West’s exact role in the escape plan has been disputed since the morning of June 12, 1962. When investigators interviewed him in the hours after the escape was discovered, he claimed to have been the mastermind. Officials were skeptical. J. Campbell Bruce, the author of a detailed account of Alcatraz escapes, credited Morris with the planning. Former inmate Darwin Coon later named John Anglin as the originator. The truth about who first conceived the plan is not documented in any primary source that is both credible and unambiguous.
What is not disputed is that West did not make it out. His role in the story of June 1962 is defined both by what he contributed and by what failed at the last moment.
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## Planning in Secret: The Six-Month Preparation
By most accounts, the planning began in earnest around December 1961. Morris and the Anglin brothers had adjacent cells on the B block corridor — a physical proximity that made coordination possible. Allen West’s cell was nearby. They communicated across the cellblock in ways that prison guards either did not detect or did not connect to anything specific.
The central mechanical challenge was getting out of the cells themselves. The cellhouse at Alcatraz had been built on a design that placed utility corridors behind the cells, containing electrical conduits, water pipes, and ventilation ducts. Each cell had a ventilation duct opening at the back wall, behind the sink. The ducts were protected by grilles that were standard prison hardware — not the reinforced obstacles one might expect from a facility of Alcatraz’s reputation.