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THE SUDDEN (SUSPICIOUS?) DEATH OF U.S. PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING

One hundred years ago, on August 2nd, 1923, Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States, suddenly died in a San Francisco hotel room. He was 57 years old. Immediately—due to no autopsy insisted upon by the ironclad demand from his wife, Florence Harding, and the fact that his body was embalmed one hour after death—suspicious rumors of foul play circulated. Conspirators came in many forms. Corrupt politicians, scandal cover-ups, quack physicians, and foreign operatives. But the most sinister accusation of all was Harding being intentionally poisoned by his wife.

The official cause of death released in press statements by the attending doctors was a “probable cerebral apoplexy”. In other words, President Harding had a stroke, a fatal brain event. There was no mention of any toxicity through poison nor any suggestion of a chronic cardiac condition, a heart attack.

Harding’s body was returned by train to Washington, DC, lay in state for two days, then was transported again by train to his hometown of Marion, Ohio where he was entombed in a marble crypt. His wife, Florence, died the following year of kidney failure and came to rest beside him. As the years passed, the truth of the Harding Administration emerged. It became known as America’s most scandalous presidency.

Extramarital lovers, illegitimate children, political corruption, cronies, bribes, payoffs, and even suicides emerged that painted a black mark on Harding’s history. The persistent suspicion of cover-up in his death failed to go away. Today, there’s a consensus as to what really happened in Harding’s death. We’ll get to that conclusion but, first, let’s look at who Warren Harding was, how he got to the White House, and how he came to die in that San Francisco hotel room.

Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on November 3rd, 1865—the year the Civil War ended—on his grandfather’s farm near Blooming Grove, Ohio. His father was a small-town physician with a small practice that earned little money. His mother was a devoutly religious homemaker with eight children to care for, including Warren who was the oldest. Harding was an average student but a very strong boy with even stronger work ethic.

Following grade school, Harding attended Ohio Central College graduating in 1882 with a B.S. degree (which grounded him as a later politician). Here he  gained experience editing and publishing the college paper. After college, Harding worked at various jobs such as a barn painter, a railroad laborer, and a horse team driver. It was in Marion, Ohio where Warren Harding got his first business break.

Harding had saved enough money to purchase a failing newspaper in Marion. He parlayed it into a profitable venture in which he wore all hats—reporter, editor, and publisher. These roles allowed Harding to get well connected and form the “Marion Gang” whom he nepotistically took with him through his political career, including placing some of these friends and allies in high-ranking service jobs in the United States federal government. That was to come back and haunt him.

In the late 1880s, Warren Harding met Florence Kling at a community dance. He became smitten with Florence who was the daughter of a banker and Marion’s richest man. Amos Kling did not approve of Warren Harding and warned Florence that Harding “would never amount to anything”. He refused to speak to Harding.

Florence Harding went to work in their newspaper business. She also got active in his political ambitions. “The only things I know are publishing and politics,” Florence was quoted as saying. She was especially good at politics.

History—now one hundred years after Harding’s death—records Harding to be an excellent speaker, very personable with a great memory for people, a driven man, but not too bright. Florence was smart, and she used her intelligence to make connections and pave roads for Harding to travel as he moved up the Ohio political ladder.

Warren Harding served as an Ohio State Senator from 1900 to 1904. From then to 1906 he was the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, and in 1910 he ran as Ohio’s Governor but was defeated. Harding went back to the paper industry but in 1915 he entered federal politics and won a seat as a Senator for the State of Ohio. This opened doors in Washington.

The Republican national convention was deadlocked in the 1920 presidential selection race. Ultimately, the delegates chose Warren Harding as a compromise candidate. He went on to represent the Republicans as a moderate in the November 1920 presidential election. Together with running mate Calvin Coolidge, they won a landslide victory over the Democrats.

Warren G. Harding was inaugurated as the 29th United States President on March 4th, 1921. He ran on the slogan “Return to Normalcy” which fit his leadership style. America was only two years past the end of WWI and the public longed for a return to pre-war normal. The country was in a financial recession with what many Americans thought was unnecessary ties still with foreign countries.

Harding focused on a protectionist America by lowering taxes, increasing foreign tariffs, and getting the country out of the League of Nations process that dynamited Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. In one year after taking off, the country rebounded and began prosperity never seen before. It was the Roaring Twenties.

Warren Harding was a hands-off president. He appointed people he thought he could trust into high office and let them loose to do their jobs. His error was not holding them accountable and, given human nature, even his closest friends began to abuse their positions for personal gain.

Harding’s other error—his vice and weakness—was womanizing, drinking, and gambling. Rumors put him having secret tunnels under the White House where he would smuggle his girls in and ply them with illegal alcohol. (Remember, this era was the start of Prohibition.) Harding’s poker games were legendary as well as a well-known fact that he supported mistresses and had at least one illegitimate daughter. Warren and Florence were childless.

Among the brewing political and criminal crises was what’s known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. This involved an oil-producing region in Wyoming that held reserves set apart for the U.S. Navy. Harding had appointed his close Marion Gang friend, Albert B. Fall, as Secretary of the Interior who oversaw the federal lands at Teapot Dome and had the power to award oil production contracts. Fall pocketed hundreds of thousands of payoff money for preferential treatment. This scandal (among others), which Harding knew about, had the potential to have President Harding impeached.

It was under this stressful black cloud that Warren Harding departed Washington on his “Voyage of Understanding” cross-country train and ship tour in June of 1923. Members of Harding’s staff observed his health rapidly deteriorating. A once vibrant man with the world’s best handshake was notably nervous and privately conferring with advisors about how to diffuse the runaway in the Marion Gang.

“I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends… they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor at night,” Harding said to one aide. To another, “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly, or would you bury it?”

President Harding’s tour took him across the west and up to Alaska. He spoke before hundreds of thousands of common folks in places like St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Helena, and Spokane. He went to a small Alaskan village called Metlakatla, then did a by-stop in Vancouver, Canada before heading straight for San Francisco and checking into the Palace Hotel with an extensive entourage including the future president Herbert Hoover who was his Secretary of Commerce.

Harding’s health had been going downhill since leaving Washington. The stress of his job and unfolding issues gave him a malady then diagnosed as neurasthenia which is an overly nervous condition where the sufferer is unable to relax. Compounding this condition, including non-recognizing many presenting symptoms of bad physical health, was the president’s personal doctor.

Charles E. Sawyer was part of the Ohio Gang. Sawyer wasn’t a trained physician. He was an odd, self-taught homeopath who prescribed plants and birds and rocks and things (not sure about sand and hills and rings) as substitutes for accepted medical practices. But Sawyer was a likable, down-homey Oh-Hi-Yo officially forehead-stamp-approved by Mrs. Harding who saw Sawyer as a 1920s genuine guru teaching them a better way.

Harding also traveled with a real doctor—Joel T. Boone. Dr. Boone knew Harding was critically ill and telegrammed ahead from Alaska to San Francisco, having two of the country’s leading cardiology specialists standing by. These were Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, the president of the American Medical Society, and Dr. Charles Cooper, the leading cardiac surgeon in the USA.

Dr. Boone knew what was happening.  President Harding was presenting these symptoms:

  • Severe abdominal and thoracic pains as in a crushing weight on the chest
  • Pain radiating down both arms
  • Shortness of breath
  • Dyspnoea at night
  • Nausea
  • Severe bouts of indigestion
  • Off and on fever—chills & sweats
  • Exhaustion after little energetic effort
  • Foul acetonic breath

Dr. Boone knew President Harding was suffering congestive heart failure and likely experienced a series of myocardial infarctions where his enlarged heart muscles were quickly failing. Boone knew Harding’s heart was likely to stop, and that he would suddenly die.

That happened at 7:20 pm on August 2nd, 1923. President Harding was in his hotel suite with his wife and two nurse care aids. Florence was reading a favorable column in the Saturday Evening Post. Harding remarked, “That is good. Go on.”

Florence continued when, with only a shudder and not a sound, the President of the United States stiffened, laid back on the bed, and instantly died.

President Harding’s staff came into the room. That included Herbert Hoover and Doctors Sawyer, Boone, Wilbur, Cooper, and another cardiac expert, Hubert Work. These medical practitioners debated the primary cause of death.

They knew the American public would immediately want to know what happened to their Commander-in-Chief and be assured nothing illegal, conspirator, or dark was behind the president’s sudden and unexpected death—especially when the official reports released to the following press during the Voyage of Understanding assured that Warren Harding was a man fit to competently hold office and guide the nation.

The doctors knew, under the circumstances, that no conclusive cause of death could be established without a complete and thorough autopsy. To this, Florence Harding was fiercely opposed. As Doctor Wilbur put it in his notes written the next day, “We shall never know exactly the immediate cause of President Harding’s death since every effort that was made to secure an autopsy was met with complete and final refusal by Mrs. Harding.”

Knowing that the public must be notified of the president’s death as soon as possible and that they would demand to know what happened—what the true cause of death was—the team of five physicians signed this statement:

Realizing their rush to judgment without medical evidence (and strongly suspecting a myocardial infarction or a heart attack), they released this second statement twenty minutes later:

Stroke of Cerebral Apoplexy. Myocardial Infarction. Let’s look at what these medical terms mean.

So how did the 1923 American public and folks over the last one hundred years go from accepting that President Warren G. Harding died of natural causes to a conspirator suspicion that he was murdered—possibly by his wife?

I think a few reasons. One is the president’s staff poorly handled the president’s health information. One day the president was strong as an ox. The next day he died.

There was no autopsy. His body was embalmed an hour after death. And this was through an ironclad order from the wife, Florence Harding, who knew full well of her husband’s infidelity and unwinding scandals.

Note: I cannot find anything in historical notes to determine if there was a San Francisco coroner having jurisdiction and the authority to hold the body while an independent autopsy was done. Or if any other authorities like the SF police were notified.

The other factor was the collective doctors’ stick handling of the “probable cause of death.” They were aware of the public backlash for knowing how serious the president’s medical condition and the perception of them not being seen to do something about it and prevent his death, but they first wrote it off as an unpredictable and unpreventable stroke, not a preventable heart attack. From Dr. Wilbur’s notes:

“In the aftermath, we were belabored and attacked by the newspapers antagonistic to Harding, and by the cranks, quacks, antivisectionalists, nature healers, the Dr. Albert Abrams electronic-diagnostic group, and many others. We were accused of starving the president, overfeeding him to death, of assisting in slowly poisoning him, and plying him to death with pills and purgatives. We were accused of being abysmally ignorant, stupid and incompetent, and even of malpractice. We were said to have forced our way to Harding’s bedside “through political pull and for political reasons.”

But the craziest theory of them all came from a book written by Gaston B. Means in 1930 titled The Strange Death of President Harding. Means claimed that Florence Harding murdered her presidential husband with poison. Without a shred of evidence, Means suggested two motives. One was because of her husband’s cheating. The other was to save him the embarrassment of the scandals. Gaston Means, by the way, went to jail over a con job in scamming the Charles Lindberg baby homicide case.

One hundred years have passed since United States President Warren G. Harding passed. There’s no doubt Harding had a fatal heart attack. That’s life, but the fallout from living the presidential life sucks. Here are lines from Herbert Hoover while dedicating a memorial to President Harding:

We saw him gradually weaken not only from physical exhaustion but from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he trusted, by men whom he believed were his devoted friends. That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding.

NAHANNI — VALLEY OF THE HEADLESS HUMAN CADAVERS

Nahanni National Park Reserve in Canada’s Northwest Territories is an extremely remote, phenomenally pristine, and breathtakingly beautiful place. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site that’s visited by only those with the means and stamina to survive the ordeal. But despite being named the Holy Grail of whitewater bucket-list experiences, the Nahanni River holds a hostile history. It’s known as the valley of the headless human cadavers.

Since 1906 when the Nahanni River Valley was first explored by gold-seeking Europeans, 44 people have been reported as disappeared or found dead in the region. 6 of them were missing their heads and lying beside burned-out camps. There’s a local legend—some say supernatural suspicion—that explains this mystery. We’ll explore this phenomenon in a bit but, first, let’s look at the Nahanni itself.

To call the Nahanni remote is an understatement. The park covers 11,602 square miles and lies north of latitude 60 on the western side of Canada’s Arctic. Its boundary starts 300 miles from the nearest center of Yellowknife and, to put the distance in perspective, Nahanni is 3,570 crow-flying miles from downtown Manhattan.

Nahanni’s geology is utterly unique. It’s a blend of towering, icy-cold mountains and lush green river bottoms fueled by 250 smouldering hot-spring caverns creating mists of sulfuric air, giving the Nahanni valley an eerie, otherworld persona. From extreme winter cold dropping to fifty-plus below through to short, but warm and humid summers, the Nahanni is truly a place of extremes.

There are no human settlements in the Nahanni. The only access is regulated through permits issued by Parks Canada whose wardens act as oversight to the few who enter. Most visitors are wealthy adventurers who access the wilderness by floatplane and enjoy guided whitewater excursions along the 210-mile route that pounds through four canyons with 9,000-foot granite guardians. One stretch, at Virginia Falls, drops twice the height of Niagara with a nearly equal volume of water.

About 300 humans visit Nahanni per year but the park is teeming with life. According to Parks Canada, there are 42 mammal, 181 bird, 16 fish, 700 vascular plant, and 300 bryophyte lichen species recorded. Grizzly bears and wolf packs are the food chain’s apex… unless you consider the region’s winner of the most vicious creation award—the wolverine.

Speaking of humans, the Nahanni records 10,000 years of indigenous inhabitation. Human artifacts dating back to the age of the mastodon and the now-extinct bear dog have been excavated by archeologists. Clearly, the interaction between people and Nahanni’s nature has been ongoing for a long, long time.

Today, the Dene are the region’s First Nations people. They populate the southern and eastern areas outside the park but are the legal ancestorial owners of the land. However, according to Dene oral history, the Nahanni was once occupied by a small and separate tribe known as the Naha who mysteriously disappeared around the time of the white man’s arrival. Naha, in the Dene language, means “people from the Nahanni River Valley”.

European contact began in the late 1800s when Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders set up posts along the Mackenzie River which lies to the east of Nahanni and to which the Nahanni waters flow on their journey to the Arctic Ocean. The fur trade flourished, and native-white contact continued throughout the Yukon Gold Rush of 1898 and onward.

It was inevitable that gold fever would boil over from the Yukon into the Northwest Territories. The lure of gold does something to the human psyche where normal people will do abnormal things. This is where our story of the valley of the headless human cadavers begins, and I’ll outline the 6 specific cases.

Brothers Frank and Willie McLeod — In the summer of 1906, two Scottish brothers from Fort Liard ventured into the Nahanni valley in search of gold. They never returned. A 1908 search party found the pair deceased in a burned-out camp. The bodies were skeletonized and both their heads were gone. Today, the camp’s river tributary junction that runs into the Nahanni River is called Headless Creek, and the localized area is Deadman’s Valley.

Martin Jorgenson — He attempted to become a permanent Nahanni Valley resident. In 1917, Jorgenson, who was a Swiss prospector, relocated from the Yukon and built a small cabin in Nahanni. That same year Jorgenson’s cabin was burned, and his headless body lay nearby.

“Yukon” Fisher — This man lost his head in 1927 near the spot that claimed the McLeod brothers. “Yukon” Fisher was a part-time gold prospector and a part-time outlaw. He was wanted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Yukon and had fled to the Nahanni. Also like the McLeods, Fisher was found decapitated in a burned camp.

Phil Powers — In 1931, Phil Powers became the fifth poor soul to become beheaded in the Nahanni. His campsite, too, was consumed by fire.

The Unidentified Headless Man — Although this man (suspected to have come from Ontario) was never named, he joined the list of headless cadavers of the Nahanni Valley. It was in 1945. The body was wrapped in a sleeping bag lying beside a burned tent.

A list of names and suspected murder victims goes on through the Valley of the Nahanni. Angus Hall, Joe Mulholland, Bill Epier, and Annie Laferte disappeared without a trace. Hall and Laferte left nothing, but the cabin shared by Mulholland and Epier was—you guessed it—burned to the ground.

So, what was behind all this burning and beheading? If you search the legends, you’ll find these explanations:

The Nahanni Valley Monster — This creature is Bigfoot-like, and it likes to behead and burn white men.

The Evil Spirit — It’s a weather spirit that’s said to haunt the Nahanni, making its presence known with otherworldly shrieks on cold nights.

Giants — It’s also said that a race of Giants inhabit the Nahanni and cook their meals in Rabbitkettle Hotsprings.

Prehistoric Creatures — Native hunters and trappers speak of elders describing creatures that match known prehistoric animals like mastodons and bear dogs.

The Waheela — This is a huge, wolf-like being linked to deaths in Nahanni Valley.

The Nuk-Luk — Picture a short, bearded man who is half-naked and carrying a huge club.

Naha: The vanished tribe.

Dene oral history tells of a sub-tribe called the Naha (who were similar to the Dene and who spoke the same language) that lived in the Nahanni mountains, descending down to the valley floor to make war on trespassers. The Dene were fearful of the Naha and steered clear of the upper and central Nahanni region to avoid confrontation. The story goes that the Naha were a small band of maybe a dozen individuals that mysteriously disappeared in the mid-twentieth century.

Some Dene claim the Naha returned to the land where both tribes have connections, somewhere in the southwest United States. There may be some truth to this as Dene is an Athabaskan language and is linguistically similar to the Navajo and Apache dialects. To use the crow-fly measurement, the distance between the Nahanni and the Navajo/Apache lands is approximately 2400 miles—hardly a big deal by 1950 and an age of public transit.

But a more likely scenario is this. The Naha, a small group, occupied the upper and central regions of Nahanni. They were fiercely protective of their lands and not tolerant of invaders—not the Dene and certainly not the white gold seekers. It makes sense that these Naha warriors would eliminate threats to their land and their livelihood. Killing intruders, cutting off their heads, and burning their possessions would certainly send a “Keep Out” message. Eventually, a fight between intruding whites and the Naha wiped out the indigenous folks.

No, I can’t buy into the monster, the evil spirits, the giants, prehistoric creatures, the Waheela, the Nuk-Luk, or the weather theories. Supernatural entities and harsh climates cannot behead bodies and burn down cabins. In my opinion, it was the Naha who caused the headless human cadavers and, ultimately, it cost them their lives.

DID THREE PRISONERS REALLY SURVIVE THEIR ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ?

Over the night of June 11/12, 1962 three inmates broke out of the United States maximum-security penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They carved their way through concrete cell walls with crudely-made tools and entered a mechanical service corridor leading outside. Once over the perimeter fence, the trio fled into cold Pacific waters on a makeshift raft. The felons were never seen again. That left many to speculate whether the fugitives drowned or… if the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz.

Alcatraz Island is a forbidding place. It’s a rugged rock just inside the entrance to San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge. Alcatraz is highly visible from the city’s shoreline and is a well-known landmark around the world. It was once also viewed as the perfect place to build a prison.

The lunar-like landmass covers 12 acres and hosts a hostile environment. Its tidal currents run fast and cold making Alcatraz a navigational challenge. An experienced yachts-person would think twice about trying to row around Alcatraz, especially in the dead of night. Even champion swimmers equipped with wetsuits struggle with the 1.5 mile trip to the shore.

The Spanish Navy first “discovered” Alcatraz and named it La Isla de los Alcacatraces which translates to “Pelican Island” after the archaic Spanish word for the bird. There doesn’t seem to be an aboriginal name for the Island because the original settlers probably found the barren place rather worthless.

The United States Army didn’t think that. They saw Alcatraz as the ideal spot for a military jail and developed it in the 1850s. Over time, Alcatraz Island served as a lockup and lighthouse. Common thinking held that no self-respecting prisoner would attempt something as crazy as a swimming escape from “The Rock”.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons felt the same way. In 1933, the Army relinquished Alcatraz to the Justice Department who needed a secure facility to house the worst of the worst offenders. Criminals like Al Capone, Machinegun Kelly, Alvin “Creepy” Karpas, and Robert Stroud (the psychotic Birdman of Alcatraz) served sentences in the “prison system’s prison”.

Alcatraz was a state-of-the-art, super-max facility for its time. There was a one-guard-to-three-inmate ratio with each felon occupying a single cell. But, despite the precautions, it was here in 1962 that three little-known, bank-robbing hoods made their famous escape from Alcatraz.

Frank Lee Morris (Inmate #AZ1441) was born in 1926 to a terribly dysfunctional family. He was orphaned at age 11 and was so incorrigible that foster homes refused to have him. By 13, Morris was already in jail for crimes ranging from armed robbery to narcotic trafficking. Prison authority tests placed Frank Morris in the top 2 percent of inmates when it came to intelligence with a 133 IQ. He was a leader, a conman, and a calculator. Morris arrived on Alcatraz in 1960 with a 10-year bank robbery sentence.

John William Anglin (Inmate #AZ1476) was an east-coast criminal. He was also a broken-home product in a family of 13 kids birthed by migrant farmworkers. John Algrin was 30 years old when he arrived on Alcatraz in the fall of 1960. His sentence was 15-20 years for a string of Alabama bank robberies committed with his younger brother Clarence.

Clarence Anglin (Inmate #AZ1485) was a year behind his brother John in age. However, he was just as bad when it came to criminal behavior. Clarence Anglin’s first conviction was for breaking into a service station when he was 14 and he continued on from there. He entered Alcatraz in January 1961 with a 20-year penalty earned after 10 years of robbing everything from banks to brothels.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers didn’t meet in Alcatraz. They went back to being co-inmates in a Florida prisoner where they made repeated escape attempts. Deemed candidates for the Alcatraz treatment, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons sequentially classified them as high-risk offenders and transferred them to The Rock one-by-one. Somehow, the three were assigned to adjacent cells.

The Morris-Anglin escape plan started in December 1961. That was six months before the breakout which gave them plenty of time to think and prepare. Their plan was elaborate, and it took a tremendous amount of coordination and cooperation with the inmate population to pull off. It seems the inevitable escape was one of the worst-kept secrets inside the criminals’ culture.

The escapees used self-made tools modified from old saw blades and kitchen utensils to chip concrete around existing ventilation ducts at floor level in their cells. Their creativity extended to using a power drill made from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor which they ran during music hour in the evening. To conceal their tunneling, they fabricated fake ventilation covers painted on cardboard.

The enlarged vent ducts gave them access to a 3-foot wide service corridor that was unpatrolled. This led to a larger area where they smuggled-in around 50 rubber raincoats donated by other inmates. The investigation later showed Morris and the Anglins built an inflatable raft and blow-up life jackets with the raincoats by vulcanizing the rubber on the facility’s steam pipes.

To inflate the raft and personal flotation devices (PFDs), they got even more ingenious. They pilfered a musical instrument called a concertina which is an accordion-like device they converted into a bellows. The trio also sourced wood scraps and screws to build paddles.

On the escape night, the three simulated themselves in bed by stuffing clothes and towels under the blankets to build body shapes. What really topped-off their attention to detail was fabricating human heads with paper mache that were authentically painted with flesh tones. They even attached human hair sourced from the Alcatraz barbershop.

Getting out of the prison facility took some doing. The fleeing felons used a ventilation shaft from the corridor to climb to the roof and then shinnied two stories down to the ground along service lines. Then, they faced inner and outer perimeter fences topped with barbed wire before making the shore.

How they hauled the raft, paddles, and some limited personal effects through this route is not clear. It took determination and considerable physical dexterity. However, the cons did it, and it worked.

The three were discovered missing during the 7 am stand-to and head-count. This set off a massive search done by the prison officials with the help of the local police and the Coast Guard. Bit-by-bit, pieces of their escape showed up.

Alcatraz Island National Park sits to the south-west of San Francisco Bay. It’s 1 ½ miles north of downtown San Francisco, about 3 ½ miles east of the Golden Gate Bridge and Horseshoe Bay in Marin County, and just over 2 miles south of Angel Island. Alcatraz is also slightly under 3 miles west of Treasure Island.

The searchers found their evidence near Angel Island. That included a broken paddle, two deflated life vests, shreds of raincoat material, and a wallet containing contact information for the Anglin relatives. Examination of one life jacket noted deep teeth marks in the inflation piece indicating that the wearer may have been struggling against air loss.

The main search lasted for two weeks. There were no signs of the Anglins or Morris, either alive or dead. Who aided the investigation was Allen West, an Alcatraz inmate who was part of the escape plot but couldn’t get through his enlarged ventilation duct in time to join the party.

West cooperated in exchange for immunity from punishment. He revealed the planning and the escapee’s intentions. According to West, the plot was to paddle the raft west from Alcatraz and land near Horseshoe Bay near the north end of Golden Gate Bridge. Here, they intended to steal clothes, a vehicle, rob some money, and then head for the Mexican border.

The investigators took West seriously. They followed every lead linking to car thefts, clothes swiping, and hold-ups. Nothing even remotely matched a modus operandi that indicated the trio had landed anywhere in the San Francisco Bay region.

Over time, many tips came in but nothing panned out. Some information was well-intended but wrong. Others were obviously pranks and hoaxes. There was one reported sighting of a man’s body floating in the Bay area that described it as wearing denim clothes consistent with prison garb. It was never found.

Another lead surfaced years later, and it came along with photographs. A long-time con-man claimed to have seen the Anglin brothers in Brazil and took their photos. By this time, the FBI had closed the case after writing off the escapees as having succumbed to hypothermia and drowned on the night of their mission. The U.S. Marshalls, however, took the photos seriously and sent investigators to Brazil. Nothing amounted to this but, today, there’s still speculation it might have been them.

So, what are the chances the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz?

The answer lies in the water. The reason authorities selected Alcatraz as a maximum-security prison site was because of how nasty the water conditions surrounding the island were. The temperature, currents, and wind conditions made this spot nearly impossible to cross without the right knowledge, timing, and equipment.

San Francisco Bay is a large water body that drains about 40 percent of California. Combining its inlets and estuaries, the bay area exceeds 1,500 square miles. That water gets flushed twice a day by ebb and flow tides that have to pass through the mile-wide Golden Gate narrows. This creates tremendous current action and some of the fastest waters on the California coast.

The logical escape plan for Morris and his Anglin accomplices would be to use the tide currents to their advantage. That would have to be when the ebb or outward action was happening, and the currrent would carry them from Alcatraz to their apparent destination near Horseshoe Bay on the Marin County shore. This would move them the fastest and minimize their paddling.

If they didn’t plan their water trip with a favorable tide, the flow tide would carry them into the bay and swirl their raft like in a toilet bowl. Surely these convicts who went to an elaborate escape effort would have considered the tide timing. That’s exactly what Allen West said they did.

Historical tide records are available online at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website. A little Googling found the tidal information for San Francisco Bay at the Alcatraz Island area for the night of Monday, June 11 and Tuesday, June 12, 1962. Here’s what was going on:

  • High tide of 5.24 feet at 7:11 pm on June 11
  • Low tide of 1.47 feet at 1:39 am on June 12
  • High tide of 3.69 feet at 7:27 am on June 12

To understand tide-talk, the figures 5.24 feet, 1.46 feet, and 3.69 feet refer to water levels above the mean or average low watermark. An important part of tidal water navigation is working with what’s called slack tide. This is the short period between ebb and flow when the current is neutral.

Low slack tide happened between Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate narrows at 1:39 am on the Tuesday morning. Before that, there was a strong ebb or outflow current moving a significant water exchange between the earlier high at 5.24 feet and the low at 1.47 feet. That meant that 3.77 feet of water depth changed from a 1,500 square mile bay area and sent it whooshing beside Alcatraz and under the bridge.

Should the escapees have missed their window of opportunity from the prison “lights-out” at 10:00 pm and the low slack time at 1:39 am, they’d have faced an incoming flow tide returning a 2.22 foot rise in water coming back into San Francisco Bay. It would’ve been a challenge to paddle a homemade raft into that force.

So, it looks like the escapees had about 3 ½ hours to crawl out of their cells, haul their gear over the fence, and catch a favorable tide to make it 3 ½  miles to freedom at Horseshoe Bay. That seems do-able… except for the wild card.

Every trained mariner respects the wind. Air movement can be good or bad depending on your vessel type and travel direction. More Google exploration found the San Francisco weather records for June 11/12, 1962. It was a cool and cloudy night with a west to southwest wind coming in off the open Pacific at a steady 10-13 mile-per-hour blow with gusts up to 21 miles-per-hour.

The escapees and their blow-up raft would have paddled into an oncoming wind which certainly would have worked against the tide power. In fact, this combination of an inflow wind hitting an outflow tide makes for choppy surface conditions, especially in shallow water. The wind and tide action also create whirlpools which seriously suck to paddle through.

San Francisco Bay is notoriously shallow as large inlets go. That’s a major reason why the U.S. Navy chose San Diego as a main port over more centrally-located San Francisco. The average depth of San Francisco Bay is 20 feet which is less than the draft on most freighter ships. The deepest part of the bay is a 300-foot underwater canyon on the north side of the Golden Gate narrows that creates significant turbulence during tide changes.

It’s an understatement to say the water surface conditions were challenging for the escapees. It seems obvious they intentionally chose that period to run as it gave them the best odds of making it. They had favorable moonlight conditions with a ¾ waxing image being blocked by high cloud. According to weather records, nautical twilight occurred at 9:42 pm on June 11 and nautical sunrise occurred at 4:37 am. Therefore, they certainly had the cover of darkness.

Weather records indicate there was no rain, there was a high barometric pressure of 102.1, and a relatively cool nighttime air temperature of 48-50 degrees Fahrenheit. With the windchill, it would feel more like the mid-40s. The water temperature was a different story. NOAA recorded the waters surrounding Alcatraz to be 47 degrees Fahrenheit on the outflow and 50 degrees Fahrenheit on the inflow. That’s due to the colder freshwater coming into San Francisco from the Sacramento River’s spring melt and the warmer Pacific saltwater returning.

There’s a picture emerging of three desperate men with little tidal water experience making an untested run for freedom using their human technology against nature’s elements. The escapees calculated their timing to use darkness and an ebb tide to carry them along, so they took their chances. What they may have failed to consider is the subterranean characteristics of the bay and air power.

Their raft was also untested. Same with their life jackets. It’s hard to say what happened once the men’s weight put pressure on the inflated raft and jacket seams. Leaks likely started early in their journey, and this would have made paddling hard. Probably, the harder they struggled, the more force they exerted on their raft and buoyancy devices which possibly failed.

If Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin ended up in the water, their life-expectancy would be limited. An average man, with a thin build like these escapes had, would go numb within a few minutes. According to charts by the U. S. Coast Guard , in water temperature between 41 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, this scenario would happen:

  • Shock  Setting — 1 to 3 minutes
  • Exhaustion Onset — 30 to 60 minutes
  • Certain Death — 1 to 3 hours

Did the escapees survive? We’ll likely never know for sure. There is no conclusive proof one way or the other. There are urban legends and family suggestions that at least the Anglin brothers made it to safety, but you have to question the source. It’s theoretically possible for three men in a rubber boat to go from their cells to shore in a 3 ½ hour period, but they’d need a dose of luck from the escape gods.

However, their bodies have never been found. Some historical unidentified remains were recently examined through DNA testing which eliminated the Anglins from being a recovered John Doe. So far, forensic investigators haven’t been able to rule out Frank Morris, as he has no known living relatives to get a DNA comparison standard from.

If the Anglins and Morris did perish in San Francisco Bay, it’s not surprising their bodies didn’t surface – especially if their life vests failed. Typically, human bodies initially sink when immersed in water. Bodies then respond to environmental conditions like temperature and salinity.

San Francisco Bay was cold in June of 1962. It also had high freshwater content due to the late-spring runoff. Bodies tend to float better in saltwater than freshwater, but they need a reasonable amount of gas to do so. With the ambient temperature being so low, it’s unlikely there’d be sufficient postmortem gas generated to cause buoyancy. If the men sank, the tidal action would have pushed them around for a while and then dropped them off in the deepness of the sea where they’d permanently decompose.

On the balance of probabilities, it’s unlikely the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz. However, there’s always a chance given the time frame they had. If they did and were still alive, they’d be old men by now. The FBI gave up the chase a long time ago, but the U. S. Marshalls still have an open file. They have a reward for you… if you can find them.