14. The Investigation Reopens
Upon receiving the letter, the Richmond police called the FBI. The FBI officially reopened the case, which had been closed for over four decades. Detectives thoroughly analyzed the handwriting based on known writing samples from all three of the escapees, but their results were inconclusive. To make matters more complicated, no evidence contradicted the claim that John Anglin and the other escapees were successful. Their bodies were never recovered from San Francisco Bay, but they could have floated out to the Pacific Ocean. The most famous prison break in history could have been successful, but there is no way to know for sure.
What is entirely possible is that the person who wrote the letter, claiming to be from John Anglin, was looking for a way to get medical attention. He was in his eighties and said that he had cancer. If he went to prison for escaping from Alcatraz, he would be able to get the medical help that he needed at the expense of Uncle Sam. What is equally plausible is that the men actually did survive the escape, but none of them were responsible for the letter. At any rate, the FBI officially labeled the letter as fraudulent and repeated its original conclusion: the men died in the waters off of San Francisco Bay. They had crude, hand-sewn life jackets and a life raft to prove it.