On December 31, 1979, the FBI formally closed its file. The official conclusion was that Morris and the Anglin brothers most likely drowned. The case was transferred to the United States Marshals Service.
The formal conclusion was careful in its language. The Bureau did not declare the men dead; it concluded they most likely drowned. The distinction is not bureaucratic precision; it reflects the actual state of the evidence. No bodies were found. No conclusive physical evidence of death was produced. The conclusion was an inference from the totality of the investigation, not a finding of verified fact.
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## The U.S. Marshals Service: The Case That Never Closed
The transfer to the United States Marshals Service was not a closure. The Marshals continued active investigation.
The jurisdictional distinction between the FBI and the Marshals matters here. The FBI had investigated the escape as a federal crime — the escape itself, the planning, the accessories involved. With the case closed and no evidence of living fugitives to pursue, the Bureau’s active involvement ended. The Marshals’ mandate is to execute federal arrest warrants, and the warrants for Morris and the Anglin brothers remained valid.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke, speaking in 2009, stated that leads continued to arrive regularly and that investigators followed each one. The Marshals’ active pursuit continued across decades, involving interviews with aging family members, review of photographs, examination of letters, and coordination with law enforcement in other jurisdictions where sightings were claimed.
The warrants remained on the federal fugitive list until the men would have turned 100 years old. By the timelines established for each man, those dates fall between approximately 2026 and 2031. The practical effect is that federal agents were still formally required to investigate credible leads as recently as the period just before this article was written.