Informant claims one of Alcatraz escapees is still alive

Alcatraz Island
Carol Highsmith photo, Library of Congress

An unnamed informant says one of the three men that escaped from Alcatraz prison in 1962 is still alive and "has done a lot of good in the world since escaping."

The claim was made in the wake of the publication earlier this week of a story on a possible connection between the Jackson County town of Greenwood and the 1962 "Escape from Alcatraz." That article included details about how local and federal investigators searched the Greenwood area in 1989-1991 after receiving credible information that two of the men had been living in the vicinity.

Clarence Anglin, 1960 (FBI)

An eyewitness in 1989 said that she knew one of the escapees, Clarence Anglin, and told the U.S. Marshals Service that he was living on a secluded farm near Greenwood, Florida, along with a second man that she thought might be Frank Morris. She did not mention seeing John Anglin, who was Clarence Anglin's older brother and the third participant in the escape. Other eyewitnesses over the years have reported seeing John Anglin as well and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was not able to rule out John as the person who wrote a check to an Alabama store in the 1960s.

Please click here to read the original article: Greenwood and the Alcatraz escape.

The information from the informant is as follows:

Greenwood from the air.

Nice post. Once of these men is still alive, both have lived full good lives that did not include a return by either of them to a life of crime and have raised wonderful families. There are a few details you conveniently left out of your story that reveals more about them on a personal note and circumstances that landed them in Alcatraz. The conditions they experienced were horrible and when given a choice they took a chance as opposed to suffering. Neither ever made excuses for what they did but they have lived good Christian lives and done a lot of good int he world since escaping.
When both have passed on there are arrangements to tell there story for the benefit of others.

John Anglin, 1960 (FBI)

The statement is intriguing because it matches closely with information developed from other sources.

Those sources indicate that the escape was successful and that two of the men succeeded in crossing San Francisco Bay to Angel Island and the Marin Headlands. From there they were picked up by car and eventually made their way back east to their old home turf in the "Wiregrass" area of Southwest Georgia, Southeast Alabama and Northwest Florida.

Other sources also indicate that one of the men has passed away but that one of the escapees remains alive and is now in his 80s, that he has raised a family and that he has avoided further trouble since the time of his escape.

Frank Morris, 1960 (FBI)

The new informant notes that the story posted here earlier this week about a possible Greenwood connection to the escape did not delve into the circumstances that landed the men in Alcatraz. This was due to a space limitation, so look for a more in-depth account on the lives of the three men this Sunday here at http://www.twoegg.blogspot.com.

I normally do not post statements from anonymous informants, but found this one particularly interesting because the information provided matched so closely with what I have been able to learn from other sources.

You can read the original article at http://twoegg.blogspot.com/2014/06/informant-claims-one-of-alcatraz.html.

Excerpt #1 - New Book on the Claude Neal Lynching

Cannady House in 1980s, before it was demolished.

My new book on the 1934 murder of Lola Cannady and lynching of Claude Neal in Jackson County is now available.

It can be ordered at the upper right of this page or purchased at Chipola River Book and Tea in Downtown Marianna.

Claude Neal was accused of raping and murdering 19-year-old Lola Cannady near Greenwood and had confessed to the crime when he was taken from a jail in Brewton, Alabama, by a group of men armed with guns and dynamite. Brought back to Jackson County, he was tortured and killed in a remote wooded area near the Parramore community in eastern Jackson County.

The FBI has opened a new investigation into the Claude Neal lynching (although apparently not into the murder of Lola Cannady) and a family member of Neal told a Tallahassee newspaper this week that his family wants $77 million dollars in compensation from either the state or federal government.

That equals out to $1 million for each year that has passed since Neal's death on October 26, 1934.

My new book is titled: The Claude Neal Lynching: The 1934 Murders of Claude Neal and Lola Cannady. It will be released in both e-book and print editions over the next two weeks.

The book is written without an agenda, political or otherwise, and offers a chronological history of the events that took place in October of 1934, giving equal attention to the deaths of both Lola Cannady and Claude Neal. Previous writings on the topic have given only scant attention to Cannady's death.

The following excerpt is from Chapter One of the new book. Please do not reprint without permission:

In the summer and fall of 2011, the United States Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal. It was, so far as is known, the first time that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into the crime and was part of a wider investigation of as many as 100 historical crimes opened during the administration of President George W. Bush.. While funding for such efforts was reduced under President Barack Obama, the investigations have continued.

“(H)ate-crimes enforcement, and cold-case investigations in particular, remain a priority to this administration,” Justice Department Spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told reporters in July of 2011, “and the Civil Rights Division will devote the resources necessary to fully investigate all significant matters.” While the department would not confirm details, one of those "significant matters" was the Claude Neal lynching. FBI agents came to Jackson County where they interviewed current and former public officials and conducted records research at the Jackson County Courthouse in Marianna. Their investigation was launched seventy-seven years after the horrible events of 1934.

It was not, of course, the first time that the shadows of that fateful year lingered over Jackson County, nor will it likely be the last. The story of the Claude Neal lynching, however, is not just a story of extralegal justice in the years of the Great Depression, it is a story of violence and murder. It began when the life of a young woman named Lola Cannady was brutally taken in the farm country near Greenwood, Florida, on a clear and cool October afternoon.

Lola Cannady, ca. 1934

Lola Cannady was, by all accounts, a bright and cheerful young woman. Friendly with a kind word for all she met, she was small in stature and skinny as a rail, as were far too many of the people who lived on farms during those hard times. She was part of a large family, but pitched in and did her share of the work by feeding and watering the family hogs to take labor from the shoulders of her father and brothers while they worked in the fields. She also helped care for the house, do the family washing and cooking and look out for her youngest brother who was still too small to do heavy farm work.

Like most young people of that day and this, she enjoyed socializing with friends and is remembered even today as a pretty young woman who drew the attention of potential suitors. Her cousins Dora King, Bessie King and Clara Bell Stanley lived nearby and they often visited each other. While the girls were cousin, they were so close that they often called each other “sister.”

Much of their conversation during the late summer of 1934 was likely about Lola’s engagement to a young man in the community. She was, according to one acquaintance, “really excited and chattered about getting married like all young girls do.” The Great Depression was then in its darkest days, but despite the hard times and hunger that stalked the land, the wedding was an exciting and anticipated event for the whole extended family.

Like Acadamy Award winning actress Faye Dunaway, who was born nearby seven years after Lola’s death, the young woman dreamed of escaping the hard life of the farm. She enjoyed visiting her sister and other relatives in Tallahassee where she saw in such now routine conveniences as electric light, running water and well-stocked store shelves the promise of a better life away from the sandy peanut and cotton fields of Jackson County. She hoped one day to live in Tallahassee, possibly even find a real job there and enjoy simple luxuries that must have seemed extravagant to a young woman from the farm.

The Cannady family, like most of the other farm families of Jackson County, ate simple food and there was never enough of it. A cousin remembered meals of sweet potatoes and cornbread on visits to the weathered farmhouse. Protein was in short supply and pork chops, bacon and fried chicken were delicacies not often enjoyed. When flour could be afforded, especially after the crop came in or the season’s hogs were sold, there were biscuits and red-eye gravy. Summer brought peaches and plums, while in the fall there were scuppernongs, ripe persimmons, and green boiled peanuts, along with sugar cane and cane syrup. All of these were delicacies anticipated the year round.

I will post additional excerpts over coming days. To read more about the Neal lynching until the next post, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/claudeneal.

FBI Opens New Investigation of 1934 Jackson County Lynching

Old Jackson County Courthouse

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the 77 year old lynching of Claude Neal, a black farm laborer accused of murdering a young woman near Greenwood.
Agents have been in Jackson County over recent weeks looking into the nearly eight decade old lynching as part of a new U.S. Department of Justice focus on approximately 100 unsolved crimes of the Civil Rights era. The FBI does not confirm active investigations, but local leaders have confirmed the presence of investigators in the county on a condition of anonymity.

Although the Claude Neal lynching is often called the "Marianna lynching," the man was actually killed in a remote wooded area near today's Parramore Landing Park in eastern Jackson County. His body was hanged from a tree at the Jackson County Courthouse.

Lola Cannady was attacked near the trees in the distance.

Neal was accused of murdering 19-year-old Lola Cannady on the afternoon of October 19, 1934. The young woman was reported missing after she left her home along what is now Dozier Road north of Greenwood to water hogs but failed to return. As concern grew over her whereabouts, family and neighbors began to search the vicinity for any traces of her. They found evidence of a fight near the hog pen, blood stains and a man's tracks leading to the scene from the nearby home of Sallie Smith.

Following the tracks to the house, the searchers found Sallie Smith and her niece Annie Smith washing a man's bloody clothes. A bloodstained hammer was also found. Annie Smith's 23-year-old son, Claude Neal, was not at home and did not return home that night. Suspicion immediately centered on him and the women later confirmed they had seen him near the hog pen with Lola Cannady and then heard her scream. They also confirmed that the bloodstained clothes belonged to him.

Lola's mother kneels over her daughter's body in 1934.

Lola's body was found early the next morning, dumped in a nearby wooded area and covered with logs and brush. She had been raped and beaten to death with a hammer.

Near the young woman's body, searchers found a piece of bloodstained cloth and the stem and loop of a man's pocket watch. The items turned out to be crucial pieces of evidence. The piece of cloth was matched to a ripped part of Neal's shirt and when taken into custody on the morning of October 19, 1934, it was discovered that his pocket watch was missing its loop and stem. The broken watch pieces found near Lola Cannady's body fit perfectly with Neal's damaged watch.

Claude Neal was arrested in Malone on suspicion of murder, but almost immediately Sheriff W.F. "Flake" Chambliss heard rumors that a mob was planning to seize him. The mob planned, according to the sheriff's reports, to take Neal back to the scene of the murder and allow Lola's father to kill him.

Deputy Dave Hamm

In order to protect the life of his prisoner, Chambliss transferred him first to the Washington County Jail in Chipley and from there to the Bay County Jail in Panama City. On the very night of Neal's arrest (October 19), however, Jackson County Deputy Dave Hamm observed a long line of cars passing through Cottondale en route to Chipley and Panama City. The Bay County sheriff was warned that a possible attack on his jail was being mounted and urged to move Neal immediately. The suspect was placed aboard a boat and carried to what is now Fort Walton Beach (then Camp Walton) and from there by car to Pensacola.

From Pensacola, Neal was moved again to the county jail in Brewton, Alabama. There, on October 22nd, he made a complete confession to the murder of Lola Cannady, but also implicated a second man named Herbert Smith.

Deputies in Jackson County took Herbert Smith into custody that same afternoon and quickly spirited him to the Leon County Jail in Tallahassee for his own protection. From there he was taken around through Georgia and Alabama to Brewton so he could confront Neal for implicating him in the crime. When Neal saw Smith in the Brewton jail, he admitted that the second man had not been involved and amended his confession to say that he had acted alone in attacking and murdering Lola Cannady.

Between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on October 26, 1934, a group of men from Jackson County stormed the jail in Brewton and demanded that Claude Neal be turned over to them. They were armed with pistols, shotguns and dynamite. Taking the suspect by force from the jail, they drove back to Jackson County on secondary roads to avoid being spotted by law enforcement officers along the way.

Claude Neal at Courthouse
(Edited)

Neal was taken to a remote wooded area near today's Parramore Landing Park. There he was tortured for several hours and finally killed. His body was then carried to the Cannady farm near Greenwood, where additional bullets were fired into the lifeless corpse. From the farm the body was taken to Marianna and hanged from a tree on the courthouse grounds.

Sheriff Chambliss found the body at around 6 a.m. on October 27th and cut it down. Neal was buried at Nubbin Ridge Cemetery near Greenwood at 10 a.m. People from throughout the region continued to arrive in Marianna throughout the morning, however, and at 12 noon rioting broke out around courthouse square.

A man was saved from rioters by Jackson County deputies, who held the mob at bay from the doors of the courthouse by claiming they had machine guns and were prepared to use them. Governor Dave Sholtz ordered National Guard companies to Marianna from Tallahassee and Panama City to quell the rioting. They arrived late in the afternoon and the situation immediately calmed.

The Claude Neal case was featured prominently in the effort by the NAACP and other organizations to secure the passage of a national anti-lynching law. That effort ultimately failed when the bill bogged was filibustered in the U.S. Senate, but the nationwide outrage over the lynching played a significant role in bringing the long history of American lynchings to an end.

No one was ever arrested in connection with the Neal lynching, although both a coroner's inquest and the Jackson County Grand Jury returned reports blaming Neal for the murder of Lola Cannady. The grand jury did attempt to investigate the lynching, but was unable to obtain the name of any of the men involved.

I recently completed work on my new book on the 1934 outbreaks. The Claude Neal Lynching: The 1934 Murders of Lola Cannady and Claude Neal is now available in both print and Amazon Kindle formats. It can be ordered at the upper right of this page and also is available from Chipola River Book and Tea in Downtown Marianna.

The book is the first on the topic in nearly 30 years and includes never before published details about both the murder of Lola Cannady and subsequent lynching of Claude Neal. Included are the only interviews ever given by some of the men involved in the lynching, original crime scene photos from 1934 and a detailed analysis of the evidence linking Neal to Lola's murder and a history of the lynching that differs significantly from previous accounts due to the inclusion of a large amount of new source material.


To learn more about the Claude Neal lynching, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/neallynching.

The St. Petersburg Times also released a story on the investigation today. You can read it here:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article1197360.ece