Rufus William Franklin (January 15 1916 – May 26 1975) was an American criminal who served a life sentence in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

He is best known for taking part in the third documented attempted escape from Alcatraz Prison with Thomas R. Limerick and James C. Lucas on the night of May 23, 1938.

Once the supervisor was rendered unconscious, the convicts would escape through a window to the rooftop, where they would incapacitate an armed guard and leave the island via a seized police boat.

They enacted their escape plan on May 23, 1938, in the prison's mat shop, where they assaulted Custodial Officer Royal Cline with hammer blows to his head.

[3] Franklin and Lucas, the other surviving convict, were tried for murder[4][5][6] and sentenced to life imprisonment, after the jury spared them from execution.