7. The First Challenges Arise
Pretty quickly, the would-be escapees realized that chiseling away through rusted metal and crumbling concrete was a rather loud undertaking. Seeing as they couldn’t trust other prisoners with the secret that they were planning an escape, Frank Morris – ever the mastermind – came up with an ingenious solution. New reforms at Alcatraz gave prisoners the opportunity to enjoy music every evening, so to hide the sound of their instruments sawing away at metal and concrete, Morris played his favorite instrument: the accordion. The noise was so loud that no one could hear over it to ascertain what West and the Anglin brothers were doing.
Altogether, Morris definitely had a knack for solving problems and throwing people off the trail of what they were doing. He was far from your typical career criminal – the man was an absolute genius, and he used his intellect to aid his life of crime. He probably wasn’t the most popular guy in the big house, in any case. Imagine how peeved all of the other inmates had to have been at him for hammering away at the accordion for three or four hours every evening! The accordion would prove instrumental in other aspects of the escape, including inflating the rudimentary life raft that the men sewed together.