In June 1962, three inmates shimmied through a hole they’d chiseled into the walls of Alcatraz prison and climbed up to the roof. To mask their escape, they’d placed in their bunks realistic-looking dummy heads they’d made out of papier-mâché and human hair from the prison barber shop. The three men — brothers John and Clarence Anglin and fellow inmate Frank Morris — grabbed makeshift paddles and plunged an escape raft they made of stolen raincoats into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay. 
 
 Alcatraz officials have long stated that the men drowned, maintaining the prison’s bragging rights of no escapees. But now, more than 50 years later, new leads are being presented by the Anglin family, who are cooperating with authorities for the first time. 
 
 They claim that not only did the brothers survive the escape, they were alive and well up through at least the mid-1970s — and may still be alive today. 
 
 The evidence is offered up by the Anglins’ nephews David, 48, and Ken Widner, 54, who are featured in “Alcatraz: Search for the Truth,” a History Channel special airing Monday. 
 
 The evidence has pumped life into the cold case, and has investigators lining up new interviews and planning to search South America for signs of America’s most notorious escapees. 
 
 “This is absolutely the best actionable lead we’ve had,” Art Roderick, the retired US marshal who was lead investigator on the case for 20 years, tells The Post. 
 
 The Anglin family sat on those leads for years because, they say, they were spied on and harassed by the FBI for years. But a desire to see the case solved before Marie Anglin Widner — the Widners’ mother and the escapees’ sister — passed away, combined with the cockiness of Alcatraz officials, inspired them to come forward. 
 
 “[Alcatraz officials] were not willing to . . . say, ‘Maybe [the escapees] did make it,’ ” David Widner says. “That gave me the motive to prove them wrong.” 
 
 First there were the Christmas cards, signed with Clarence and John Anglin’s names, that were delivered to their mother during the three years after the escape. They arrived without postage. 
 
 In the History Channel special, the nephews take the cards and other evidence to Roderick, who retired in 2008 but is still working on the case. Though the handwriting matched, the investigators were unable to pinpoint the exact date of the cards. 
 
 But the nephews also came forward with a photo — which will be revealed on the show — that proves the Anglins may have been alive in the 1970s. That really caught Roderick’s attention. 
 
 “When you work these types of cases, there’s a feeling you get when stuff starts to fall into place,” he says. “I’m getting this feeling now.” 
 
 The next big piece of evidence was buried — about six feet in the ground. The family finally let investigators dig up the remains of the Anglins’ other brother, Alfred, who was electrocuted during his own escape attempt from an Alabama prison. They needed his DNA: Authorities had discovered a set of bones that washed ashore north of San Francisco in 1963, which they said may have belonged to one of the escapees. 
 
 But the DNA proved to not be a match, bolstering the Anglin family’s claims that the two may indeed still be alive. (The bones could still belong to Morris, though; he has no living relatives to test.) 
 
 David Widner says he’s working on a book that will contain more evidence not included in the TV show. That includes a surprise guest star: Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger, who met the future escapees in Alcatraz. Bulger, in a 2014 letter to Ken Widner, said he instructed John and Clarence on how to navigate bay currents, and dropped a key piece of advice about being a fugitive. 
 
 “He taught them that when you disappear, you have to cut all ties,” Ken says. “He told me in a letter, ‘This is the mistake that I made.’ He told me, ‘These brothers undoubtedly had done exactly what I told them to do.’ ” 
 
 The nephews hope the special rewrites the history of Alcatraz, and cements their uncles and Morris as the only people to successfully escape the island, out of the 36 who tried. 
 
 Roderick has lined up 10 new interviews since seeing the evidence, and is talking to US marshals about investigating in Brazil, where the Anglins may have ended up. If they are still alive (both would be in their mid-80s by now), international laws may not even allow extradition to the US. 
 
 Nonetheless, Roderick would want to sit down with them to figure out how they did it. 
 
 If they died and their bodies can be found, however, Ken and David want to bring the Anglin brothers back to the family plot in Ruskin, Fla. 
 
 Says David, “We should get ’em a place ready.” ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption A mystery surrounds whether three prisoners - Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin - survived 
 
 Three inmates who famously escaped from the US island prison Alcatraz had a small chance of making it to land alive - but the odds were stacked against them, a new study suggests. 
 
 In 1962, the prisoners absconded using a raft, and were never seen again. 
 
 A novel computer model now indicates that if they set off right at midnight, they could have made landfall. 
 
 But if they left in the hours either side, it is very likely they died in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay. 
 
 The study was carried out by scientists at Delft University and the research institute Deltares, both in the Netherlands, and is being presented this week at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, which is hosted in the California city. 
 
 Fake heads 
 
 This prison break - dramatized by Clint Eastwood in the film Escape from Alcatraz - is one of the most daring and intricate escapes ever attempted. 
 
 Three bank robbers - Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris - spent months digging an escape tunnel out of their concrete cells using sharpened spoons. 
 
 On the night of 11 June 1962, they left dummy heads, fashioned out of soap, toilet paper and hair, in their beds, and crawled out of the "escape-proof" prison. 
 
 At the water's edge, it is thought they made an inflatable raft out of raincoats and entered San Francisco Bay, at some point between 2000 and 0200, according to FBI files. 
 
 Despite an intense search effort, the men were never found. Whether they survived and made landfall or died after entering the water remains a mystery. 
 
 Image copyright FBI Image caption The prisoners created dummy heads from soap, paper and hair 
 
 Image copyright FBI Image caption The inmates placed the heads in their beds on the night of the escape 
 
 Now, a Dutch team of scientists has attempted to shed light on what happened. 
 
 Dr Rolf Hut said: "My colleague, Olivier Hoes, was working on a hydraulic model, called 3Di, which is a collaboration between different Dutch companies, agencies and universities. 
 
 "It is a high-performance hydraulic model for simulating the movement of water bodies in deltas and bays. 
 
 "He was using that to simulate the movement of water in the San Francisco Bay area, and I thought we could try to re-analyse what happened back in 1962." 
 
 Dr Hut said he was inspired to find out more by the US TV show MythBusters, in which the presenters recreated the escape and managed to make landfall. 
 
 But the Dutch scientist wanted to recreate the exact conditions of the night using historical tidal data in the computer model. 
 
 Image copyright Rolf Hut & colleagues Image caption Simulated flow conditions on the night of the escape at 22:39 local time 
 
 Fedor Baart, a simulation specialist at Deltares, explained: "We didn't know exactly when the inmates launched their boats, or their precise starting point, and so we decided to release 50 [virtual] boats every 30 minutes between 2000 and 0400, from a range of possible escape spots at Alcatraz to see where they would end up. 
 
 "We added a paddling effect to the boats, as we assumed the prisoners would paddle as they got closer to land." 
 
 With the help of the virtual vessels, the researchers found that if the prisoners had escaped in the hours before midnight, they would have almost certainly perished. 
 
 Dr Hut said: "In the worst-case scenario, where paddling was ineffective, the outgoing tide would have swept them out to the ocean and they would have died of hypothermia. For sure. 
 
 "The San Francisco Bay area has one of the strongest tidal currents going under the Golden Gate Bridge." 
 
 Image caption The US island of Alcatraz was said to be an "escape-proof" prison 
 
 But if they entered the water later, after 1am, the tide would have reversed, taking the escapees on a different course. 
 
 Dr Hut explained: "They would have been pushed back into the Bay. And then depending on which way they were paddling, they would have been sent into the north bay - towards Berkeley and the mouth of the Sacramento River - or pushed south towards Oakland, past Treasure Island. 
 
 "In both cases they would have spent so much time in the water, they probably would have died of hypothermia, or they would have been picked up by the police because sunrise was at 0600." 
 
 However, the team found one small window where survival would have been possible. 
 
 If the trio had left at midnight and had paddled hard to the north, then the strong currents could have worked in their favour. 
 
 "If they hit it exactly at midnight, the beautiful thing is that we see that they would have been sucked out towards the Golden Gate Bridge," Dr Hut told BBC News. 
 
 "But the moment they were close to the Golden Gate would have been the moment the tide reverses. 
 
 "And that would give them a moment of slack tide, in which they could have reached marine headlands in the northern site of the Golden Gate Bridge." 
 
 The team has produced visualisations that show a "worst case scenario", in which the prisoners do not paddle, and a "best case scenario", in which they paddle northwards at a speed of 25cm per second. 
 
 Outside factors 
 
 The model also predicted that any debris from the raft would have floated back into the bay, towards Angel Island, which is where the FBI found a paddle and some personal belongings. 
 
 The team points out that the model cannot prove exactly what happened, but it does help to assess what scenarios are most plausible. 
 
 "We're just exploring possibilities within the scope of what we can calculate," said Dr Hut. 
 
 "When doing historical research, there is a chance that there is an event not in the feasibility of your model: maybe they had a friend with a boat? 
 
 "We are only exploring whether it was possible for them to make landfall, with no additional help or other events taking place." 
 
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– Three inmates who famously escaped from Alcatraz prison in 1962 may not be so dead after all. In fact, new evidence that they survived has spawned a History Channel special and inspired a retired US marshal to revive the investigation, the New York Post reports. "This is absolutely the best actionable lead we’ve had," says the ex-marshal, Art Roderick. To recap, three Alcatraz inmates—Frank Morris along with brothers John and Clarence Anglin—escaped by chiseling a hole into a prison wall and jumping into the cold San Francisco Bay, with homemade paddles and a raft made from raincoats. Never found, they were presumed dead. But two nephews of the Anglins have produced evidence to the contrary: They have Christmas cards signed in the names of John and Clarence Anglin, and Roderick matched the handwriting. But the cards are neither stamped nor dated. A photo that will be seen on the show, Alcatraz: Search for the Truth, "proves the Anglins may have been alive in the 1970s," says the Post. And DNA from the dug-up remains of another Anglin brother, Alfred, does not genetically match a set of bones found on a shore near San Francisco in 1963. In a letter, former Boston mobster Whitey Bulger says he met the three men in Alcatraz and gave them advice about navigating currents in the bay. "He taught them that when you disappear, you have to cut all ties," says one of the nephews, Ken Widner. "He told me, 'These brothers undoubtedly had done exactly what I told them to do.'" Sadly, Variety didn't think much of the History Channel special, calling it "overproduced, from the pounding music to the dramatic recreations." (A study found that the inmates might have survived if they plunged into the water between 11pm and midnight.)