Welcome back to my Mystery Book. Today we are looking at The Story of Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe and their Mysterious Escape from Alcatraz that remains as one of my favourite Mysteries of all time. Credit to Wikipedia, The Documentaries "Sharkatraz", and "Escapes From Alcatraz : The True Stories", and their very own Comic Book for the information. Enjoy.

On this day, 85 years ago, on December 16th 1937, two young men named Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe made the 2nd escape attempt from The USP Penitenterary Alcatraz Island, disappeared, and were never seen again...

Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe were shipped from USP Leavenworth to Alcatraz on October 26th 1935 for bank robbing, kidnapping and escaping several times from their former prisons. Cole also went to Alcatraz for murdering his cellmate at Leavenworth. They became really good friends as they had a lot of things in common, and they spent their two years together on the rock.

But even though they were good friends on the rock, it was still a complete hell hole where no one wanted to be. Alcatraz was the world's toughest prison. It was a prison that was said to be "escape proof", but inmates always dreamed of escaping the prison, but it seemed impossible to escape from the island. There were armed guards everywhere, always checking on and watching the inmates, barbed wire fences, tool resistant bars that were impossible to cut through. However, the biggest and toughest obstacle for escaping The Rock was a mile and a quarter of what surrounded it. The 50 degree freezing, rough and currents of The San Francisco Bay. Inexperience swimmers such as prison inmates would develop hypothermia, drown and get washed out to sea to be never seen again. It seemed impossible to escape the legendary island, but the lure of freedom and possibility of making it past all of those obstacles was overpowering, and escaping the island would be the ultimate victory. Escape was all the inmates on The Rock could think about, and their desperation only grew more and more the longer by the day. Especially for Cole and Roe.

On October 26th 1937, two years after they arrived on the island, their desperation for freedom had reached its maximum point, and they couldn't take anymore of the purgatory they were in, so they began thinking of how they could get off the island without being recaptured. During their 2 years on the island, they were well behaved inmates which earned them a job in The Model Industries Building on the edge of the island. There, they noticed a window with flat bars in a room that was only checked once every half an hour. They knew that they could easily cut through the bars, especially because Cole collected a small metal hacksaw blade from a prison he served 2 months at for smoking cigarettes. They knew this was the perfect opportunity to escape. Especially because the building was at the edge of the water, and it was l shaped, which meant that tower guards could only supervise one section at a time. It was a great place for escape.

Over the next few weeks, they secretly sawed through the bars with the metal hacksaw blade as well as a wrench and covered them with shoe polish and machine grease so the guards wouldn't see the damage and foil their plan. After a month of sawing through the bars, they finally sawed through all of them, and now all they had to do was wait for the perfect day to escape, and soon enough, that day came.

On this day, 85 years ago, on December 16th 1937, a dense fog swept through the entire city of San Francisco. It was one of the foggiest days on record, and Cole and Roe knew that today was their chance to escape. At 1:00 PM, after a guard left them to check other work areas nearby for the next half hour, they grabbed their 5 gallon gasoline gas cans they collected to use for flotation, and then grabbed the wrench they used to cut open the bars, and smashed the window and climbed out. They then ran to a fence along the beach, and broke the lock using the wrench, which they then dropped as they opened the door, and ran down to the beach into the bay. They disappeared and were never seen again...

Half an hour later at 1:30 PM, when they were being checked on again, it was discovered that the two men were gone and for the first time in Alcatraz History, the alarm was immediately sounded. A massive manhunt for the two men was conducted and everyone searched all over The San Francisco Bay and even on land for the two men even though that day, the fog was so thick, even searching for the men by boat would be dangerous. Tear gas was even sprayed in all of the island's caves. Everyone worked as hard as they could to find the two men, but in the end, all that was found of the two men... Was nothing...

All that was found of the two men, were two tools they used to cut through the bars in the building, but the two men or their flotation devices were never found... It was the first of only two cases of Alcatraz Escapes when the men escaping were not recaptured...

After everyone came to the bone chilling realization that the two men were gone and there was nothing they could do anymore, it was assumed that the two men had most likely drowned as it seemed impossible to escape from the island, especially on a day like this. Surrounded by dense fog, pulled by powerful currents, freezing in 50 degree water, an hour long swim, all making a one in a thousand chance of making it to shore, made it seem like the inmates never would have reached the shore, and everyone, including Alcatraz's Warden, James A. Johnston believed that they drowned and were swept out to sea along with their flotation devices, never to be seen again...

What supported this theory even more was that some inmates claimed to have seen them swimming and then disappear under the water. One of Alcatraz's most famous inmates, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis claimed that he saw the two men swimming when Roe suddenly disappeared under the surface, and Cole being swept out towards the ocean before disappearing into the fog. These claims are often discredited however, because the dense fog that swept through the entire city that day, reduced ability to nearly 0 and it would be impossible to see outside that day. Despite the likely fact that no one saw the two men out in the bay, it was still agreed that they drowned and everyone just had to move on.

However, just because most people agreed that Cole and Roe drowned in the bay, does not mean that everyone agreed and they actually did. Ever since they disappeared, there have been several reports of people sighting the men across the country, and even in South America. Despite these reports however, none of them were ever confirmed to be true, nor did they have any solid evidence to prove they were, so it's quite likely that any report of Cole and Roe being spotted after they disappeared is not true and many people still believe that they drowned during their escape.

85 years later, the opinions on what happened to these men still haven't changed. Many people, including myself, still believe that they drowned when they made their desperate escape on that foggy day and were never seen by anyone ever again...

To this day, 85 years later, no trace of Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe has ever been found, and it still remains as one of the most famous mysteries in the world...

What do YOU think happened to Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe on that very foggy day, 85 years ago?

The end!