A strange letter has been found that is said to be from one of the three famous prisoners who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962.

Someone writing as John Anglin sent a letter to the San Francisco police in 2013, but it was not made public until now.

“My name is John Anglin,” the letter says. “In June 1962, I get away from Alcatraz. We did make it that night, but just barely!”

The three people who got away are still on the most wanted list, along with pictures of what they might look like now.

What does it say?
It says that Frank Morris, John and Clarence Anglin, and another prisoner, John Anglin, lived long after they got out of jail fifty years ago.

The writer says that Morris died in 2005 and Clarence Anglin died in 2008.

The author tries to make a deal with the police by saying, “If you say on TV that I will only have to go to jail for a year and get medical care, I will write back and let you know exactly where I am.”

“I’m 83 years old and not in good health.” Cancer has hit me.

The letter says that John Anglin lived in North Dakota for eight years and then Seattle for most of his life.

He was said to be living in southern California at the time the letter was sent.

Is the letter real?
CBS says that even though San Francisco police got the letter five years ago, they didn’t make it public.

It came from an unknown source and was given to the San Francisco TV station KPIX.

The letter was sent to the FBI lab for forensic handwriting analysis by the US Marshals Service, which has been in charge of the case since 1978.

The US Marshals Service said in a statement that handwriting samples of John Anglin, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris, the three escapees, were compared to the anonymous letter. The results were “inconclusive.”

Under Alcatraz, an unknown past was found.

What does family say?
John and Clarence Anglin’s nephew told CBS that his grandmother used to get roses with cards signed by John and Clarence years after they escaped.

David Widner, John’s nephew, said, “I really haven’t decided whether I think it’s John reaching out or not.”

The fact that the letter wasn’t delivered to the family on time made Mr. Widner very upset.

“For him to say he had cancer and was dying, I feel like they should have at least reached out to the family and let them know it existed,” he stated.

How did they get away?
The three prisoners, who were locked up for robbing a bank, showed that Alcatraz, a federal prison for the “worst of the worst,” was not as “escape proof” as people thought.

It is thought that the three prisoners used sharpened spoons to dig a tunnel out of their cells over a period of months.

The men took raincoats and used them to make an inflatable raft. They went into the water at night and were never seen again.

There are now more than a million tourists who visit San Francisco every year to see the building that used to be a prison.

John Anglin escaped from his cell through a hole in the wall. This is one of the most interesting parts of the tour.

The prison was built on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the bay. It closed in 1963, one year after the men got away.

At the time, the police said the three people could not have swum across the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay. Today, triathletes do just that.

The escape was made famous in the 1979 movie Escape from Alcatraz, which starred Clint Eastwood.