hoped others would too Many prisoners had learned about the escape They had heard the men digging in their cells at night But nobody said a word to the officers The situation was different for West In the back of his cell where there should have been an air vent was a gaping hole He had chipped away the concrete around the vent and knocked it out and he had created a fake vent cover from cardboard It was obvious that West was supposed to escape with the others but something had gone wrong for him He knew he could not hide his involvement with the plan so he gave short answers to the officers questions But he was careful not to reveal too much Chances are he didn’t want to sabotage his friends shot at freedom While West was being questioned in the warden’s office the rest of the cell house was searched Up above Cellblock B investigators noticed that blankets had been hung from the bars that enclosed the area between the top of the cellblock and the ceiling What they found behind the blankets was stunning a secret workshop full of tools including a homemade wrench a foot-long file a stapler a
mirror a flashlight three spoon handles and more They also found a rubber raft and a life preserver both of which the prisoners had made out of raincoats and left behind for West There was even a vacuum cleaner motor that the prisoners had used to power a drill In Frank Morris’s cell they found magazine articles that explained how to make rafts and life jackets John Anglin’s cell contained art supplies and the paint that had been used on the dummy heads Clarence Anglin’s cell had knots of human hair left over from the dummy heads and more paint One of the more interesting things the investigators found was in Allen West’s cell a road atlas of North America with the pages for Mexico removed His cell also contained three hacksaw blades three more spoons and a chisel The scope of the escape was incredible and complicated All those stolen or improvised tools A virtual hardware store hidden behind blankets Holes dug through 8 inches of concrete with spoon handles and other rigged utensils It
was clear that the escapees had planned it for a long time They had thought of everything And they had a nine-hour head start The search expanded rapidly and was conducted by sea land and air It covered the entire western United States Highway patrol officers stopped and searched vehicles Photos of the men appeared on newspapers all over the world Where could they be The FBI believed that the men could have made it ashore and were on the run But the men had no money no clothes and no food They were career criminals Surely they would make a mistake sooner or later like getting caught in a robbery for instance The FBI carefully monitored the Anglin family home in Florida in case the men turned up there or made a phone call to their relatives A week after the escape Warden Olin Blackwell received a postcard dated two days earlier It said Ha ha we made it and was signed Frank John Clarence Blackwell gave the postcard to the FBI but they didn’t have enough handwriting samples from the prisoners to
make a good comparison They thought it was probably fake But as the days went on and no bodies turned up it seemed more possible that the men had successfully escaped That is certainly what Clarence Carnes and most of the other inmates believed Carnes had escaped other prisons so he knew it could be done And he knew that his friends had worked hard on their plan Alcatraz was not escape proof as the warden always claimed Even though Carnes was still stuck inside Alcatraz had been beaten He didn’t necessarily think that he would escape but it felt good to know someone had Even Alcatraz couldn’t kill all hope
