by David Ward
Karpis was locked up in D block for refusing to work. About a month later a lieutenant reported that he was still “very indignant,” would not go to work in the kitchen “under any circumstances,” and was “satisfied to stay in [D block] for a year or more.” In May, while still in disciplinary segregation, Karpis was charged with “Mutinous Participation in Group Resistance to Duly Constituted Authority” for continuing to refuse to return to work in the kitchen.
The following October Karpis received good news. Howell County, Missouri, authorities had dropped the murder detainer, making him eligible for parole consideration. He declined to apply, however, knowing that an application from someone locked up in disciplinary segregation was unlikely to be regarded favorably. Despite the removal of the detainer, he was described in March 1953 as “bitter,” “cynical,” and “sullen,” an agitator who was looked on as a hero and leader by many inmates. “He has a ‘Big Shot’ complex,” concluded a report. “His adjustment of several years ago . . . has deteriorated.”
In May 1953, after the inmates in the shops began a work strike, Karpis stopped acting captain Emil Rychner in the cell house, told him he was acting as the inmates’ spokesperson, and offered to put an end to the strike if “some assurance was given that no good time would be taken” and if “the inmates in the Treatment Unit [D block] were returned to the regular population.” Rychner reported this proposal to the assistant warden, who advised the warden: “This is the first concrete indication of leadership since the work stoppage began. This inmate should be reported and punished.”37
The administration’s reaction to Karpis’s offer to act as a mediator was described by a senior officer:
We had a strike and one day Captain Rychner and I were standing in the back of the cell house B and Karpis came over to us. He said, “You know, I’ve got a lot of influence with these inmates that are out on strike. If you’d give me the chance I’ll go around and talk to all these inmates and I’ll use my influence and I think I can get ’em to come back to work—provided that certain things are taken care of in regard to their work.” Rychner and I thanked him and we turned around and walked out and got a hold of Associate Warden Delmore and Warden Swope and told them that we’d been propositioned. Delmore said “Write out a misconduct report on Karpis and throw him in segregation. So we wrote out the misconduct, walked back, and told Karpis, ‘Say Karpis, we’re sorry we can’t take you up on the proposal, but we will put you over in the segregation unit for an extended period.’ He was over there for two years.”38
Karpis described this episode rather differently. In his version, he encountered a lieutenant who said, “You’re pretty well known around here, Karpis. Everyone knows you aren’t afraid of the hole. You’re well respected. Why don’t you find out if there are any suggestions as to how we can square this thing. What do you guys want?” Karpis then talked with Arnold Kyle and several other “influential” convicts in the yard who argued that some men in D block not involved in the strike should be released. Karpis told the lieutenant he would give him a list of these men, but before it could be delivered he was brought before the disciplinary committee.39
Whether Karpis’s proposal was solicited by the staff or not, it was clear to inmates that Karpis had made a mistake. Morton Sobell, newly arrived at the time but quick to understand how the Bureau of Prisons operated, put it this way:
He pulled a stunt . . . he tried to play the big shot guy to the captain. “I think we can get this thing settled.” The Bureau of Prisons doesn’t like an inmate who thinks he has power to settle things. You would think they might welcome the chance to get the thing over with, but they were afraid of somebody establishing himself as a leader. . . . I was surprised—he had been in there so long and he should have known that he couldn’t do that . . . the other inmates laughed [at Karpis’s effort].40
The Alcatraz convicts themselves did not support any attempt by any prisoner to establish himself as their leader or spokesman; there were no convict bosses in this penitentiary.
Karpis was locked up in a closed-front cell, but he was allowed to send a letter to his sister, written, he said, while “lying on the floor flat on my stomach.” He told his sister: “Don’t worry I have no intention of throwing in the sponge. I am just as determined as I ever was. Don’t think for a minute that a day of reckoning isn’t going to come over all this stuff. . . . [The Republicans may be] like the Democrats . . . just don’t give a damn what happens in this place. To tell you the truth I don’t much care myself anymore.”
During his many months in D block, Karpis was allowed to work as a painter. In March 1954, when several prisoners began a hunger strike to protest the absence of full meals, desserts, and cigarettes, Karpis told them, “I told you the other night how I stood. I don’t want anymore f——ing around. It’s not worth it. I’m not getting into any more strikes. I’m not going to ruin my health for a piece of pie and a cigarette.” Karpis received little credit for refusing to join this strike because he was still “considered extremely dangerous” and was believed to exert “continued influence on a certain group of impressionable inmates.”41
In August 1954 Karpis was returned to the general population and assigned to work picking up and delivering library books. Six months later, a classification committee report noted that he was “serving his time with greater ease . . . and he has indicated a marked improvement in attitude and behavior.” The committee recommended his transfer to Leavenworth—a proposal that would not be approved by the Bureau for another three years. In the meantime, Karpis continued his good work record, wrote to his sister, played his guitar, and read many fiction and nonfiction books and magazines.
In February 1958 Karpis was transferred to Leavenworth, where he remained for only seven months before Bureau headquarters received an “urgent” request from Warden Chester Looney that he be returned to Alcatraz “as soon as possible.” Looney complained that soon after Karpis’s arrival at Leavenworth, complaints about the food began to be heard and it was suspected that Karpis was “an instigator.” Looney went on to characterize Karpis as a bad influence:
Karpavicz had an unusual interest in an escape plot that was uncovered here. He has always been able to control other inmates and cause them to create problems while he drops into the background. He had a tailor-made organization when he arrived here through the large number of inmates who have previously served time at Alcatraz . . . he is a menace in the population here.42
Warden Paul J. Madigan (a former lieutenant and captain at Alcatraz) talked to Karpis a few weeks after his return to the Rock to determine his attitude.
Strangely he does not seem bitter but he did say it was wonderful to be . . . where he could move around freely and go out to the big recreation yard. He also said he availed himself of the commissary and gorged himself on candy. . . . Karpis probably will fall into our routine again and get along well.43
Karpis went back to work in the library, then moved on to other work assignments in the industries office and in the clothing factory, quietly doing his time. He began corresponding with the director of the Catholic Rehabilitation Service in Montreal, Canada—the country to which he would be deported after his release from federal custody. Over the next several years, classification committees recommended that he either be returned to Leavenworth or be sent to Atlanta because he had an arthritic condition that might be less problematic in a warmer climate. In June 1961 the chairman of the U.S. Board of Parole met with Karpis, reviewed the positive reports of his conduct, and recommended that he be transferred to another prison “with the idea that he will perhaps be ready for parole after another two or three years.”44
Karpis’s complete conversion to law-abiding prisoner was noted in a September 1961 report that described him as having a “steadying influence” on other prisoners. Karpis was said to be
cooperative, quiet, and trying to do his time in such a manner as to make it easy on the supervisor as well as other inmates assigned
to the shop. The Lieutenant in charge of quarters comments that he wished he had 246 inmates like him. He gets along well with all the inmates and none at the present time treat him as a “big shot.”
In February 1962, the director of the Catholic Rehabilitation Service, with whom Karpis had been working to develop a release plan to present to the parole board, informed newspaper reporters that former Public Enemy no. 1 might be coming out of prison. This information produced headlines across the country such as “Ex-Mob King Seeks Parole,” “Widow to Fight Karpis’ Release From Alcatraz,” and “‘Hood’ Karpis Eyes Parole.”45 The last article described Karpis as a “pal” of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson and listed a number of crimes, other than the Bremer kidnapping, for which he was said to be wanted, including the Kansas City Union Station massacre and the murder of a Kansas City politician.
When a copy of this article was circulated in FBI headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover penned a comment, “They will parole this rat.” The director had already written to the attorney general to oppose Karpis’s release:
In view of the ruthless crimes perpetrated by Karpis, I wanted to let you know of the alleged efforts to get him released from prison. By reason of his notorious background, Karpis is certainly not entitled to any consideration.46
Hoover sent a copy of this letter to James Bennett, asking that the FBI be informed of any efforts to release Karpis, and of any transfer within the Bureau of Prisons.
Hoover was not alone in his opposition to the release of the former Public Enemy. An article in the Washington Star summed up the editorial position of many newspapers: “His good behavior in prison hardly atones for the atrocious crimes which he and his colleagues committed when they were terrorizing the whole Midwest some thirty years ago.”47
Karpis thus encountered the problem faced by many high-profile lawbreakers: records of good conduct in prison, no matter for how many years, had no bearing on their chances for parole. Prison officials understood this reality to mean that celebrity offenders who obeyed prison rules would become frustrated when they realized that records of good conduct would not give them credit for “having changed.”
With the director of the FBI expressing his considerable opposition, Karpis’s release to Canada would not come for many more years after his transformation from “a menace” to a “model prisoner.” Yet in the end Karpis would have an opportunity to even the score with J. Edgar Hoover.
In April 1962 Karpis was transferred to McNeil Island—Leavenworth officials had rejected a proposal that he be given another try in their prison. While he maintained correspondence with a sister and his son, he worked closely with Frank Roberts of the Catholic Rehabilitation Service, who visited him at McNeil to discuss his employment as a cook or baker following release. He was assigned to work in the recreation department and for the first time was allowed to watch television and began attending a “self-improvement” group. He moved to a job with more responsibility—inmate payroll clerk—where his supervisor characterized his work as “exceptional.” His housing unit officer called his attitude “outstanding,” stating that Karpis exhibited “the biggest change he had ever observed in a man.”
Several years later Karpis, now in his midfifties, moved into a residence for “model prisoners” outside the prison walls, where he became head of the resident council and occasionally acted as a tour guide for visitors. When arthritis forced him to give up general office work he took a job in the hospital records office. In 1965 the staff recommended him for parole, noting that his “reckless, anti-social tendencies are as defunct as the conditions that surrounded him in the Prohibition Days.”
That parole board staff and members were sensitive to the objections of J. Edgar Hoover, however, was evident in the minutes of a September 1966 board meeting. Unfortunately for Karpis, a visitor to McNeil who had heard Karpis was going to a parole hearing notified a local newspaper, which led to an Associated Press story headed “He and Ma Barker’s Boy: Ex-Public Enemy No. 1 Now a Model Prisoner,” which once again triggered protests opposing his release. One parole board member noted that Karpis was fifty-eight years old and “is not a vegetable,” that he had made an excellent adjustment at McNeil Island and had a “well worked out” parole release plan, and that the prison staff recommended his parole. She summed up the difficult situation facing the board:
There is the continuing concern of J. Edgar Hoover and no doubt that the FBI, at least in the person of its Director is irrevocably determined to bring about all the pressure that is possible to prevent his release at any time . . . the Board must choose between coming to a decision according to our own rules and judgment, or accepting Mr. Hoover’s attitude.48
Charlotte P. Reese, the parole board member who wrote this summary, rejected Hoover’s position and recommended Karpis’s parole “for deportation only.”
Two years later Karpis, still at McNeil Island, was advised by an attorney for the parole board to obtain letters from former wardens and other prison personnel that would support his release, obtain assurance from the Catholic Rehabilitation Service that they would accept responsibility for him, and send a letter to the parole executive stating the following: “that you realize your early career was both wrong and stupid . . . [that] you regret it and are willing to go out, keep your nose clean and fit into society without indulging in any further controversy or illegal, immoral or wrong behavior.”49 Karpis dutifully asked for and received a strong letter of support from former Alcatraz and McNeil Island warden Paul J. Madigan, who commented that “a number of Karpis’s old associates are now enjoying parole supervision and no doubt succeeding.”50 Retired Alcatraz and McNeil Island Officer Raymond May wrote to the parole board, arguing
That if correction is to have any meaning [Karpis should be released, otherwise] from this point on the enthusiasm and the ardor that has been developed for a better life “if and when” which has sustained him the many years will gradually dim and we merely serve as a warehouse.51
The parole board still wanted Karpis to jump through a few more hoops before parole would be granted. The chairman, Walter Dunbar, met with Karpis and asked him to write a letter describing “The kind of person you were in 1936; How do you now view your criminal activities of the 1930s; How prison has changed you in the last 30 years; Your activities and behavior while in prison; How do you view yourself now; and What are your future plans.”52
Karpis responded with the expected answers to these inane questions, concluding with a plea for a definite yes or no on his release. The yes came seven months later, on November 27, 1968; the Department of Justice announced that after thirty-two years in prison Karpis would be paroled, “for deportation only.”
On January 11, 1969, Alvin Karpis was turned over to Canadian immigration officials and taken to Montreal, where at age sixty he began the rest of his life. He was a celebrity in the minds of those old enough to remember the Roaring Twenties and gangster days. He knew he had a story to tell, and he began to work on it with a writer while answering questions from various reporters. Interviewed when he arrived in Montreal, Karpis talked about his plans “to become a respectable citizen” and said that he wanted to see the movie about two people he knew—“Bonnie and Clyde.” If his release job did not work out and he had to wash dishes, he stated confidently, “I guarantee you I’ll be washing dishes in the best place in town within six months.”
He declined, however, to answer the big question: Was it true that after a year on the run he had been personally arrested by J. Edgar Hoover? He responded as would any wise prisoner just released on parole: “I believe it would be bad taste for me to . . . say anything in the absence of Mr. Hoover. . . . Mr. Hoover has performed a credible job for his country.”53 Karpis knew that the account of his capture by Hoover, as written by Hoover, had been a major contributor to the FBI director’s reputation; he also knew that his own version of this event would create publicity for the book on which he was working. In a feature article in the St. Pa
ul Pioneer Press, he described how after thirty-two years in prison, he marveled at the expense of riding in a jet plane, seeing girls in mini-skirts, and going on a “simple dinner date . . . taking a woman to a restaurant, helping her into a chair, taking her coat, lighting her cigarette.” Noting that he enjoyed such simple activities as “hailing a cab, riding on a bus, buying a tie, calling a friend on the telephone,” he reflected: “you forget so much in prison. . . . I can’t take freedom for granted the way other people do.”54
In March 1971 Karpis’s campaign to cut J. Edgar Hoover down to size began with an article in the Weekend Magazine, “I Made Hoover’s Reputation,” excerpted from his forthcoming book. Karpis described his arrest, along with that of Fred Hunter in New Orleans, after the two had climbed into their automobile:
I put the key in the ignition and turned it. I started to push the starter with my foot and, at that exact moment, a car cut sharply in front of our car and stopped at the curb. Five men climbed out very quickly. . . . I heard a voice at my window.
“All right, Karpis,” the voice said, “just keep your hands on that wheel.” I turned my head slight to the left and my temple bumped into the barrel of a gun. It was a 351 automatic rifle. . . . I held my head steady, looking straight out the window. I had no choice. Two men were leaning over the hood of the car that had cut in front of us. Each of them was aiming a machine gun at my head. Three other men were crouched in the street. They had pistols, drawn and ready. . . .
“Okay, Karpis,” he said, “get out of the car and be damn careful where you put your hands.” I slid out of the seat keeping my hands in plain sight. I stood up on the street. . . . It was bedlam.