The SBA Canteen was on the road today, making stops at Madison Square Garden and Rockefeller Center to support NYPD Sergeants working details in Manhattan.
A small way to show appreciation and connect with fellow Sergeants helping keep NYC safe.
Go Knicks!
#FrontlineSGTs #ToughestJobInTheWorld
On June 11, 1962, three bank robbers sat through dinner at Alcatraz, the prison built to be inescapable, and by sunrise they had pulled off the greatest vanishing act in American history.
Frank Morris had an IQ of 133. The Anglin brothers, John and Clarence, grew up swimming the freezing waters of Lake Michigan. For over a year they dug through the concrete around their cell vents using sharpened spoons and a drill they built from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor, timing the noise to the prison's music hour so guards heard nothing.
The night of the escape, they tucked dummy heads into their beds. The heads were sculpted from soap, toilet paper and cement dust, painted with flesh tones from prison art kits, and topped with real human hair swept up from the barbershop floor. Guards walked past them all night and saw three sleeping men.
Meanwhile the trio slipped through their holes into a hidden utility corridor, climbed 30 feet of plumbing, and reached the roof through a ventilation shaft. They carried a raft made from more than 50 stolen raincoats, sealed with heat from steam pipes, inflated with a concertina one of them played in the prison band.
Then they paddled into the black, freezing water of San Francisco Bay. And disappeared.
The FBI searched for 17 years and closed the case in 1979, concluding they probably drowned. But no bodies were ever recovered. The Anglin family swears the brothers made it to South America, and in 2013 the FBI received a letter claiming to be from John Anglin: "Yes we all made it that night, but barely."
The cruelest twist belongs to Allen West, the fourth conspirator who helped plan everything. His vent would not open in time. He spent that night clawing at concrete while his friends vanished, and the rest of his life knowing he missed the boat by one hour.
The US Marshals case file remains open to this day. If alive, the brothers would be in their 90s, still wanted men.
What do you think happened to them?