Alcatraz Alumni at 75th Anniversary - Stories of the Rock's Notorious Inmates and Residents

A former Alcatraz guard who used to sit and play checkers with notorious inmate, 'Birdman' Robert Stroud, was giving his story on the Rock yesterday.

He was one of over 75 Alcatraz Alumni, including an ex-con, former guards and residents, gathered there to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the federal penitentiary...see previous blogs

The guard was 83-year-old George De Vincenzi.

'George knew him best of anyone because George spent time in the hospital,' said one of the Rangers.

George is also the guard with the epithet of the 'most dramatic introduction to working there' in the history of Alcatraz.

Playing checkers with Stroud wasn't allowed on the basis that it constituted socializing with an inmate, especially such a high-security one.

'It was prohibited to do what I did,' said George. But he did it. 'We both were bored, and it was an opportunity to pass a little time occasionally.'

Stroud, said George describing the hospital scene, was 'behind a barred door with a chain and lock on it, I did not even have the key. I put a little table against the barred door and he played with his hands through the bars.'

Security for Stroud was so tight that before George could push the table up to the bars he had first to open another door, a thick oak one with a glass window at the top. When the oak door was closed, Stroud would stand behind the window 'to look out and try to get your attention,' he said.

George, however, was always very aware of the dangers of socializing with inmates. Of conversation with Stroud he said, 'I kept that to a minimum. I didn't want it to get personal. If you get too close they begin to want something from you. The next thing you know, they want you to bring a letter out, or something in. I was very wary of that.'

'He would ask me questions sometimes about my family. I knew what I was doing. I just answered what I had to.'

The idea of playing checkers had been passed on by a fellow officer who also played occasionally. The clandestine games took place only when George was confident he could trust other officers to watch out for him and warn him if senior officers were about. 'If I couldn't trust them, I wouldn't do it,' he said.

Had he been caught, 'I probably would have been given thirty days off, possibly fired.'

Who won the games?

'He did! I don't believe I won one. He beat me at checkers, he won all the time.'

Stroud, the 'Birdman', was considered to have a high IQ score of 134, and researched and wrote on birds that he had kept in his former prison in Kansas. He spent a record 44 years in isolation, 17 years of that in Alcatraz, for his brutality.

He killed a barman, assaulted a prison orderly, stabbed a prison inmate, made threats against prisoners and finally murdered a prison officer. Deemed a risk to other prisoners, for most of his time there he was only let out when they were locked up, a feature that used to annoy many of the prisoners, said George.

He was also a known homosexual and a psychopath. 'He was a psychopath. Definitely,' confirmed George.

But though George used to supervise him in the bathroom without the protection of metal bars, he never feared for his personal safety.

'I was always leery of him, but I got to know him quite well, and I got along fine with him,' he said.

Which wasn't the case with all prisoners. His first morning's work there would have sent many a man scurrying back to the dole queue.

George had returned to America from service in the navy during the Second World War. He needed employment and decided to take a short intensive training course to become a Correctional Officer, as guards were called, on Alcatraz.

Three weeks later, Monday morning at 9 am with 'starched shirt and shiny shoes', he reported for his first duty. He was given the innocuous-sounding task of supervising at the barber's, a place where inmates cut each other's hair. It would serve as a sharp lesson that nowhere on the Rock was safer than any other.

There were two black inmates there, Freddie Lee 'Curly' Thomas, barber for black inmates, and in the chair, Joseph Barsock. Both were murderers.

They were whispering together, George recounted. 'I began to get a little suspicious,' he said.

Without warning, suddenly the barber plunged his shears into Barsock's neck, heart and lungs.

'I jumped in like a damn fool,' said George, who risked his life to try and separate them. Barsock collapsed on the floor.

'And then a very strange thing happened,' said George. The barber knelt down, kissed the dying man on the side of the face and whispered "I love you."

The attack was a lovers' tiff, and the time was 9.35 am. George was 24-years-old and had completed his first 35 minutes on duty.

As officers rushed into the room, George, who now cannot recall how he came to have the bloodied shears in his hands but presumes he must have picked them up, handed the gruesome evidence over to an officer.

Nor was it to be the only murder that he witnessed. Five years later, and George had been promoted and given more responsibility. One morning he was ascribed the role of Acting Lieutenant. He had to go to D-Block, the isolation unit, with two other officers to fetch a prisoner who had been in there for two years for his own protection.

He was one of two inmates who had both been sentenced to 40 years in jail for mutiny in the army. Again, it was a lovers' quarrel and one had threatened the other. After two years, and with space needed in the special treatment unit, officers thought that the grievance would have melted away.

George brought the prisoner into the shower and clothing room to kit him out for his return to the main cell block. But who should be working there that morning? His ex-lover. Before George could realize what was happening, the ex-lover had pulled a knife and stabbed his former partner.

'Within thirty seconds, he was dead,' said George.

Over his time there, he was on duty when other terrible things happened, including the incident when an inmate slit his throat with glass from a light bulb.

How did the murders impact George, especially the first one with the barber?

'I'm not the kind of person that falls apart with something like that,' he replied. In part, he was strengthened by his war service, in part he had a resilience and strength of personality that enabled him to cope.

'I've seen potential officers go over there and when they enter inside they say "this is not for me, I don't want the job."'

'You've got to be a certain type of person to do it.'

During the Anniversary day, George related some of his experiences before an audience. Asked by someone if he had any regrets, he replied, 'It doesn't seem as bad (now) as it did then.

'Looking back, it was quite an experience!'

pic by Chris

more stories to follow...

Alcatraz 75th Anniversary - Alumni Discuss Escapes

The greatest mystery of Alcatraz surrounds the 'dummy heads' escape of three men in 1962.

Their escape was still a disputed topic on the Rock today as over 75 Alcatraz Alumni, including an ex-con and former guards and residents, gathered to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the
opening of the federal penitentiary...see previous blog for first part of previously untold escape story

'I am certain that they drowned because nothing has ever been heard of

them,' said 85-year-old Bill Long, the guard that discovered they were missing on the morning of June 12, 1962.

Bank robbers, brothers John and Clarence Anglin, and Frank Lee Morris, convicted of crimes ranging from narcotics to armed robbery, had planned and worked on their escape for over a year with a fourth man, Allen West, a car thief. All were in Alcatraz because of escape attempts in previous prisons.

Once the prisoners had worked out their escape from the cell blocks, they then had to find a means to cross the treacherous waters of the Bay, not to San Francisco but to Angel Island and the Marin headland on the opposite side to the city. They collected prison-issue rubberized raincoats from some of the inmates to make a raft and life vests. To inflate the raft, they used a concertina, one of the musical instruments provided for the prisoners' 'music hour.'

The first thing the prisoners would have had to do on reaching land was to steal a car, said Bill. They would also have had to rob for money. There were no stolen cars reported, nor was anyone robbed at that time.

'There's a theory someone was supposed to meet them,' he said, dismissing it, and likewise rumours that they made it to South America, but the FBI's checked everything out, he shrugged.

The raft was flimsy, he said, being put together in small squares. 'They were trying to go to Angel Island - the largest island in the Bay - that raft didn't make it, I'm sure,' he said.

The Anglin brothers were 'dumb-hill hillybillies' who had started with petty crimes and graduated to bank robbery, said Bill. A third brother, Alfred, convicted of the same bank robbery had remained in jail in Atlanta because he hadn't joined them in an escape attempt.

Morris, however, was a different kettle of fish. 'He had an IQ of 118, something like that,' said Bill. 'He's the guy that devised the raft but he didn't pick the tides very well.'

The night of the escape, the tide was flowing fast at 6 knots.

A replica of the escape had been attempted for a TV documentary. Picking a professional swimmer and a tide running at the same speed, the 'escape' had to be abandoned and the swimmer rescued because the tide was pushing him out of the Golden Gate, said Bill.

Generally, the men might not have been in bad shape physically but they had had no training. In fact, one of the inmates reported to the authorities afterwards that John Anglin had described himself as a poor swimmer.

Former guard, 82-year-old Frank Heaney, with the distinction of being the youngest-ever guard on Alcatraz, agreed. Asked by one of the audience about the escape as he was giving a talk about his experiences, he thought that conditions that night defeated the men. The water temperature was cold as usual at 55 degrees, the distance to land was about one mile to one-and-a-quarter miles, and the tide was running very swiftly out to the Golden Gate, he said.

'So we think they drowned and got swept out into the ocean. No-one knows for sure,' he added. He thought it significant, though, that Fox TV had once offered a $1 million reward for information.

'That's how much they think those inmates drowned,' he said. But of the escape plan itself, he said, 'And what a genius escape that was!'

Ex-bank robber, 76-year-old Darwin Coon, who was a friend of the Anglins and helped in their escape, disagreed that they had drowned in the attempt.

'They got away from here, that's my opinion,' he said. Darwin's view is that the Anglins simply went back to the Everglades of Florida where they were from, and disappeared. Their bodies were never discovered, he maintained.

In the days after the escape, the remains of the raft, homemade paddles, two life vests - one in the Bay, the other outside the Golden Gate - and two packages containing Anglin family photos and sheets of paper with names and addresses on, were found floating in the water.

Several weeks later, a body was found outside the Bay but was so badly decomposed - CSI hadn't been invented! - that it remained unidentified. The colour of the clothing was blue, though bleached by the water, and so a query remains as to whether it was blue prison issue clothing.

Darwin had earned the reputation of being a 'solid con', one who wouldn't squeal on other inmates. He knew the Anglins from their time together in the Kansas prison and when asked by John to help, he took the risk because he was a friend.

The irony of Darwin's criminal career is that he was sent to Alcatraz in September 1959 from Kansas for a crime he DIDN'T commit: the theft of prison tools.

At Alcatraz, Darwin worked in the kitchen as a cook. Shortly after, an inmate on the maintenance team slipped him a screwdriver. At a prearranged time, he went to the restroom, unscrewed the cap on the waste line and lowered the screw driver down on a cord to the waiting John.

Over a few months Darwin passed on more tools and one day in the exercise yard surreptitiously handed over his raincoat.

He discovered afterwards that other prisoners were doing the same.

Darwin was asked by someone in the audience as he spoke, how would he have devised an escape plan?

'I would do it the same way, with dummies,' he replied. With guards checking prisoners every 15 minutes during the day, the nighttime was the only possibility.

The question remains, however, why did the Fourth Man, Allen West, remain in his cell on the night, and who was the inventor of the 'genius escape'?

Bill believes he has the answers. At the time, West said that work on the vent in his cell wall wasn't finished and by the time he had squeezed out into the cavity, the others had vanished onto the roof. This meant that West wasn't able to get through the air vent and onto the roof by himself because of its height, the others having hoisted the first man up and pulled the last man through.

Not so, said Bill. 'I do think he stayed behind and he was smart.'

The raft, said Bill, was small and would only take three men. The Anglins and Morris were planning to abandon West on the shore, and West knew this.

Even though he was the mastermind of the scheme. In the early years after the escape, Morris was credited with devising the plan. But others began to say it was West.

It was West who spotted the possibility when he was working at the top of the block, said Bill, confident of his sources on both this and the intent to abandon West on the Rock.

'I have heard that from some very reliable inmates. I'd been there about ten years before the escape. I got to know some of the inmates pretty well.'

pics by Chris show: Alcatraz water tower; Darwin; Frank; Bill

More firsthand stories of life on the Rock and it's notorious inmates in next blogs

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI have released its documents on the escape:
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/alcatraz.htm

A Summary of all the Escape Attempts:
http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/escapes1.htm

75th Anniversary of Alcatraz - Alumni and Untold Escape Story

It is the escape story from Alcatraz that's 'never been told,' said former guard, Bill Long, today, speaking on the Rock as part of the celebrations of the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the federal penitentiary.



The untold story concerns the most ingenious of escapes, that of the Anglin brothers and Frank Lee Morris.

Also giving their stories were ex-bank robber Darwin Coon and other former guards and their families who lived on the Rock during its illustrious penitentiary days from 1934 to 1963. Another ex-con, John Dekker, also a bank robber, was due to be there but was ill.

The Alcatraz Alumni as they are known have been gathering annually since the 50th Anniversary in 1984. The anniversary event was a sell-out, giving 5,000 people the chance to meet over 75 former residents of the Rock.

The story, however, that has
not been told is what happened on the evening watch of June 11, 1962, the night of the escape. Up until now it has been thought that the prisoners escaped without being noticed at all. But, says Bill, they were heard by two officers who failed to react to warning signs.

'I was the one that discovered they were gone,' he said.

In 1962, John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Lee Morris had burrowed through their cell walls by enlarging vents at the back, giving them access to a cavity in the cell block. They made false wall segments to cover the holes. From there they scaled up pipes to an air vent and cut away metal bars, using the prisoners' 'music hour' to cover the noise, to be able to get onto the roof.

On the night of their escape, they placed dummy heads in their beds made with real hair and painted flesh colour, so that they weren't missed until morning.

That evening Bill was five minutes late arriving for his shift due to the fact that he was working a double shift. The report when he took over was that all was routine. 'It was actually anything but routine,' he said.

Minutes before he reported for duty, his fellow guard - the strict term was Correctional Officer - had heard a loud noise like a hub being dropped on the ground.

One of the escapees had dropped the cover off the air vent as they were removing it. 'It rumbled,' he said, and was heard by inmates.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, an officer working in the prison hospital heard footsteps on the roof and notified the control center. Nothing happened. Ten minutes later, the hospital officer called again.

This time a lieutenant got a key and went to the hospital. He couldn't hear any footsteps, said Bill, but of course the Anglins and Morris were not there by then. They were out and down by the shore.

What the lieutenant should have done, said Bill, was to 'make sure there's a man in every cell,' by doing a stand-up count. If that had happened, the escapees would have been caught on the Rock. Instead, the officer in charge 'came back down and ignored the whole thing.'

At 7.15 am the following morning, a sergeant 'hot-footed' it to Bill: at the stand-up count three men weren't responding.

Bill went along to the cells. Then he knelt with his head against the bars and with his left hand struck one of the men's pillows hard - the pillow not the head, he stressed. 'The head flopped over on the floor. That's when the shit hit the fan,' he said.

How did he react to that?

'Ma'am, that would give you a shock! They said I jumped back about four feet, and I was kneeling!' he said.

Whistles blew then, Bill notified Control Room and 'we started looking at every nook and cranny.' The errant lieutenant was never disciplined.

'I've never really told this story much before,' said 85-year-old Bill, speaking in a corner of the prisoners' dining room to a small cluster of journalists and cameramen.

As Bill spoke, it became apparent that quite a large number of inmates had been aware of the impending escape. Why, he was asked, did it remain unknown from the guards and those in charge?

'They must have had everyone pretty well scared,' said the questioner.

'The whole group were rooting for someone who would be able to make the break,' said Bill, to prove that it was possible to escape. That's why even their regular, reliable snitch - he didn't name a name - kept quiet.

Another factor was the unusual method that they used - to chisel through rock at the back of the cell with sharpened spoons and other implements.

'For years and years we checked the bars, but we never checked the back (of the cell), it was meant to be solid rock,' he said. Every so often guards were required to tap the metal bars with a rubber hammer. If they vibrated, all was secure.

But checking the backs of the cells? 'It never entered anyone's mind. It was quite clever the way they got out.'

Bill enjoys his story-telling. 'I'm the guy that knocked the head off....I enjoy it (the story telling) in fact,' he said. Now living in Pennsylvania, he handed out a business card that describes him as a historian and story teller.

He arrived at Alcatraz with his wife, 18-month-old daughter and six-month-old son in 1953 and stayed until it closed in 1963.

The mystery surrounding the escape of John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Lee Morris has never been solved. Did they make it to Angel Island and Marin County where they were heading for, or San Francisco, and to freedom, or did they drown?

For Bill's views and those of Darwin Coon and former guard Frank Heaney, and to discover who was the real mastermind behind the escape...see next blog

pics by Chris