Escape from Alcatraz

by J. Campbell Bruce

  Chapter 9

  IN THE SPRING OF 1941 a murder trial took place in the United States District Court of San Francisco that became celebrated as the Trial of Alcatraz. It began routinely as the trial of Henri Young for the slaying of Rufus McCain, but midway The Rock itself superseded Young as a defendant in absentia.

  Young had engineered the break out of solitary two years earlier, and McCain was in on it. Both landed in the Dark Hole. McCain emerged first and spread word that when Young got out there would, in short time, be only one of them left on the island—McCain. His verbal sniping included what the newspapers referred to as “a revolting remark” about Young’s mother. He flew into a rage when informed his hour of freedom, shivering on the beach in his long cotton drawers, had cost him 11,880 days of good time off, a third of his ninety-nine-year term. He blamed Young for the failure of the escape and branded him “a yellow punk bastard.”

  Young attributed McCain’s hostility to various causes. He was chagrined at being found out a coward, on his knees pleading for mercy at the time of the capture. He was sore because Young wouldn’t go along with his desperate plan, once the jig was up, to snatch a couple of wives as hostages. Their feud predated the break: McCain had long harbored a resentment at Young’s response to a homosexual advance with a sock on the jaw.

  McCain’s threats to kill him came to Young in solitary by the grapevine. They began to bug him. Everywhere he looked—and everywhere, in the Dark Hole, was midnight—McCain was giving him the evil eye. One morning, not long after his release from solitary, Young slipped out of a third-floor shop, down an outside stairway, into the tailor shop on the second floor. A canvas holster on his belt held a steel blade with a rounded butt. In his hand at his side he gripped a seven-inch, bronze stiletto with a tape handle, honed to razor keenness. He walked up to McCain and rammed the stiletto into his stomach. McCain fell like a sack. Young stood staring at him. Guards relieved Young of the knives, and as they led him away he muttered, “I hope I killed the bastard.” He had, and it looked like the gas chamber at San Quentin for Young.

  These details came out at the trial.…

  Almost seven years had passed since The Rock became a Devil’s Island, and its mystery-nurtured reputation was such that spectators gasped when the twenty-nine-year-old Henri Young walked into Federal Judge Michael J. Roche’s court for arraignment that April morning in 1941. Alongside the husky guards, he had a gentle, amiable look, the groomed appearance of a shoe clerk in his gray suit, white shirt, and blue tie, dark hair slicked in a meticulous part.

  Asked if he desired counsel, the accused slayer, in his fifth year of a twenty-year bank robbery term when he abbreviated Rufus McCain’s ninety-nine-year stretch, put on an act that patently astonished the venerable jurist. He strode to and fro before the bench, like a veteran trial lawyer, as he addressed the court: “May I have two attorneys, Your Honor? Categorically speaking, I have a preference among attorneys. I would like to have for my counsel two young attorneys with no established reputations either for verdicts or hung juries.”

  “Rather an unusual request,” commented the judge.

  “I want the two most youthful attorneys I can get,” Young said. He grinned. “They probably won’t do any good for me, but maybe they can use the experience.”

  On his next trip to court, for plea, Young beamed at the sight of his counsel. Both had a fresh-off-the-campus aura: James Martin MacInnis, in his middle twenties and four years out of Stanford Law School, sporting a derby and double-breasted overcoat; Sol A. Abrams, thirtyish, pink-cheeked, cherub-faced. Young was not aware that MacInnis already had a wide Hall of Justice experience, and that Abrams was a former assistant U.S. attorney. Judge Roche had been deluged with pleas from young barristers clutching law degrees but, for the prisoner’s own welfare, preferred counsel with trial practice.

  They came up with a unique defense: Alcatraz, not Henri Young, killed Rufus McCain. Alcatraz had put Young into a “psychological coma” and rendered him “legally unconscious” at the moment of the slaying. Questioning veniremen, they delved into the misty realm of the subconscious, of dual personality, of irresistible impulse, sleepwalking, dissociation of ideas. At length, a jury of six men and six housewives sat in the box, their foreman a cultural leader of San Francisco, Paul Verdier, president of the City of Paris, a pioneer department store.

  “Henry Young was only eleven days out of the dungeon, where he had spent three years and two months, when he killed Rufus McCain,” MacInnis told the jurors. “The mental torture he suffered during those years robbed him of his senses. Thirty-two men have gone insane and have been taken off the island in straitjackets and placed in asylums since Young entered Alcatraz in 1935. Alcatraz, not Young, is responsible for the murder of McCain.”

  Prosecutor Frank Hennessy called for the extreme penalty, invoking the simple law of the land in homicide, a law that ignores moral insanity, a law rooted in the old British Macnaughten Rule, recognizing insanity only if a man does not know the nature of his act or does not know that the act is wrong.

  Warden Johnston took the stand, the image of mildness in antiquated steel-rimmed spectacles. And the page-one story in the Chronicle next morning started off: “Out of the mist-shrouded walls of Alcatraz Prison has come for the first time the inside story of life upon the most dreaded island in the United States.”

  In his memoirs, Johnston described the treatment of prisoners at Alcatraz: “Privileges are limited, supervision is strict, routine is exacting, discipline is firm, but there is no cruelty or undue harshness, and we insist upon a decent regard for the humanities.”

  Under cross-examination, Warden Johnston said the cells lining two walls of an underground area, relic of the old fortress citadel, were abolished as a dungeon in 1938, four years after Alcatraz became The Rock.

  “Is it dark there?” asked MacInnis.

  “Well, persons confined in the cells had no light.”

  “Any sanitation facilities?”

  “No.”

  The warden admitted men were sometimes lodged in the pitch-black dungeon cells for months with only a single blanket and no bed, sleeping on a concrete floor. Young had been in such absolute darkness for nineteen days at a time without a bath. When the dungeon was abandoned, he was confined in a narrow cell with a solid steel door in the isolation block and, the warden said, was removed once for a period of “thirty to thirty-five minutes” in a year.

  “Can any light get in these cells?”

  “Some light can creep in,” said the warden. “And creep is the word.”

  He said that men in solitary received one meal in three days, with bread and water in between; that straitjackets were never used as punishment, only when prescribed by a doctor.

  “Was Floyd Hill in a straitjacket for forty days?”

  “By the doctor’s orders,” said the warden.

  “Is brew-making an ordinary hazard at Alcatraz?”

  “It’s not frequent.”

  MacInnis spoke of a maize brew and the exotic drink made of milk and gasoline, then asked: “Was Young ever supplied with such concoctions?”

  “It is unknown to me,” the warden said.

  They reviewed Young’s record. He had been placed in the dungeon or solitary, and deprived of 2,400 days of good behavior time, for such infractions as not eating all his food, giving a Bronx cheer, having two extra pairs of socks in his cell, agitating a strike, insolence, a fist fight over an umpire’s decision in a ball game in the yard, loud talking, raving in his cell.

  “Once,” said the warden, “Young was put in the dungeon for banging his pillow on the concrete floor.”

  MacInnis, momentarily taken aback, inquired: “How much noise can such an offense create?”

  The warden replied, “Strangely, quite a racket can be made by banging a pillow on the concrete floor.”

  A defense request for writs of habeas corpus testificandum to bring over a dozen of The Rock’s most notorious inmates made the h
eadlines and drew even greater throngs. The bailiff posted a “No Standing Room” sign. Spectators had to identify themselves before they could enter the courtroom. Persons in the overflow that filled the long corridor had to produce identification. A score of Alcatraz guards and deputy marshals stood sentry at the doors and mingled with the audience and the crowd outside. Convict witnesses arrived from the island in pairs, manacled and shackled. When called, each was relieved of these restraints, hurried swiftly through a rear door, and the door relocked. The witness then passed by the press table; behind the counsel table at which Young sat; behind the prosecution table at which Warden Johnston and Associate Warden Miller sat; past the front of the jury box to the stand. At either end of the jury box stood a guard.

  For days a parade of robbers, kidnapers, murderers took this route to recite chilling tales of Alcatraz. The spectators, and the jurors, sat enthralled.

  First came William Dunnock, thirty-four, doing fifteen years for a Baltimore bank holdup. He seemed nervous in his civilian garb, looked tired, had an ashen pallor, coughed frequently. At the outset he waited while objections were made, and sustained, to counsel’s questions, such as: Was he struck across the nose in the hospital with a blackjack, so hard that the nose was broken, and then did Associate Warden Miller punch him in the nose? After he had kept silent through a series of questions, Dunnock began snapping out answers before the prosecutor could utter an objection.

  “Did Miller tear off your clothes, strike you, and shove you into a dungeon cell without bedding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you expect to be physically punished for testifying here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you in a pitch-black cell for long periods—nineteen days or more—without a bath, without soap, without tooth powder?”

  “Yes.”

  The court repeatedly admonished the witness to wait for prosecution objections and instructed the jury to disregard these rapid responses. Nonetheless, MacInnis managed to get before the jury by this back-door route the fact that his colleague, Abrams, on his first trip to Alcatraz to consult prospective witnesses had been refused permission to see Dunnock in his isolation cell, where the convict said he was nursing wounds inflicted by a guard with a gasbilly. Abrams had to obtain a court order to interview Dunnock and saw him on the second visit, but the prisoner said he had been hastily removed to an open-front cell “that had a bed.”

  To a prosecution protest that such testimony was irrelevant, Abrams replied: “We are putting Alcatraz on trial, but we can’t help that. We must show it in its true light.”

  Ray Stevenson, forty-one, Michigan bank robber doing twenty-five years, tall with a good bearing, spoke calmly but with an apparent effort. He corroborated Dunnock’s testimony.

  Had he heard Dunnock groaning as he lay beaten on the floor, pleading for mercy, yelling “Stop twisting my leg, for God’s sake!”

  Yes.

  Long intervals elapsed between pairs of witnesses. Only when the convicts who had testified were safely back in their Rock cells were the next two escorted over. During these breaks Associate Warden Miller was recalled to the stand for rebuttal. He denied ever laying a hand on Dunnock or ever beating an inmate before lodging him in solitary. He admitted that prisoners were not always provided with a blanket in their damp, dark dungeon cells during the day. He admitted too that men were stripped naked before placed in these cells, but he said their clothes were tossed in to them later.

  Next came Sam Berlin of Baltimore, doing three to fifteen years for robbing a brewery in the District of Columbia, a first offense. He was forty—a tall, thin, balding man with an eager face and wispy voice. The word about prosecution objections apparently had sped along the Rock grapevine: Berlin, and others to follow, spat out answers.

  Was he aware that a convict, Whitey Lewis, had his skull cracked by guards, was later sent to an insane asylum? Yes. Did he recall that a convict named Wutke was driven to suicide by unbearable treatment? The jury saw him nod as an objection was sustained.

  Ed Wutke was thirty-six, doing a stretch for murder on the high seas, when he became The Rock’s first suicide. A guard stood over a convict in those days while he shaved, to see that the razor blade was used for the purpose intended. Wutke discovered another means. He extracted the tiny blade from a pencil sharpener and after lights-out one night he climbed into bed and slit his throat. The deed was not discovered until the next morning when he failed to appear at his cell front for the standup count and the guard went in to rouse him.

  Abruptly, the prosecutor began allowing the convict witnesses more latitude by raising fewer objections. Thus, when asked if Walter Bearden, an inmate with tuberculosis, had been confined to a solitary cell with him for twelve days, Sam Berlin could reply with more than a fast affirmative or a nod: “Yes, he fainted and slumped to the floor of his cell, but wasn’t given any medical treatment. He was spitting up blood and begged to be sent up to the hospital. He died a month later.” He said Bearden was pushed into the cell stripped naked. His clothes, except for shoes, were later tossed in.

  Berlin said it was general knowledge among convicts that Joe Bowers, slain climbing the fence at the incinerator, was daffy. He testified an inmate named Vito Giacaloni, sick in his cell, was so viciously beaten by guards that he died en route to the hospital asylum in Missouri.

  Berlin reported a conversation with Young regarding Giacaloni: “I told him that they just beat him (Giacaloni) over the skull and locked him up in isolation. He could not read or write or talk the American language, he is ignorant of what is going on all around him.”

  He said that an inmate, Jack Allen, was in agony one night and rattled a cup on his cell bars to attract the guard, who came with the lieutenant and warned Allen they would put him in the hole if he didn’t quiet down. “He kept hollering for a doctor and they put him in the hole and he died fifty-two hours later.”

  He described the dungeon cells as damp from water seepage, and drafty. He depicted life in the dungeon darkness: inmates, deprived of shoes, walked the cold concrete floor in stocking feet; they received a cup of water twice a day, a slice of bread once; the bucket substitute for a toilet was not emptied or cleaned in nine days; occasionally a doctor would “peek into the cells.”

  “What was he looking for?” asked MacInnis.

  “To see if we were dead, I guess. A lot of men have died there.”

  Newsmen questioned Berlin as he waited in the marshal’s cage for the return trip to the island. This was in itself a rarity as Bennett, the prison director, forbids the interviewing of any federal prisoner.

  Berlin told them: “I’ve been over there six years. I’m going crazy. They talk about that being a prison for hardened criminals. Lot of young kids over there, for minor offenses, and they’re going crazy like I am. Since I’ve been there I’ve seen thirty prisoners go crazy, be put in a straitjacket and get shipped off to some government hospital. There are few visitors. Most of the inmates are from poor families, whose relatives can’t afford to travel this far to see them.”

  During a wait for another brace of witnesses, Associate Warden Miller resumed the stand. He said the dungeon toilet buckets were emptied two to four times a day, and inmates had a bowl of water at all times.

  Abrams stepped forth, asked a question that focused the eyes of every juror on the prison keeper: Had he, on the night of July 9, 1939, inflicted upon the defendant, Henri Young, brutality of the most savage sort?

  Miller said he had never touched Young, nor any other prisoner; that he had never ordered a guard to strike a prisoner; that he had never seen a guard mistreat a prisoner.

  Abrams produced prison records. They showed that on the date in question Young was sent to solitary for banging his pillow on the floor and leading the convicts in a song. Were they singing a ballad in reference to him? “They’ll hang old Meathead from a sour apple tree.”

  The associate warden replied in a low voice: “They may have.”

&
nbsp; In retaliation for that chant, did Miller himself drag Young from his cell, throw him down a circular steel stairway, then jump on his face with both feet, knocking out several teeth? Thereupon, did he look on while two guards beat Young mercilessly with saps, and two stood by in reserve to take over when the first pair wearied? And then did they dump him, unconscious, in a dark cell?

  The heavy-set associate warden denied the entire episode, with one exception: he did order Young into an isolation cell. He then volunteered a custodial viewpoint of solitary: some prisoners thrived on such confinement, gained weight, emerged spiritually benefited, with “a better outlook on life.”

  Others present a different portrait of Miller. An old-time gangster, who admittedly had been chained more than once to a wall of The Rock’s dungeon says: “Miller was all right. He might beat the hell out of you one day, but the next day you ask him a favor and he did it. He was a good guy.”

  A former colleague recalls: “Lefty Egan, one of Capone’s torpedomen, was up near the roof painting with his left hand when the end of the scaffold slips. He grabs at the rope with his crippled right hand but it’s no good. The guard’s an older fellow with a bad heart—he can’t help. Just then Miller comes by. He runs up and catches Lefty. It knocks the wind out of him and he staggers and goes down, Lefty on top. Lefty told me later if Miller hadn’t risked his own neck, he’d’ve been a goner, sure as hell.”

  The parade of horror-bearers kept up.

  Harmon Waley, thirty, doing forty-five years for his role in the Weyerhaeuser kidnaping, related how he made the dungeon while sick. He had asked for medicine, was told it would be sent to his cell later. He asked for aspirin, again was told he would get his medicine later. “So,” he recounted, with a retrospective grin, “I told the doctor what to do with his aspirin and was thrown in the dungeon. I got sicker, then raving, and they put me in a straitjacket.”

  Carl Hood, twenty-nine, a Texan who had stabbed an inmate at Leavenworth, recalled that he and Young, in whispered conversations in the dungeon, had “wondered why the people of the United States let a prison like Alcatraz stand.” He told of an insane convict dying after a blackjack clubbing by guards. He said a male nurse had cruelly wielded a metal pan on a helpless hospital patient, “paralyzed from the hips down.”