Name: Aaron Walter Burgett Age: 28 Inmate #: 991-AZ Crime: post office robbery in Missouri Sentence: 26 years Notes: transferred from Leavenworth in 1955; attempted escape at Leavenworth in 1952. He died from drowning during this escape attempt.

Name: Clyde Johnson Age: 40 Inmate #: 864-AZ Crime: bank robbery in Tennessee Sentence: 40 years Notes: transferred from Leavenworth in 1950; once escaped from the 21-story Dade county jail in Miami, Florida. Bureau of Prisons: "transferred from Alcatraz (no date available), paroled (institution not available), violated parole and returned to custody several times. He died at Federal Medical Center (FMC) Lexington on 10/29/95."

Burgett and Johnson were working outside the walls on garbage detail at the western side of the island under supervison of the armed guard, Harold Miller. Shortly after 3 p.m. on the foggy afternoon, the two convicts flashed a knife in Miller's face. They bound and gagged him, and then tied him to a tree near the water. As they were doing this, the convicts mentioned that a boat was waiting for them in the fog. By 3:45, it was noticed the three had not returned from their detail. The guards sounded the alarm and quickly found Miller by 4 p.m. An hour later, a crewman on a Coast Guard boat spotted Johnson up to his waist in water on the western side of the island.

Burgett was nowhere to be found. The search went on for ten days on land and eventually under the water. On October 12, thirteen days later, Burgett's body, floating about 100 yards off the east end of the island, was spotted at 8 a.m. by tower guard Lyndon M. Cropper. The warden called the Coast Guard Harbor Patrol who retrieved the body. It was discovered on Burgett's body that he tried to use wooden flippers tied to his boots and a plastic bag "water wing" tied to his belt to keep him afloat.