by David Ward
I went up to the Weyerhaeuser Building and I told the secretary, “I’m here to see George Weyerhaeuser.” She says, “Who shall I say is calling?” “Tell him Harmon Metz Waley is calling.” She called on the phone and she said, “He said, go in.” So I went in and he met me half way with his hand out for a handshake. So I went to work for Weyerhaeuser. . . . He said, “They gave you an awful way to go.” He didn’t appreciate it. His father said if it wasn’t for the Depression, this wouldn’t have occurred.35
Waley worked as a truck driver for the Weyerhaeuser Company for four years. During this time, Waley’s probation officer wrote to the pardon attorney on his behalf. The letter began with an attempt to explain the improvement over Waley’s earlier confrontational attitude toward all governmental authority:
Presently, Waley can stand considerable more warp and frustration of his ego needs. To say that he has developed more tolerance, more insight, would, I believe, be pure conjecture on anyone’s part. To say that the emotional and intellectual engine that is Harmon Waley is running down might be more accurate. He is considerably less violent in his emotional denunciations of things past and present, although he still denounces with fervor. His reaction now to the rather firm redirection of logic by the supervisor concerning Waley’s bland pronouncements is an abrupt change of subject whereas in the past punctuation during the interview was accomplished by hard looks, a red face and abrupt departure from the interview situation. The sharp edges are being dulled. . . . He is certainly a different being now than the 24-year-old obstreperous deviant sentenced for kidnapping in 1935. Thus, if pardon in this case would mean a remission of penalty, I would recommend it.36
No pardon followed this recommendation, however.
In January 1968 Waley took a job as an engineer for the Washington state ferry. After June 1972, when he was no longer able to work due to angina and resulting heart surgery, he lived on disability payments and social security.
In 1975 Waley’s probation officer in the state of Washington appealed to the parole board to end his reporting requirements, citing a letter from George Weyerhaeuser that read, in part:
I have been generally familiar with Mr. Waley’s circumstances and conduct as a parolee for many years during which he worked for the Weyerhaeuser Company, and subsequently with the State of Washington Ferry System, and it is my conviction that he has acted in a responsible manner as an employee and subsequent to employment as a retiree. . . . In light of the fact that it has now been 40 years since he committed the crime for which he is still on parole, and inasmuch as his conduct subsequent to his prison term has proven him to be responsible, it seems to me entirely in order that he be relieved of the onus of reporting frequently. . . . I am sure that anyone looking over his long-term records would come to the conclusion that he has fully paid his debt to society.37
On July 23, 1976, Harmon Waley was discharged from parole. When interviewed by the author in 1980, he was living in a small town in Washington. He commented that he had never been “hassled” by police officers or FBI agents, expressed appreciation for the tolerance and understanding of his probation officers, and described George Weyerhaeuser as “a pretty nice guy,” who provided employment and invited him to “stop by whenever you’re in town.” On several occasions Waley met with other ex-Alcatraz releasees who lived in Washington, to “cut up the Rock”—tell stories and recall incidents and personalities of the prisoners and personnel. He continued to voice complaints about American prisons and noted the lack of safety on the streets (he had been mugged one night in Tacoma).
Due to his “obnoxious attitude,” as one Alcatraz staff member described it, his confrontational style, and his “colossal ego,” none of the inmates or employees who knew Waley on the Rock expected that he would successfully complete parole. What they did not take into account was Waley’s determination to continue trying to control events in his life and maintain his self-respect, whether that meant years of fighting the regime at Alcatraz or being bold enough to walk into the office of his kidnap victim to ask for help in finding a job.38
Charles Berta
Each time he walked through the yard gate at Alcatraz and down the steps to the industries area, Berta looked out on the city where he had lived as a free citizen. He came to Alcatraz with considerable experience doing hard time, having suffered through twenty lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails at the British Columbia Penitentiary, and having spent many months in disciplinary segregation at Leavenworth after he and six other men took Warden White as a hostage and broke out of the prison.
On the Rock, Berta’s defiance of authority and his attempt to assault an officer earned him two trips to lower solitary, the dungeon cells described in chapter 4. He accumulated nine additional misconduct reports, two for fighting with other prisoners, and one for “intimidating an officer.” As the years went by, Berta’s conduct improved, due in part, according to Alcatraz personnel, to visits he received from his mother during a ten-year period that ended with her death in 1945. Several months before his release, however, he received two more misconduct reports for “defiance and disrespect of authority.”
Toward the end of 1948 Berta had 3,600 days of good time restored, most of it time lost at Leavenworth. His work at Alcatraz as an institutional blacksmith and welder was so highly regarded that he also earned industrial good time that further advanced his release date. On August 10, 1949, at the age of forty-seven, Berta was released “flat,” at the expiration of his sentence with no requirement to report to a parole officer. One day before he left the island the chief medical officer’s psychiatric report provided a poor prognosis for his release:
This man has a long criminal record, and has been an aggressive, quick tempered and paranoid individual who has not been able to get along too well in prison. He does however have a good work record, and has developed a more tolerant attitude in the past few years of his incarceration. It is my opinion that his chances for civil adjustment are poor.39
When Berta stepped off the prison boat in San Francisco and into the free world, his wife, with whom he had been living before his arrest for train robbery, was waiting—this despite that fact that Berta had corresponded with her only occasionally during his eighteen years at Alcatraz and had received no visits from her. They would stay together for the rest of his life.
An old friend also greeted him on the dock. “They met me and we all had a nice big dinner at his house,” said Berta during his interview. “I had these friends from the old days to take care of me. . . . I went to work as a plumber’s helper.”40 He and his wife took up residence in Brisbane, a small town outside San Francisco. In a letter to James Bennett several years later, he described his return to the Bay Area and a job he had taken as a bartender—employment that would likely not have been approved if he had been on parole:
I did a lot of walking around the hills and also along the beaches and just laid around for about three months. Work was hard to get . . . so I took a job as a plumber’s helper that a friend got for me. A friend of mine had a half interest in a bar and wanted me to work for him. I didn’t care for that kind of work but being in need of work I took it and have been there ever since—three years this month—haven’t missed a day or been late. Things would have been much harder if it wasn’t for people I knew helping me . . . my mother left me a little money and we put it down on a house, so between my job and working around the house I’m pretty busy. That is the score as of now. The bar I work in is across from the main post office. The next time you are in the city give me a ring as I would like to talk to you.41
Berta had three more encounters with law enforcement agencies. In August 1952 he was given a thirty-day sentence for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions before a federal grand jury investigating New York gangster Waxey Gordon’s narcotics business. While out on bail, Berta filed an appeal, and the sentence was vacated. In May 1954 Berta and another man were arrested by San Francisco police on suspicion of burglary and
grand vagrancy. In the town of San Anselmo in Marin County, a police lieutenant observed Berta and a friend driving around and arrested them, thinking they were there “to case taverns, motels, and some of the homes.” The two men were released on writs of habeas corpus several hours later after they argued, apparently successfully, that they were “merely putting some mileage on a new motor car.”42
As a result of this arrest and the subsequent newspaper article, Berta’s criminal record became public, and he offered to quit his bartending job to avoid embarrassing the owner; his offer was rejected. Several years later when a man attempted to hold up the bar, Berta took the gun away from the robber and called the police.
In the mid 1970s, after Alcatraz became a tourist attraction and criticism of the prison was again heard, Berta was irritated:
Those criticisms of Alcatraz–that’s bullshit, they want to make a big thing of cruel and unusual punishment. Alcatraz was a good place to do time, in my opinion. At Leavenworth, man, in the summertime, you was roasting in that cell, you’d have to be stripped naked and the humidity was so bad, everything was all wet. They had to come around and give you ice cold water to cool you off. Alcatraz was terrific; you had to use a blanket every night, the weather was beautiful. When you were out in that yard, you could look around, the good fresh air; you could see the sunset, Sausalito, the boats coming in, the aircraft carriers coming in, the battleships coming in. You couldn’t see that up in Leavenworth or McNeil Island. That place—Leavenworth—stunk. There were cockroaches and bedbugs. . . . The mess hall was filthy. Leavenworth was wide open for marijuana, cocaine, you name it, it was there—not at Alcatraz. And no queers; the homosexuals couldn’t run around loose in the cell block. That’s one of the worst things in prison, it causes all the killings; none of that was going on at Alcatraz, supervision was too tough.43
James Quillen
When he left Alcatraz, Quillen had accumulated eighteen misconduct reports—eight were for contraband; others were for disobeying orders—two for insolence and four for refusal to work (characterized as the leader of a strike in two refusals). He forfeited 1,113 days of good time for destroying property in his cell in disciplinary segregation. He also had one misconduct report for “uncleanness—while cooking hot cakes for officers, he dropped the hot cakes on the floor and picked them up, put them on the plates, and sent them in for the officers to eat. He said officers are no fucking better than the inmates on the main line.”44
Before, during, and after the May 1946 battle of Alcatraz, James Quillen spent several months in D block for misconduct. The isolation, he noted later in an account of these years, gave him “considerable time to think” about his future. “The total weight of your time there,” he said during one of his interviews for this project, “really brought your mind to the futility of the whole thing. It’s like you took this much of your life and totally threw it away.” After being released back to the general population, Quillen began a remarkable transformation.
He signed up for three University of California correspondence courses and asked to meet with James Bennett on the director’s next visit to the institution. He told Bennett he planned to finish high school and earn back the good time he had lost, and the director responded favorably. “He assured me,” said Quillen, “that if I would work and study for two years, he would recommend that at least five years of my forfeited good time be restored. It was a challenge that I accepted.”45
A change in behavior accompanied this resolution. In addition to spending time studying, Quillen played music and began attending Mass. The changes in his conduct were noted in special progress reports. Whereas a report on Oct. 24, 1947, described him as “headstrong, impulsive and aggressive and capable of violence” and concluded that he had made “a poor adjustment to date,” a report less than a year later, on July 16, 1948, said Quillen was “better adjusted at present” and mentioned as positive signs his new interest in music and attendance at religious services.
As a result of his attending Mass, Quillen began to associate with the Catholic chaplain at Alcatraz, Joseph Clark, who counseled him as they walked around the yard. When Clark’s altar assistant was transferred, Quillen assumed his position. Thinking that family support might help improve Quillen’s often-troubled frame of mind, Clark and another interim priest tried to locate members of his family. Clark learned that Quillen’s mother had died, but he was able to contact and meet his stepfather. One day Quillen was very surprised to receive a visit from his stepfather and stepmother, and then another with his stepsister and her husband, at that time an Oakland police officer. In his interviews, Quillen identified this reunification with family members as a major turning point. He finally had “someone in the outside world to communicate and share with.” With this support, said Quillen, “I resolved to turn my life around.”
A progress report in 1952 corroborated the importance of his contacts with his stepfather and stepsister: “Their influence and encouragement contribute to his increasing stability and determination to avail himself of the institution’s educational opportunities.” The report went on to note an admirable commitment to his scholastic work. “This inmate, a brash and defiant malcontent earlier in his incarceration here,” concluded the report, “has responded remarkably to the counseling offered by relatives formerly wholly uninterested in his welfare.”46
Two years after their meeting, James Bennett fulfilled his promise and restored five years of Quillen’s good time. Continuing to receive monthly visits from his family, Quillen applied for an assignment to a job as an orderly in the hospital. To his surprise, Warden Johnston approved the assignment and he was allowed to live in the hospital. After he showed strong interest in the work, the resident physician and medical technical assistants taught him how to conduct tests and perform other procedures. Soon he was giving injections, preparing surgical packs, and taking X-rays. Ten years and one day after his arrival at Alcatraz, and with the remainder of his lost good time restored, Quillen was told that he was being transferred to McNeil Island.
At McNeil, Quillen was allowed to continue working in the prison hospital. He was soon placed in charge of the tuberculosis unit and then moved into surgery as an assistant. During these years he had meetings with a psychiatrist whom he described in interviews for this project as helping him control feelings of anger and revenge:
I met a psychiatrist, a guy named Garvey, who was fresh out of medical school. I thought well, this is a golden opportunity. I’ll use this guy a little bit to get a good recommendation because I’m going up for parole. I was playing a game with Garvey, except that Garvey wasn’t playing my game and I didn’t know it. I was going to go in there and really slick-talk this guy, but I got to where I was going in there and really letting my hair down but I didn’t realize it. Finally, this guy made me see a whole lot about carrying all this bitterness. I wanted that guy that almost killed me in the jail, but talking to Garvey it didn’t make no difference anymore—it just kind of lost its importance.
Also at McNeil, Quillen had the opportunity to take a vocational nursing program that would give him a license and enable him to gain more experience as an X-ray technician.
At this point everything seemed to be going his way, but he still had a state detainer hanging over his head. He asked James Bennett for help in convincing the parole board to allow him to return to California so he could complete his state sentence and then become eligible for federal parole. Bennett suggested that a member of Quillen’s family contact the victims of his crime; this was accomplished and one of the kidnap victims wrote to the parole board stating that Quillen had been punished enough and that he had no objection to his release. Bennett wrote to the head of the California Adult Authority to determine if Quillen could be released under “joint supervision” if he was granted a federal parole.47
After several years at McNeil Island, James Quillen was transferred to San Quentin to resume serving the California sentence from which he had escaped. When h
e was released from San Quentin in 1958 on federal parole, he moved in with his sister and brother-in-law, a police officer who lived in Ukiah, California. The couple agreed to provide a home and maintain him until he was able to find work. His own financial resources consisted of $150 he had earned fighting fires at a California Department of Corrections Forestry Camp and a $200 loan from his stepfather. In his interview he described his efforts to find work:
I applied at the state hospital first as a psychiatric technician. I passed all the tests but they weren’t hiring. I needed a job. So I went to work breaking up concrete—pick and shovel work. When I first came home I went down to the employment office and got all these papers and I was going to fill them out, but I got to draft status and all that garbage; hell, I didn’t know how to handle it. So I took them back to the employment office and told the guy, “Hell, I can’t fill these papers out.” He says, “Why?” I told him “I just got out of prison; I don’t know how to fill out all this garbage.” This guy was really nice and he said, “Come on in and I’ll help you.” So we sat down and filled out these papers. I said I had done quite a bit of hospital work; I had of lot experience in surgery, some experience in X-ray, and I had a LPN license. I got a call the following week to go up to Hillside Hospital. I went up there and the radiologist was a super guy. I laid out everything on the line with him and the administrator—that I was an ex-con, but I needed a job, but I didn’t know if I could hack it. They took me right in and I worked there for eight years.