Case 67: The Battle of Alcatraz

*** Content warnings: Child abuse, crimes against children, sexual assault ***When 10-year-old Zahra Baker was reported missing by her father and stepmum in Hickory, North Carolina, one Saturday afternoon in 2010, it sparked the largest missing persons investigation in the city's ...  Show more

*** Content warnings: Child abduction ***When 13-year-old Megumi Yokota failed to return home from her regular badminton practice on November 15 1977, her parents immediately raised the alarm.The police in Niigata, Japan, conducted one of the city’s largest ever investigations, b ...  Show more

Alcatraz was one of the United States' most notorious prisons -- isolated on an island and surrounded by sharks. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the fact and fiction surrounding escape attempts at Alcatraz.

Locked cells, surrounded by an impenetrable concrete fortress, surrounded by high barbed wire fences, surrounded by water, on an island in San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz was considered the most 'inescapable' prison in the world. The worst of the worst were sent there. So how, in 196 ...  Show more

Cloaked in secrecy, discussed by even the most hardened criminals as a place of terror, US Penitentiary Alcatraz is the most feared institution in the American penal system. From 1934 to 1963 more than 1500 prisoners pass through its gates, including Machine-Gun Kelly and Scarfac ...  Show more

Alcatraz was the jewel in the crown of America's prison system. The wind-swept island fortress was the final stop for the nation's most dangerous criminals, including the notorious gangsters Al Capone and George 'Machine Gun' Kelly. It was thought to be escape-proof - at least ...