by Joe Urschel
What they had in mind was something akin to the notorious French prison known as Devil’s Island, a brutal penal colony located off the coast of French Guiana in South America, surrounded by fast currents and shark-infested waters.
Cummings had the perfect spot in mind. On October 13, two weeks after Kelly’s conviction, he announced that the federal government was building a new prison on Alcatraz Island, off the coast of San Francisco, which had been used as a military prison since the days of the Civil War. The barren island, known even then as The Rock, fit perfectly with the militaristic theme of Cummings’s War on Crime. He would describe and promote it in such a way as to counter the public’s image of the coddling of gangsters in the federal prison system. He wanted the public to believe that the most dangerous criminals in the prison system were being sent to a brutal penal colony where they would be punished inhumanely and from which there was no escape possible.
Hoover held special contempt for the country’s penal system, with its coddling wardens, loosely purchased pardons and—the worst sin of all—parole. He had a litany of phrases to describe them that he would throw around whenever he got the chance: “criminal coddlers,” “shyster lawyers,” “convict lovers,” “legal vermin” and “swivel-chair criminologists.”
The island prison, said Cummings, would be for convicts with “advanced degrees in crime.” It would house the “habitual and incorrigible … the irreclaimable.” Consequently, the prison staff would waste no time on rehabilitation. The prison would exist solely to punish its inmates and deter others from joining their ranks. It would be reserved for less than 1 percent of the prison population—the worst of the worst.
“Here may be isolated the criminals of the vicious and irredeemable type … so that their evil influence may not be extended to other prisoners who are disposed to rehabilitate themselves,” he said. This was the place where he said he hoped to lock up the likes of Harvey Bailey, George Kelly and Al Capone.
Less than a year later, he would.
* * *
The assistant director of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, William Hammack, believed the prisoners ought to be sent to the island in large groups on special trains—heavily guarded, armored and moving in secret. He was convinced he could make his plan work, but it would require tight coordination and the cooperation of the railroads. He outlined his plan in a memo to Director of Prisons Bates.
The railroads agreed not to stop the special train at regular stations, and in fact the only occasion for stopping the train would be to change the crew, take on water or fuel, or perform some regular service. This would be done in the yard or at some point distant from the regular passenger station. Nobody but the train crew would know where the stops were to be. To safeguard this phase the railroad companies have agreed they will have [a] sufficient number of special agents and detectives in the yard or at the service station to insure no unauthorized person even approaches the train.
It would be impossible for anybody to know who was on the train unless the information was given out at Washington or at the institution from which the transfer originated. If the prisoners were selected beforehand, the train placed in the prison yard, carefully searched, the prisoners moved in and properly shackled, the entire party could move without anybody knowing anything about it except the officers inside the institution.
On September 4, 1934, Bailey, Bates and Kelly were removed from Leavenworth to be transferred with 101 other incorrigibles to Alcatraz on the heavily guarded railroad train. The plan was as audacious as it was precedent-setting. More than one hundred of the most dangerous and violent criminals in the federal penitentiary system would be loaded collectively onto a single train and transported across the Western badlands to an island prison in San Francisco Bay. The opportunities for mishap, escape and assault from outside forces were multitudinous. Still, it was decided that it would be safer to move the group collectively, rather than one at a time.
Hoover assigned Gus Jones to guard the cargo.
Kelly and company were on the largest—and last—run of the Alcatraz Express. Two other shipments of “furniture” (code for the inmates) had preceded them as the Bureau of Prisons tested its transportation plan with smaller loads of less-dangerous celebrity prisoners. They feared the dire consequences of losing the likes of Kelly or Bailey in some calamity—a rescue attempt, a train wreck or an outright assault. The Bureau also feared loose-lipped railroad workers or the eminently bribable rail yard guards who might assist the gangster crowd to somehow free the whole bunch or divert the train into some trap.
Although the first trains had delivered their cargo without incident, they were less successful in eluding the press. Photographs of the Alcatraz Express had been taken and stories about its cross-country trip published. Jones told his guards that this, the last trip, would be the most dangerous of all.
“We got away with the first bunch because they didn’t have any idea of what we would do. But now they know it will be a rail move and they’ll be ready for us if they intend to make an effort to break these men out,” he said.
“There well could be an attempt because these men we are taking are connected into every bandit, stickup, and kidnapping gang in the country. Anywhere along the line they could derail this train … and hope their men would live through it and they could get them away—and they have damned little to lose if they don’t.”
The cross-country train ride was a special torture itself. There were to be sixteen guards accompanying each shipment. The ends of each car were enclosed with a metal mesh sheeting and the windows were barred and locked closed. The inmates were shackled together in pairs. They remained in their seats for the entire four-day trip, drinking water from pails with dippers and eating in their seats. The only time during the trip they were permitted to leave their seats was to use the restrooms, which they would do while bound to their partners. The trains raced across the country, with rail switchers clearing the tracks ahead of them. They refueled and changed crews in the rail yards rather than in the stations. The yards were cleared and guarded by armed guards until the trains could tear out and resume their journey.
As Jones walked through the railcars with his finger on the trigger of his submachine gun, surveying the scene, he thought of an incident from early in his career as a Texas Ranger, when he and his partner were about to enter a seedy Mexican bar to arrest a cattle rustler. His partner had turned to Jones and said, “If trouble starts in there just pull your pistol as fast as you can and shoot everybody in sight except me—they’re all bound to be guilty of something.”
Good advice in his present situation as well, he thought. And these men all really were guilty. He’d personally arrested a good number of them, and knew them all by name and reputation.
As Kelly’s train raced through the drought-plagued Midwest he watched the wastelands of the territory he used to plunder fly by. The parched wheat fields, the rotten corn, the carcasses of dead cattle that had starved in the heat and were left rotting in the fields. The wind blew the dust off the barren fields and into the railcars on the rare occasions when Jones would allow a door to be cracked open for some brief ventilation. The dirt caked on the sweaty faces of the inmates until they were almost unrecognizable. When the train would stop, the heat in the car would rise. Rivulets of sweat carved tracks in their dusted faces, and the stench intensified as the men cursed and threatened their tormentors.
Kelly’s train arrived at 6:00 a.m. at Ferry Point on the East Bay. From there, the prisoners were taken by barge to Alcatraz Island escorted by a Coast Guard cutter and a prison launch. The final 103 pieces of “furniture” had arrived. The Alcatraz population of 210 was complete.
The press had foiled the Bureau’s attempts to keep the shipments secret, and each of their arrivals was greeted by throngs of reporters wanting to know who was on the trains that required such heavy protection, and who was being shipped to Alcatraz.
Each time, Warden James Johnston, reading from
the Bureau’s playbook, told them essentially the same thing.
“No one is going to know the identity of the prisoners housed here, nor even the numbers they go by … We are not even going to let the outside world know to which duties they have been assigned … [the inmates] are not even going to have an opportunity to know what goes on outside … These men were sent here because the government wants to break their contacts with the underworld. That is going to be done.”
Once on the island, Kelly and the rest of the inmates were marched into a yard and taken two by two inside, where they were allowed to shower. They were then inspected by the medical staff, which probed and prodded, looking for evidence of contraband and drugs. They were given clean clothes, their prison numbers and marched off to their cells.
After their days-long ride through the Midwest and the western plains in the beastly hot railcars, the prisoners were freezing in the damp, windy weather on the island. When they assembled for their first meal, they were locked into the mess hall, where machine-gun-wielding guards walked the catwalks above and tear-gas canisters hung above the tables ready to be triggered if trouble broke out. They were allowed to eat, but not to talk.
Among Kelly’s new neighbors were Al Capone, five members of Roger Touhy’s gang, two from Bugs Moran’s, five from Dutch Schultz’s, ten from the Barker-Karpis collective and guys who’d ridden and worked with John Dillinger, George “Baby Face” Nelson and Bonnie and Clyde. Among the notables was Gordon Alcorn, who’d kidnapped Charles Boettcher. Union Station massacre conspirators Frank Mulloy, Richard Galatas and Herbert Farmer were there. So were Jim Clark, who had busted out of the Kansas State Pen with Harvey Bailey, and Tommy Holden and Francis Keating, who Kelly had sprung from Leavenworth.
The old crowd was back together, but their life in Alcatraz would be decidedly different from their previous incarcerations. Alcatraz was the prison for the inmates that society had given up on. There was no effort made at rehabilitation, because the country had decided that the people sent to Alcatraz were irredeemable and, thus, they never were wanted back in the general population. Alcatraz was simply about punishment and confinement.
The prison strove to isolate its population from the outside world under a level of security theretofore unseen. Their interaction with the outside world would be virtually eliminated. All prisoners were equal and anonymous. There was no way to curry favors or game the system.
The guards were new and newly trained. They and their families were required to live on the island, but in the midst of the Depression, the Bureau of Prisons had little trouble finding men willing to live in such a godforsaken place.
The Justice Department imposed the rules at Alcatraz, and they were draconian and unambiguous.
Escape would be virtually impossible. Inmates would be deprived of opportunities for interaction with one another that might provide opportunities for collusion. There would be no special accommodations for rich celebrity prisoners. Information in and out of the prison would be strictly controlled. The regimen at Alcatraz would represent real punishment. In effect, the government was saying that it did not care if the inmates there were ever returned to society. In fact, they would prefer that they weren’t.
The inmates at Alcatraz were informed that they were entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else was a privilege that had to be earned. On Alcatraz there were no newspapers or radios; there was no commissary where inmates could select items to purchase, like candy or cigarettes. Their days were regimented to the minute.
For the rebellious, there was solitary confinement in the prison’s “dungeon.”
Life in the dungeon was a special form of hell, completely unknown to the outside world until it was described in testimony by inmate Harry Young, who was accused of murdering another prisoner with a home-made shiv:
Its size was approximately that of a regular cell—9 feet by 5 feet by about 7 feet high—I could touch the ceiling by stretching my arm … You are stripped nude and pushed into the cell. Guards take your clothes and go over them minutely for what few grains of tobacco may have fallen into the cuffs or pockets. There is no soap. No tobacco. No toothbrush. The smell—it is like stepping into a sewer. It is nauseating. After they have searched your clothing, they throw it in to you. For bedding, you get two blankets around 5 in the evening. You have no shoes, no bed, no mattress—nothing but the four damp walls and two blankets. The walls are painted black. Once a day I got three slices of bread … I got one meal in five days and nothing but bread in between … In the entire thirteen days I was there, I got two meals.
He described the air fouled by the stench of human waste in the metal bucket that serves as the cell’s toilet, and damp air from the large vent through which the winds blow constantly, making it impossible to stay warm.
Standing in your stocking feet on that concrete floor is not conducive to health … I tried to huddle in the corner and took my coveralls off and used them to try to keep my shoulders warm. Then I shifted and wrapped them around my legs to try to keep my legs warm. That went on day after day … I have seen but one man get a bath in solitary confinement, in all the time that I have been there. That man had a bucket of cold water thrown over him.
The monastic regime and hellacious conditions drove some inmates insane, but others learned to accommodate and accept it. They adapted and survived. George Kelly was among those in the latter group.
He entered Alcatraz at age thirty-four, and he would never again walk the earth as a free man. He was resigned to his fate. Initially, he would support the other inmates in their hunger strikes and fruitless protests for easier conditions. But after a few tours in the dungeon, he gave up on that and tried to make the best of the situation and live his life as well as he could. He would “do his own time” in the parlance of the inmates, enjoying the few breaks in the work routine, when he could play cards and dominoes in the prison yard with Bailey and Bates, Keating and Holden and some of the other bank-robbing pros from his gang days.
The prison psychiatrist described Kelly favorably in his reports, saying he fully accepted responsibility for his criminal actions, was smart, insightful and did not display signs of resentment. On the Stanford–Binet tests given by the prison, Kelly scored as “highly intelligent.” The doctor wrote that he “shows a fairly normal reaction to a difficult situation … does not appear to worry too much.” The doctor did not consider him “psychotic in any way.”
For Kelly, the torture of Alcatraz was not the spartan conditions, the monotonous routine and the lack of any special privileges, but the deprivation of news from the outside world—the lack of newspapers, radio and correspondence. To keep his sanity he enrolled in several correspondence courses from the University of California, checked out books from the prison library and read constantly. (Al Capone, an accomplished mandolin and banjo player, convinced the warden to allow him to start a prison band. He recruited Kelly to play drums and Alvin Karpis to play guitar. Years later, Karpis would be released to the maximum security federal penitentiary in Washington state, where he taught fellow inmate Charles Manson how to play.)
Bates took a similar tack, consuming three to four books of nonfiction a week and outperforming Kelly in friendly competition in their correspondence courses. In fact, one of his teachers noted that his work in grammar and composition was “probably the best submitted at this institution thus far.”
But Bates, whose take from the kidnapping was still largely unrecovered, was constantly being hounded by prison officials and federal agents for information about its whereabouts. With the agents constantly making a public show of pulling him off work details and out of his cell for interrogations, Bates feared he might be marked as a stool pigeon by the other inmates, who might assume that he was giving up information about them or their partners on the outside. And that was a particularly dangerous reputation to have in a federal prison, especially one housing known murderers and assassins.
Ultimately, he
refused to meet with any agent unless he could bring Bailey with him as a witness. Bailey’s reputation among the inmates was so stellar that if he vouched for Bates, that was good enough. Bailey would never violate the prisoners’ code. He practically wrote it.
Annoyed with the constant harassment, Bates wrote to the warden complaining that he’d been having “unwelcome visits” that were causing him apprehension:
I endeavored to impress upon the first visitor that I have no desire to discuss any phase of my affairs now or in the future with the Dep’t of Investigation. I have never, since being in their custody, encouraged them to believe that I could or would divulge any information that would be of the slightest interest or benefit to them, nor has anything occurred since my arrival here to alter my attitude … I would appreciate very much if you will please enforce the order that you made known to me upon my arrival here Sept 4th, that I would be allowed no visitors.
While the Bureau of Prisons was filling Alcatraz with incorrigibles, Hoover’s men continued their pursuit of other Public Enemies.
They would never get the man whose reckless act had started the whole crime war with his bold slaughter of lawmen in the parking lot in Kansas City. The “heat” had simply gotten to Verne Miller. Hoover’s men found themselves racing against the forces of organized crime, who were also hunting Miller to eliminate him in the hope of getting the feds off their backs as they tracked him through his usual network of criminal hideouts and safe havens. Miller had planned to leave for Europe after saying farewell to Vi Mathias in Chicago when the Bureau’s agents botched his attempted capture. The Bureau’s subsequent hunt, and the problems it was creating for organized crime up and down the East Coast, had made him a marked man.
Agents had interviewed gang leader Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, head of Murder Incorporated, one of the nation’s most notorious killing syndicates and one of Miller’s earlier employers. He told the feds that “no one will have anything to do with Verne Miller now … If Verne Miller shows up you will know about it.” In other words, we are hunting him too. If we find him, you won’t have to worry about any legal technicalities.