![]() It was just another scare tactic to keep the prisoners from thinking about escape." "There are some sharks in those waters - a few great whites have been seen there - but most were bottom-feeders. "We got letters from some of the prisoners, men like Whitey Bulger, and they told us that when you got to Alcatraz, you were told that sharks patrolled the waters around the island," Widner said. The structure was officially opened as a federal penitentiary in 1934, and it housed some of the nation's most notorious criminals, men like Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, James "Whitey" Bulger, Mickey Cohen, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, and the famed "Birdman of Alcatraz," Robert Stroud, who were confined to The Rock to pay for their crimes.Įach prisoner was told the same thing when he came to Alcatraz: There's no escaping. With its location 1.25 miles from San Francisco and the California mainland, Alcatraz - known as The Rock - seemingly earned its reputation as escape-proof. By the end of the century, the island continued to serve what officials saw as its rightful purpose: a place to lock men away.Ī disciplinary barracks was built on the 22-acre island located in the San Francisco Bay in 1912, and by the 1920s, the three-story structure was at full capacity. ![]() "We, of course, collected evidence that said otherwise, and I think over the years we've pretty much convinced everyone that what the FBI said was not true."Īs early as the 1860s, Alcatraz was utilized as a facility of incarceration, housing insolent soldiers who cheered the death of President Lincoln in post-Civil War America. "The FBI was embarrassed that they hadn't been able to find (the escapees), so they tried to convince everyone that the three of them died in the waters surrounding Alcatraz. Edgar Hoover and the FBI tried to convince everyone that while my uncles and Frank Morris had been able to get out of prison at Alcatraz, they actually did not ever make it to the mainland," Widner said. "There had been so much written about the escape, but one of the things that really stuck out to me was how J. David and Ken, who'd contributed to several documentaries on their uncles' escape, were integral to the making of the startling - and extremely well-made - History Channel documentary "Alcatraz: The Search for the Truth," and David Widner teamed with renowned author Michael Esslinger to pen "Escaping Alcatraz: The Untold Story of the Greatest Prison Break in American History."
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