Battle of Alcatraz

It's one of the most violent escape attempts of all time.

He was dead.

They just got him.

Dead centre.

Five determined men...

..against the toughest prison in the country.

These men had practically no privileges.

When you got to the Rock, this is it.

We used to call it the prison of no return.

Desperate for freedom, these inmates will do anything to get out...

..or die trying.

Well, they were very dangerous people.

They...they were... they're kind of crazy,

along with...with being dangerous.

They would do things that no sensible person would do.

The true story behind countless breakout films,

from The Rock to The Birdman of Alcatraz.

Will anyone escape alive from the Battle of Alcatraz?

It's 1946.

For 12 years, Alcatraz has earned its reputation as an escape-proof prison.

Nine attempted breakouts have failed.

Some escapees have been shot and killed by guards.

Others have made it to the water, only to drown,

sinking deep into the frigid bay.

That water is the wall that keeps us there.

It killed a lot of escaping convicts,

people that we were friends with, you know.

One day, they're there and they're alive, and tomorrow, they're...

..they're dead.

But one man believes he'll succeed where others couldn't.

His name?

Bernard Paul Coy.

Coy, he's a soldier, an extremely intelligent guy.

He's very hardworking.

He's loyal to his family and he's creative.

A World War I veteran, Coy has done his homework.

He's studied the failures of the past

and he's devised the most ambitious escape plan to date.

People were able to exploit the weaknesses

all the way through its history.

They knew what ideas had not worked before,

and they were able to eliminate all of the ideas.

He concluded early on that he needed a gun,

that he needed hostages

and that he needed the boat.

After months of studying the prison guards' routines,

he's calculated the perfect moment to strike.

He and his accomplice, Alabama robber Marvin Hubbard,

have subdued the main cellhouse guard

and taken the guard's keys to open individual cells.

Timing is everything. It's critical.

And Coy has definitely done his homework.

He's been watching these guards. He knows their schedule.

He knows when they're gonna be coming

and when they're gonna be going.

And we're talking about a window of five minutes.

They've released three more team members -

former FBI most wanted bank robber Joseph Cretzer,

8-time escapee Miran Thompson

and the youngest prisoner on Alcatraz, Clarence Carnes.

He's not looking for mice. He's looking for men.

He's looking for brothers-in-arms who can help him fight this battle.

He's looking for the bravest,

and he's also looking for the most desperate.

Next, with his team fully assembled,

Coy has done what no other escapee ever dreamed of.

Stripping down, he's scaled the bars to the west gun gallery,

used a makeshift spreader to slip through the bars

and subdued the two remaining cellhouse guards.

In less than 15 minutes, he and his team have captured two guns,

three hostages and the key to the recreation yard -

their path to freedom.

But just when his plan seems to be working,

Coy has made a decision that could jeopardise everything.

Either as a distraction or for reinforcements,

he's opened all the doors in D Block,

the section of the prison reserved for the worst troublemakers.

D Block tended to house the men

who were very recalcitrant and in many cases, very mentally ill.

All those prisoners came out.

And they were all excited.

Among the men set free, three are notable.

There's Samuel Shockley,

better known as Crazy Sam.

Born to a poor family in rural Oklahoma,

at best, Shockley has had an elementary school education.

He began with petty crimes

and quickly was sent to the state reformatory.

There, he was badly beaten by a fellow inmate

and suffered a severe head injury.

A year later, he received another head injury,

this time from a correctional officer.

Sam Shockley is an absolute wildcard.

He was dropped on his head by his sister when he was young.

And he's been beaten over the head,

not only by guards but by other inmates,

so this guy has suffered some serious brain injuries.

And though brain injuries don't necessarily make you violent,

they do inhibit your impulse control.

So if he has a propensity to be violent, he can't put a lid on it.

On his release from the state reformatory,

Shockley took up kidnapping and bank robbery.

Caught and sent to Leavenworth prison,

he was always in trouble with inmates and guards.

He's loud, explosive, violent and truly crazy.

Shockley was borderline mentally retarded.

He was emotionally unstable,

which probably a large percentage of the prisoners were.

He was irrational, very excitable.

Really, I don't think he belonged in a maximum-security penitentiary.

I think he belonged in a hospital.

Sam Shockley had an IQ of 68. OK?

He had the mentality of an 8-year-old.

He was delusional. He heard voices here.

He was crazy. He was a psychopath.

Another escapee from D Block is convicted kidnapper Jim Quillen.

A wild young man, he's serving his time in isolation

for a previous escape attempt from the kitchen area.

This is the kitchen basement, and this is an area here

that was divided off from the rest of it,

with a low retaining wall there

where we couldn't walk back and forth in here.

One day, while walking and looking for a way to escape,

we saw this lid here and wondered what was in here.

And we got the lock picked and found out

that there was a passageway under here down all the way to

what we thought went clear to the powerhouse.

Now, the heat in here varied from 145 to 160 degrees.

It was too narrow and too small for two people to turn around in,

so we have to have one person crawl in then reverse it when we came out.

You would sweat.

The sweat would hit those pipes and it would just sizzle.

And if you broke one of the pipes,

you were going to be instantly cooked,

because that was live, hot steam.

We tried real hard to get through the wall down there,

but, unfortunately, somebody...

..snitched us off, and, as a consequence, we went to D Block.

And then there's the third D Block escapee,

one of the most famous, strange, intelligent and unpredictable inmates

in the history of the Rock -

Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz.

Stroud was a psychopath,

who would stick a knife in you for no reason whatsoever.

The child of an abusive father, at the age of 13,

Robert Stroud ran away to the Alaskan Territory.

There, he became a pimp

and killed a bartender who attacked one of his prostitutes.

Then, while serving time at McNeil Island,

he stabbed and killed a guard.

He had been given a sentence early in his life,

life in solitary confinement, because he killed a guard.

So he was never in solitary, which are the dark cells,

but he was always in whatever prison's segregation unit.

Sent to Leavenworth prison, in Kansas, Stroud raised birds

and researched bird diseases

with scientific equipment supplied by the prison.

Unpopular with the guards,

they found out he was actually using the equipment

to make and sell alcohol.

It was the final straw.

They sent him to the prison for the worst of the worst - Alcatraz.

The release of the D Block inmates has wasted valuable time

and created unnecessary distractions.

And then...

..another prison guard enters the cellhouse.

But the youngest escapee, Clarence Carnes, is ready.

He captures the unsuspecting guard

and locks him in cell 404 with the others.

Soon after, they capture two more guards.

There was a series of...cascade of errors,

prisoners with guns and keys and hostages in the cellhouse.

One guard after another walked into the trap.

And as each man didn't come out again,

then they sent someone more into the prison.

In just a few minutes,

escape mastermind Bernard Coy and his accomplices

have overpowered six guards.

One is still tied up in the gun gallery, and five are in cell 404.

As more and more guards show up,

what initially was a tool to get out of prison

is turning into a huge liability.

They've got way too many hostages at this point.

They only needed a couple.

So with each guard arriving,

it's another opportunity for something to go horribly wrong.

Soon, their escape will be unmasked,

and someone will sound the prison alarm,

forcing a lockdown, eliminating any hope of escape.

Absolutely the most important thing to make this escape possible,

to have it brought off successful,

was the element of time.

With the knowledge that the outside guards

could discover the breakout at any moment,

8-time escapee Miran Thompson,

Alabama robber Marvin Hubbard

and Alcatraz's youngest inmate, Clarence Carnes,

act as lookouts...

..while escape mastermind Bernard Coy

and former FBI most wanted gunman and criminal Joe Cretzer