by David Ward
The preliminary parts of this plan were already under way when, in May 1944, guards discovered a note in a magazine indicating an escape plot. The note was unsigned but matched Franklin’s handwriting. When Franklin’s cell was searched, a five-inch-long knife was found concealed under the linoleum floor in his cell. The subsequent investigation revealed other components of the escape plan and implicated other inmates, as described in a report to Warden Johnston by Deputy Warden Miller:
A thorough search resulted in the finding of 2 small bits and a small piece of hack saw blade very cleverly concealed in one of the floor brooms. We removed the men and went around from cell to cell searching them while they were unoccupied. This led to the discovery that Franklin had used either the hack saw blade or the band saw blade, or knife blade, to attempt a cut in the ceiling of the cell in the process of attempting to make an opening to get into the attic. We also found two ¼ inch holes drilled through the metal ceiling in his cell. It was apparent that he could do this by standing on his bunk. In the cell occupied by Cretzer we found bored in the wall 20 holes making a line approximately 7 inches in length on the north wall of his cell which would be the south wall of the adjoining cell occupied by his brother-in-law, Kyle. The holes were under the bunk in Kyle’s cell. The cuts made by Franklin in the ceiling of the cell were covered with soap and were not discernible until I had the ceiling of the cell washed and scraped.31
Miller concluded that in addition to Franklin, Joseph Cretzer, and Arnold Kyle, Ted Walters, and Floyd Hamilton were likely involved in the escape plan. This plot, involving five men who had all attempted to escape at least once before, demonstrated once again the determination of some prisoners to beat the government. It should also have informed the staff of deficiencies in the physical plant, patrolling practices, the habits of individual officers, and other weaknesses that provided inmates with escape opportunities. Deputy Warden Miller discounted the possibility of inmates getting inside the utility area behind the cells and climbing the pipes up to the top of the cell house for an escape, because he did not believe it was possible for inmates to get through the roof itself. Many years later another group of convicts would find a way to overcome this obstacle.
In July 1945, with the war in Europe over and Japan under attack, another Alcatraz prisoner attempted to escape on his own. Taking advantage of two aspects of the war effort—the availability of military uniforms coming to Alcatraz for laundering and the regular coming and going of military ferries—John K. Giles succeeded in getting off the island and making it as far as nearby Angel Island.
Giles, a train robber, arrived at Alcatraz with a twenty-five-year sentence. Several years later, in 1943, he filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court claiming that his robbery conviction should be voided because the law applied to successful robberies, not to failed attempts. He declined to apply for parole consideration, noting that “applications from Alcatraz are impracticable.”32 In 1945, at age fifty, having failed to gain his release through legal means, as he had at the Oregon State Prison a decade earlier, John Giles resolved to leave Alcatraz by escape.
At approximately 10:20 on the morning of July 31, 1945, the U.S. Army ferry General Frank M. Coxe was tied up at the dock on Alcatraz before continuing on to Fort McDowell on nearby Angel Island. Sergeant Sherman Casey on the Coxe noticed a man in a staff sergeant’s uniform moving along a beam next to the boat but below the dock and apparently examining the beams with a flashlight. Casey then turned his attention to other matters. A few minutes later, however, a private informed Casey that an unidentified staff sergeant had jumped from the dock and piled into the freight hatch of the Coxe. As the boat left, Casey called out this information to Alcatraz guard Zenas Crowell who was standing on the dock. As the boat got under way, Casey instructed Corporal Paul Lorinez to locate the unidentified staff sergeant and ask where he was going. Lorinez found the man, asked his destination, and was told that he was a telephone lineman going to Fort McDowell to repair a cable. Sergeant Casey did not link the boarding of the unknown staff sergeant to an escape attempt because the week before the army had assigned several men to work on the telephone cables below the Alcatraz dock. The Coxe completed its fifteen-minute voyage, tied up to the pier at Angel Island, and prepared to allow its passengers to disembark.
Meanwhile, back on Alcatraz, the comment by Sergeant Casey to Officer Crowell had prompted an immediate count of the crew of six inmates assigned to work as freight handlers. Crowell quickly determined that Giles, who had worked on the dock as a janitor and freight handler for nine years, was missing. Crowell notified the dock lieutenant, who called Warden Johnston with the news that Giles was missing. Johnston quickly telephoned Fort McDowell to ask that all passengers disembarking from the Coxe be screened; Deputy Warden Miller jumped into an army speed boat tied up at the dock and set out after the ferry boat as the siren sounded for an escape.
The officer of the day at Fort McDowell, Lieutenant Gordon Kilgore, received the news from Alcatraz that a prisoner, possibly dressed in an army uniform, had escaped. Taking a sergeant with him, Kilgore went on board the Coxe. Corporal Lorinez told him about the unidentified boarder and pointed to Giles, who was standing in the middle of a line of soldiers waiting to disembark. Kilgore approached Giles, asked him for his pass and dog tag, which were promptly produced and identified him as “George F. Todd.” The only irregularity Lt. Kilgore noticed was that the pass had not been stamped as required at Fort Mason, the starting point for the ferry on the city side of the bay. Kilgore asked the staff sergeant to accompany him to the dock office where he was questioned as to his business at Fort McDowell, which he said was “to visit the Post photographer.” Kilgore asked how long he had been in the army and the soldier replied, “off and on for about nine years.” At this point Deputy Warden Miller arrived at the dock and was directed to the office where Kilgore was holding “Sergeant Todd.” Miller walked into the office, took one look at the soldier, and placed handcuffs on his wrists. Giles was searched and handcuffed to the record clerk who had accompanied Miller in the boat. The party returned to Alcatraz, where after a physical examination Giles was locked up in solitary confinement on a restricted diet.
The San Francisco newspaper headlines reported “10 Years of Planning—Brief Moment of Freedom” and “Alcatraz Guest Nonchalantly Sails Away.”33 Warden Johnston asked U.S. Attorney Frank Hennessy to prosecute Giles for escape, not because the additional sentence would mean anything to Giles, but because the additional years for the attempt might deter other inmates. How the warden came to the conclusion that three- to five-year terms for escape attempts would deter men on Alcatraz who were already serving long sentences is not clear.
In subsequent interviews about his attempted escape, Giles reported only that he had picked up the various pieces of his uniform from the tons of laundry that were unloaded and loaded by the inmate freight handlers on the dock. He said that he had thought about trying to escape for nine years and that on 31 July he had decided “Today is the day.” When asked why he did not board the Coxe when it was returning to San Francisco rather than en route to Angel Island, he replied that he thought moving in the latter, less expected direction would be more likely to succeed. Giles refused to disclose any further details when FBI agents sought to question him, saying only that no other person was involved in the attempt, that he had nothing to gain by supplying information, and that he was unconcerned about an additional prison sentence. He declined to disclose the place where he had hidden the uniform, or how he had obtained the substantial number of items found in his possession, including maps of the San Francisco Bay Area and of Marin County, two sets of enlisted men’s passes, two sets of dog tags, seven associated U.S. Army shoulder patches, and other items.34 Giles ended his interview with the FBI agents with a statement familiar to all Rock convicts and staff, “I’m a prisoner doing a long time. It’s up to the prison officers to keep me and it’s up to me to get away if I can. It is not in my book
to tell anything because I don’t want to injure the chances that another prisoner may have in escaping.”35
Bureau of Prisons headquarters responded to Warden Johnston’s report on the escape by asking how so many contraband items and uniform pieces could have been collected by Giles and remain hidden from the shakedowns conducted by the custodial staff.36 Warden Johnston replied that all incoming laundry was first searched by an officer, item by item, but that the amount of laundry had become so large that some items in pockets possibly escaped detection.
Three and a half months after the escape attempt—after a good time forfeiture board had taken 3,000 days of his statutory good time—Giles was brought before federal judge Michael Roche in San Francisco and told the court that he did not wish to have an attorney represent him. A jury was impaneled with no objection from Giles, and the government proceeded to call six witnesses, primarily the military personnel on the Coxe, Lt. Kilgore from Fort McDowell, and Deputy Warden Miller. The government and the defendant concluded their arguments by 3:00 P.M. on the same day, with Giles asserting that he should not be charged with “attempted escape” because he had, in fact, escaped. The following morning the jury deliberated for eight minutes and rendered its verdict of “guilty.” Giles was sentenced to three years to run consecutively at the end of his present twenty-five-year sentence; his only response to a reporter was: “I’ll pay for what I get. But what I need is an undertaker, not an attorney.”37
TUNNELING TOWARD FREEDOM
During the spring of 1946, as the nation recovered from the devastating world war, four prisoners assigned to work in the basement below the kitchen noticed a steel door in the floor that was secured with a padlock.38 One of the men, number 1700, told the others that the steel plate covered the entrance to a tunnel through which the steam pipes that heated the prison passed. James Quillen—serving a forty-five-year federal term with a detainer against his release filed by the State of California—had heard stories from old-timers about Alcatraz being built “on top of the old Spanish prison.” He theorized that if they could get access to the tunnel, they “should be able to go anywhere underneath the building” and find an “outlet somewhere.”
To test the theory, 1700 picked the lock that held the door in place. When it was lifted a shallow tunnel three feet wide and three feet deep was revealed. Most of the space in the tunnel was taken up by a large steam pipe and two smaller pipes. Quillen crawled some distance into the tunnel to investigate. The plotters were encouraged when they saw that the walls of the tunnel were made of bricks, which unlike concrete could be dug out individually. In the yard, Quillen talked with “Ray,” who worked in one of the industries shops (this was most likely Alvin Karpis, who was called Ray by his friends). Quillen convinced Ray that escape was feasible and that he could help by smuggling needed items from the shops. Quillen and 1700 removed another padlock from a cabinet in the basement that matched the lock securing the grate in the floor. This lock was smuggled to Ray, who removed all but one tumbler; the altered padlock was then used to replace the lock at the tunnel entrance. “That lock was real, the lock wasn’t damaged, you couldn’t tell it had ever been touched,” said Quillen later. “Their keys worked in it, but anything we wanted to use would work in it.”
Then the inmates obtained chisels and hammers from Ray, who smuggled them to the kitchen area using a system that involved hiding the items in garbage barrels. A flashlight was obtained from an inmate in the hospital. Quillen and 1700, along with Quillen’s rap partner Jack Pepper and an inmate identified as “T,” began working in the tunnel digging out bricks. The intense heat from the pipes was so debilitating that a man could be down in the tunnel for no longer than twenty minutes, and the workspace was so claustrophobic that no more than two men at a time could be in the tunnel. These efforts took place while the officer assigned to supervise the kitchen crew was stationed on the floor above during the serving of the evening meal. After working in the tunnel, the men had to be helped out, rushed to a nearby shower to cool down, and their soiled pants and shirts replaced by a clean set of clothes. The dirty clothes were placed in the laundry basket used by all kitchen workers.
While the digging proceeded, other kitchen crew inmates came down to the basement to use a toilet and on numerous occasions saw Quillen and the others climbing in and out of the hole in the floor. With members of the kitchen crew and other convicts in the shops aware of the plot, Quillen knew that even though none of these men would be likely to rat on them, someone might make comments to other convicts who might talk. Eventually, someone did.
One afternoon in mid-April as he returned to the cell house from the yard, Quillen was ordered to go to his cell instead of his job in the kitchen. A few minutes later, guards took him before a disciplinary court comprised of the deputy warden, the captain, a lieutenant, and the kitchen officer. He was charged with attempting to escape and told that the hammers and chisels, which were left each night in the tunnel, had been found wrapped in a sock that had Quillen’s number on it. Quillen knew the claim was false. He told Deputy Warden Miller:
I’m not so dumb that I would get into an escape plot and put something in a sock that had my number on it. . . . Damn, you’ve known me long enough to know that if I was doing that I sure as hell wouldn’t put it in my sock.
Quillen and Pepper—the only ones of the four involved in the plot to be charged—suspected they had been “fingered” by an informant and that the sock story was just a way of hiding that fact.39
Alcatraz officers found an impressive number of contraband tools in the tunnel: two hammers, two chisels, two knives, two pieces of pipe each eighteen inches long, three homemade keys that were nearly finished and an eighteen-inch steel hook. Quillen and Pepper found it very strange that neither of them was questioned as to how all of this escape paraphernalia had been obtained.40 Quillen was relieved, however, to learn that while he drew nineteen days in solitary confinement followed by indefinite segregation in D block, he did not lose any of his 5,400 days of good time.
Soon after they were locked up in D block, Quillen and Pepper became involved in a protest. This disruption was initiated by a man who had become well known at Leavenworth for killing a guard in the dining hall. During the years this prisoner had spent in disciplinary segregation, he had begun raising canaries and other birds and writing articles about their diseases. As bird fanciers learned of his studies, they began a campaign to lighten his punishment. The growing publicity and demands for his freedom from persons outside the prison became a major nuisance for the Bureau of Prisons, and in 1942 Robert F. Stroud, without his birds, was sent to Alcatraz. To continue his punishment for killing the officer, he was confined to D block.
On the evening of April 28, 1946, according to the account Quillen provided later, Stroud “started moaning and groaning and carrying on that he was sick” and asked to see a doctor. The guards called a medical technical assistant, who took Stroud’s temperature and told him nothing was wrong. The other inmates in D block demanded that a doctor be sent. When a doctor failed to arrive, the inmates threatened to “tear this place up.” With Stroud “egging” them on, the inmates made good on their threat:
It was probably about midnight by the time we really got around to wrecking the place. You took paper and you wadded it all up in your toilet. You flushed it and pushed all the water out that you could . . . you could make it go over the top and then you dried the bowl out—you got all the water out. You took paper or magazines or whatever the hell you could get that would burn and you wadded it all up and lit with a match and then you flushed it. And when you did the toilet just went—bang! It just shattered. Then you took a big piece of that and broke the sink. Then you cut the mattress up—tore it up. You’d set fire to it and throw it off the tier. Then you’d take your clothes off and you throw them out. There’s water running everywhere. Oh, everybody was freezing their ass off! I was buck naked. I didn’t have nothing on. None of us did. Everything in the cell went.<
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We thought everyone participated. With everybody saying, “What are you doing, Stroud?” “I’m ripping this to pieces.” “How’re you doing, so and so?” “Well, I’m tearing this place apart.” So the next afternoon about two o’clock they come in. We hadn’t had anything to eat. We are cold and we are miserable and by then all this gung-ho spirit is gone. I don’t know why I took my clothes off and threw my shoes out. Anyhow, they came up and they take you down to court. Well, I had fifteen years good time and I lost half of it. I lost seven and a half years for that caper. I had 5,400 days and I lost 2,700 of them. And you know who didn’t break his cell up? Stroud—the guy that was sick.41
The escape attempts that occurred during the war years—none of them successful or resulting in staff injuries—were nonetheless cause for concern in Bureau of Prisons headquarters. All of the attempts involved deficiencies in staff training, supervision, or security procedures, somewhat consistent with J. Edgar Hoover’s comment, “This prison outfit is certainly a mess.” Even though Warden Johnston had lost a number of his experienced officers to the military services and many of the wartime replacements were not regarded as equivalent, the senior administrators—Lieutenant Paul Madigan, Captain Henry Weinhold, Deputy Warden E. J. Miller, and some other senior officers—had continued working on the island through the war years. Responsibility for the security breakdown thus appeared to be located at the top of the staff hierarchy. But because none of the escapes had been successful and the nation’s attention was on foreign, not domestic, issues, sufficient grounds for removing Warden Johnston did not present themselves until another breakout attempt in early May 1946.