Alcatraz: A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years

by Michael Esslinger

  After serving nearly twenty-eight months at McNeil, Stroud violently stabbed a fellow inmate who allegedly “snitched” on him for sneaking food back to his cell. He was sent to serve time in solitary confinement and received an additional six-month sentence for his hostile act. On September 5, 1912, Stroud was transferred by train to the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Robert Stroud had now become inmate L-17431. Leavenworth was known simply as the “Big Top” and was considered as one of America’s toughest prisons. The move to Leavenworth also further complicated Stroud’s personal life. His family was still in Alaska which isolated him even more from any close personal contact. It is recorded that his mother would not make the trip to Kansas for nearly five years.

  Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas.

  Stroud’s first mug shot at Leavenworth, taken in 1912.

  Despite his growing reputation as an inmate with a violent disposition, it was at Leavenworth that Stroud started to attend school. His initial foundation studies were primarily in Math and English, but later he undertook more intensive subjects such as astronomy and engineering. Self-study became a newfound outlet for Stroud’s energy. But along with his legitimate studies, Stroud also pursued courses in the art of survival, and he crafted weapons under the cover of night from items he obtained covertly. Over the next few years, Stroud would land himself in solitary confinement several times when guards discovered his crudely fashioned weapons and escape tools.

  The next turning point in Stroud’s prison career began on Saturday, March 25, 1916, where Stroud has recounted that he attended a motion picture show in the prison auditorium. Following the film, he was escorted to the mess hall for supper. Stroud would later contend that he didn’t feel well and had lost his appetite. To maintain order, correctional officers strolled up and down the aisles, carefully monitoring the activities in the mess hall. A prison guard named Andrew F. Turner made repeated passes by Stroud’s table, allegedly delivering hard stares each time. Stroud apparently voiced his observation of the guard’s behavior to a fellow inmate, thus violating the strict rule of silence. Turner quickly walked over to Stroud and sharply demanded his prisoner number. Stroud had been put on notice.

  Stroud’s second murder victim, Leavenworth Correctional Officer Andrew F. Turner. This wedding portrait was used during the murder trial.

  The following day on March 26th, Stroud returned to his cell after supper to find a basket of fruit and candy on his cot. The armory guard had left a note for Stroud indicating that his eighteen-year-old brother Marcus had come to visit him from Alaska. Stroud learned that his brother had been turned away simply because he had been in the auditorium at the time, watching a movie. He was enraged that Marcus had traveled all the way from Alaska, only to be told to come back the following Monday.

  Stroud would later claim he became worried that Turner would report him for breaching the silence rule during the previous meal and that the warden would then take away his visitation privilege with Marcus. He asserted that his only option was to speak with Turner again during the next meal period, to ask whether he had reported him. He said that he planned to plead with Turner for leniency.

  The dining hall at Leavenworth, where Turner was murdered by Stroud.

  Stroud later recounted his story to fellow inmate Joseph Duhamel, stating that during the next dinner meal and in sight of nearly two thousand fellow inmates; he simply raised his hand to talk with Turner. The true sequence of events that unfolded from this point forward is somewhat sketchy. The two started to exchange words and Turner apparently drew his club from under his left arm. Witnesses state that Stroud aggressively attempted to wrestle away Turner’s club, and in a manic rage, pulled a homemade knife and stabbed him violently in the upper chest. Turner fell hard to the cement floor and gasped a final breath before succumbing to the fatal knife wound. All of the men in the mess hall rose to their feet in shocked silence.

  Stroud had just murdered a guard and everyone immediately knew the ramifications. Stroud would surely die by execution. The Captain of the Guard calmly approached the prisoner and asked him in a soft voice to drop his knife. As Stroud started to explain why he had stabbed Turner, he followed the Captain’s order and dropped the bloodied knife onto the floor.

  In the timeless classic Birdman of Alcatraz by Thomas E. Gaddis, Turner is described as a “club happy screw” that was in constant conflict with inmates. Turner and Stroud are said to have had a long history of problematic encounters. However, it should be noted that there is no documented proof that Stroud and Turner had any prior conflicts beyond those stated here. At age twenty-six, Stroud had committed his second murder and he was now destined to face the death penalty.

  Stroud’s trial began in May of 1916, with Federal Judge John C. Pollack presiding. Stroud entered a plea of self-defense, in front of what would ultimately prove to be an unsympathetic jury. The trial lasted for only a few weeks. On May 22, 1916, Stroud was sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out on July 21st, 1916. However, the judgment was successfully appealed. That appeal began what would be a series of trials and petitions to have his death sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Stroud’s mother Elizabeth hired two prominent attorneys and a skilled psychiatrist – but her attempts ultimately proved futile in the courtroom. On March 5, 1920, by order of Federal Judge James Lewis, Robert F. Stroud was sentenced to be executed on April 23, 1920. The hanging was to be performed at Leavenworth, and the prison began construction of his gallows.

  Nevertheless, Elizabeth Stroud did not lose hope and launched large-scale campaigns to save her son’s life. She enlisted the help of women’s groups in letter-writing campaigns addressed to President Woodrow Wilson and the First Lady, hoping to secure an executive order commuting his sentence to penalty without death. Stroud’s mother was unrelenting and passionately lobbied the White House to review her son’s case. She would base her line of reasoning on the argument that her son suffered from mental illness and that this was a genetic trait that ran in her family. Stroud’s older sister had been institutionalized and his mother cited case histories in which other convicts had been granted leniency for mental disorders.

  Her valiant efforts proved successful; only five days before he was scheduled to hang, Stroud was issued a commutation by the President of the United States. It read:

  NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT KNOWN, THAT I, WOODROW WILSON, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, drivers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby commute the sentence of Robert F. Stroud to imprisonment for life in a penitentiary to be designated by the Attorney General of the United States. Signed April 15, 1920, by President Wilson.

  The commutation was a tough blow for prison officials. The official notebook of the Alcatraz Warden noted:

  Rumors were that Stroud was to serve his life sentence in Solitary Confinement. There is no wording, phrases, or riders attached to indicate just how the subject is to serve while confined for the remainder of his life. Such detail was apparently left to the Attorney General or Warden of the Penitentiary.

  With no specific direction from the courts or the President, Stroud would have to serve his time under the terms of his original sentence, which stated that he should remain in solitary confinement until his execution. The Warden issued a single statement to reporters that read: “Stroud is to be kept in the segregated ward during his sentence, which is for life. He will never be permitted to associate with other prisoners, and will be allowed the customary half hour each day for exercise...” It was a perfectly clear and concise message to the public – Stroud would pay his debt. But some recall that Bob Stroud actually embraced the idea of being kept out of the general prison population.

  Stroud’s fragile family unit began to dissolve after the trial was over. His parents divorced and his father moved to California to look for work. Marcus Stroud was now leading an eccentric lifestyle in vaudevillian shows as Marcus the Great, performin
g a successful Houdini-like escape act, in which he made use of skills learned from his brother. He formally changed his name to Lawrence Gene Marcus and traveled throughout the country with his act.

  Now confined to a small and dimly-lit solitary cell, Stroud worked to better himself through correspondence courses and also took to painting and sketching. There is little documentation regarding his activities prior to beginning his bird research. Stroud’s biographer Tom Gaddis wrote that Elizabeth had taken a twelve-dollar-a-week job sewing satin casket linings and that Bob started to craft holiday cards to help supplement his mother’s income. It was also Gaddis who best captured the beginning of Stroud’s interest in birds. He claimed that Stroud found a baby sparrow in the isolation yard during a storm and brought the bird back to his cell to nurture it. Gaddis wrote that Bob would place a sock over the warm light bulb in his cell to create a warm bed, and would feed crushed cockroaches to the sparrow with a toothpick.

  Before Stroud began studying birds, he hand-painted holiday cards to help support his mother.

  Stroud was persistent with his new hobby, and persuaded the warden to allow him to keep and breed birds in his solitary cell. He slowly grew obsessed with this newfound interest, and began collecting materials to make cages, and rearranging his cell in efforts to accommodate his birds. Visitors to Leavenworth were often paraded past Stroud’s cell, and were shown the circus-style tricks performed by his small canaries. The guards however were not impressed by his antics. Former Alcatraz Captain Phil Bergen stated that the majority of the custodial staff at Leavenworth felt some level of resentment toward the prison administration for allowing Stroud the freedom to breed canaries.

  Stroud launched into a new project of assembling a small laboratory in his cell, soon after some of his birds fell ill and died. He had become completely consumed with his birds and their needs. He maintained an observation journal to help understand how the various diseases affected his ever-growing canary population. As well as documenting his observations in detail, he began experimenting with birdseed blends and other pharmaceutically based mixtures. Stroud was allowed to subscribe to a variety of bird magazines, and wrote remarkably detailed theories based on his observations.

  Stroud’s position was unique. He lived with the birds in a single room twenty-four hours a day and was unable to leave his study. Gradually the bird-fancying community began to take notice of this interesting new enthusiast named Bob Stroud. By late 1929 he was breeding his birds in a lucrative business, and he was able to fully support his mother. In addition to his bird sales, Bob also began marketing Stroud Effervescent Bird Salts and Stroud’s Prescription and Salts No.1, which rapidly became popular remedies for bird ailments. He claimed that the Stroud Specific remedies were the first treatments ever marketed to treat avian diphtheria. Stroud performed detailed autopsies to study the causes of death for his stricken birds and composed amazingly detailed illustrations of their organs and anatomy. What the public didn’t know was that the name and address in Leavenworth, Kansas, belonged to a twice-convicted murderer working from a solitary confinement cell in federal prison.

  Della Mae Jones was a widowed middle-aged bird lover who exchanged letters with Stroud after he won a bird that she had offered in a magazine contest. She became intrigued when she learned that the seemingly gentle bird enthusiast who had written so many articles on bird ailments was actually a federal prisoner. Bob and Della began a steady stream of correspondence and quickly developed a close friendship. After a few years of exchanging letters, Della traveled to Kansas to meet Stroud in April of 1931. After one visit, she immediately began making plans to move to Kansas City and help with the bird business. She moved into the same building as Elizabeth, but soon she found herself in conflict with Stroud’s dominant mother.

  In late August of 1931, Leavenworth Warden Thomas White was directed by the newly formed Bureau of Prisons to disband Stroud’s mail order business and to revoke all privileges that allowed him to keep birds in his cell. It was a serious blow to Stroud to have all of his avian studies brought to a halt by prison bureaucracy. He pleaded directly to the B.O.P. with little success. Della and Elizabeth flooded newspaper and magazine offices with plaintive appeals and sorrowful press releases that Bob had written from his cell. Bob’s plight drew national attention and public empathy forced the B.O.P. to change its position. The Bureau’s newly appointed Director, James V. Bennett, who was only thirty-seven years of age, was sent to Leavenworth to negotiate new terms with Stroud. After Bennett’s visit, the Bureau modified its ruling to state that Stroud would no longer be able to conduct private business ventures from his prison cell. His profitable business of bird remedies and breeding would now fall under the umbrella of prison industries. As a result, Stroud would go from making nearly ten dollars per bird to earning only ten dollars a month as a noncommissioned salary.

  An article written by Della Mae Jones in 1931, petitioning for leniency and a reinstatement of privileges so that Stroud could keep his birds while in prison.

  Hollywood Actress Betty Field’s original contract to play the role of Stella in the motion picture Birdman of Alcatraz. The character was based on Della Mae Jones.

  Though this was widely considered to be a harsh ruling, the Bureau did make some concessions. They classified Stroud as a special prisoner of the Bureau and provided him with an additional cell adjacent to his own which included additional electrical outlets to help accommodate his research. The prison even went so far as to hire a construction crew to jackhammer a doorway between the two cells. Stroud once again became engrossed in his research and his self-taught explorations into avian behavior, illness and scientific theory.

  Stroud’s cell with birdcages strewn about, as it was depicted in the biographical film, looked quite similar to his actual solitary cell at Leavenworth.

  In 1933 Stroud’s first book, entitled Diseases of Canaries,was published by Canary Publishers. It was based on his magazine articles and his independent research techniques, and was intended to be marketed as a comprehensive and authoritative text on canary care for owners and breeders. His well-written reference was as meticulously researched and structured as an avian encyclopedia. The book was, however, not without its critics. Some of the remedies were later found to be harmful to birds. It also drew skeptical responses from some circles in the veterinarian community. Stroud and his publisher E.J. Powell soon clashed over the book’s lack of success. Stroud argued that it was Powell who had been responsible for the book’s failure and later attempted to file a lawsuit against him.

  Meanwhile Stroud and Della grew closer and they sought to marry, even though Stroud was incarcerated for life. After reading an out-of-date law book from the prison library, Stroud interpreted the Treaty of Paris, struck in 1803, as granting inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase (which also included the Kansas territory) the right to marry by signing an officiated contract. Stroud typed the contract on the old Remington typewriter he had in his cell, and the following day their unofficial marriage was published in the Kansas City Star, in October of 1933. Della Mae then started penning her name as Della Mae Stroud. Prison officials were furious that Stroud was publicly maneuvering around prison regulations and it was around this time that rumors started to surface regarding his eventual transfer to Alcatraz.

  During the next few years, Stroud would lose many of his closest contacts and would leave the cell that had been his home and laboratory for so long. In 1934 Elizabeth Stroud ceased her efforts to support the cause of her son and relocated back to Metropolis, Illinois, along with her daughter Mamie. Elizabeth would have no further contact and she died only four years later in August of 1938. Meanwhile, prison officials began to complicate the visiting procedures for Stroud and Della. By 1936, their relationship had also dissolved. To make matters worse, Ida Turner, the widow of the slain guard, had publicly criticized the Prison Bureau for giving Stroud special liberties and had established a small group of followers.

  In spite o
f these setbacks, the intrepid prisoner continued to conduct and expand his avian research. Stroud had been given professional tools to perform his autopsies, including scalpels and other sharp instruments. He had educated himself in the use of an old microscope that had been donated to the prison by Wesleyan University and claimed that he had logged more than 3,000 hours at the eyepiece. It was also reported that Stroud had made a microtone from scraps of metal and a discarded razor blade which could slice tissue to 1/12,000 of an inch – and that he had studied literally thousands of homemade slides. He had spent countless hours sketching his observations in detailed pen-and-ink illustrations.

  Stroud spent hundreds of hours studying and sketching his avian observations in detailed pen-and-ink illustrations. These sketches were assembled for his book Digest on the Diseases of Bird,” published in 1943.

  Stroud’s Alcatraz D-Block cell, located on the top tier. This was the cell Stroud occupied during the aborted 1946 escape attempt by inmates Bernard Coy, Joseph Cretzer, Marvin Hubbard and Miran Thompson. Following these events, he was moved to cell D-4 on the flats.

  Then in the early morning of December 16, 1942, Stroud was awakened without any warning by two guards and was advised him to get dressed and prepare for reassignment to Alcatraz. Now fifty-two years old and having spent over twenty-years in his solitary confinement cell at Leavenworth, he would be traveling by train to California. Stroud had been restricted from taking any of his birds and would only be allowed to carry his books and note journals. His journey to Alcatraz would be one of wonderment as he peered at the landscape through the barred windows of the train. He was viewing a world that he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years.