Escapes

During the height of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” in the 1970s and ‘80s, the British government incarcerated hundreds of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitaries inside the notorious Maze Prison. Touted as Europe’s most secure penitentiary, the Maze was thought to ...read more

The mass escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp in March 1944 remains one of history’s most famous prison breaks. Although the German Luftwaffe designed the Stalag Luft III camp to be escape-proof, the audacious, real-life prison break immortalized in the 1963 movie The ...read more

A list of the most renowned inmates at Alcatraz federal prison reads like a who’s who of 20th-century criminals. They range from Prohibition-era gangsters like Al “Scarface” Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly to ‘70s Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger and Harlem drug ...read more

Ever since Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary opened as a maximum-security lockup in 1934 on a desolate island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, officials touted it as “America’s most secure prison.” During its nearly 30 years of operation, inmates put that reputation to the test ...read more

To Americans of the 1920s and ‘30s, he was the notorious gangster Scarface Al, Public Enemy No. 1. But when he arrived at Alcatraz in late August of 1934, Alphonse “Al” Capone took on a more humbling name: Prisoner 85. As Prisoner 85, Al Capone led a very different life from his ...read more

It was one of the most ingenious prison breaks of all time—if it worked. In 1962, inmates and bank robbers Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin vanished from Alcatraz, the federal island penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco. They had used sharpened spoons to bore ...read more