Darwin E. Coon, AZ-1422
Former Inmate, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
Dedication
Philip R. Bergen
“Lieutenant Bergen was a tall, square jawed, handsome man who looked as if he could have been the hero of every Saturday movie serial ever made. He had cool direct eyes and a natural fearlessness. On Alcatraz, he was a “high-risk” guard. He was a daredevil who thought nothing of plunging head-first into danger. In addition he was a deadly shot...”
This is how Clark Howard described Philip Bergen in his brilliant novel Six Against the Rock. Bergen is also depicted in classic novel Birdman of Alcatraz byThomas E. Gaddis and he appears in numerous and films other books. When I asked Bergen which character depiction he found most accurate, he simply replied: “Well... the birds were very well written don’t you think?”
I doubt that I will ever forget the time I first handed over my “completed” manuscript to Bergen, former Captain of the Guard at Alcatraz. He had spent sixteen years working and living on the island and had raised his two daughters on “the Rock”. I had spent several years conducting exhaustive research and I was quite pleased to hand him what I considered to be the final version of this book. A few weeks later I called Phil to get his opinion of the content and to see if he had any last minute recommendations. He stated in a very matter-of-fact tone: “Sure, rewrite the whole thing or make sure that it is marked fiction.”
Over the next eighteen months I recommenced my long journey, heading back to the archives, cross-checking references against archival records, conducting additional interviews, attending lectures, and even going out with County staff (in the rain and mud) to verify the unmarked burial sites of a few deceased inmates. Thus while Bergen did not have any formal connection to my book, his mark remains obvious. Even when the perspectives presented were not favorable to him, he pushed me to become an objective listener and then to document what I had heard, rather than trying to interpret. That was the theme of his contribution and with that said, it has been a long and extraordinary journey.
Well into his nineties, Phil Bergen remained an Alcatraz aficionado. I attended several Alcatraz reunions and would watch in amazement as Phil rattled off names of people he hadn’t seen in over fifty years. His ability to recount specific events and their chronologies was phenomenal. Phil Bergen represents only one of the many voices of those that lived the Alcatraz experience – but his was a very prominent and authoritative voice. Getting to know Phil was a rare privilege and I feel blessed that he was able to read and comment on all but the final two chapters. Although he has passed, his voice has not been silenced.
Thank you Phil, for helping me to see Alcatraz through your eyes and leaving behind such a remarkable legacy.
Preface
My first introduction to Alcatraz came at a very young age, during a visit to San Francisco with my parents in the late 1970’s. Just as thousands of others had done before me, I peered in wonderment from across the Bay at the small and forbidding island known as “the Rock.” I had seen the books that lined the sidewalks of Fisherman’s Wharf, illustrated with the faces of hardened convicts and vintage photographs, all indicating that the island prison was a kind of living hell. My parents were generous enough to purchase a few of these books for me and I was destined to immerse myself into this fascinating history. As we walked along the pier of Fisherman’s Wharf, I sneaked a few quick peeks into my shopping bag, hoping to catch brief glimpses of the inmates and prison photos. I knew that there were no longer any prisoners residing on the island, but to a young and curious mind, there was still something intriguing and mysterious about it all.
After reading my books from cover-to-cover, I began plotting my first visit to the island. I had prepared for my excursion by studying the various escape attempts, the lives of former inmates such as Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly and the chilling personal accounts of these and others that that were said to be the “rogues of society.” During the first years when the island was open to the public, National Parks Service employees guided all of the visitor tours. As we hiked up the steep path to the cellhouse, I remember the stillness of the surroundings, broken only by the occasional screeches of passing seagulls. The misted smell of the ocean was thick and almost tropic. As the ranger guided us past the dimly lit cells, I lagged behind, blending into the shadows, absorbed by the incredible history of the now abandoned prison.
The highlight of my trip was meeting a former inmate who had come to the island to talk with visitors and to describe the eighteen years during which he had lived on “the Rock” as inmate #AZ-714. Clarence Carnes had been involved in a disastrous attempt at armed robbery at only fifteen. When a gas station attendant challenged Carnes and fought to disarm him, the young delinquent pulled the trigger and changed his life’s destiny in a matter of only seconds. Carnes was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder and he arrived on Alcatraz at the young age of only eighteen. One year later he participated in what would be considered the island’s most significant and catastrophic escape attempt, which would ultimately result in five tragic deaths. For his role in the escape and the murder of a correctional officer by a co-conspirator, Carnes received an additional ninety-nine years which was added to the life sentence he was already serving. His codefendants would receive the death penalty, and would later be executed sitting side-by-side in San Quentin’s gas chamber. He would therefore spend the vast majority of his life behind bars.
Seeing Carnes in person, I was amazed at how much he had changed since his arrival mug shot photos on Alcatraz were taken. As I asked questions, his responses were terse and consistently evasive. He would respond by showing our group where an incident occurred, but avoided any details. He would simply nod as the National Park Ranger highlighted historical details and then would look away. I was also intrigued by his claim that despite nearly two decades on Alcatraz, there were still areas he hadn’t seen within the prison confines. He was soft-spoken and articulate. His hard looks had evolved into soft rounded features and he certainly didn’t resemble the cold-blooded criminal that I had read about.
A few hours later after the boat had delivered our group back to the boarding pier, I noticed Carnes sitting at a street vendor’s booth signing books. I tried to muster the courage to introduce myself and ask him a few questions about the ’46 events. But just as I approached him, he got up, motioned to the vendor that he was hungry and started walking away. Keeping a safe distance, I followed him through Fisherman’s Wharf, finally arriving at a food concession stand. Carnes purchased a hot dog and soft drink and walked over to the telescopes located at the end of Pier 45, which advertised a close-up view of Alcatraz Island for only ten cents. He dropped a dime in the first telescope and looked through it for about a minute. Noticing me, he turned and motioned to the telescope, inviting me to have a look. He said that if I looked quickly, I might be able to catch a glimpse of a group walking down the stairs from the recreation yard. Knowing his past, I cautiously accepted the invitation and watched him carefully as I positioned myself at the telescope. Eventually I was able to navigate through the scenery through the eyepiece as Carnes started walking away, gazing casually at the island every few seconds. I finally got the courage to approach him and introduce myself. I explained that I had learned who he was from two books I had read about the prison. He graciously shook my hand and allowed me to ask some unskilled questions about his long habitation on Alcatraz and the tragic events of 1946. Our dialog remained fairly superficial until a woman approached Carnes, interrupting the conversation.
The woman told Carnes that she had been a young girl during the 1946 escape attempt and that her father had brought her to Aquatic Park, where many of the correctional officers’ families had gathered to watch the events unfolding from the mainland. She explained that she had been terrified, seeing the flashes of light and hearing the thunderous guns. She told Carnes that she had hugged her father’s steel thermos, praying that it would block an
y bullets fired by the inmates and she described how that same fear remained in her thoughts every time she looked at the island. She jokingly commented that after the ’46 riot, she was annoyed at having to give up her bed to masses of visiting relatives. They all had come to hear at firsthand her father’s description of what he had witnessed from the mainland. They were all hoping to catch a glimpse through binoculars of a guard on the yard wall catwalk, or perhaps even the faint figure of an inmate.
The conversation then progressed to Carnes’s thoughts on being out of prison. He commented that when he was inside, he constantly thought and read about what people were doing on the outside, but once he got out, he couldn’t stop thinking about his friends on the inside and what they were doing. He said that the most difficult years of his life had been spent on Alcatraz, and that even now it consumed much of his daily thoughts. The woman made a parting comment that I still remember today. She offered to him that although they had followed different paths, and had lived their lives on opposite sides of the prison’s wall, they were both still haunted by memories of Alcatraz. Carnes nodded and smiled at her, then walked off, disappearing into the crowd of tourists along the pier. It would be several decades before I realized that it was during my conversation with Carnes that I began to write this book.
Each year over one million tourists board the island's ferry to visit what was once considered the toughest federal prison in America. Today, Alcatraz is one of the biggest tourist magnets and most famous landmarks of San Francisco. The island's mystique, which has been created primarily through books and motion pictures, continues to lure people from all over the world to see firsthand where America once housed its most notorious criminals. Cramped cells, rigid discipline and unrelenting routine were the Alcatraz trademarks and it became known as the final stop for the nation's most incorrigible prisoners. On any given day, thousands of visitors can be found wandering the island and taking in its unique history. The cellhouse now abandoned by the criminals who were once housed there, still has scars of the events to which the walls once bore witness. It is a journey into a dim piece of American history and few walk away fully comprehending. The clichéd expression "if these walls could talk" is taken to a deeper level.
Even today, decades after the prison’s closure, the name Alcatraz still evokes a variety of dark, forbidding images for many. In the decades of the prison’s active years, people would wander the shorelines of San Francisco, weaving their own mental images of the horrors that lurked behind the concrete walls and fencing. In some ways, Alcatraz became almost two distinct entities – the prison and the myth. In many cases, the Alcatraz that people still imagine was a cruel and vile chamber of horrors and to some former inmates, this may seem a valid perception of that environment. One such case was illustrated in an informal meeting between the late former inmate Jim Quillen and myself in the kitchen basement of Alcatraz, in August of 1997. Forty years earlier Quillen and a few fellow inmates had plotted an escape in the very same location. During our brief conversation, Quillen confided that returning to the main cellhouse had been a painful and difficult journey. It was obvious that even decades later, he was still troubled by the many experiences he had endured on Alcatraz.
In my approach to assembling the information presented here, there has been no attempt to minimize the allegations of brutality, though the facts often times argue the opposite. I am bringing forward a more factual and balanced view through the eyes of those who lived and worked on the island, both inmates and officers. This book is intended to reflect a blend of perspectives, researched and derived from a variety of sources. The historical framework comes from both published and unpublished archive materials, supplemented by extensive interviews with a multitude of former inmates as well as correctional officers and their families. Statements of historical and technical fact are as precise as I could make them, given the resources at my disposal. Errors doubtlessly remain, as there are simply too many sources with contrasting perspectives to consider. I have made every attempt to verify information against archival record and the knowledge of those involved. Nevertheless, there is certainly some information included in this text that is reported as fact, but has most likely been embellished over the years. I don’t necessarily believe that anyone has intentionally set out to falsify history, but when source information is derived primarily from personal memory, details become impure with time and thus historical interpretation tends to fall into the trap of extrapolation, rather than adhering to essential fact.
During the initial phases of my research, I received a letter from former Alcatraz inmate Willie Radkay, who wrote in part: “Nobody wants to print the facts, even if it comes direct from the source himself. Artistic license is used to alter true incidents and events, and even the language used by the cons, whose jargons weren’t spoken in church circles.” This statement emerged as a common theme of discussions and interviews with former guards and inmates alike. In communicating this history, I felt it was important for the reader to understand that I am aware of the limitations of recollection and memory. I have chosen to maintain the integrity of the source material and to reconstruct events based on period documentation, unless the original sources contain obvious errors. This may challenge the opinions of many who are versed in the history of Alcatraz.
Too often in historical works, writers have filtered events in a fashion that they felt would better acclimatize their readers to the subject matter. Often as a result, the characters of individuals and the sense of place are lost. One of my favorite examples of image softening is the famous portrait of General George Washington crossing the Delaware in 1776, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Most people would probably prefer to believe that Washington stood stately and commanding in the prow of the boat, a model of dignified leadership before his men. But as historian Kenneth Davis later discovered during his research, the truth was much different from this romanticized image. When documenting his experiences with General Washington, General Harry Knox made an entry in his journal commenting that on this historical occasion, when stepping down onto the boat, Washington poked him with the tip of his boot, remarking: “Move your fat ass Harry, and not too fast or you’ll swamp the boat.”
Another example of historical coloring involves our perceptions of the early days of space travel. Following the return of the Apollo 12 Astronauts from the second lunar landing mission, the crewmen were televised in a worldwide broadcast with President Richard M. Nixon via a secured telephone connection to the White House. While awaiting the President’s arrival, the crew sat idly as television cameras focused on the planetary explorers, trapped behind the glass window of their quarantine trailer. As the world watched, Mission Commander Pete Conrad cupped his hand over the telephone receiver, turned away from the camera and whispered a comment to Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon. The public would never hear his remark, which was later revealed to me: “See Dick, I told you if you stuck with me you’d be farting through silk.” I obviously never met George Washington, but I did get to know Pete Conrad extremely well and humor was a hallmark of his personality. He was a brilliant astronaut, but he never let an opportunity for a joking comment pass him. I had heard this story before meeting him and it helped me to shape a more accurate image of his personality. I’ve always wished that I had read more such stories when I was in school, rather than the carefully woven images that my textbooks always seem to provide. When Pete later stepped foot on the moon, his historic first words spoken from the lunar surface were: “Whoopee.... Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.” His humor shows the human side to those historic accomplishments.
With all of this in mind, the greatest weakness of Alcatraz – A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years also remains its principal strength. I felt it was important to capture the essence of the island’s history, but at the same time to ensure the integrity of the archival records. Above all, I had to resist the temptation to venture too deeply into the st
ates of mind or the thought processes of the individuals involved, or to replace plain fact with entertaining narrative. The voices of Alcatraz are numerous and one simply cannot understand the complex history of the island by looking solely at any exclusive source. In my process of researching specific events, when the source materials provided little or no information, I turned to the excellent works that are listed in the bibliography to verify the chronology. These works have served to preserve the history of Alcatraz to the present day. It should also be noted that the bibliographic references provided herein serve as a map for those whose interests require a more expanded research base. Alcatraz – A Definitive History is intended as a source reference rather than a conclusive text. The history of Alcatraz is a fascinating window into one of the richest and debatably one of the darkest aspects of America’s history. I hope that this book will inspire you to read further on the subject and will help you to hear for yourself the many voices of Alcatraz, and their fascinating stories.
- Michael Esslinger
Discovery and Exploration
For centuries the bay of San Francisco lay hidden to passing ships, due to a unique illusion created by a small island that is known today as Alcatraz. This island positioned at the center of the bay and three miles inland from the Pacific Ocean was indistinctly visible from the misty coastline. The Rocky formations draped with gloomy vegetation blended in with the soft features of the East Bay Hills, screening the mouth of the elusive harbor.
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