Alcatraz (91 page)

33
. Pieper to J. Edgar Hoover, p. 14.

34
. J. Edgar Hoover to James V. Bennett, January 24, 1939.

35
. E. A. Tamm, memo to Director [Hoover], March 29, 1939. According to the coroner as quoted on January 26, 1939, in the
San Francisco News
, “the inquest . . . shows that Alcatraz is not ‘impregnable’ against the super-cunning of the men caged there, the Rock is dynamite in our Bay!”

36
. Henry Young Alcatraz file.

37
. James V. Bennett to J. A. Johnston, January 4, 1940.

38
. James A. Johnston to Director, BOP, January 29, 1940. Johnston wrote in the genteel style typical of communications between the director and the warden during this period when Bureau headquarters increasingly sought to exercise more and more influence over an administrator accustomed to running his own show, but about whose administrative abilities Bureau officials were becoming increasingly concerned.

1
. “Alcatraz Horrors Doom Men, Ex-Convict Says”; “Alcatraz Silence ‘Breaks’ Toughest Gangsters: Machine Gun Kelly Through Bragging; Karpis Is Cracking, Human Beings Can’t Endure ‘the Rock’ ”; “Riots and Bloodshed Are Forecast at Alcatraz; Convicts Can’t Win But Silence Is Worse than Machine Guns; The Rock a Barrel of Dynamite with Tough Warden Sitting on Lid,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, November 29, 30, December 1, 1937. Because no news organization had been allowed to take photographs after federal prisoners arrived, the
Inquirer
illustrated its series with a photo from the Warner Brothers movie
Alcatraz Island
.

2
. Alexander Kendrick, editorial,
Philadelphia Inquirer
, December 4, 1937.

3
. Roy Gardner to J. V. Bennett, June 7, 1938, Gardner Alcatraz file.

4
. “Roy Gardner Quits Prison,”
San Francisco Call-Bulletin
, June 17, 1938.

5
. First draft of
Hellcatraz
, 1–2, Gardner file. His book’s full title is
Hell-catraz: The Rock of Despair, The Tomb of the Living Dead
(n.p., 1939). For an expanded description of Gardner’s life and federal prison experience see Roy Gardner,
My Life Story, Hellcatraz
, ed. Tom Ryan (n.p.: Douglas/Ryan Communication, 2000).

6
. “Gardner Quits Prison.”

7
. E. J. Miller, Acting Warden, to Director, BOP, February 28, 1939.

8
. J. A. Johnston to Director, BOP, July 19, 1940.

9
. Ibid. The variety of food given to Alcatraz convicts underscores the administration’s
determination not to allow that feature of the regime to become a source of protest. It should also be noted that during the 1930s and 1940s employees were served the same food. No staff member or inmate interviewed for this project registered a complaint about the quantity or the quality of food.

10
. Ibid., p. 2.

11
. In March 1941 guards discovered that an inmate had managed to manufacture a couple of “crude” guns and have them smuggled past the metal detectors into the cell house. For obvious reasons, no contraband found on the island attracted as much staff attention as a gun, or the parts of a gun. A March 1941 statement by inmate William Dainard, the rap partner of Harmon Waley in the Weyerhaeuser kidnapping, that he knew where two guns were hidden produced an immediate response from Deputy Warden E. J. Miller. Dainard was upset over the length of his sentence, which was twenty years longer than Waley’s. He became severely depressed, and two months after he arrived at McNeil Island he tried to commit suicide three times within a week. He was transferred to Leavenworth, where he was certified as having “an unsound mind” and sent on to the Springfield Medical Center, where he remained for two and a half years. Dainard was returned to Leavenworth, but in July he was shipped off to Alcatraz, due to his lengthy sentence, the nature of his offense, the detainers held against him, and the view that he was a “dangerous, hardened criminal and a potential escape risk.”

Dainard’s note to Deputy Warden Miller stated that he knew where two guns were hidden and would provide information as to their whereabouts if Miller would promise to get him a pardon. The subsequent investigation revealed that Dainard “had manufactured two firearms, hidden them in his cell, and concocted the story to bargain for a sentence reduction.” For this ruse, Dainard was sent to disciplinary segregation, where he remained for seven years and four months. (This period included Dainard’s loss of 1,300 days of good time for destroying property in D block. In December 1946 Dainard was charged with conspiring with guard Oscar Eastin to have Eastin smuggle some contraband in to him, Copenhagen snuff.)

The discovery of these guns, described by Warden Johnston as “very crude, of doubtful practicability, nevertheless fashioned with devilish ingenuity,” was a matter of concern because Dainard had never been out of the cell house; the gun barrels therefore had to have been molded in the industries and workshop area and smuggled into the cell house by another inmate, revealing, once again, that the metal detectors had been foiled by the use of brass, a feature of which the inmates were clearly aware. Warden Johnston swore the senior staff to secrecy about the discovery of the guns to keep the information from reaching the San Francisco newspapers. Dainard Alcatraz file.

12
. James V. Bennett, to Attorney General, June 14, 1939. Bennett claimed that using Alcatraz as a facility for “the lame, the halt, and the blind” would be consistent with the island’s earlier use “as a health resort and sanitarium for enlisted men and officers returning from the Orient.” Apparently, the director had missed the sight of his own guards, as well as the inmates, bundled up in heavy overcoats and huddled in the less windy corners of the prison yard seeking relief from the persistent cold winds and frequent dense fogs of San Francisco Bay.

13
. Ibid., pp. 1–2.

14
. Gardner file.

15
. United Press International (UPI) release, San Francisco, January 11, 1940, ibid.

16
. Ibid.

17
. R. W. Gaynor, attempted interview with McCain, E. J. Miller, 10:45
A.M.
, December 3, 1940, Young Alcatraz file.

18
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, February 12, 1941.

19
. Warden Johnston wrote to Director Bennett describing the defense strategy: “They plan a defense based on psychological reasoning; theorizing that a man imprisoned for a long term and restricted in privileges and confined either in solitary or in isolation over a long period undergoes a mental and emotional strain so that when taunted or abused or threatened as they will indicate he was by McCain, he was seized with a sudden or irresistible impulse over which he had no control and that at the moment of the crime he was psychologically unconscious.” April 16, 1941.

20
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 17, 1941.

21
. Edited transcript of the Henry Young trial prepared for Bureau headquarters by A. H. Connor, Commissioner of Prisoner Industries, pp. 8–9.

22
. “Hard Rock Criminals to Attend Trial,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 16, 1941.

23
. Waley interview in 1980.

24
.
San Francisco Examiner
, April 24, 1941. Waley told the author that denial of aspirin was not the issue in the incident he described in the trial: “Coming out of the dungeon I refused to go for no books, letters, one meal a day, and no tobacco in D block. I told them to take my clothes, cut off my water and food, and go to hell. They force-fed me. Lt. Culver had a guard hold each arm while he tried to hit me with his fist. I ducked my head so he’d hit my forehead and I think he broke his thumb on it. They took me to the hospital and put me in a straight sheet in bed.” Written commentary by Harmon Waley on a copy of the edited transcript of Young trial.

25
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 23, 1941.

26
.
San Francisco News
, April 23, 1941.

27
. Unidentified and undated San Francisco newspaper article by John U. Terrell, in Young file.

28
. Ibid.

29
. Several prisoners provided testimony that staff members carried, and used on prisoners, blackjacks or “saps,” hunks of lead sewn up in pieces of leather, which contributed to the impression that harsh means of punishment were used on the island.

30
. An example of callous treatment directed toward a seriously mentally disturbed prisoner is the death of Vito Giacalone after he left Alcatraz for the Federal Medical Center at Springfield, Missouri. An Italian immigrant who could not read, write, or speak intelligible English, and a first offender serving a ten-year sentence for counterfeiting, Giacalone was one of a number of puzzling choices for a prison intended for “public enemies.” He was initially committed to Leavenworth, where he had a fight with another inmate but, because he was
regarded as “strange” and physically powerful, he was transferred to Alcatraz. Within two months of his arrival in March 1937 Giacalone was experiencing mental health problems. In various incidents he fought with other inmates, engaged in frenzies and tore up everything in his cell, and on one occasion made growling sounds as he pulled out his hair. He repeatedly took his clothes off and pounded the walls of his cell with his hands and his head. He spent “much time playing in the water [washbowl]” in his cell. He was confined to an isolation cell in A block but one day when a guard opened his cell door to recover a food tray, Giacalone kicked the officer in the stomach, knocking him to the floor. Another guard subdued him by a blow to the head with a gas billy club. His transfer to Springfield was “urgently recommended” by a neuropsychiatric board in February 1939.

The following July Giacalone, along with four other prisoners and accompanied by Alcatraz and Leavenworth guards, was placed in a barred prison car operated by the Santa Fe Railroad. As the train passed through Needles, California, on its way to Leavenworth and Springfield he was observed lunging forward and backward in his seat. Alcatraz Chief Medical Officer Emanuel Horwitz, sitting in an air-conditioned parlor car, was called back to the prisoners’ car to treat Giacalone, who had a temperature of 107°. Ice packs and medications were applied, but Giacalone never regained consciousness; he died at 7:30
A.M
. from heat prostration. The train did not stop from the time he became unconscious at 5
P.M.
until the next day when his body was removed from the prison car at Willard, New Mexico, to be shipped by a local undertaker to Leavenworth. When his only relative, a cousin, declined to claim his body, he was buried in a cemetery for prisoners.

In the inquiry that followed, Alcatraz Lt. J. M. Concannon reported that the temperature in the steel prison car—the only coach without insulation or air conditioning—was estimated to have been 120° or higher. This incident prompted strong complaints from the accompanying officers who, like the prisoners, were confined to the prison car. Bureau officials, always sensitive to allegations that Alcatraz produced mental health problems, asked Warden Johnston for a report on Giacalone. According to Dr. Ritchey, the prisoner’s “mental condition seems to have been present for some time before his admission to Alcatraz and was noted soon after arrival. There was nothing to indicate that his residence here had affected him adversely any more than confinement in any prison would bring about.” If at a later date the inmate’s family had cared enough to protest, Giacalone’s death would likely have resulted in a civil suit challenging his death as a result of cruel and unusual conditions on a prison train. Giacalone Alcatraz file.

31
. In regard to allegations of reprisals for testifying in the trial, Waley told the author, “Outside of dirty looks no [guard] said a word to me on the way to court and back.”

32
.
San Francisco Call-Bulletin
, April 24, 1941.

33
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 26, 1941.

34
.
San Francisco Examiner
, April 26, 1941. The balance of quoted material for Young’s trial comes from this source.

35
. This was the same Frank Murphy who served as attorney general in 1939, and to whom Bureau of Prisons director Bennett had sent his proposal to close
Alcatraz. President Roosevelt had appointed Murphy an associate justice of the Supreme Court on January 4, 1940.

36
. Young Alcatraz file.

37
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, May 3, 1941.

38
. Statement of James V. Bennett, May 2, 1941.

39
. James V. Bennett to Attorney General McGuire, May 29, 1941.

40
. A. H. Connor to James V. Bennett, August 5, 1941.

41
. James A. Johnston to Director, May 29, 1941. These reports were not for use in any federal court or congressional hearing but were prepared for Bureau of Prisons headquarters. The question of whether subordinates in a paramilitary organization can be expected to report improper behavior on the part of their superiors was of secondary concern to Bureau administrators, whose intention was to communicate to personnel in the field that they would be held accountable for actions that might bring discredit or embarrassment to the agency as a whole. Internal investigations were intended to influence the behavior of the custodial force because being instructed to answer these charges and to explain their own actions communicated clearly the message that Washington, D.C., not Warden James A. Johnston, was ultimately responsible for operations at Alcatraz.

42
. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Johnston went on describe the policy regarding meals for men in solitary:

Now as to solitary: we have followed the instructions . . . to increase the amount of food given to men confined to solitary on restricted diet. . . . If a prisoner is placed in solitary in the morning after he has had his breakfast, he is furnished bread at the noon-day meal and salads and one-fourth of the evening meal from the regular main-line menu. If he is placed in solitary in the afternoon, that is after he has had his full noon-day meal, then he gets only bread for the evening meal.