PxHereFrom the heyday of organized crime to modern-day drug traffickers, these prison escapes are among the most ingenious in history.According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, some 2,000 people escape from prison every year. But only a handful of prison escapes are truly legendary.Most people who escape prison do so while out on work detail or leave during an authorized furlough. They are usually caught within days. But others are far more elaborate. And while the crimes that put criminals in jail may not be anything to applaud, some of their prison escapes might just be.The variety of these 11 prison escapes runs the gamut. From mile-long tunnels constructed directly beneath the prison to con artists talking their way out, the prison escapes and jailbreaks below will have you rethink just how secure these facilities really are.The 1962 Alcatraz Prison EscapeAlcatraz Federal PenitentiaryClarence Anglin, John Anglin, and Frank Morris vanished in 1962 never to be seen again.On the morning of June 12, 1962, guards at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary made a shocking discovery. Alcatraz inmates Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin had escaped. Their daring caper baffled authorities since Alcatraz island was over 1.25 miles off San Franciscos coast and so heavily guarded it was known as The Rock.Alcatraz had held prisoners since the Civil War. However, it was only re-fortified into the infamous prison in 1934 and came in handy by holding inmates like Al Capone during the peak of organized crime. With an armed guard at every outpost, new iron bars on every cell, and choppy waters offshore escape seemed all but impossible. And between 1934 and 1962, there had already been 13 failed escape attempts. But that didnt deter Morris and the Anglin brothers. The trio escaped Alcatraz on June 11, 1962, just a year before the prison would close for good. But their project began months earlier with Morris at the helm.FBIOne of the dummy heads left behind by the escapists.A career burglar and armed robber, Morris was one of the smartest inmates in Alcatraz. Bringing the Anglins and car thief Allen West into the fold, they stole spoons and saw blades and spent over half a year enlarging the ventilation ducts in each of their cells with Morris playing his accordion to dampen the nightly noise.They covered the ducts with cardboard resembling the cell wall color during the day. The ducts led to a utility tunnel where they stored a six-by-14-foot inflatable raft made of raincoats they had accumulated. Most resourceful of all, they had created papier-mch dummy heads and left them poking out of their cell beds.When the time finally came, West was left behind when he failed to remove the grill of his ventilation duct. In a twist of fate, it had simply become stuck. Morris and the Anglins, meanwhile, arrived at the utility tunnel, grabbed their raft, slid down a pipe from the prison roof and snuck to the shore to inflate their raft.While the FBI launched an investigation that concluded in 1979 that all three men had died, not everyone is as convinced particularly the Anglin brothers two sisters who claimed in 2012 that Clarence had called them as a free man.The Prison Escape Of Leonard Rayne MosesLeonard Rayne Moses after his arrest on November 12, 2020, in Grand Blanc, Michigan by the FBIs Detroit Fugitive Task Force.Leonard Rayne Moses was only 16 years old when joined the 1968 Pittsburgh riots in wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.s assassination. It was April 6 when he threw Molotov cocktails at the home of local Mary Amplo, who died of pneumonia caused by her burns a few months later. Moses was charged with first-degree murder.The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for only an hour before finding the 15-year-old Moses guilty. A judge sentenced him to life with no chance of parole. In desperate hopes to overturn that conviction, his lawyers managed to bring the case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1971. His lawyers argued that any confession Moses gave authorities should be suppressed. They explained that the teenager was far too young to decide to waive his Miranda warnings, let alone realize that he might have incriminated himself while speaking to police without an attorney following his arrest. YouTube/ABC NewsFBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge Michael Christman announcing Leonard Moses arrest during a 2020 press conference.Ultimately, Moses decided to take matters into his own hands. Despite the Supreme Court concluding that he did deserve a new trial, Moses opted not to take any chances and forewent a traditional prison escape by using a temporary leave to his advantage. When he was permitted to attend his grandmothers funeral, he vanished.On July 1, 1971, Moses attended the service at Nazarene Baptist Church in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, escorted by two police officers. But Moses managed to elude them and escape. A federal arrest warrant was issued on July 12, but Moses remained a fugitive for the next five decades.The FBI had been aware that Moses likely lived under an alias, but only discovered that it was Paul Dickson when he was locally arrested in Michigan. Working as a pharmacist, Moses was arrested for stealing 80 hydrocodone pills with authorities easily matching his fingerprints to those from the 1968 arrest.Arrested by the FBI on Nov. 12, 2020, Leonard Rayne Moses had become one of the longest-running fugitives in U.S. history. Fortunately for Moses, the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled in 2012 that sentencing a juvenile to life imprisonment without parole was tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment. 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