News Article

Blue & Gold Fleet Posts One Million Dollar Reward Leading to the Arrest of Escaped Alcatraz Prisoners Frank Lee Morris, John William Anglin and Clarence Anglin.

San Francisco's Blue & Gold Fleet posts a 1 million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of escaped Alcatraz federal prisoners Frank Lee Morris, and brothers John William Anglin and Clarence Anglin. The missing criminals escaped from Alcatraz 41 years ago, but are still being pursued by the exclusive ferry service provider to Alcatraz, Blue & Gold Fleet. To aid in the quest for the trio of missing inmates, John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted, featured the intriguing story entitled "The Great Escapes" on his national television show on Saturday, May 3, 2003.

The Blue & Gold Fleet wants to resolve this decades old mystery by soliciting the help of the public to find Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin Brothers. Realizing that the men are now in their 70s they're still worth capturing to put a lawful end to the mysterious manhunt. It was on the evening of June 11, 1962 when the three convicts pulled off the seemingly impossible caper successfully orchestrating their elaborate plan.

Frank Heaney, former Alcatraz guard and author of the book, Inside the Walls of Alcatraz says, "I personally would like to come face to face with these inmates to set the record straight, in order to accurately rewrite the history of Alcatraz."

For valid information leading to the arrest of the above named criminals, the public is encouraged to notify the Blue & Gold Fleet at 415.705.8200, or notify America's Most Wanted at 1-800-CRIME-TV. Reward will be paid to the first person who provides information May 3, 2003 to June 3, 2003. Fugitives must still be alive.

Open to the public since 1973, Alcatraz is a 22-acre island in San Francisco Bay, and is designated part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. More than 1 million national and international visitors tour the federal penitentiary annually.

A Film On a Case That Shut Alcatraz

By BERNARD WEINRAUB,

Published: March 3, 1994

The time is 1939. Prisoners, shackled to one another, climb off a barge onto a dock. Guards armed with shotguns hover nearby. "Welcome to Alcatraz," says one guard in an unwelcome voice.

Marc Rocco, the director, is shooting a scene for the film "Murder in the First," on the site of what was once this country's most infamous prison. Speaking in a whisper, Kirk Petruccelli, the movie's production designer, said: "At night it's very scary, very mysterious here. When the fog rolls in, it's unbelievably eerie. You almost hear voices."

The voices depicted in this film, which is to be released next fall, are based on a real-life drama Hollywood studios have flirted with for years: the brutal imprisonment of Henri Young, an impoverished youth whose act of petty theft more than 50 years ago set off a chain of events that helped lead to the closing of the "Rock" as a Federal penitentiary in 1963. Robert F. Kennedy, then the Attorney General, cited the case as one reason for shutting down the prison, isolated on an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

Alcatraz, which is now a tourist attraction run by the National Park Service, has an on-screen history of its own. "Birdman of Alcatraz," starring Burt Lancaster, is probably the best-known movie set in the prison. And Warner Brothers, which by coincidence is making "Murder in the First," used it as a reference point in countless gangster movies of the 1930's, in which guys named Louie were given a one-way ticket to the Rock. A Dark and Foggy Night

It was on a foggy night in 1939 that Henri Young and four other inmates tried to escape from Alcatraz. Kevin Bacon portrays Henri Young in "Murder in the First," Christian Slater is his Ivy League lawyer, Gary Oldman plays a vicious warden and Embeth Davidtz -- who played Helen Hirsch, the brutalized maid, in "Schindler's List" -- is Mr. Slater's law colleague and lover.

Mr. Rocco, the 30-year-old director, said that some of the characters are composites, but that the story of Henri Young is intact. "What this is, is really the story of these two men, coming from totally opposite sides of the tracks and realizing their common bond," Mr. Rocco said of the convict and his lawyer. "But it's also a commentary about a prison system that was unbelievably horrible."

The movie, budgeted at $20 million, is Mr. Rocco's first large-scale production. His last film, "Where the Day Takes You," about homeless teen-agers in Hollywood, received mixed reviews but led to a burst of interest among studios and agents.

He was offered a number of scripts, including "Murder in the First," written by Dan Gordon. The script, based largely on newspaper articles, had been circulating in Hollywood for several years, with many stars, including Tom Cruise, toying with the project.

Mr. Rocco, the son of the actor Alex Rocco, revised the screenplay with Mr. Gordon after spending nearly nine months researching the case in archives, libraries and watching newsreel and archival scenes. He also interviewed former convicts and lawyers.

"I didn't want to make this a Hollywood version of a courtroom or prison drama," he said, walking into the prison exercise yard. "But there's always a battle in this kind of film. The studio's inclination is not to make it too dark, too real. My inclination is to make it as real as possible." A Poor Boy's Story

The real Henri Young was an impoverished teen-ager in the Depression who stole $5 from a store that also doubled as a Post Office. As a result, his crime was a Federal offense. He was sent to the Leavenworth Federal penitentiary in Kansas. He tried to escape, was seized, became a troublemaker and was deemed incorrigible by prison authorities. At that point, he was sent to Alcatraz.

On Jan. 13, 1939, he and four other men tried to escape on a raft. One, Arthur (Doc) Barker, the youngest son of the infamous bank robber Ma Barker, was killed. The others, including Young, were seized, apparently after a prisoner betrayed them to authorities. For the killing of an Inmate, Young was placed in a dungeon in brutal confinement for three years. Hours after his release from solitary, he confronted the man who had betrayed him in the prison dining room. In front of hundreds of prisoners, Young killed the man with a spoon.

His trial, however, led to revelations about brutality against him in the dungeon. A jury condemned his treatment in Alcatraz, and convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, which at the time was tantamount to a verdict of manslaughter by reason of insanity. The trial was a triumph for Young, and led to improved conditions in Alcatraz. But two years later, Young committed suicide there. 'I Almost Went Nuts'

Mr. Bacon, who shed 25 pounds and shaved his head for the role, said he was "totally spooked" by the part. He spent a night in solitary confinement on a film set just before "Murder in the First" began shooting, and nearly three weeks, from morning to night, making the movie in the dungeon.

"To be honest, I almost went nuts playing this part," said Mr. Bacon as he sat in his spartan dressing room, which is a former cell. "There's no light. It's wet. You're in shackles. You're naked. It's horribly cold. There are rats and bugs. It was a nightmare. And I was in a controlled situation. I can't imagine living it."

"There's nothing more boring than actors talking about how the parts we play influence our lives," Mr. Bacon continued. "That's kind of nonsense. But this part, well, psychologically, I was a basket case. It's all pain. It's all so raw. There's no break. There's no good day. It's all anguish."

As Mr. Bacon spoke, he rose and walked past the former cell of Robert Stroud, the "birdman of Alcatraz," perhaps the most famous prisoner on the island. Mr. Stroud spent 43 years in solitary confinement after killing a prison guard in 1916. He spent 17 years in Alcatraz. In his cell -- 12 feet long and 6 feet wide with a small, barred window -- Mr. Stroud gained extraordinary fame as a breeder and caretaker of birds. He died at the age of 73 in 1963, the year after "Birdman of Alcatraz" was released. "I have never had any fear of death, probably because most of my life has been so miserable," Stroud said before his death.

Mr. Slater, Mr. Bacon's co-star, described the prison as hideous. "It was supposed to be this facility for all these outlaws and gangsters, a place they couldn't escape from," he said. "But they had to fill it up so they ended up taking smaller criminals and treating them horrifically, like they were murderers. An unbelievable place." Of Inmates and Altar Boys

Although Alcatraz has been closed as a Federal prison for decades, its history -- and memories -- remain powerful. Frank Heaney, a former guard who helped with research for the film and who serves as a consultant on prisons for other movies, said he had met some of the more notorious inmates, including George (Machine Gun) Kelly.

"A good inmate, an altar boy," Mr. Heaney said of him. "Of course, Al Capone was an altar boy, too."

Mr. Heaney left Alcatraz when he was drafted during the Korean War. He never returned to that job.

"It was the most depressing job," he said while riding on the tugboat from San Francisco to the island. "If you were a guard, you lived on the island, too. You lived right at the prison. That got to me. You had some of the most violent and difficult inmates right there. There were no radios, no paroles, no rehabilitation. It made you kind of despondent."

Mr. Heaney grew up in Berkeley, Calif., and became a guard at the age of 18, he said, after seeing too many movies about prisons. "I saw all those Pat O'Brien and George Raft movies, and I was enthralled," he said. "But then I became a guard and realized Hollywood prison movies were all wrong. I wasn't prepared for the real thing. The real thing was pretty bad."

Correction: April 6, 1994, Wednesday

An article on March 3 about the filming of "Murder in the First," a movie based on the life of a 1930's convict named Henri Young, included several erroneous descriptions of events in his life supplied by the film makers. A March 16 letter from the Federal Bureau of Prisons points out that Mr. Young went to Alcatraz after serving time in two state prisons for burglary and robbery. His subsequent Federal crime was bank robbery, not theft from a post office. He did not commit suicide at Alcatraz in the 1940's; he completed his sentence there in 1954, then served a term in Washington State Penitentiary for murder. He was paroled there in 1972, and it is not known where he is or whether he is alive. This corrrection was delayed by checking at The Times.