Alcatraz

by David Ward

  Two other Tucker Prison Farm convicts had been sent to Atlanta with Persful. When they circulated word around the penitentiary that Persful had killed and maimed escaping prisoners, and that he had shot a woman in the back, the Atlanta inmates began threatening and beating him. Although the beatings were not officially reported, it came to the attention of Atlanta officials that Persful’s life had been threatened and that he was being ostracized and periodically assaulted by other inmates. It was determined that he needed placement in a prison far removed from the deep South, one that afforded tighter controls over inmates while providing security appropriate for a man with a record of violence and a long sentence—namely the newly opened penitentiary at Alcatraz.

  Once again Persful’s record in Arkansas preceded him to the island, and when he arrived in December 1935 he found himself confronting more threats and violence from the Alcatraz convicts (alerted by others transferred from Atlanta). Shortly after his arrival, Persful was locked up in solitary confinement for fighting with longtime convict Francis Keating, who had called him “a shotgun son of a bitch” and attacked him in the yard. Persful had to be watched closely when he was in proximity to other inmates in the dining room and in the yard and could not be placed in any of the usual work assignments. For this reason he was assigned the job on the cleanup crew.

  By September 1936 Persful had become so anxious over his safety that he wrote to Warden Johnston, appealing for a transfer to another prison, telling the warden that in the performance of his duty as a trusty guard he had killed and wounded a number of prisoners and, “as a result, it is only natural that many enemies were made among the criminal element.” Several of these “enemies,” he went on, tried to poison him in the Arkansas penitentiary and later, after committing federal offenses that resulted in their being sent to the Atlanta Penitentiary, they informed other inmates of his actions as a trusty guard. Persful claimed that he had tried to get away from these men by asking for a transfer to Alcatraz but then found out too late that they were going to arrive on the Rock before he did, and they had turned the Alcatraz inmates against him.34 His request for a transfer to the penitentiary at McNeil Island was rejected; nine months later he used the ax to emphasize the seriousness of his problem.

  The question for Alcatraz officials was whether Persful’s self-mutilation was an attempt at suicide, the act of a deranged man, or a ruse to get off the island. The mental illness theory was supported by Persful’s behavior in the prison hospital after he severed his fingers and this provided the rationale for his transfer in January 1938—first to the mental ward at Leavenworth and then to the Springfield Medical Center. His mental health rapidly improved, and in October 1940 Persful was transferred to McNeil Island. Three days after his arrival, however, word had spread among the McNeil prisoners about his actions in Arkansas and when he walked into the prison dining room he was greeted by loud and prolonged booing from the inmates. Subsequent to this incident he received his meals in his cell, was kept locked up when other inmates were moving about the cell block, and had to be seated by himself in the rear of the auditorium during movies. The McNeil staff were required to watch Persful closely at all times to prevent other prisoners from assaulting him; his job assignment was cleaning the cell house after the other inmates had left to work elsewhere in the prison.

  In November 1941 the McNeil Island warden requested that Persful be sent elsewhere, and Director James Bennett asked Warden Johnston to consider taking him back and confining him to permanent isolation in D block. The chief medical officer on the island argued against this proposal based on his judgment that Persful would, under these circumstances, become psychotic again. Several months later, when the McNeil Island staff tried to place him in a group cell, Persful’s cell mates warned him and the staff that if he was not moved they “would cut his fucking throat out.” Persful was returned to a single cell and resumed his restricted contact routine. Nevertheless eighteen months later, when his cell door was opened for cleaning, he was attacked by another inmate who shouted, “I’ve been waiting for months to do this”; at this point, Persful appealed to the warden:

  Now I am asking you to do me a favor, for the rest of the time I’m here I want you to order my cell door padlocked, leave me where I am at, leave my radio and smoking tobacco in here and shoo everyone to hell away from me.”35

  In subsequent years Persful was attacked on two more occasions. In April 1948 he was conditionally released from his federal sentence and took up residence with a relative in Gary, Indiana. He never returned to the federal prison system, where for fourteen years he had suffered a unique form of punishment.

  Bowers, Stadig, and Persful were all morose and solitary types. While their mental health problems could be attributed at least partly to the harsh Alcatraz regime and convict culture, they brought these problems with them to the island. This was not the case with another inmate.

  Hayes Van Gorder had attended Luther College in Iowa and the University of Minnesota and taught school until he was convicted of murdering his father-in-law, for which he received an eight-year sentence in the Iowa State Penitentiary. He was released in 1924 but shortly thereafter came into federal custody with a twenty-eight-year term for forging government documents and using the mails to defraud. He soon developed a reputation as a writ writer, enhanced by his success in escaping from Atlanta through the use of a bogus habeas corpus order. He was captured a year later and a five-year term for escape was added to his sentence.

  At Atlanta and Leavenworth Van Gorder was noted for his willingness to help other inmates with the legal briefs—activities that earned him a transfer to Alcatraz and high status among the convicts when he arrived on the island. But the men who knew him noticed that soon after his arrival he became very depressed and took up a largely solitary existence, spending most of his time reading. He lost weight, his memory for recent events became impaired, and during several outbursts he tore up his cell—and he stopped filing writs. Earlier psychiatric evaluations had noted evidence of “paranoid trends,” but his growing difficulties at Alcatraz were diagnosed as resulting from “senile arteriosclerosis.”36 His fellow prisoners were not aware of this assessment, but they knew something was wrong; their interpretation was that the intellectual who was a good con in a less restrictive prison could not stand up to the pressure of doing time on the Rock.

  Van Gorder was admitted for observation to the hospital ward in September 1936. In the months following he experienced hallucinations, as well as bad dreams that caused him to cry out at night. He expressed bitterness toward the judge who sentenced him to prison, not because he was innocent, but because the length of the term was so long. He argued that prison officials should not hold his escape attempts against him given the injustice of his sentence and he complained about the climate, the lack of privileges, and the “depressed atmosphere” on the island. In July 1937, after he was declared to be “of unsound mind,” he was transferred to the Springfield Medical Center. He complained of stomach problems and was diagnosed with cancer; in April 1938 he died from the disease. Hayes Van Gorder was buried in Springfield with his wife in attendance—she had remained faithful to him through all the years of his prison terms, including the time he served for killing her father.37

  The shooting of Bowers, Stadig’s suicide, Persful’s effort at self-mutilation, and the sharp decline in Van Gorder’s mental health, all within a relatively short period, combined to plant firmly in the minds of inmates an image of Alcatraz as psychologically destructive for some of their fellow convicts.

  ANOTHER STRIKE AND AN

  ASSAULT ON THE WARDEN

  On September 20, 1937, James Johnston assembled his officers and advised them to be alert for trouble. After the noon meal, when the bell was sounded for the inmates to return to their jobs, twenty-three men remained in their cells. Each protester was interviewed by Deputy Warden Edward J. Miller and offered the opportunity to return to work. All refused and they were removed to discipl
inary segregation cells. The strikers said they were protesting because they did the same work as men at other penitentiaries and ought to have the same privileges. The following day, ten more inmates refused to report to their work details and they too were locked in segregation cells. That evening, the protesters began yelling and creating a disturbance. Four of “the most boisterous” strikers were sent down to lower solitary in an attempt to prevent the protest from spreading over the cell house.38 The next day another twenty-four inmates joined the protest and they were placed in cells on the unused side of A block. By September 24, one hundred prisoners had joined the strike.

  Warden Johnston agreed to meet with some of the protesters, including Burton Phillips. Having been locked up in solitary four times for refusing to work and refusing to obey orders, Phillips had several grievances. Before the strike, he had written to James Bennett, who had succeeded Sanford Bates as director of the federal prison system in 1937, complaining that the constitutional rights of Alcatraz prisoners were being violated:

  Is it not denying the prisoner access to due process of law by denying him access to the legal publications which would inform him what the law is and how the courts hold on legal questions in which he is vitally interested since his liberty is involved? . . . I’ll grant you the point that there is nothing in the constitution to keep you from starving, torturing and mistreating me but it must be a regrettable oversight on your part to deny me full access to legal documents.

  He asked to be allowed to subscribe to the Federal Reporter so that he could be informed of court decisions related to laws passed since 1932, one of which had been used to give him a life sentence; he also asked that the Reporter and copies of Supreme Court and Appellate Court decisions be made available to the inmates as a right. Without these materials, Phillips went on,

  I would be better off to slit my throat, or perhaps, someone else’s and make you hang me, ending quickly and mercifully a life which would otherwise be carried on tortuously year after weary year without hope or possibilities of legal release.39

  The denial of access to legal materials was only one restriction that bothered Phillips; he was also angered by the lack of sugar and sweets in the prison menu, writing to Warden Johnston in June and again in early September asking that more sugar, syrup, sweet rolls, and bread pudding be provided. After presenting his arguments for more privileges, Phillips agreed to return to work and was escorted back to his cell, where he waited for release for the noon meal. In the dining room he took his complaints to the warden in a way that impressed his fellow inmates.

  In the dining hall Warden Johnston assumed his customary position—standing in the middle of the room facing the door to the cell house with his back to the two columns of inmates who passed by him on either side as they exited. Lieutenant R. O. Culver, the senior officer on duty in the dining hall, described what happened next:

  Everything seemed to be in order until prisoner no. 259, Phillips, reached a position directly in back of the Warden, whereupon he drew back his fist and without warning hit the Warden a terrific blow in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor unconscious. Inmate Phillips, with a determination to kill the Warden (as he stated to me later) kicked him in the side and in the face while he was prostrate. He also jumped on the Warden and continued to hammer him about the face and head until subdued by Officers Joe B. Steere, John F. Gilmore, and myself. After securing a firm hold Phillips continued to resist and would not let go of the Warden until struck a blow on the head [in fact, several blows] with a “Gas-Billy,” which rendered him unconscious.

  The warden and Phillips were taken to the prison hospital; the rest of the inmates scattered, trying to find cover behind columns and tables when an officer on the catwalk outside broke the windows of the dining hall to point the muzzle of his automatic rifle inside. The inmates were reassembled and marched back to their cells. About three hours after the assault, Lt. Culver questioned Phillips in the hospital, and Phillips told him, “I am sorry that I did not kill him, now it will all be to do over again.”40

  In later years, when Alvin Karpis recounted the incident, he noted that the three blows to the head of Phillips, administered in a “calm and cool manner” by Lieutenant Culver, involved the use of a club eight inches long that contained a tear gas shell in one end. Only lieutenants at Alcatraz were authorized to carry one of these gas billies or a sap, a leather-encased chunk of lead. Karpis also noted that the guard on the catwalk caused panic in the room when he thrust his rifle through the glass because the inmates recognized him as the same man who had shot Joe Bowers off the fence.41 Harmon Waley told the author that when the unconscious Phillips was removed from the dining hall he “was dragged by the feet up the stairs to the hospital, Culver sapping him continuously and his head flopping on the stairs.”42

  After receiving first aid, Warden Johnston was treated for multiple contusions to his face and ear and for “slight shock.” Phillips remained in the prison hospital for two weeks during which time he was examined by the psychiatrist, who noted that his patient was in “mechanical restraint [straps].” Shortly thereafter, Phillips was moved to a solitary confinement cell and put on a restricted diet (one meal per day, bread and water at other times) for seventeen days, after which he was moved to an open-front (barred) cell in the D block segregation unit with his food increased to two meals per day.

  Johnston, anticipating a news release by Bureau headquarters about these events, authorized his clerk to release a brief statement noting that a strike was in progress and that he had been assaulted. The “vicious slugging” of the warden was reported by the press in the usual inflammatory style and was placed within the context of the “seething revolt” that had been under way for several days in “the Federal Government’s Devil’s Island.”43

  On September 30 Johnston felt well enough to dress and return to the main cell house. He went directly to the dining room, stood on the spot where he had been assaulted, and resumed his normal procedure of checking the lines in and out of the mess hall. “I deemed that to be the best way in which to resume my duties,” he said in a report to the director. By October 14 the strike had essentially ended: of the 132 inmates who joined the strike all but 15 had returned to work and those 15 were locked up in solitary confinement. With the exception of Capone, most of the big names on the island—Kelly, Keating, Bates, Holden, Bailey, Barker, and Karpis—had participated in the protest and stayed out for a week or more. The holdouts included the leaders of the protest the year before, along with two recent arrivals—Henry (sometimes Henri) Young and Harmon Waley. In early November Johnston reported to Bureau of Prisons headquarters that Phillips was still “unrepentant” and that it was “probably best for all concerned that he be kept [in segregation] for a long time.”44 Burton Phillips remained in the D block disciplinary segregation unit until June 23, 1946—a period of almost nine years.

  The strike produced no changes in the regime and generated little sympathy for the inmates in the outside world. Most newspaper editors across the country expressed the view that whatever the Alcatraz cons had to endure they had earned and that other prison administrators should emulate the “no-nonsense” policies in place on the Rock. Their editorials confirmed the government’s success in creating an image of punishment appropriate for a group of master criminals.

  The Dallas Times-Herald went further, suggesting that punishment on the Rock was not severe enough for this particular group of lawbreakers:

  THE REBELLION IN ALCATRAZ PRISON

  The authorities in Alcatraz prison have shown remarkable patience in dealing with the convict “sit down strikers,” if reports from the place of confinement are true. Alcatraz is at least one prison that is not classifiable as a reformatory. Its inmates are persons who are so far gone in crime that very few can be regarded as prospects for rehabilitation. . . . Criminals of their type cannot be expected to respond to fair treatment. These inmates may resent the stern discipline of the prison, but man
y of them are killers and ruthless gangsters who were absolutely merciless while they were at large. They are more dangerous than wild beasts which must be held in cages. The situation in Alcatraz might be regarded as an argument for capital punishment. It hardly seems worthwhile to spare the life of a criminal who is so incorrigible that he must be confined in this stronghold.45

  The Rapid City Journal took a similar position:

  NO PITY FOR CONVICTS

  America has had a lot of prison disturbances in recent years. On investigation a dismaying number of them proved to be society’s fault. The prison was out of date, overcrowded, filthy; the management was lax, the guards were venal, the politicians had interfered too much. And so on. The newest outbreak, at Alcatraz, seems to stand in a class by itself. None of the above-mentioned defects applies there. Indeed, the trouble seems chiefly due to the fact that Alcatraz contains the toughest and most vicious thugs in America who don’t like the way society has put them down for the count. Alcatraz is a hard-boiled place; it has to be.46

  The Spokane Spokesman-Review joined in invoking France’s Devil’s Island as a model for American prisons:

  PRISONS SHOULD BE GRIM

  Men incarcerated behind bars cannot be dealt with as ordinary individuals. Most of them have depraved natures, or they would not be there in the first place. Yet too many sentimental persons are prone to contend that convicts should be pampered. They hold to the fallacy that penitentiaries are reform institutions instead of places of punishment. America might benefit by the experience of the French in dealing with criminals. A French penal institution is a place to be shunned by every one. Confinement in a French prison is punishment which most men of criminal tendency fear worse than death. If our prisons were a little more grim they might have fewer occupants. A prison should be a prison.47