Over the years, the US Marshals’ position has been that “it is possible” Morris and the Anglin brothers survived the escape. But after the letter came to light in January 2018, one of their representatives questioned the letter’s legitimacy to The Washington Post, claiming he believed it was a fake.
A quote from the Post’s article stated: “The Marshals Service has continued to investigate leads and said it will do so until the men are proven deceased, or until they turn 99.” The FBI saw things differently when they decided to call off the search in 1979; this was their take: “For the 17 years we worked on the case, no credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the U.S. or overseas.”
The Real Deal?
These are the terms set in the letter: “If you announce on TV that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke…”
But before the deal was even considered, the letter itself had to be investigated to see if any other information about its authenticity and origin could be discovered. An intensive analysis was done of every aspect of the letter in an attempt to unlock its secrets. The police knew it had something priceless in their hands.
Authenticity
The US Marshals handed the letter over to the FBI, who then tested the paper extensively. They checked for trace DNA evidence, dusted for fingerprints, and ran handwriting analysis using the three escapees' writing samples from when they were locked up. But did they find anything?
San Francisco’s local CBS affiliate, KPIX, published the letter and reported on the investigation. According to them, “the FBI’s results were inconclusive.” A security expert on the channel gave the following perplexing quote as to the letter’s authenticity, saying the FBI’s conclusion: “means yes, and it means no, so this leaves everything in limbo.”
The Last Man on Alcatraz
Jim Albright, the very last guard to leave Alcatraz prison, was interviewed by ABC 7, a local TV affiliate in San Francisco, to commemorate 55 years of the prison’s closing in March 2018. He worked there during the escape and was asked about his beliefs regarding the men’s fate. Does he think they drowned, or did they survive as claimed in the letter?
This is what he had to say: “It depends on whether you’re talking to me or you’re talking to their mother. I believe they drowned, I really do.” Albright believed that the man who wrote the letter, pretending to be John Anglin, was a very sick man who needed treatment for his cancer and was using the famous escapee’s name to get help.
U.S. Marshals Respond
The only reason the public even learned about the letter was its publication on KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco. The station received a copy of it from an anonymous source. After the letter was published, the US Marshals made the following statement.
“There is absolutely no reason to believe that any of them would have changed their lifestyle and became completely law-abiding citizens after this escape.” The US Marshals are the only ones still on the case, so they probably know what they are talking about. What do you think happened? Will the truth ever come out?