Alcatraz

by David Ward

  In September 1939 the Bureau of Prisons contacted members of Capone’s family, advising them to seek treatment for him on release. When Al’s wife, Mae, and brother John visited him that month, they were alarmed at his appearance because he had some twenty cuts on his face that had been painted with mercurochrome. Warden Lloyd admitted to Bureau headquarters that Al did “look kind of wild at the time of the visit” but pointed out that the cuts and nicks were due to Capone’s using a razor improperly when he tried to shave himself before the visit.

  John Capone, anticipating the crush of newspaper reporters who would want to interview his brother on his release, suggested that Al and the family should stay for several weeks in the Los Angeles area to get the press coverage out of the way before they went on to Florida. The Bureau of Prisons, having no difficulty in imagining what Al would have to say about his unfair treatment in the courts, his troubles at Atlanta, the attempts on his life at Alcatraz, and the treatment applied to a disease he claimed not to have, intended to avoid any such scenario.

  During the onset of his illness, FBI agents sought at various times to question Capone about both his own and the criminal activities of others, perhaps hoping that his impaired mental faculties might induce revelations that would not have come forth under normal conditions. For example, shortly before his release from Terminal Island, an agent visited Capone to seek information about certain individuals involved with the Chicago Motion Picture Operators Union and the escape from Alcatraz of Ralph Roe and Theodore Cole. Capone was described by the agent as “in high spirits during the course of the interview.” When questioned about one individual in the union, he responded that the man had been one of his [Capone’s] men but “got out of line and subsequently was killed in an automobile accident, giving agent a confidential wink of his left eye while making the statement.” Capone went on to tell the agent that he had tried to keep Johnny Torrio from becoming involved in the prostitution racket. He admitted that he had made $10,000,000 during Prohibition, but he had never been interested in any of the rackets pertaining to vice. He expressed his contempt for newspaperman Randolph Hearst; he described a visit he had made with Jack Dempsey to Hearst’s beach home in Santa Monica, California, where he claimed “to have witnessed various sexual activities which disgusted him.” Capone then rambled on, periodically asking the agent, “What are we talking about?”

  When asked what happened to Roe and Cole, Capone replied that in his opinion Roe had successfully escaped but not Cole, although he could not explain why one man made it and the other did not. Capone advised the agent that on his release he was going to establish four furniture and automobile factories in Florida that would provide employment for thousands of people. At the end of the interview Capone claimed that he was in charge of recreation at the Terminal Island Prison. This interview convinced federal agents that the accuracy of any revelations offered by the Big Boy could never again be known and that he would never make a credible witness in a courtroom.15

  In October Ralph Capone notified Bureau of Prisons headquarters that he accepted the Bureau’s strong recommendation that his brother be hospitalized on his release; he reported that he had arranged to have his brother admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital to be treated by Dr. Joseph Moore, a specialist in the treatment of general paresis.16 Director Bennett then instructed Warden Lloyd to transfer Capone to the penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, just before his release from federal custody.

  Capone arrived at Lewisburg on November 16. He was picked up by Mae and his brother Ralph, driven to Baltimore, and placed in the care of Dr. Moore. The medical staff at Terminal Island was pessimistic about Capone’s future:

  This patient has been given every opportunity to adjust to this institution and has remained poorly cooperative and viciously assaultive. He presents neurological, psychological, and psychiatric evidence of general paresis, expansive-grandiose type. He is in need of continued hospitalization and treatment upon the termination of his present sentence, and such is recommended. The prognosis is poor.17

  In spring 1940 Capone was taken to his home in Palm Island, Florida. The Capone family compound consisted of some fifteen to eighteen rooms surrounded by high concrete walls on three sides and open to a canal on the fourth side. There Al and Mae had dinner several nights a week with their son Albert “Sonny,” who was married and lived a completely law-abiding life. Al was said to be a doting grandfather to Sonny’s two children. Five years later, when Al’s youngest brother, Matthew Capone, was wanted for “unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for murder,” the Palm Island residence was put under continuous surveillance.

  This intense coverage was the basis of an “information” report to FBI headquarters that described daily life for the Big Boy and his family. Neighbors interviewed by federal agents could not recall a single instance of a disturbance or any suspicious activity involving the Capone residence since Al’s release five years earlier. He had been seen making trips to grocery stores, to a dentist’s office, and to visit his son who lived in Hollywood, Florida. Mae Capone was a regular churchgoer, but the local priest’s only contact with Al was one visit to their home during the previous summer. Capone told the priest that he did not attend Mass because he felt his presence would arouse curiosity and be disruptive to the priest and regular members of the congregation.

  Because Capone was said to be nervous about his safety and that of the family, no automobiles other than Al’s and Sonny’s were ever allowed to drive through the heavy gates into the compound. Also living in the house were Mae’s sister and her husband, a former female friend of Mae’s, and Mae’s brother and his wife. The family employed two black servants; one was a houseman who did some of the cooking and most of the shopping, and the other was a housekeeper; both were present only during daytime hours.

  The entire household worked around Al’s fitful sleeping schedule, which called for going to bed at 10:00 P.M. and getting up at 3:00 A.M. The family spent considerable time sitting around the swimming pool, Al dressed in pajamas and a dressing gown. They watched movies on their own projector and screen. Visitors to the home, said to be limited by Ralph and John Capone, included a small number of old-time Chicago friends, including Jake Guzik. Al eagerly looked forward to these visits, and to playing gin rummy and pinochle with family members and old friends. Income for the family was reported to be provided in the form of weekly checks sent by Ralph, who had become the de facto head of the family. Al’s main function became telling stories about “the good old days.”18 According to Capone biographer John Kobler, Guzik had been asked after Al’s release from prison if his old boss was likely to return to Chicago to take charge of the rackets; Guzik had replied in the negative, noting “Al is nutty as a fruitcake.”19

  Capone was treated by Dr. Moore with antibiotics, which became available during World War II, but they could not reverse the damage already done. His speech became slurred, and on January 19, 1947, he suffered a brain hemorrhage. Last rites were administered; he rallied but then developed bronchial pneumonia. On January 25, with his mother, his wife, his son, his brothers, and his sisters at his side, Alphonse Capone was pronounced dead; he was forty-eight. His family refused to allow the attending physician to conduct an autopsy on his brain. He was the Big Boy, the Big Shot, and Big Al on the streets of Chicago, Cicero, and other cities, but at Alcatraz he was just convict no. 85.

  GEORGE KELLY

  For George “Machine Gun” Kelly, the transfer to Alcatraz represented a marked improvement over the conditions under which he had been held at Leavenworth. On the island he was back in the general population, where he could talk to Bailey, Bates, and other friends and bank-robbing partners; he began to play bridge during yard periods. Compared to his quarters in the Memphis and Oklahoma City jails and at Leavenworth, he had some freedom of movement at Alcatraz despite the limited confines of the cell house, yard, and work area. The prison surgeon/psychiatrist observed that Kelly adapted well to his situation and accepted
his circumstances:

  He accepts the blame for his actions . . . has good insight . . . realized the risks involved in his manner of living . . . is not resentful . . . shows a fairly normal reaction to a difficult situation . . . does not appear to worry too much . . . and [is] not considered psychotic in any way.20

  Kelly received only minor disciplinary reports (talking in the dining hall and improper use of clothing) until he participated in the general strike in January 1936. He told the associate warden that he was not sure what the protest was all about but felt he should “stick with the boys a few days.” He was placed in an open-front (barred) cell in A block, used during the 1930s as a disciplinary segregation unit. On the second day of his lockup, Kelly yelled to the other strikers that he was through with them, was ready to return to work, and that from that point on he would “do his own time.” He was released from A block and returned to work with no loss of privileges.

  In September 1937, however, his own frustrations with the regimen on the island prompted Kelly to join another work strike. He told the associate warden: “I just want some different tobacco, shows, and some diversions. I do not go in the yard because it is so inconvenient and uncomfortable. Also Mr. Bixby [assistant director] promised me that I would be able to correspond with my wife and he has not yet kept his promise.” He was locked up in isolation on a restricted diet (one full meal every three days, bread and water on the other days) and remained there for eight days.

  Over the years, Kelly was characterized in staff evaluations as having a “big shot complex,” but it was also noted that “he does not become involved in any conniving or scheming and tries to hold himself aloof from the general population. He has only a few friends with whom he associates, he spends time playing dominoes and bridge.” Kelly, whose IQ measured 118 on the Stanford–Binet test, enrolled in several correspondence courses available through the University of California, all of which he completed successfully. Like many other inmates, he spent most of his cell time reading. In February 1936 he wrote to the attorney general, offering to stay at one of the remote locations owned by the U.S. government in the Pacific, Alaska, or the South Pole to “make a meteorology survey” that “would be of benefit to science and the government”:

  I could be taken from here secretly, placed on a boat in the Bay and transported with what supplies I would need. This could be managed in such a way that the crew need never know who I was or even that I was a prisoner from Alcatraz. Some kind of arrangements could be made for a boat to stop say every year or two, leave supplies, and take back what data I had accumulated. By this method I would be doing some useful work, serving my sentence and I believe by the time I was eligible for parole I would be shown some consideration.

  His proposal was denied on the grounds that it was too radical, but his writing indicated a high level of literacy, which became more and more evident in his letters as the years rolled by.

  The most acute problem for George Kelly in adjusting to life at Alcatraz was the pain of missing his wife, Kathryn. Unlike Bates and Bailey and most of the rest of the Alcatraz convicts, who had severed any connections they had to the women in their lives, Kelly remained deeply attached to Kathryn. He was acutely aware of her anguish over the consequences her mother and stepfather had to suffer for their minor involvement in the detention of Charles Urschel. Before his transfer to Alcatraz, Kelly had written a letter to Kathryn (which was not delivered but forwarded instead to the Bureau of Prisons headquarters and then to the FBI) in which he disavowed any involvement by Ora and R. G. “Boss” Shannon in kidnapping Urschel.

  When George arrived at Alcatraz in 1934, he was informed that for the first three months, he could have no mail contact with Kathryn. After that he would be allowed to send her only two letters a year, written on one side each of three sheets of paper, and subject to censorship. When asked by Warden Johnston to accept this special arrangement, Kelly refused, objecting on the grounds that this restriction was not imposed on any other Alcatraz inmates. Johnston and Bureau headquarters did not ease the restriction until November 1935, when the director authorized the four men at Alcatraz whose wives were serving time in federal prison (Kelly, Waley, and Dillinger associates Arthur Cherrington and Welton Spark) to write to their wives and receive letters from them every two months. A year later, this privilege was increased to one letter a month, and two years later the men were allowed to write and receive two letters per month. In 1939 Kelly was allowed to increase the amount of space available in each letter—he was permitted to write on both sides of two of the three sheets of paper allowed.

  In July 1940 Kelly wrote to Ora Shannon explaining that he would no longer be writing to her because his letters had been reduced by the mail censor to “senseless drivel.” He noted that he would try to continue writing to Kathryn, although the letters would consist of “some kind of foolishness just so we can keep in touch.” But a week later, when Kelly had two of the letters he wrote returned to him by the censor, he decided that the interference in his correspondence with Kathryn had become intolerable; he wrote to her, proposing that they discontinue writing. “To me, writing has become an aggravation instead of a pleasure, and I firmly believe that when anything becomes a burden it is time to discontinue the practice.” Though he worried about hurting Kathryn’s feelings and hastened to assure her, “I love you entirely too much for that,” he admitted that when parts of the letters were deleted he “was mad at everyone for days.” He also complained that there was so little to tell from one letter to the next. He suggested: “Suppose we discontinue our correspondence until we can write under more favorable conditions; or until you get out and can visit me and we can talk things over. Of course that may be years and then again it may be a matter of only eighteen months or so.” He then went into a reverie about their earlier correspondence:

  Do you remember the twelve and fourteen page letters you used to write me daily when I was serving that other “bit.” I even recall one that was twenty pages long, and every page as sweet as you are.

  Kelly closed the letter saying that if he did not receive a reply, he will know that she agreed. And then he wrote of his love for Kathryn:

  It is almost needless for me to repeat how much I love you. To me you are the grandest girl in the world, and I will love and adore you if I live to be a hundred. I hope you get transferred this month and have a pleasant trip. Give Ora my love and don’t forget the one who worships you. All my heart will always be yours angel. Lots of hugs and kisses. As ever, your very own, Geo.

  Kathryn responded several weeks later, chastising George for not accepting the reality of prison life, obviously disappointed that her letters had not done more to cheer him:

  I have thought in vain of how to word a reply to you that would express exactly how I feel about “us.” And I find that it is most difficult to do. Your letter touched my heart. In fact I cried when I read it as I expected quite a different wording. I shrink from hurting you. That is the farthest desire of my heart. . . . I suppose the best thing I can do is to simply speak plainly and exactly how I feel. First, please understand that I am not “cracking up”; neither is prison getting me down, and in dismissing the love angle, which I admit is hard to do, I feel like this: that to help you in any manner I would gladly give my life, but I can’t feel that I have added to you, in any manner, by consistently trying to encourage you, by writing you the long cheerful letters that I have, these years. I tried my level best to help you in doing your time; but it seems I failed miserably. Don’t think that I even considered you less strong than myself. I haven’t—but I always feel that if either of us needed encouragement, I should attempt to give it to you because my surroundings have no doubt been more pleasing than yours. I longed for you to avoid trouble, to stand on your own feet for what you know is right and minutely be the man you really are. Well it seems to me you fell down on the job.

  She then threatened divorce, stating that she was done with the criminal life, and blame
d her marriage to George for getting her in such trouble:

  Unless you have changed a lot darling, even if we two were free tomorrow we should be forced to say goodbye. Why? Well, because I’m happy to say that I know I shall never place myself nor permit myself to be placed in a position to ever re-enter prison. I shall be just a “little fish” so to speak if I am fortunate enough to get that one chance and like it. No more “big dough” for me in any place. In other words I find that I am completely cured of any craving for un-legitimate luxuries and my sincere hopes and plans for the future are of a sane, balanced mode in living. I’ll never change that viewpoint. I have gone through hell and still am plainly speaking, seeing mother as a daily reminder of my own mistake. The mistake was in my love, and marriage to you. Not that I censure you, I don’t. I blame myself. However, I “woke up.” I hoped you would but I’m not sure of what goes on in your mind. As you know I like to finish things immediately and I feel if our goodbye is to come, why not now. The hurt will at least be dimmed in the years of incarceration yet ahead of both of us.

  But then Kathryn exhorted Kelly to give up his criminal identity:

  What you need to do is forget “Machine Gun” Kelly and what he stood for and interest yourself in being plain, kind George, who is just another “con” like myself . . . and if it’s impossible for you to make yourself into a man who “thinks straight”—who will go straight when the opportunity presents itself, then I don’t want you for a companion.

  Having heard about a food strike at Alcatraz, Kathryn stated, “I’m fed up with worries, and god knows I have plenty of my own, so I do think I’d perhaps be happier, in placing you in the background and coasting along with just my own problems.” But then she seemed to change her mind and closed the letter as follows: