Riddle Of The Rock [Hardcover]

In 1962, three prisoners escaped from their cells at the Alcatraz prison located on an island in San Francisco Bay. The escape was planned and executed over many months. It required the men find a way to exit from and return to their cells on a nightly basis; climb three floors of cells to the inner side of the cellhouse roof; find a way to remove two sets of bars on a ventilator shaft; remove the ventilator; move across the roof of the cell house and climb down and finally make their way to the water's edge. All this had to be done without discovery by the guards.

Then, the escapees had to get off the island by crossing the bay, either to San Francisco to the south or Marin County to the north. Between 1934 - the year the prison opened - and 1962 - the year it closed - no one had successfully made this last journey. And, if you believe prison officials, no one ever did.

Author DeNevi disagrees. It's his contention that two, possibly all three, of the escapees - the two Anglin brothers and Frank Morris - did escape and made their way to Florida. The key to their success rests on DeNevi's theory the men had help from people inside and outside the prison. The help - specifically a boat waiting off the island to pick up the men and deliver them south of San Francisco where land transportation was available - allowed them to get several hundred miles away before the guards were alerted to the escape.

Nor is the author alone in this belief the men got away. Individuals in various law enforcement agencies - among them the FBI and police in Florida - think the escape could have been successful.

To be sure, there is conflicting evidence and conclusions based on negatives. The men's bodies were never found; however, not all bodies that have gone into the bay are found. Personal items of the three were found drifting in the bay; but this might have been done deliberately to put the authorities off the scent.

But, to my mind, the biggest problem centers on the leap of faith needed to get that boat off Alcatraz on the night in question. Without revealing too much of the plot, I'll just say that doing so required the plan be communicated to someone outside the prison under conditions where all messages were scrutinized and that another message could be sent resulting in immediate action. It's here that I felt the story became less probable though not impossible.

This is DeNevi's second book on Alcatraz. His first dealt with an infamous escape attempt in 1946 that left both guards and prisoners dead. It was one of those involved who - during an interview with the author - told of the plans behind the 1962 escapes.

A book well worth reading if only for the pleasure of conjecture over what is described and developing one's own opinion of whether they got away with it.

The Riddle of the Rock is truly an amazing story. Being a person who is fairly "obsessed" with prison breakouts this is a great book seeing as it describes the biggest of all. It first tells the history of the Anglin brothers and a small story of Alcatraz. It then tells of the escape, ending with almost the next 100 pages on the aftermath. Definitely worth it - God and Guns

Well written, covers the 1946 3 day battle as well. It speculates that Morris and the Anglin brothers might have been picked up by a boat.

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