Alcatraz: A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years Part 13

After splitting the ransom money with their accomplices, Kathryn and Machine Gun started hopping from state to state, trying to stay ahead of law officials. Aided by the clues that Urschel was able to provide, the FBI raided the ranch and arrested one of the other conspirators. The bills that had been used for payment in the ransom had traceable serial numbers and the Central Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) started a nationwide search for the ringleader, who they now suspected as being Kelly.

George and Kathryn bounced around in several states, with Chicago as their main hub. In an effort to conceal their ident.i.ties they both dyed their hair, all the while enjoying a lavish lifestyle with the marked currency. After several weeks in hiding, the couple finally made their way back to Memphis to stay with longtime a.s.sociate John Tichenor. On the morning of September 26, 1933, Memphis police and FBI agents surrounded the Tichenor house, and then made a violent forced entry. It is said that this was the moment when Kelly coined the phrase: "G-Men, please don't shoot!" Kelly was found still in his pajamas and badly hung over from the prior evening's drinking binge, while Kathryn was still in bed asleep. The couple was quickly flown to Oklahoma where they stood trial and both received life sentences. Another accomplice, Albert Bates, was taken into custody in Denver, Colorado, on August 12, 1933, on an unrelated charge. At the time of his arrest, he had in his possession $660.00, later identified by Bureau agents as part of the Urschel ransom money.

Albert Bates and Harvey Bailey's Alcatraz mug shots.

Harvey Bailey following his capture after escaping from a Dallas jail in 1933.

The FBI then raided the Shannon residence and took into custody Harvey J. Bailey, a notorious criminal who had escaped from the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing, Kansas, on May 30, 1933, where he had been serving a sentence of ten to fifty years on a charge of bank robbery. Bailey was also wanted in connection with the murder of three police officers, a FBI Special Agent, and their prisoner. Eventually all of the accomplices were apprehended, and of all those involved in the kidnapping, six were given life sentences.

Kelly was transferred to Leavenworth in Kansas, and Kathryn was sent to a Federal prison in Cincinnati. Kelly was arrogant toward prison officials. He bragged to the press that he would escape and then break his wife out of jail so that they could spend Christmas together. It was decided that these threats should be taken seriously and in August of 1934, Kelly and fellow inmates Albert L. Bates and Harvey J. Bailey were transferred by train from Leavenworth to Alcatraz. Arriving on September 4, 1934, they would be among the first prisoners received on the island. Kelly was now inmate #AZ-117, Bates was #AZ-137 and Bailey was #AZ-139.

Kathryn Kelly and George Kelly following their capture in 1933.

George and Kathryn Kelly during their sentencing.

Following her conviction, Kathryn Kelly was transferred to the Federal prison in Cincinnati, Ohio.

George Kelly was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary under heavy guard.

In prison, Kelly constantly boasted about robberies and murders that he had never committed. Although this was said to be an apparent point of frustration for several fellow prisoners, Warden Johnson considered him a model inmate and his life at Alcatraz was largely uneventful. He took a job as an altar boy in the prison chapel, worked in the laundry and served out his time quietly. Warden Johnson noted that Kelly would become depressed when receiving mail from family members. He seemed to feel remorse for his crimes and always felt that his wife Kathryn and their other accomplices were treated too harshly.

Machine Gun Kelly (without hat) enjoying his time on the Alcatraz Recreation Yard. Seated next to him (wearing hat) is Willie Radkay.

Basil "The Owl" Banghart and Machine Gun Kelly were close friends at Alcatraz.

Letters from Kelly to the Attorney General, requesting an immediate transfer from Alcatraz.

Inmate Willie Radkay, who occupied a cell next to Kelly, stated that he had many fond memories of getting to know him, and working together in the prison Industries along with Basil "The Owl" Banghart. Every day they would work side-by-side, enduring all of Kelly's "big tales." When asked about his most prominent memory of living next to Machine Gun, Radkay said that nearly every night Kelly would accuse Willie of snoring, reach out of his cell and slap him with a magazine.

Kelly wrote several remorseful letters to Urschel begging his help in pleading his case. His letters provide a genuine sense of the pain and loneliness he suffered during his imprisonment on the Rock. In one letter written to Charles Urschel on April 11, 1940, Kelly penned perhaps some of the most profound observations ever written on the subjects of crime, and time served on America's "Devil's Island." He wrote in part: I feel at times you wonder how I'm standing up under my penal servitude, and what is my att.i.tude of mind. It is natural that you should be infinitely curious. Incidentally, let me say that you have missed something in not having had the experience for yourself. No letters, no amount of talk, and still more, no literary description in second-rate books, and books on crime cannot but be second-rate could ever give you the faintest idea of the reality.

No one can know what it's like to suffer from the sort of intellectual atrophy, the pernicious mental scurvy, that come of long privation of all the things that make life real; because even the a.n.a.logy of thirst can't possibly give you an inkling of what it's like to be tortured by the absence of everything that makes life worth living.

Maybe you have asked yourself, "How can a man of even ordinary intelligence put up with this kind of life, day in, day out, week after week, month after month, year after year." To put it more mildly still, what is this life of mine like, you might wonder, and whence do I draw sufficient courage to endure it.

To begin with, these five words seem written in fire on the walls of my cell: "Nothing can be worth this." This kind of life I'm leading. That is the final word of wisdom so far as crime is concerned. Everything else is mere fine writing...

George Kelly's Leavenworth mug shot, taken in 1951 (top) and (bottom) the last known living photo of Machine Gun Kelly, taken just prior his death in 1954.

A telegram to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, announcing George Kelly's death in 1954.

Kathryn Kelly playing the piano at the women's correctional facility in Ohio, and prison portrait taken during the same period.

R.G. (Boss) Shannon, takes a last look at George Kelly, during the famed gunman's funeral in Cottondale, Texas on July 27, 1954. Shannon also served time in prison for his part in the kidnapping of Charles Urscel.

Charles Urschel apparently never responded to any of Kelly's letters. George "Machine Gun" Kelly would spend seventeen years on Alcatraz and was returned to Leavenworth in 1951. Kelly died of a heart attack on July 18, 1954. Ironically, it was his fifty-ninth birthday. Kathryn was released from prison just four years following Kelly's death, and took a job at an Oklahoma hospital as a bookkeeper. Albert Bates died of a heart attack on July 4, 1948, while still an inmate at Alcatraz.

Morton Sobell.

Morton Sobell.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

In March of 1951, Morton Sobell, known internationally as the notorious Atom Spy, was brought to trial for conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States. He was the co-defendant of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and their court case remains one the most famous and controversial trials in American history. Their alleged acts were declared the "Crime of the Century" by J. Edgar Hoover and the trial would result in the execution of both of the Rosenbergs. Sobell would escape the death penalty, but would receive a harsh thirty-year Federal prison term. In an attempt to apply one of the most severe punishments that the Federal prison system could impose, J. Edgar Hoover personally requested that Sobell be sent to Alcatraz.

In 1950 the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Julius Rosenberg, then an electrical engineer employed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and his wife Ethel, a vocal activist for communism. They were indicted for conspiracy to transmit cla.s.sified military information to a foreign power. During the course of their trial, the prosecution charged that the Rosenbergs had persuaded Ethel's brother David Greengla.s.s, an Army Technical Sergeant at a top-secret governmental laboratory in Los Alamos, to furnish a Soviet agent named Anatoli Yakovlev with cla.s.sified data on nuclear weapons. Greengla.s.s had allegedly sketched schematics of the atomic bomb design, and provided several other key doc.u.ments. It was revealed during the trial that he had full military clearance, with access to the most sensitive Defense Department data.

Morton Sobell was born on April 11, 1917, to Russian immigrants who had remained active in the Communist Party after immigrating to the United States. Morton met Julius Rosenberg while attending the City College School of Engineering in New York. Both men belonged to a young communist league and were active in promoting their political views. After completing their studies, Sobell and another colleague, Max Elitcher, moved to Was.h.i.+ngton D. C., where they shared an apartment while working at the Bureau of Ordnance in the Department of the Navy.

Years later during the famous trial, the sole evidence that would be introduced against Sobell was the testimony of Max Elitcher. Elitcher had admitted to being a communist, attributing this to Sobell's influence. It was also through Sobell that he had become acquainted with the Rosenbergs, who he alleged were known to him as secret Soviet agents. He testified that he had acted as a courier between Sobell and Julius Rosenberg. Despite Elitcher's incriminating testimony, the prosecution failed to present any substantial proof that Sobell had any connection with atomic bomb research and supplied no evidence of the alleged transmission of information on his part. Nevertheless, the prosecution a.s.serted that an extensive spy ring had been in operation of which Sobell had been a principle member. They built their case around his previous political and personal affiliations and his a.s.sociation with the Rosenbergs.

The case was further based on a decision Sobell had made in 1950, when two days before the Korean War broke out, he left with his family to seek sanctuary in Mexico perhaps knowing that he would be sought in connection with the Rosenbergs. Initially he made no attempts to conceal his ident.i.ty in his travels. He used his own name to book the flight, and to rent property during his stay in Mexico. But the fact that Sobell then a.s.sumed an alias to seek pa.s.sage to Europe would prove seriously detrimental to his case. The prosecution was able to link Sobell further with the Rosenbergs' activities, because he departed for Mexico during the same time window in which Greengla.s.s was paid by the Russians for transmitting atomic bomb secrets.

Although the evidence linking Sobell to the case was weak, the prosecution effectively persuaded the jury to convict him, stating in part: "Sobell's conduct fits the pattern of members.h.i.+p in this conspiracy and flight from an American Jury when the day of reckoning had come." On March 29, 1951, the jury p.r.o.nounced all three defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, and the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. The judge a.s.serted that while he was fully confident that Sobell had also engaged in espionage activities, he was bound to recognize the lesser degree of his implication. Soviet agent Anatoli Yakovlev managed to escape back to Russia before the F.B.I. could apprehend him.

Despite many court appeals and pleas for executive clemency, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electrocution on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison in New York. They became the first U.S. civilians to suffer the death penalty in an espionage trial, and the controversial case received worldwide attention. Some supporters claimed that the political climate in the country had made a fair trial impossible, while others questioned the value of the information that had been transmitted to the Soviet Union, arguing that the death penalty was too severe in this case. President Eisenhower was unsympathetic and unyielding, stating: "I can only say, that by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world."

No other spy case has had such global ramifications. The description of the Rosenbergs' executions reverberated throughout the world, and would forever call into question the cruel process of death by electrocution. The a.s.sociated Press printed a disturbing and vivid account of Ethel's death, which ultimately weakened public support for capital punishment.

Morton Sobell arrived at Alcatraz on November 26, 1952, as inmate AZ-996. His background as an engineer was not parallel to the criminal histories shared by his new neighbors and he seemed an unusual candidate for the island prison. The administration had worried that because of the nature of his crimes, Sobell could be targeted by the other inmates who by nature were extremely patriotic. But Sobell was also Hoover's archenemy, and this would in fact earn him a special status amongst the inmate population. In his personal memoir ent.i.tled On Doing Time, Sobell recounted his experiences in seemingly unbiased detail. He wrote that the environment at Alcatraz was different from that of any other prison he had seen. The inmates seemed unusually curious, and the guard staff was openly courteous, initially going as far as to address him as "Mr. Sobell." Like most other new "fish," he was placed in B Block for a quarantine cycle and it would be several weeks before he was given a job a.s.signment.

Sobell also commented that the population at Alcatraz seemed unusually subdued when he first arrived and that the prison was "like a tomb of living souls. " Unlike many of the other inmates he was able to adjust to his environment at Alcatraz and used his idle cell time productively by reading extensively from the prison library. Sobell was eventually moved to a cell located at the far corner of C Block. Warden Swope frequently stopped at Sobell's cell when giving tours to special visitors. He commented during an interview, that without fail, every time the Warden would bring people by as they were touring the prison, they'd catch him sitting on the toilet. He would later reside on the top tier in cell #C-342, where it was significantly warmer and he had a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

On March 7, 1958, Sobell was received at Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, and then on May 30, 1963 he was transferred to the Medical Facility for Federal Inmates in Springfield Missouri. At Springfield Sobell developed a close friends.h.i.+p with Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz," and would later be the one to find him dead of natural causes in his cell. Sobell was transferred to the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania on January 30, 1965, and was finally released on January 14, 1969.

Sobell in 2001 returning to Alcatraz as a visitor.

Roy Gardner.

Roy Gardner.

In the late 1930's Roy Gardner was known as one of the last notorious train robbers from the old western era, and in the first years after Alcatraz became a Federal prison; Gardner's name was synonymous with the island inst.i.tution. He spent two years incarcerated on the island from 1934 until 1936 and after his ultimate release in 1938, he peddled a small informational book and narrated boat tours for San Francisco tourists. Jim Quillen once said that if the walls of Alcatraz could talk, every cell would be novel of tragedy and despair, and he felt that this was especially true in the case of Roy Gardner. When Gardner arrived on one of the first trains from Leavenworth to Alcatraz, he was already a "solid con," or a seasoned inmate. Gardner was known to the public as a brilliant escape artist, and he was famous for his Houdini-like jailbreaks. Up until his arrival at Alcatraz in 1934, he had seemed nearly impossible to keep caged.

Gardner was born on January 5, 1886 to a poor family in Trenton, Missouri. He entered the U.S. Army, and served in the 22nd Infantry stationed in the Philippine Islands from 1903 to 1905. After returning to the U.S., he deserted the military because of what he described as "serious gambling debts." Fearing for his life, he fled to Mexico and took a job working in the mines. In 1909 Gardner was arrested in Mexico for smuggling weaponry, and was sentenced to death by a firing squad for his involvement with the Mexican Revolutionary Army. While awaiting his execution, he was confined in a dungeon under the most horrific conditions. The cells were rat-infested and dimly lit, and he was forced to relieve himself in a bucket that was emptied infrequently. Just three days before his scheduled execution, he amazingly overpowered his sentry and fled to Arizona. From there he eventually traveled northwest to San Francisco.

On December 22, 1910, during the busy Christmas shopping season, Gardner robbed Glindemann's Jewelry Store on Market Street in San Francisco. Posing as a distinguished customer, he waited as the clerk laid a full tray of diamond rings before him. After taking some time to examine the gems, he grabbed the entire tray and fled into the street, but he was quickly spotted and tackled by a San Francisco police officer. Following his trial he was sentenced to serve five years in a California state prison, and he entered San Quentin on February 16, 1911. He was by all accounts a model inmate, and worked productively in the Prison Industries. He was released in September of 1913, and secured a job at a copper mine in Kennett, California. He eventually took a welding job at the Mare Island Naval s.h.i.+p Yard, and sold war bonds during World War I. During his short reprieve from crime, Gardner met and married a pretty waitress named Dolly Wades. But despite this interlude of normalcy, Gardner's link to the world of crime had not yet dissolved.

Dolly Wades-Gardner.

After a busted gambling spree during a business trip in April of 1920, Gardner was again arrested for robbing a postal mail messenger in San Diego, taking approximately $75,000 in bonds and securities. He was sentenced to a twenty-five-year Federal term at McNeil Island. The thought of enduring another prison term was unbearable to Gardner, and during his transfer by train, cuffed in hand and leg irons, he made a bold escape from the Federal marshals who were accompanying him. He somehow managed to secure their guns, and made them take off his shackles. He fled, and immediately thereafter committed another robbery. This time he had truly struck gold as his heist would net him over $200,000. But his luck was to prove short-lived. Only days after the robbery, Gardner was recognized while playing poker at a saloon in Roseville, California. The Porter House Saloon was only blocks from where he had committed the robbery. He was captured, and was sent back to McNeil to serve out an additional prison term. Amazingly enough, just like a modern-day Houdini, he again escaped from the Federal marshals. But he was recaptured soon after, and this time extensive precautions would be taken to ensure that he had no means of escape.

In September of 1921 Gardner was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, and he immediately fell into conflict with the prison administration. He was transferred to Atlanta in October of 1925 and in July of 1926, he attempted another daring escape. Gardner and four other inmates secured weapons and attempted to take hostages, but their plan failed, and Gardner was placed in a deep lockdown status where he would remain for several months.

Surprisingly, Gardner volunteered to be transferred to Alcatraz. He claimed that he wanted to go straight, and felt that this would bring him closer to friends and family. Following his unsuccessful escape, Gardner had finally acquiesced under the strict prison rules. He eventually earned the reputation of a model inmate, and was granted his request for transfer to what he would later call "h.e.l.lcatraz." Gardner was destined to do hard time during his twenty-five month imprisonment at Alcatraz. Warden Johnston had a.s.signed him to work in the Mat Factory, and he would later comment that Leavenworth and Atlanta were summer resorts compared to the Rock. He wrote: The hopeless despair on the Rock is reflected in the faces and actions of almost all of the inmates. They seem to march about the island in a sort of hopelessness, helpless daze, and you can watch them progressively sinking down and down... On "the Rock" there are upwards of three hundred men. One hundred fifty will die there. Sometime in ten, fifteen, twenty-five years the others come out into the world. These, too, are dead; the walking dead. The men confined there, to all intents and purposes, are buried alive. In reality they are little more than animated cadavers dead men who are still able to walk and talk. Watching those men from day to day slowly giving up hopes is truly a pitiful sight, even if you are one of them.

Gardner was transferred back to Leavenworth in 1936, and was finally released from prison in 1938. He drifted back to San Francisco, and set up an exhibition booth at the Golden Gate Pan Pacific Exposition on Treasure Island. Gardner recounted to patrons his murderous stories of violence and torture, and autographed his personal memoir ent.i.tled h.e.l.lcatraz.

Roy Gardner's h.e.l.lcatraz.

Following his release from Alcatraz, Gardner worked as a guide on a San Francisco tour boat for a short period.

Using cyanide, sulfuric acid, and a bath towel, Gardner created his own makes.h.i.+ft gas chamber, and committed suicide by draping the bathroom sink with a towel and covering his head.

Gardner's show, ent.i.tled Crime Doesn't Pay, failed to draw large crowds, and it eventually closed. He then spent a brief period working as a narrator on a San Francisco tour boat, but was later forced to take employment as a baker in San Francisco.

Gardner eventually found himself with no friends and his wife had left him and remarried. He finally committed suicide in a small San Francisco hotel on January 10, 1940. Using cyanide, sulfuric acid and a bath towel, he draped the bathroom sink and covered his head, creating a makes.h.i.+ft gas chamber. On the door was a note warning the maid: "Do Not Open Door - Poison Gas - Call Police." Gardner had also left the maid a small cash tip for cleaning out his belongings. His suitcase stood neatly in a corner of his room and the shower curtain was neatly folded across the floor to prevent any mess. He wrote a note to the San Francisco Call-Bulletin that read: "I'm old and tired and don't care to continue the struggle. Please let me down as light as possible."

ALCATRAZ ESCAPES.

Alcatraz was designed to be an "escape-proof" prison for the nation's most hardened criminals, incorporating multiple layers of redundant safeguards to eliminate all possible routes of escape. The island's size, location and topography were also ideal in this regard, as it lay accessible to the mainland, yet surrounded by icy waters and treacherous currents, with a barren rocky landscape that offered little cover for potential escapees. The prison buildings were constructed to enhance even further the natural inaccessibility of the site, and even the interior gun galleries were designed so that they could only be entered from outside of the prison perimeter. But despite the seemingly foolproof design of the prison, inmates were still able to identify weaknesses in the system, and some made it down to the sh.o.r.e and into the ice-cold water never to be seen or heard from again...

ESCAPE ATTEMPT #1.

Date:.

April 27, 1936.

Inmates:.

Joseph Bowers.

Location:.

Incinerator Detail.

Joseph Bowers.

The first recorded escape on Alcatraz during its tenure as a Federal Penitentiary occurred on April 27, 1936. However, several historians consider the escape attempt by Joseph Bowers as a suicide rather than a conventional prison break. Joseph Bowers was among the first group to be transferred to Alcatraz from McNeil in 1934. In a report submitted on September 4, 1936, shortly after Bower's arrival, Chief Medical Officer George Hess concluded: "He is a man of extremely low mentality upon which is superimposed an extremely ugly disposition, he is a custodial problem and will probably have to be dealt with by firm measures."

Joseph Bowers was originally thought to have been born on February 18, 1897 in El Paso Texas (records would later show that he was of Austrian decent and held legal citizens.h.i.+p). He was thirty-eight years old when he arrived at Alcatraz as inmate AZ-210. From his birth onward, his life had been a fragmented model of instability. Bowers was born to circus performers and alleged to have been deserted by his parents at birth. He was raised by various people within the circus environment and although he was never given any formal schooling, he claimed to have learned to read and write from others in the circus. Bowers traveled the world extensively and he later a.s.serted that he could read and write in six different languages. At age thirteen, Bowers decided to leave the circus and take employment as a seaman on a commercial schooner. In 1919 he was married in Russia, but he separated from his wife later that same year.

A neuro-psychiatric report written by Dr. Romney Ritchey at McNeil states that it was "believed" that Bowers had served in the German Army, but that he would not admit to this. There was significant circ.u.mstantial evidence to corroborate this however, as Bowers had suffered what appeared to be combat injuries. These included a lost t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e due to a bullet wound and a "bullet scar" on his chest. Bowers also claimed that at the age of twenty-five he had secured employment in Germany as an interpreter, making $350.00 per month. When it was discovered that he didn't possess a valid pa.s.sport or proof of citizens.h.i.+p, he was deported back to the U.S. to obtain doc.u.mentary evidence of his birthplace. It was further recorded that he could not find any traces of his parents.

In 1928 Bowers was arrested for car theft in Oregon where he served ten months in jail. He was again arrested in Was.h.i.+ngton in 1930 for drunken driving, fined $75, and released. The Federal crime that would lead him to Alcatraz was committed in 1930, and it would garner him a mere $16.63. Bowers' description of the crime, which he claimed he did not commit, was included in the neuropsychiatry summary by Dr. Ritchy of the McNeil Island Penitentiary in Was.h.i.+ngton State. It is further worth noting that in 1938, Dr. Ritchy left McNeil Island to replace Dr. George Hess as Chief Medical Officer at Alcatraz. A pertinent section of Dr. Ritchey's report on Bowers reads: His present crime he says was committed because he was out of funds and was actually hungry most of the time. He says he met a man sleeping in a Park in Sacramento who persuaded him to go along while they robbed a store and post office near Orville California. He claims that he did not actually go with the man to Orville but that the man himself proceeded with his plan and robbed the store and finally was arrested and confessed and lay the blame on Bowers, he himself going free for his testimony.

Dr. Ritchey's 1933 report at McNeil Island stated Bowers' official mental diagnosis as "const.i.tutional psychopathic state, inadequate personality, emotionally unstable and without psychosis." However, fellow inmates of Bowers' at Alcatraz considered him insane. In a subsequent report by Dr. Hess, there were references to Bowers that indicated some suggestion of mental illness. Bowers believed that other inmates were plotting against him, and he alleged that he could "hear" them talking about him at night after lights out. On March 7, 1935, he attempted suicide by trying to cut his own throat with a broken gla.s.s lens. The attempt was unsuccessful, as the wound was only superficial. He apparently reported hearing voices, and would continually ask to be admitted to the hospital for protection. But each time he was admitted, he would quickly demand to be released.

The silence rule and strict unrelenting routine at Alcatraz seemed to weigh heavily on Bowers' mental state. In one incident which occurred on June 1st, 1935 and was doc.u.mented by Deputy Warden C.J. Shuttleworth, Bowers was waiting in line to go to work in the laundry when he started shouting: "Put me in the dungeon. I do not want to go to work." While this may have seemed to some like a relatively minor misbehavior, Bowers was punished harshly by being placed in solitary confinement with the "solid door open," and put on a restricted diet. At around the same time, a letter from an inmate was smuggled to a San Francisco newspaper, alleging "cruelty practices on prisoners" at Alcatraz, which were causing inmates to go insane. The letter was rumored to have been smuggled out by a correctional officer, and Bowers was one of four inmates named in the case.

Warden Johnston later wrote that he looked at Bowers as "a weak-minded man with a strong back who would get piece of mind by exercising his body." This essentially translated to a trivial and tough labor work a.s.signment for Bowers at the island's incinerator, which was located on the lower level on the west side of the island, close to a wire fence that rimmed the sh.o.r.eline. It appeared that Bowers was coping well with his job until the day of the escape. There have been several versions proposed as to the etiology of Bowers' ascent of the fence.

Correctional Officer E.F. Chandler.

The Road Tower and Incinerator from where Chandler pitched aim at Bowers with a high powered rifle. After being struck by two bullets, Bowers fell on the side of freedom onto the rocky cliff.

On the day of the escape attempt, Correctional Officer E.F. Chandler reported his recollection of the events to Warden Johnston in a formal memorandum: While on duty in the Road Tower at about 11:00 A.M., I suddenly looked to see inmate Joseph Bowers 210-AZ on the top of wire fence attempting to go over, I then yelled at him several times to get down but he ignored my warning and continued. I fired two shots low and waited a few seconds to see the results. He started down the far side of the fence and I fired one more shot, aiming at his legs. Bowers was hanging on the fence with his hands but his feet were pointing down toward the cement ledge. After my third shot I called the Armory and reported the matter. When I returned from calling the Armory, the body dropped into the bay.

Several other correctional officers witnessed the shooting, and essentially confirmed Chandler's report. Guard Joe B. Steere also described what he had witnessed in his report to Deputy Warden C.J. Shuttleworth: At about 11:00 A.M., I was in the industries area between the Mat Factory and Blacksmith Shop, when I heard a shot fired apparently from the Road Tower. I ran to the corner of the building and looked at the tower and saw Mr. Chandler raise his rifle for another shot. I looked in the direction he was aiming, expecting to see a boat, but saw Number 210 with his back to me going over the fence in back of the incinerator. Mr. Chandler fired and I started to run towards the incinerator. When Mr. Chandler fired a third shot, I was between the Renovating Plant and the Rock Crusher. I looked at Number 210 then and could see only his head due to the fact I was running parallel to the fence at this point and Number 210 was around a bend in the offset where the incinerator is located. He then disappeared from my sight.

When I reached the incinerator and looked down through the bars over the concrete chute, I could see him lying on his back on the rocks just at the edge of the water. The Deputy Warden was in the Road Tower and instructed me to attempt to reach the body by going over the side of the cliff. I then went through the gate and down the lower road and dropped down from the retaining wall to the rocks of the cliff, and tried to go down the face of the cliff, but I was unable to proceed very far. I remained here until the trucks arrived with slings and ropes. Then I a.s.sisted Mr. Curry who went down on a rope and secured the body until the Launch "McDowell" arrived.

Sanford Bates, Federal Director of Prisons, was on Alcatraz at the time conducting an inspection of prison workshops, accompanied by Warden James A. Johnston. Following the inspection, the two were entering the office of the warden when the gunfire broke out. Johnston would then request that the escape siren be sounded for the first time ever on Alcatraz, and several guards were directed to report to the escape location. Dr. George Hess also responded after hearing of the injuries inflicted, and he p.r.o.nounced Bowers dead before the body was secured with ropes and pulled into the launch.

During the initial examination, Hess reported that in his opinion, Bowers might have broken his neck in the fall. After the body was brought to the mainland and transferred to the coroner's office, Dr. Hess was permitted to attend the autopsy performed by Dr. Sherman Leland. Although Bowers had fallen approximately seventy-five feet, his physical trauma was limited to two gunshot wounds. Hess recorded: A bullet wound into the right posterior chest, just lateral to the scapula and penetrating the right lung. Upon opening the chest cavity it was found that the bullet had transversed the chest cavity and had emerged from the left chest just below the clavicle leaving a ragged wound about two inches in length. As the bullet emerged from the chest it fractured the second rib on the left side. There was also found a bullet wound of the right b.u.t.tock and right thigh. These wounds were made by fragments of a bullet and no whole bullet was found. No other bones of the body were fractured.

Following Bowers' death, tension increased between the correctional staff and the inmates of Alcatraz. During the investigation, Correctional Officer Chandler was rea.s.signed to work in the Armory. There were several rumors going around that Bowers had been shot in cold blood. The San Francisco Examiner published former inmate Henry Larry's account of the incident in a feature article ent.i.tled Inside Alcatraz, which described tales of abusive incarceration practices at Alcatraz. Larry alleged that Bowers had simply climbed the fence to feed a seagull, and suggested that Bowers' disturbed mental condition was a result of the treatment he had received at Alcatraz. Other inmates later reported that Bowers had been ordered to clean the area, and he was only attempting to pick up papers that were lodged high up on the fence. These accounts were quickly dismissed, as the correctional staff confirmed that Bowers was "aggressively" attempting to "go over." It was determined in the investigation that Chandler's actions were fully justified. One report stated that any lesser response would have been deemed a breach of duty. Bowers was buried at the Mount Olive Cemetery in San Mateo, California The San Francisco Examiner published former inmate Henry Larry's account of the Bowers escape attempt in a feature article ent.i.tled Inside Alcatraz. Larry's article was one of the first "inside stories" to surface in the press.