If a confirmed body had been found — a body matched by DNA or dental records or fingerprints to Frank Morris or either Anglin brother — the case would have been closed differently. The closure of the FBI case in 1979 was the result of seventeen years of investigation producing no such confirmation in either direction. The official position is “probable drowning” because that is what the evidence supports, and it is “probable” rather than “confirmed” because the evidence for drowning is itself entirely inferential.
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## The Escape That Closed Alcatraz (and Didn’t)
A persistent misconception places the June 1962 escape as the event that caused Alcatraz to close. The closure happened, and the escape happened, and they happened close together in time, but the relationship between them is more complicated than a simple cause and effect.
Robert F. Kennedy, as Attorney General, had initiated a review of the federal prison system’s costs and operations in 1961 — before the escape. The economic case for closing Alcatraz was compelling and predated the June 1962 events: the facility cost roughly $10 per prisoner per day to operate, compared to approximately $3 at comparable mainland facilities. The island’s infrastructure was aging, its maintenance expensive, and its fresh water supply had to be shipped in by barge. A new federal prison in Marion, Illinois, was being developed as an alternative high-security facility that would not carry the island’s overhead.
The June 1962 escape added to the institutional pressure but did not create it. The escape demonstrated that Alcatraz was not, in fact, perfectly escape-proof — a demonstration that weakened the institutional rationale for the premium cost. But the closure had been in planning before the escape, and the timeline of the actual closure — March 21, 1963, ten months after the escape — was consistent with a planning process that had been underway for some time before June 1962.