by David Ward
John Paul Chase was the first inmate on the list of Alcatraz notables who arrived after the initial mass transfers in the latter half of 1934. Contrary to the official policy that inmates would be sent to Alcatraz only after their cases had been reviewed at other federal prisons, Chase was committed directly to Alcatraz in late March 1935 after having been convicted of murdering two FBI agents. When he arrived at Alcatraz two weeks later, he was the only inmate who had not previously served time in jail or prison.36
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Chase was involved in bootlegging activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. In early 1932 he met Lester Gillis, alias Baby Face Nelson, who had escaped from the Illinois State Prison at Joliet in February and come to San Francisco.37 The two became close friends, and Chase left his home in Sausalito to travel to Minnesota with Nelson and his wife, Helen. Chase and Nelson became the chief suspects in a murder in Minneapolis, prompting them to move to Reno, Nevada. Again they became suspects, this time in the murder of a witness who was to testify against several of their underworld friends. In mid-April 1934, while Chase was in Chicago purchasing a car, Nelson, John Dillinger, and other members of the Dillinger gang were hiding out at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin when FBI agents raided the lodge and all the gangsters got away.
Following the escape from Little Bohemia, Nelson attempted a holdup in Koerner’s Place, Wisconsin. FBI agents arrived on the scene and Nelson shot and killed one agent and wounded another. On June 30 a police officer was killed during a bank robbery in South Bend, Indiana; Nelson and Dillinger were identified and it was suspected that Chase was also involved. Chase continued to perform numerous services for Nelson, including purchasing automobiles, guns, ammunition, and bulletproof vests.
The offense that assured Chase would end up in Alcatraz occurred on November 27, 1934. Nelson, his wife, and Chase were on a highway near Barrington, Illinois, when two FBI agents in a passing car recognized the license plate number on Nelson’s vehicle. The agents turned their car around to follow but were surprised to see that Nelson had also reversed direction and was coming toward them. After the two cars passed, Nelson turned again so that both cars were traveling in the same direction. Nelson pulled even with the agents and, with Chase in the back seat pointing an “automatic monitor rifle” at the agents, ordered them to pull over. The agents accelerated and Chase fired five shots through their windshield; one of the agents returned fire, damaging the radiator in Nelson’s car.
Two other FBI agents, Samuel Cowley and H. E. Hollis, who happened to be approaching, came on this gun battle. In the course of their pursuit, Nelson suddenly stopped his car and Cowley and Hollis passed it by several hundred feet. As the agents got out of their car, they fired at Nelson and Chase, who returned fire with “automatic rifles and a machine gun.” In the exchange, Cowley, Hollis, and Nelson were all hit—the two FBI agents died but Nelson, although he was severely wounded by six bullets, was able to walk to the agents’ car, drive it back to his disabled vehicle, and pick up their weapons, Chase, and his wife, who had been hiding in a nearby field. Chase drove Nelson to the home of a priest in Wilmette, Illinois, seeking help but was turned away. Nelson died that evening and his body was left on a country road the next day.38
Nelson’s wife, Helen, was soon arrested and Chase fled to the West Coast. He was arrested in Mt. Shasta, California, on December 27. Admitting his participation in the murders of FBI agents Cowley and Hollis, he was found guilty and on March 25, 1935, the judge proclaimed that he would “be imprisoned at the USP Alcatraz for the term of his natural life.”
Harmon Waley arrived on Alcatraz on July 17, 1935, after having spent only twenty-six days in the penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington. He would spend more than two decades at Alcatraz—longer than any other prisoner except Alvin Karpis—mostly because of his misconduct on the island.
After a commitment at age seventeen to the Washington State Training School, Waley joined the army, deserted six months later, and after a court martial was sentenced to hard labor for nine months. At age twenty he was committed to the Idaho State Penitentiary to serve five to fifteen years for burglary but was pardoned due to the efforts of his mother. Two months after his release, he was charged with another burglary and began a two- to fifteen-year sentence at the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, Washington. A year later this sentence was also suspended, because a judge believed that Waley had “learned his lesson.” But Waley continued to disappoint those who interceded on his behalf—he was back in Walla Walla two months later with a new two- to five-year sentence for grand larceny. After a number of commitments to solitary confinement for rules violations, he was paroled in September 1933.
Waley had met William Dainard at the Idaho State Penitentiary. In the spring of 1935 the two met again and, with Waley’s wife, decided to make some money by kidnapping and holding for ransom the son of J. P. Weyerhaeuser, president of a major lumber company. After observing the Weyerhaeuser children going to and from school, Waley and Dainard grabbed seven-year-old George, the youngest child, on May 24, 1935. They hid him, secured by heavy chains, in a hole they had dug in the woods near Issaquah, in western Washington. He remained there during the night of May 24, wearing only a sweater, a pair of corduroy knickers, and cotton stockings. He was forced to sign his name to a ransom note that demanded $200,000 for his safe return.
Fearful they had been seen, Waley and Dainard moved the boy to another hole they had dug near Kanaskat where he spent the next night shackled; they gave him two blankets for warmth. On May 26 they again became apprehensive that they would be located, so they placed George in the trunk of their car and drove to an area outside Spokane where they handcuffed the boy to a tree until approximately 7:00 P.M. the next day, when he was again placed in the trunk of the car and taken to a house Waley’s wife had rented in Spokane. He spent the next four days in a closet.
On May 31, Margaret Waley and William Dainard collected the ransom in Seattle and returned to Spokane. That night they once again placed the boy in the trunk of their car and drove 375 miles to Issaquah. At about 3:00 A.M. they released George, who was shortly thereafter returned to his parents. Because the boy claimed one of his kidnappers was referred to as “Alvin,” suspicion was cast on Alvin Karpis and his gang.39
After dividing the ransom money, the Waleys and Dainard parted company; the Waleys went to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Harmon cashed a number of the ransom bills. On June 8, 1935, while buying a birthday present for her father with some of the ransom money, Margaret was arrested. Harmon was taken into custody on the same day and turned over to the U.S. marshal. Charged with kidnapping, he pleaded guilty on June 13 and was sentenced to forty-five years on the kidnapping count and two years on a conspiracy count, both sentences to run concurrently. He was sent to McNeil Island Penitentiary but shortly thereafter transferred to Alcatraz for “safer custody, considering the nature of his offense and criminal record.”40
William Dainard would also end up at Alcatraz, but not until several years after his partner Waley. It took authorities almost a year to arrest him after the Weyerhaeuser kidnapping, during which time he was designated Public Enemy no. 2 (at the time, Alvin Karpis held the top spot of Public Enemy no. 1). He was given a sentence of sixty years for “transporting a kidnapped person in Interstate Commerce” and committed to McNeil Island on May 8, 1936. He was subsequently transferred to Leavenworth, transferred again to the medical center at Springfield, Missouri, and then back to Leavenworth. Dainard was sent to Alcatraz in the summer of 1939 because he was “a dangerous hardened offender who because of long sentence and detainer [legal hold placed against a prisoner’s release by another jurisdiction, usually a state] must be considered as a potential escape case.”41
Arthur “Dock” Barker disembarked from the Alcatraz prison launch on October 26, 1935, with a life sentence for the ransom kidnapping of St. Paul banker Edward Bremer. He was the son of Ma Barker and brother of Fred, both of whom had been gunned down by
FBI agents. Barker’s criminal history (some of which was described in chapter 1) also included the killing of two Minneapolis police officers after a Minneapolis bank robbery, the robbery of a Swift Company payroll in St. Paul, and the robbery of a Federal Reserve bank truck in Chicago, in the course of which a police officer was killed. When Barker was arrested on a Chicago street by FBI agents he had no weapon, but in the apartment where he was staying agents found a machine gun taken from a St. Paul policeman.42
With his outstanding criminal record, prior commitment to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for murder, and a new federal life sentence, five months after he was received at Leavenworth Arthur Barker was a definite candidate for Alcatraz.43
Volney Davis’s criminal history was closely tied to that of Dock Barker, and the two joined the Alcatraz population at about the same time, in the autumn of 1935. Davis met Barker while serving a three-year sentence for robbery at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. After their release from prison, Davis and Barker killed an elderly night watchman in the course of a robbery, for which each received a life sentence. Two years later, in February 1923, after his return to the penitentiary at McAlester, Oklahoma, Davis and several other convicts escaped over the prison walls using ropes and a ladder. After twelve days at large, Davis was captured and returned to McAlester, where he served time until November 1932, at which time he was granted a “leave of absence.” According to Davis, Dock (who had remarkably been paroled) and Fred Barker provided the money for an attorney to “put in the fix” to allow his “leave” from McAlester.44
Davis, indebted to the Barkers, joined them in a series of robberies, thereby becoming a fugitive from the state of Oklahoma. His connection to the Barkers led to his association with Alvin Karpis, and subsequently to his involvement in the kidnapping of Edward Bremer. Captured by FBI agents in Kansas City on February 6, 1935, he was handcuffed, shackled, and put in a small plane guarded by two agents. En route to Chicago the pilot became lost and the plane made a forced landing in a cornfield in Illinois. Since the incident attracted nearby residents, the agents, “to prevent curiosity and publicity,” removed Davis’s leg irons so that he could walk to the car being loaned to the agents. When they arrived at a hotel, the agents removed Davis’s handcuffs, again to “avoid publicity and curiosity.” While one of the agents went to a telephone booth, Davis and the other agent ordered glasses of beer. Davis suddenly knocked the agent down, “leaped head-first through a window,” and ran from the building. The agent who had been knocked to the floor ran to the window, fired twice, but missed the fleeing prisoner. Davis stole a car and got out of town.45 But several months later he was captured in Chicago and taken to St. Paul to face charges related to the Bremer kidnapping. Davis pleaded guilty and received a life sentence on June 7, 1935. He was initially committed to Leavenworth, but four months later he was on his way to Alcatraz.
Burton Phillips arrived on Alcatraz at about the same time—October 1935—as Barker and Davis. He had received a life sentence seven months before for robbing $2,090 from the Chandler Bank of Lyons, Kansas, then taking the cashier and the assistant cashier as hostages while he and an accomplice drove away in a stolen car. It was Phillips’s second conviction in Kansas. He had robbed a bank before robbing banks became a federal offense; on this conviction he had served one and a half years in the Kansas State Reformatory before he was paroled.
After the federal robbery conviction, he was sent to Leavenworth, where the staff quickly concluded that although he was only twenty-two years old, he was “undoubtedly a dangerous major criminal.” It didn’t help that while in jail awaiting transport to Leavenworth he had planned an escape by seizing the sheriff and obtaining weapons. He then intended to hold up the same bank he had just been convicted of robbing. The U.S. attorney labeled him “a habitual criminal that can never be reformed.”46 His transfer to Alcatraz was recommended, but because of his age Bureau headquarters suggested that he first be given a try for a couple of months at Leavenworth. He failed the test and was sent to Alcatraz on October 26. Phillips arrived on the island angry and resentful and began to establish an impressive record of misconduct that would include a violent assault on Warden James A. Johnston.
Alvin Karpis had associated with so many of the era’s notorious outlaws that his arrival on Alcatraz on August 7, 1936, was in many ways a reunion with old friends. He would need these friendships because he was destined to spend twenty-five years on the Rock.
One of the best-known outlaws of the day, Karpis’s criminal exploits were highlighted in chapter 1. More biographical background is useful here because unlike the other Alcatraz big shots—Capone and Kelly—Karpis actively participated in some of the organized resistance to be chronicled in subsequent chapters.47
Karpis was a Canadian citizen whose early criminal conduct earned him a ten-year sentence for burglary at the Kansas State Reformatory. After a successful escape, he was captured one year later and was sent to the state prison at Lansing. Following his release, he began a series of armed robberies of banks, corporate payrolls, and even the Erie mail train. He was accompanied during various heists by Dock Barker, Fred Barker, Harvey Bailey, Frank Nash, Thomas Holden, Fred Hunter, Harry Campbell, and other confederates, most of whom would also end up on Alcatraz.
Karpis was most widely known for two sensationalized kidnappings described in chapter 1: the $100,000 ransom kidnapping of William Hamm in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 1933, and the January 1934 kidnapping of St. Paul banker Edward Bremer for a $200,000 ransom. Branded Public Enemy no. 1, his criminal career received national attention when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover claimed to have personally arrested him in New Orleans. Karpis’s version was that Hoover “didn’t lead the attack on me. He hid until I was safely covered by many guns. He waited until he was told the coast was clear. Then he came out to reap the glory. . . . I made Hoover’s reputation as a fearless lawman. It’s a reputation he doesn’t deserve.”48
After his arrest on May 1, 1936, Karpis was flown to St. Paul, where for five days he was kept in handcuffs and leg shackles locked to a radiator. Following his aggressive interrogation by FBI agents, Karpis pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges; several weeks later, on July 27, he was sentenced to a life term. The next day he was taken to Leavenworth by train but there was no question that as Hoover’s prize catch he would be moving on to the Rock. The Leavenworth staff recommended his transfer because he was “a notorious prisoner . . . agitator, and possible escape risk.”49
Floyd Hamilton and Ted Walters became part of the Alcatraz population in June 1940—well after the other prisoners described above but in plenty of time for each to be involved in an escape attempt as well as to be eyewitnesses to the most spectacular event in the island prison’s history—the battle of Alcatraz in May 1946.
Both men grew up in poor, working-class families in West Dallas. In 1938 they began a string of robberies, burglaries, and automobile thefts. On one occasion they were arrested but broke out of a county jail by cutting the cell bars and outwitting the jailer. Two weeks later they stole a car and robbed the bank of Bradley, Texas, obtaining the modest sum of $685. More auto thefts and grocery store robberies followed, as state and federal agents tried to track them down (they had been identified as the perpetrators of the bank robbery by a third man who had accompanied them and was subsequently arrested). Through these efforts Hamilton and Walters earned the titles of the state’s Public Enemies nos. 1 and 2.
After three more automobile thefts in Indiana and Arkansas, they robbed the payroll of a Coca Cola plant in Nashville. While making their getaway they were confronted by Arkansas highway patrol officers; a gun battle ensued, but Walters and Hamilton succeeded in running from their vehicle and escaping in some nearby woods. Ten days later when they returned to their old haunts, they were captured by Dallas police officers. Five weeks later each received a twenty-five-year term to be served in the Texas prison system for robbery by assault. Hamilton received another five years for theft and
Walters was sentenced to ninety-nine years for violation of the Texas Habitual Criminal Act. Texas authorities, however, turned them over to federal agents, who took them to Arkansas to face federal motor vehicle theft and bank robbery charges. Walters pleaded guilty, received a thirty-year federal prison term to go with his multiple state sentences, and was transported to Leavenworth where Hamilton arrived soon after.50
Personnel at Leavenworth took one look at their records and immediately asked Bureau of Prisons headquarters to authorize their transfers to Alcatraz. The report on Walters concluded:
Subject’s criminal record indicates that he is an habitual criminal, a hardened and dangerous offender and a menace to society. . . . May be expected to present some problem as to custody and also present some problem as to discipline of a serious nature. His behavior is entirely unpredictable. . . . Recommendation: Transfer Alcatraz Island [for the] benefit of inmate population at large. A confirmed and vicious criminal and a definite custodial risk.51