Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [226]
• 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 that this was likely to be one of the escapees.
• The families of the Anglin brothers stated that the escape had been a topic of family discussions for several years. None of them have ever been contacted by the brothers, and they felt that had the inmates survived, they would have made contact in some form. The Anglin family would soon suffer yet another tragedy. The third brother, Alfred, was electrocuted on a high-voltage security wire when attempting to escape from Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Alabama in 1964.
Allen West remained at Alcatraz until February of 1963, leaving only one month before the prison’s final closing. He then continued his journey through the Federal penal system until he was eventually released in 1967, in the state of Florida. His taste of freedom was brief, and he quickly landed himself back in prison less than a year later. In 1972 West fatally stabbed another inmate, and thus permanently sealed his fate, condemning himself to a life in prison. Allen West died of peritonitis in the Florida State Prison hospital in December of 1978, at only forty-nine years of age.
The mystery is still being explored decades after the Great Escape, and it