text: 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.” ||||| Those caught up in the romance surrounding Alcatraz might be tempted to watch “Alcatraz: Search For the Truth,” a History documentary devoted to the 1962 escape by Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin. The curious, however, would be well advised to tape this tedious production and fast-forward to the last six minutes, which contain everything they could hope to glean about whether the trio, never found, might have survived the treacherous waters surrounding the prison island. Even allowing for the genre’s carnival-barker qualities, the producers have spread about 25 minutes of content over two hours. 
   
   Told entirely from the perspective of the Anglins (that is, the guys who Clint Eastwood didn’t play in the 1979 movie “Escape From Alcatraz”), the special is built around information provided by their nephews, Ken and David Widner, two emotional fellows who are convinced the government has been after the family and that their uncles have been abused by the media. So they enlist a retired U.S. Marshal, Art Roderick, to help lay out their case, which includes various shreds of evidence that they believe prove the Anglins not only navigated the frigid waters but also made it to South America. 
   
   Graciously setting aside what the “Search” reveals – with the Widners having begun expressing their belief the Anglins survived a few years ago – there’s no nice way to say that the brothers are an irritating pair, carrying rather sizable chips on their shoulders. Claiming the FBI harassed them, and that their only motivation is to set the record straight, they’re prone to getting teary-eyed when speaking about these half-century-old events, including their conviction that the feds killed another uncle while seeking information about the escapees. 
   
   Nor does it help that almost everything here feels overproduced, from the pounding music to the dramatic recreations. So when one of the Widners reminisces about his mom receiving a phone call when he was a child, voila, there’s a gauzy image of a woman holding a tyke as she answers. 
   
   Morris, whose genius IQ was thought to have been instrumental in planning the dramatic escape, is shortchanged by this version of history, which focuses squarely on the Anglins. Yet while some of the new details certainly appear intriguing, wading through the padding feels like treading water, or maybe crawling down that sewage tunnel at the end of “The Shawshank Redemption.” All that, and there’s still relatively little presented about the rich lore of Alcatraz – which has inspired plenty of fiction – other than a rather mundane visit to the island. 
   
   Granted, History’s pursuit of younger demos with programs like “Pawn Stars” deviates so often from actual history that it’s kind of nice when the two occasionally bump into each other. Yet watching “Alcatraz,” those prone to lament the channel’s drift will likely just remember why their search for quality historical fare increasingly leads elsewhere.
target: – 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.)