Alcatraz_ A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years - Michael Esslinger [226]
• Sources reported that these three men had neither friends nor relatives with the resources to come to San Francisco and assist in the escape. The cost of putting a boat in the Bay night after night to assist in the escape would have been thousands of dollars. The families and friends of the trio were investigated regarding their financial resources, and their hypothetical role as accomplices was eventually ruled out. There would have been no possible way for the inmates to communicate with outside contacts in order to confirm the date and progress of their break.
• Critics on the other side of the debate claimed that the fact that no bodies were found amounted to “proof” that the inmates had made it successfully to the mainland. The reality was that it was common for people who perished in the Bay waters never to be found. On the very night of the escape, a thirty-three-year old African-American gentleman named Seymour Webb, reportedly despondent over a failed relationship, abandoned his car mid-span on the Golden Gate Bridge and tragically jumped to his death in front of sixty-two horrified eyewitnesses. Despite a quick response from the Coast Guard, his body was never recovered. The significance of this event is that the suicide entered the water about the same time as the escapees, and his body was never found.
• On June 19, 1962, Robert Panis, an eighteen-year-old Filipino male, also drowned in the waters of Half Moon Bay, approximately twenty-five miles south of the Golden Gate Bridge. On the day of the drowning, a Coast Guard Helicopter noticed a floating body wearing attire that matched that of the missing man. A surface vessel was dispatched to the location, but the authorities were never successful in recovering the body. The FBI cited this as another example of the extreme difficulty in recovering drowned bodies from the Bay. The Bureau also referenced the case of Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe, who escaped from Alcatraz in 1937. Despite intensive searches these men were likewise never located, and it was concluded that they had drowned.
• The Bay water temperatures ranged from fifty to fifty-four degrees. It was determined that exposure to the elements would have affected body functions after approximately twenty minutes. The showers at Alcatraz were always supplied with moderately hot water, in order to hinder inmates from becoming acclimated to the freezing Bay waters.
• On July 17, 1962 the Ship S.S. Norefjell, a Norwegian Freighter departing from Pier 38, reported seeing a body floating twenty miles northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. The ship was en route to Canada, and the crew noted the sighting in the ship’s log, but did not make a formal report until returning to the United States on August 8, 1962. The SS Norefjell was not equipped with a transceiver that could broadcast on the marine radio bands used in the United States. The crewmembers logged the notation that sometime between 5:45 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. they noticed something bobbing in the water, and used binoculars to confirm that it was a body floating face down. The hands and feet were dangling down in the water, but the buttocks were clearly visible. Although bleached from the ocean and sun, the body was clothed in full-length denim trousers that appeared identical to prison issue. Coroners from San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, and Marin Counties all confirmed that a body could float for five weeks after drowning. The FBI determined this to be one of the most significant leads in the case. Their official report established that there was no other individual missing or drowned at that time who had been wearing similar trousers, and concluded that it was reasonable to state