5. Covering Their Tracks
Another problem that the escape artists had to solve was hiding the fact that they were inside the prison’s walls instead of asleep in bed. They had to be inside their workshop for hours at a time to assemble things like their raft, and correctional officers perform routine checks at least every few hours. To overcome this challenge, they made dummies to put in their beds. The models wouldn’t be at all convincing up close, but for a guard who just wanted to check and see that there was a body in the bed, they got the job done.
The method of making the dummies came from the Anglin brothers. Every day, the men shaved and saved the hair, mixed in with shaving cream. They mixed the concoction with soap and toilet paper to make rather unhygienic papier mache heads. They topped the heads off with shavings gleaned from the prison barber and used art kits that prisoners had access to for painting the faces. Anytime they needed to head to their workshop, they strategically placed pillows under the blankets to look like bodies, then put the dummy heads at the top of their beds. The guards never caught on.