Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe

Theodore Cole ( born February 16, 1913 † probably on December 16, 1937) was an American prisoner. Cole became famous as one of five men who may escape from the U.S. maximum security prison Alcatraz has succeeded.

Cole's escape attempt from Alcatraz

Cole was convicted in 1936 after a failed bank robbery in Oklahoma for a thirty-year prison sentence. For serving the same he was transferred to the same prison island in the bay of San Francisco in the prison Alcatraz. From there, he took on 16 December 1937, together with his fellow prisoner Ralph Roe attempt to escape. The two succeeded, first, located from the outside of the actual prison facility, tire work shop, where they were busy trying to escape by using their tools to auseinanderzubiegen in an unattended moment the bars of the windows of the building, through the resulting opening slip through and then to reach the coast of the island. After that their trace is lost.

Officially, Cole, as well as Roe, as missing and was declared soon after his disappearance dead. It is believed that the two in an attempt to (probably with the help of a homemade raft ) to swim in cold weather in December to the mainland, frozen and / or drowned thereafter stripped and their bodies from the sea and "swallowed" were.

The escape attempt by Cole and Roe was the second of a total of fourteen escape attempts from Alcatraz in 1961 and is next to the outbreak of Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin brothers as the only one who 's been possibly succeed.