A nephew of two Alcatraz robbers slammed Donald Trump for claiming no one has ever escaped the notorious California prison that he wants to reopen.
David Widner, 58, of Leesburg, Georgia, is convinced his uncles John and Clarence Anglin – one of the prison’s most notorious escape stories – made it off the island alive, despite the US president claiming the lock-up joint was inescapable.
‘That would be a lie,’ David, a safety manager, exclusively told DailyMail.com. ‘There have been several escapes and more than one where they don’t know what happened to them.
‘So they can’t say it was unescapable, because it was.’
He says the FBI spent years questioning his family as agents investigated the theory they had fled to Mexico following the audacious 1962 jailbreak.
‘If they really believed that my uncles didn’t make it, they would have stopped looking for them,’ he said.
‘Still to this day, they have not stopped looking for them. So why would you be looking for someone you believe to be dead? It’s still an open case, so why not close the case?’
This week, Trump vowed to reopen Alcatraz as he continues to crack down on violent criminals and illegal migrants.
David Widner, 58, Leesburg, Georgia, (pictured right, with brother) is convinced his uncles John and Clarence Anglin made it off the island alive, despite the US president claiming the lock-up joint was inescapable
John Anglin (left with a friend) made it to dry land with his brother Clarence and Frank Morris, his nephew is convinced. ‘If they really believed that my uncles didn’t make it, they would have stopped looking for them,’ said David Widner.
David even has cutouts of his uncles. ‘There have been several escapes and more than one where they don’t know what happened to them’
In a post shared to Truth Social on Sunday night, Trump said: ‘The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE.’
Trump has directed the Bureau of Prisons to work alongside the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security to ‘reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt’ Alcatraz.
He said the notorious facility, which once held famed gangster Al Capone, will ‘house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.’
The order comes as Trump has repeatedly clashed with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members and illegal migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Maximum security Alcatraz, which was shut down in 1963, will provide Trump a workaround to those court orders barring him from carrying out the mass deportation scheme.
As the Republican gears up for this new venture, the question of whether the Anglin brothers and fellow inmate Frank Morris successfully escaped from Alcatraz still remains one of the biggest mysteries of the prison.
The convicted bank robbers spent six months using spoons and forks to dig holes in the walls surrounding the air vents in their cells.
On the night of the escape, they used painted papier-mâché heads topped with hair collected from the prison barber shop to fool the guards into thinking they were asleep in bed.
Trump vowed to reopen Alcatraz as he continues to crack down on violent criminals and illegal migrants. He said the notorious facility will ‘house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders’
They squeezed through the hole and made their way from the prison roof to the water’s edge carrying a makeshift raft crafted from 50 pilfered cotton raincoats.
The fugitives’ bodies have never been found, but the FBI concluded in 1979 that all three must have drowned in the freezing, shark-infested waters surrounding the prison.
David, however, says the FBI’s announcement was part of an elaborate cover-up, designed to protect the Federal Penitentiary’s fearsome reputation.
A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts from Alcatraz in its 30-year history – making Trump’s claims false.
Out of those, 23 were caught alive, six were shot and killed, and two are known to have drowned attempting the 1.25-mile swim to shore through brutal currents.
Five, including the Anglins, who were incarcerated there in 1957, and Morris, who had been an inmate there since 1960, are listed as ‘missing and presumed drowned.’
The story of the June 11, 1962 escape was later turned into the 1979 film starring Clint Eastwood called Escape From Alcatraz.
Eastwood played bank robber Morris, who had an IQ of 133, putting him in the smartest two percent in the population.
John Anglin was pictured with a car with a Mexican plate, making Widner believe that is where he ended up
They were thought to have escaped to Mexico and later Brazil after leaving the prison. This photo was believed to be them, but David said he has since learned who those men actually are.
John Anglin (pictured) and his brother Clarence were strong swimmers, their nephew says.The fugitives’ bodies have never been found, but the FBI concluded in 1979 that theymust have drowned
David says his uncles were strong swimmers who would regularly bunk off school as kids to swim in the ocean off Tampa, Florida.
He can still recall his mother, Marie – who was raised with her 13 siblings in the nearby town of Ruskin – being quizzed by the FBI when he was a small boy.
But this week, when announcing his intention to reopen Alcatraz, Trump said: ‘It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right?
‘But it’s right now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there. It housed the most violent criminals in the world and nobody ever escaped.’
David believes Trump isn’t ‘aware of my uncles’ story and I would love to talk to him about that.’
‘I would love to tell him that to reopen that prison would be a huge cost and you would lose all of the history because all of the cells – including my uncles’ – would no longer be available for people to see.
‘In my opinion, it would be cheaper to build an underground prison if he wants to keep them out of the public eye.
‘To me, preserving the history would make more sense than turning it back into a prison.’
The maximum security prison, which was shut down in 1963, will provide Trump a workaround to court orders barring him from carrying out the mass deportation scheme
As for what he would tell the 47th president about his uncles is that they were stronger swimmers and ‘water was the last deterrent.’
‘They were a lot smarter than people gave them credit for and there’s no doubt in my mind that they made it. It was not an inescapable prison,’ he said. ‘If you got out of that building, you have escaped Alcatraz.’
In 1992, a drug smuggler called Fred Brizzi, now deceased, claimed to have flown the Anglin brothers to Mexico a short time after their escape.
A photo later emerged that experts said showed the brothers standing next to a termite mound on a farm in Brazil.
Another twist came when it was leaked in 2018 that US authorities had been sitting on a letter reportedly written by John Anglin five years earlier.
The note was sent to police in San Francisco in 2013 and stated: ‘My name is John Anglin. I escape [sic] from Alcatraz in June 1962 with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris.
‘I’m 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer.
‘Yes we all made it that night but barely! Frank passed away in October 2005. His grave is in Alexandria under another name. My brother died in 2011,’ it read.
The prison is now a museum, as Trump referenced. The order comes as Trump has repeatedly clashed with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members and illegal migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador
Alcatraz’s cafeteria provided simple but filling fare for inmates including Al Capone, Mickey Cohen and Machine Gun Kelly
David wrote a book about Alcatraz his uncle’s escape
‘If you announce on TV that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke this is for real and honest truth.’
However, David doesn’t believe his uncle is still alive.
‘My mom is fixing to turn 90 so John would probably be 96. There are only two sisters left and all the brothers have passed away out of 14 kids, seven girls and seven boys,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘So the chances of them still being alive at this age are very slim. My whole goal and mission was to get my mom to see her brother again but I don’t think that will happen at this point.
As for where he believes his relatives were hiding? He doesn’t believe they ever left Mexico.
‘For a long time, I thought they ended up in South America, in Brazil. With recent research, I now don’t believe they ever left Mexico once they made it over there,’ he said.
‘They had an older brother that they confided in 100 percent and he was in touch with them for 25 years after the escape. He made regular trips to Mexico to see old friends and he was questioned about that by the FBI.
‘I have a picture of Uncle John standing next to his car in the 1950s and once I scanned it and zoomed in, I saw the tag on the front of his car was a Mexican tag. So they had ties to Mexico long before they committed the robbery and went to Alcatraz.
The story of the June 11, 1962 escape was turned into the 1979 film starring Clint Eastwood called Escape From Alcatraz
‘There were some leads in Brazil and Brizzi came to the family with his elaborate story about running into them at a bar in Rio.
‘My mom recorded that conversation and when I first heard it my reaction was: “I know he is lying.” I could just tell,’ he said.
Brizzi gave his mother some photographs that he claimed were ‘taken while he was there, including two guys he had travelled down with.’
‘He never said they were John and Clarence but we started looking at it and wondering whether it was them,’ David told DailyMail.com.
‘When the experts did their facial recognition and came back and said that it was highly likely to be them, then I really started believing it and I made myself believe it.
However, he later found out that the men in the photograph were not John and Clarence, but he’s not quite ready to reveal their true identities.
‘I know who the two guys are and it’s not them. I can’t say who it is, that will be something that is coming out soon. One of them is still alive.’
