Escape From Alcatraz

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

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It is often reported that no one has ever escaped from the Alcatraz Island prison in San Francisco Bay. That is not completely true.

John Paul Scott hailed from Springfield, Kentucky. He was a repeat offender and then was convicted of bank robbery and the possession of unregistered firearms in Lexington, Kentucky. He was given a 30-year sentence. Scott was sent to Alcatraz Island in 1959 and given prisoner number #AZ 1403. He was determined not to stay.

It was 92 years ago this week that the federal government’s “most dangerous” prisoners arrived at the new high-security facility. One of the arrivals in August 1934 was one of the nation’s most notorious criminals, Al Capone. A month later, he was joined by another underworld celebrity, “Machine Gun” Kelly.

Over the years, dozens of prisoners tried to escape Alcatraz, none successfully . . . as far as the authorities knew. The bodies of several escapees believed drowned were never found. These included Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, whose attempt inspired the 1979 Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz.

Overlooked was John Paul Scott, who actually reached the mainland. Here is what happened:

On the evening of December 16, 1962, the 35-year-old tried to escape from the island, together with 31-year-old Darl Lee Parker, a convicted bank robber and hijacker who had been sentenced to 50 years. While working on culinary duty in a storage room below the kitchen, the two bent the bars of a window in the latrine of the cell block, climbed down a rope, and made it to the water.

They then attempted to float to the San Francisco shore, a distance of 1.4 miles. For that purpose, they had made water wings from stolen rubber gloves, which they blew up. The escape was noticed at 5:47 p.m.

Parker had to give up after a short time because he had broken his ankle during the escape. He was recaptured 20 minutes after the escape was discovered, on the rock formation Little Alcatraz which lies 100 yards from Alcatraz Island. Although the Coast Guard was searching the bay, they failed to find Scott.

However, at 7:40 p.m., the Presidio Military Police got a call from one of four teenagers who had found an unconscious man at Fort Point beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. It was John Paul Scott, suffering from exhaustion and hypothermia. The ebbing tide had carried him to this location, approximately three miles from Alcatraz. After recovering in a hospital, Scott was returned to the prison.

He had learned the hard way that it was pretty much impossible to escape from Alcatraz by swimming. The seasonal water temperature in San Francisco Bay is about 53 °F in December and the current can exceed six knots. Citing these facts, as well as razor-sharp rocks and occasional visits from sharks, prison officers had discouraged most escape attempts.

When Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers escaped and disappeared several months earlier, prison officials had said that they had likely drowned, although the FBI just listed them as missing. Scott’s escape shook this line of reasoning. For the first time, it was proved that a prisoner could escape, if only temporarily, by swimming.

The Alcatraz Island penitentiary was closed in March 1963, with all inmates moved to other facilities. This closure was primarily due to the facility’s high operational costs and structural problems but was hastened by the escape of John Paul Scott.

After the closure, he was transferred to Leavenworth in Kansas and later to a prison in Illinois. While there, Scott made another futile escape attempt. After that, he spent several years at the Oak Park Heights prison in Minnesota. The end of the trail came in February 1987, when Scott died at age 60 at a federal prison in Florida.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, the latest being Vengeance: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull, published by St. Martin’s Press. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.