John Paul Scott (January 3, 1927[1] – February 22, 1987[2]) was an American criminal who is noted as the only escapee from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary known to have reached the San Francisco shore by swimming.

While working on culinary duty in a storage room below the kitchen, the two bent the bars of a window in the latrine of the cell block, climbed down a rope, and made it to the water.

At 7:40 a.m., the Presidio Military Police got a call from one of four teenagers who had found an unconscious man at Fort Point beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

When Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin had escaped and disappeared half a year earlier, prison officials had said that they had likely drowned (although the FBI just listed them as missing).

This closure was predominantly due to the expensive operational costs of the facility and structural problems, but was hastened by the escape of John Paul Scott and others.