Joseph Bowers Joseph Bowers Joseph "Dutch" Bowers (December 13, 1896 – April 27, 1936) was the first man to attempt an escape from Alcatraz prison. On 27 April 1936, convict Henry Larry claims to have watched Bowers, who was feeding seagulls, stack some empty barrels and climb up next to the fence so he could retrieve a bit of food which had fallen on the barbed wire. He stood there feeding the birds for several minutes until a tower guard turned, saw him atop the fence, and fired on the convict. Bowers fell seventy feet to his death on the rocks below.
Folsom State Prison numerous escape attempts; the first occurred shortly after the first inmates arrived in the 1880s. Throughout Folsom's violent and bloody history, numerous riots and escape attempts have resulted in both inmate and staff deaths. In 1920, three convicts hijacked a prison train that was used to move materials and smashed it through a prison gate to escape. On June 16, Dwight E. Abbott, 24, a Los Angeles robber, escaped from Folsom by making a lifelike dummy. The dummy was cleverly made to look real enough with Abbott's own hair, that of his cellmate, and a plaster of Paris face, to