The island had been used as a military fort and military prison before the federal Bureau of Prisons took it over in 1934. It was designed from the start of its federal incarnation as a destination for the most problematic prisoners in the federal system — men who had demonstrated, at other institutions, that they would escape given any opportunity, men whose criminal organizations made standard incarceration a risk, men who required conditions beyond what ordinary penitentiaries could provide.
The physical structure reinforced the psychological message. The cellhouse was built on the highest ground of the island. The bars were tested to exceed normal specifications. The count was taken multiple times daily. Guards made rounds through the night. The cells measured five by nine feet, containing a bunk, a toilet, a small desk, and a sink. Everything was controlled, logged, and watched.
Over the twenty-nine years of Alcatraz’s operation as a federal prison, thirty-six inmates made fourteen separate escape attempts. Twenty-three were caught. Six were shot and killed. Two drowned. Five were listed as missing and presumed drowned. No one, by the Bureau of Prisons’ official accounting, escaped successfully.
The June 1962 attempt did not change that official accounting. What it did was create a question that has never been definitively answered, an open case that the United States Marshals Service carried for more than sixty years, and a piece of criminal ingenuity that remains one of the most studied prison escapes in American history.
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## Who Were These Men?
Understanding the June 1962 escape requires understanding who planned and executed it — not as folkloric heroes but as specific people with specific histories that explain both why they were at Alcatraz and why they were capable of what they achieved.