshoe up on a tree about 14 feet high we'll see it's not far i think it's got potential like crazy those paint chips in that little place that could have been a horseshoe at one time [Music] so we're calling it a day it's getting dark we found one spot that had a lot of potential with a couple markings and a horseshoe shaped indentation in a tree so we're going to come back tomorrow at the spot see what else we can find out yesterday we were a little discouraged when we went to the location because the rocks weren't quite as big as we expected and there were a few things about the statement that um that mike erp had pointed out that troubled him in some manner i mean most of the things about the statement turned out to be look like they're totally correct and accurate but some of the questions he posed i i gave it a little thought over the last 12 hours and this is my idea of the answers maybe one of the things that he said was that it was very unlikely that they would trust somebody with forty or fifty thousand dollars this person uncle donald because in the sixties that was a ton of money now i thought about that and number one frank morris he was friends with this uncle donald and uncle donald was 78 years old at the time so i just don't see that some 70 year 78 year old guy would necessarily run off with the money from a friend of his at that age the other part about it's being a large large amount of amount of money you know for sort of like two-bit thieves to put together when you think about it there were supposed to be five people five convicts escaping at alcatraz so five people let's say forty or fifty thousand dollars their family some of the money that they they got in bank robberies that's only about ten thousand dollars apiece approximately ten twelve thousand dollars so to start a new life in canada which was obviously the idea according to this statement ten twelve thousand dollars a piece split by five men seems like a reasonable amount of money to put together especially if you've got a loved one in jail back to the location so we went to the location yesterday and so you know in our mind's eye we sort of maybe thought these rocks were going to be bigger um we did we did find some really interesting evidence we found a really cool looking horseshoe-shaped indentation in a tree we also found some paint scraps in yellow and red which is again we didn't find exactly paint on the rocks but we found some evidence that you know a circumstance and enough to follow up on so today we're going to go back and i'm not sure what else we'll we'll ask the u.s marshals what else we're going to do but we we've identified a really highly potential site [Music] okay we're back to this spot and i just found a few interesting things okay originally they said that they nailed or he nailed four horseshoes into a tree just bear with me look at that nail one see the nail come over here second now follow me three so we were looking for horseshoes now you know when she came back apparently there were only two left but now there are no horseshoes but look there there are one two three over there and four nails and this is the area that i said looks like somebody maybe came back at some point just point the camera right down there i'm not saying this is where the hole was dug but maybe this is where he came back it dug this little ground up to bury the horseshoes it's not like this area looks to me a little unnatural to the rest it looks like something was dug out and it's all uneven here this feels like if anywhere could be the spot you know this has got a lot of potential there are four nails in somewhat of a circle in this spot and it's act exactly what we're looking for now come over here and look at these rocks [Music] i'm hoping that we'll come back and survey this whole area because this ground this area and those markings look good to me [Music] you know george clooney's going to play in the movie version right john well pretty good some research on it now to find out what the deal is you know how to get the gps coordinates to that particular location we'll probably do that today [Music] but i know the name of the individual you got this statement from if we could just do it back we can run a background on him right now we can call our pictures find out if he's connected to what his mother's name is right where he's been right he's got to be the son he's got yeah he's real paranoid about his identity you know we're at that point i mean we don't even know if she's alive right if you're telling me this guy sounds like he's in his 50s and this is his mother and she's got to be at least in her 70s you know right i got you so okay yeah we're going to engage the statements let's be honest about it yeah they are the ones providing statements in reference right right for this guy contesting to homicides and whatnot yeah look those law enforcement uh officials that could be investigating that yeah their names are known they're gonna be questioned they're gonna be interviewed they're gonna be possibly compelled to testify i mean there is a possibility of these states right there's no doubt i want to mislead you out of that that is right the public's not going to get any information no we're not going to release it i mean we do it to law enforcement yeah right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] who was this man john leroy kelly a phantom a charlatan a phony or was he telling the truth did he and his partner take part in one of the most well-planned and coordinated escapes in history an escape that could only have been successful with help from inside and outside the walls of the rock what is irrefutable is that the three men made it out of their cells and into the water that night it is only speculated that they drowned at sea was the culmination of their complex plan merely to swim across the bay risking hypothermia and drowning only to come ashore in bustling downtown san francisco or did they have something more sophisticated in mind for now their fate still remains a mystery or doesn't [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Id: jkyxnr6C2vQ

Length: 74min 39sec (4479 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022