New information could help solve a big decades-old mystery. Did they or didn't they survive the escape from Alcatraz?
The Georgia family of the two brothers who escaped from Alcatraz is releasing a name that connects the escape directly to the mob.
The family believes it knows how the men escaped the dangerous waters surrounding Alcatraz and where they've been living ever since.
This photo they're sharing with 11Alive purports to prove the brothers' connection to a mob boss.
The family believes it was taken of John and Clearance Anglin in Brazil in 1972.
That's ten years after their escape.
They say a well known gangster, Mickey Cohen, helped get the men out of San Francisco bay and eventually to South America.
It was Freddy Brezzi, a convicted drug smuggler, who they say delivered a photo to their home after meeting the escapees in a bar in Rio.
But there's one more player in all of this: a mob boss who sent the family the latest in a string of letters written from jail just a few weeks ago.
This is something the family has never discussed.
David and Ken Widner are nephews of the John and Clarance Anglin, the Georgia-born brothers who escaped from the country's most infamous prison.
The Anglins were presumed dead in the turbulent current of San Francisco Bay, but their bodies were never found.
"We are starting to understand what really happened," David Widner said.
The family has uncovered a deep connection between the escape, their survival, and the mob.
"All of these big named people – Mickey Cohen, Whitey Bulger – they all wanted somebody to try it and make it," David told 11Alive's Jeremy Campbell. "If somebody made it, they would all get out."
Decades after the escape, the family says they still receive appreciation from the mob.
"Whitey Bulger has been writing us for the last three years. He thinks a lot of John and Clarence because he feels like these boys saved all of their lives by getting Alcatraz shut down so they could all leave." David said. "He tells us things without telling us things. He gives us clues that only we would know what he's talking about. He knows they were all involved."
The family showed several letters to Campbell. All were postmarked with a return address of a Federal Prison in Florida, but Bulger's attorney has not responded to requests to validate the letters.
