August 11, 1934, 90 years ago: The United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, opens on an island in San Francisco Bay. It had been a U.S. Army fort since 1859, and had included a military prison since 1912.
"Alcatraz" is a Spanish word meaning "the gannet," for the pelican-like birds that the original Spanish settlers found on the island. As a military prison, among those housed there were conscientious objectors from serving in World War I, including Philip Grosser, who called it "America's Devil's Island," after the French island prison off the coast of French Guiana in South America.
Alcatraz was intended for prisoners who continuously caused trouble at other federal prisons. It would be a "last resort prison," to hold "the worst of the worst," from whom there was no hope of rehabilitation. The island became adapted and used as a prison after the buildings were modernized and security increased.
Given this high security and the island's location in the cold waters and strong currents of San Francisco Bay, prison operators believed Alcatraz to be escape-proof and America's strongest prison. On August 11, 1934, the first batch of 137 prisoners arrived at Alcatraz from the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
The three-story cellhouse included the four main cell blocks – A-block through D-block, the warden's office, visitation room, the library, and the barber shop. The prison cells typically measured 9 feet by 5 feet and 7 feet high. They were primitive and lacked privacy, furnished with a bed, desk, washbasin, a toilet on the back wall, and few items other than a blanket.
Black prisoners were segregated from other inmates in cell designation. D-Block housed the worst inmates, and 6 cells at its end were designated "The Hole." Prisoners with behavioral problems were sent to these for periods of often brutal punishment.
The dining hall and kitchen extended from the main building. Prisoners and staff ate three meals a day together, and, contrary to tradition, many prisoners said Alcatraz had considerably better food than other prisons in which they'd served. The prison hospital was located above the dining hall.
Working at the prison was considered a privilege for inmates. Those who earned privileges were employed in the Model Industries Building and the New Industries Building during the day, actively involved in providing for the military in jobs such as sewing and woodwork, and performing various maintenance and laundry chores.
The best-known inmate was former Chicago organized crime boss Al Capone. He had served in the federal prison in Atlanta from 1931 to 1934, and had paid off guards to allow him to continue running his rackets. There was no chance of that at Alcatraz. But it turned out to be unnecessary: He developed symptoms of tertiary syphilis, and was given compassionate release in late 1939, after a psychologist determined that he now had the mind of a 12-year-old boy. He lived another 7 years. Other notable crime figures from the 1930s that got sent to "The Rock" were Alvin "Creepy" Karpis and George Barnes, a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly.
As Capone ran things in Chicago, so did Meyer "Mickey" Cohen run them in Los Angeles. Like Capone, the charge on which he was eventually nailed was income tax evasion. He also didn't serve in Alcatraz for long, from 1961 to 1963. After that, he was transferred to Atlanta, and was released in 1972 after developing cancer. He died 4 years later. Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson was the "Godfather of Harlem," and was in Alcatraz from 1954 to 1963, at which point he was paroled. He lived another 5 years.
In 1962, Burt Lancaster starred in the film Birdman of Alcatraz, as convicted murderer Robert Stroud. In fact, the title was a misnomer: As the film makes clear, while Stroud had been allowed to keep and study birds in his cell at Leavenworth, he was not allowed to do so at Alcatraz. And while the film portrayed him as alternating between psychotic and sympathetic, he was far from it.
He was in Alcatraz from 1942 to 1959, at which point his ill health got him transferred to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he died in 1963, a day before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
An escape attempt on May 2, 1946 resulted in what became known as "The Battle of Alcatraz": Six men attempted to escape, but, seeing the odds against them, three turned back. The other three were killed by U.S. Marines stationed on the island.
No one ever escaped from Alcatraz. The legend that anyone did comes from an attempt on June 11, 1962: Armed robber Frank Morris, and bank-robbing brothers John and Clarence Anglin, made their way through a ventilation shaft, slid down a kitchen vent pipe, then climbed perimeter fences lined with barbed wire, before making their way to an inflated raft. They tried to reach Angel Island, 2 miles to the north.
On June 14, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter found a paddle about 200 yards off Angel Island. Later that day, in the same area, workers on a private boat found a wallet, whose contents suggested it belonged to one of the Anglins. On June 21, shreds of cloth believed to be remnants of the raft were found on a beach near the Golden Gate Bridge. The FBI's report stated, "The individuals' personal effects were the only belongings they had, and the men would have drowned before leaving them behind." The reason people still cling to the belief that the escape was successful is that the bodies were never found. They are likely at the bottom of the Bay.
A 1959 report indicated that the facility was over 3 times more expensive to run than the average American prison. The problem was made worse by the buildings' structural deterioration from exposure to salt spray, which would require $5 million to fix. Major repairs began in 1958, but by 1961, engineers considered the prison a lost cause. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy submitted plans for a new maximum-security institution at Marion, Illinois. Alcatraz was closed on March 21, 1963, and its prisoners moved to other federal pens.
Alcatraz has been reopened as a public museum. It is one of San Francisco's major tourist attractions, operated by the National Park Service's Golden Gate National Recreation Area, attracting some 1.5 million visitors annually. Visitors arrive by boat and are given a tour of the cellhouse and island, and a slide show and audio narration with anecdotes from former inmates, guards and rangers on Alcatraz.
No comments:
Post a Comment