The Voices of Penitentiary Alcatraz

Alcatraz at Night

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35316

Between 1934 and 1963 Alcatraz became infamous for being a federal prison. The stories we know come from the records that have been saved and passed down to us. Here you can listen to the individual stories of the people who were there when these events happened, and you can decide what kind of place Alcatraz was from their firsthand interpretations.

For More U.S Penitentiary Alcatraz History

 

Guards at the Sally Port

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-3264

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"The Assistant Director came to Leavenworth and informed us and gave us the story that we were needed at Alcatraz. They were short of experienced help out here"- Marvin Orr, on how he ended up at Alcatraz

 

• Marvin Orr

  
  

  Park rangers Frank Heany and Dave Harbert discuss life on Alcatraz with Ex correctional Officer Marvin Orr, who lived and worked on Alcatraz with his family between 1939 and 1960
  Audio Transcript

  Dave:    00:00    I guess now. This is park technician Frank [Keeney 00:00:07] and Dave [Harbart 00:00:10] doing a tape recording on the Marvin Orr family. Frank Keeney, park technician, was also a correction officer here from 1948 to 1950, worked with Marvin here for a couple years. He and his family lived on the island from 1939 until he left in 1960, and so we'll go on from there.

  Frank:   00:41    The biggest controversy we've got so far today has been about the showers, and if you can just get on tape, for the record right now, how you remember the shower room and the dressing room, the clothing area being over there?

  Marvin: 00:55    Well, the shower area, as it is today, shows the shower stalls all having been removed, and there seems to have been some misconception somewhere along the line as to whether those stalls ever existed in the first place. Well, they actually did, because I was in charge of that department for some three or four years, and in that area where the main line population was, bathed each Saturday. The shower stalls were in a continuous row, back-to-back, some 48 or 50 stalls, and inmates were brought down from the cell house in groups enough to fill the stalls. They showered and returned, another group brought down. I don't know exactly when those stalls were removed. They were still here in 1960 when I retired. As to when they were removed, I don't know.

  Dave:    01:54    How often were they showering when they were here?

  Marvin: 01:58    How often did the inmates shower?

  Dave:    02:00    Yeah.

  Marvin: 02:00    Once a week, on a Saturday.

  Dave:    02:01    On Saturday only-

  Marvin: 02:02    With the exception of the culinary help, they showered every day.

  Frank:   02:08    Marvin, there's another thing they talk about on the tours which I don't remember is that the reason they had warm-water showers is because they wouldn't get used to warm water and they'd be able to ... If they used cold water, their bodies would be accustomed to it, cold conditions, and they could swim away from the island. Do you remember that, when you were here?

  Marvin: 02:29    No.

  Frank:   02:30    I don't remember it.

  Marvin: 02:31    Because, as far as I know, the hot water was in use when I came here in 39. The big hot water tank was there and the whole bit. During my tenure here, they never did shower in cold water. There was no cold water in the cells until later years.

  Frank:   02:51    You mean there's no warm water in cells.

  Marvin: 02:52    No warm water I meant to say, yes.

  Dave:    02:55    But they didn't get... did they give people warm showers so they couldn't get used to the water in the bay? Do you think that was the reason they gave them warm showers?

  Marvin: 03:02    I never heard it put that way, no. I never did.

  Frank:   03:06    I never did, either. Somebody must have told the Park Service that they did do this, though, for that reason, but I don't remember it. I remember because a person just doesn't like to take cold showers. It's inhumane to take cold showers. Now about gas billies and about clubs that, in general, I've heard that there was and I've seen the movies where they had short clubs, long clubs, they had clubs, and I remember no clubs at all, except maybe a set of, once in a while down in the industry, maybe an officer would carry a gas billy. Is that correct?

  Marvin: 03:45    Yes, the officers never carried clubs here, as a general piece of equipment. The officers working in the cell house area, clothing room, and in the workshops, the work area, they all carried gas billies.

  Frank:   04:06    Up until the time you left?

  Marvin: 04:09    Yes.

  Dave:    04:12    We were talking about that 46 escape attempt, and you mentioned that they didn't carry the key, 107, but did they have a ring of keys that they carried normally, for the cell block?

  Marvin: 04:22    You mean the Cell Block Officer? Yes, the west end cell block officer had a key rings. He had the keys to the control boxes on the galleries. He had the key to the door that goes from the cell house into the mess hall and various other keys for the lockers and so forth around the cell house. The key 107 that opens the outside door to the recreation yard from the cell house, was kept in the gun gallery at all times except when it was in use, then returned immediately. The same thing was true for the key that opened the door into D-block, the isolation unit.

  Dave:    05:02    So they did carry keys that opened and closed the doors?

  Marvin: 05:05    Oh, yes.

  Dave:    05:06    But not anything you could-

  Marvin: 05:07    During the daylight hours. At night when the final count was made and the lockup was made, those boxes were locked, and then the keys were sent out front to the control center and returned the next morning to open up.

  Frank:   05:22    Earlier, Marvin, you and I went to the control center, and neither one of us could remember it being on the opposite side.

  Marvin: 05:28    It wasn't.

  Frank:   05:29    It wasn't. So in the later 60s, before the prison was closed, apparently they remodeled that area and made a complete change of that control center.

  Marvin: 05:38    They did. I heard about it.

  Dave:    05:39    The armory area in front of the prison?

  Frank:   05:40    The armory area, right.

  Marvin: 05:42    But I've never seen it. The control center was the nerve center of the institution. The officer in there was a busy man. He took all the counts that came in, he took the watch calls, he had the radio communication with the boat, he issued all firearms, all keys. The main watch particularly was a very, very busy place, a lot of activity there. There was some, in the course of a 24-hour period, there were some 15 or 16 counts took place, each and every 24-hour period. In general, every time there was a movement of the population, there was a count made.

  Frank:   06:37    That's the way I remember.

  Marvin: 06:37    Yeah, that was the general rule.

  Dave:    06:40    Okay now, you mentioned some metal detectors, too. They had one on the dock-

  Marvin: 06:46    Yes.

  Dave:    06:46    For people coming on and off the island. Where were the other metal detectors located, if you remember?

  Marvin: 06:51    There was one right outside, at the furthest area coming out of the cell house into the recreation area, right before those stairs. And there was one that went through the stairs, they went through the back gate out of the area, out of the recreation area. Then on the way out to the shops, there was one at each location there, and one at the dock.

  Dave:    07:18    So even if they're just coming in and out of the rec yard, they go through a metal detector-

  Marvin: 07:21    Oh, absolutely.

  Dave:    07:23    As well as coming in and out of the [inaudible 00:07:26]

  Marvin: 07:25    Yeah.

  Dave:    07:28    Okay, well I think I'd only heard about the one outside the rec yard. I didn't know about the one inside the rec yard.

  Frank:   07:33    Ah, there's talk about everyone that came on this island, regardless of who he was, had to go through that metal detector. As an officer, I don't remember going through the metal detector, but did the families? I don't remember the families... Did families go through the metal detector, too?

  Marvin: 07:49    Yes they did.

  Frank:   07:50    I guess-

  Marvin: 07:51    But of course, they kept the controls on that box here.

  Dave:    07:56    A lot-

  Marvin: 07:56    Except for the [inaudible 00:08:00].

  Frank:   08:00    Yeah.

  Marvin: 08:01    In other words, you could pass through it with a-

  Frank:   08:03    With keys-

  Marvin: 08:05    With a reasonable amount of metal on you, like keys and pocketknife and so forth.

  Frank:   08:06    Yeah.

  Bob:      08:07    They used to be located around here, wasn't it-

  Marvin: 08:09    Yeah.

  Frank:   08:09    Yeah, right outside there.

  Dave:    08:09    Yeah, I was pointing right outside the dock office there.

  Marvin: 08:13    The principal object of that of course was for inmates' visitors.

  Frank:   08:18    That's what I remember.

  Marvin: 08:20    In case they carried firearms or something else.

  Frank:   08:21    Yeah, right.

  Marvin: 08:23    And, of course-

  Frank:   08:23    Our visitors had to go through there, too.

  Marvin: 08:25    Yeah, right. And the female visitors, of course, all had to submit their purses for the search when they came in. Some of them were a little irritated by it, but it had to be done.

  Dave:    08:40    Were there any problems with the visitors? I heard a story about, it was a little before your time, I guess, when Al Capone was here. His mother apparently came out and had a lot of trouble. Did a lot of visitors not come back, say, after the first visit? She made the comment that she was embarrassed and humiliated for the whole process. Do you think that happened often?

  Marvin: 09:03    Oh, I don't think so. I've heard of it in other instances but I don't think that's the whole thing.

  Frank:   09:06    Well, now, the problem with Mrs. Capone is that she couldn't speak English and they had a hard time trying to listen to what she was saying. Secondly, she had a corset that had metal in it and metal stays, so she couldn't make the metal detector.

  Marvin: 09:24    Yeah.

  Frank:   09:24    So that's not a usual case.

  Marvin: 09:24    Of course, with those visiting windows, there was absolutely no personal contact there at all.

  Frank:   09:28    No.

  Marvin: 09:28    No outside possibility of them because it's solid glass, and in the early days, there were not even any phones there. Later they put in-

  Frank:   09:28    Yeah, they had a grill screen that they talked through.

  Marvin: 09:28    Yeah, so there was no personal contact at all. If the inmate was having a visit, there was an officer sat right close to him, and he had to speak in a tone loud enough so the officer could overhear him.

  Dave:    09:58    Before the telephone?

  Marvin: 09:58    Before we got the telephones.

  Frank:   09:58    Yes.

  Marvin: 09:59    And if you'd lower your voice, they'd call him on it.

  Frank:   10:09    Yeah.

  Marvin: 10:09    Speak up so I can understand what you're saying.

  Dave:    10:12    What about the lawyers when they came to visit? They get a little more privacy then?

  Marvin: 10:12    Yes. The lawyer-

  Frank:   10:21    I remember when the lawyer was brought around the other side and talks across the table.

  Marvin: 10:24    Well, he-

  Dave:    10:25    Well, he-

  Marvin: 10:25    If you remember, sometimes in the main gate there, coming out of the cell house, when you get into the old sally port there, to your right, that was called the visiting area. That's where the inmate's visitor was placed, talked through those. Then they had a lawyer visit, they'd bring the inmate out and put him in that room at a table with his attorney.

  Frank:   10:49    The way I remember it.

  Marvin: 10:49    And-

  Dave:    10:51    But they did get a private visit with the attorney.

  Marvin: 10:52    Yeah.

  Dave:    10:54    I see, but they watched them though?

  Marvin: 10:55    How's that?

  Dave:    10:56    Did they watch them physically?

  Marvin: 10:57    Oh, yeah.

  Dave:    10:57    Make sure they didn't exchange anything. They just couldn't listen to them.

  Frank:   10:59    The officer who worked-

  Marvin: 11:00    Right next to the main gate officer-

  Frank:   11:02    Main gate officer was watching, that's what I remember.

  Dave:    11:04    But they couldn't hear the conversation.

  Frank:   11:05    They couldn't hear, no, because it's privileged-

  Marvin: 11:08    Can't monitor the conversations unless they were talking-

  Dave:    11:13    What about visiting privileges in D-block and in the dark cells? I understand you lost your normal visiting privileges there, but did you also lose visiting privileges with your lawyer when you were in D-block?

  Marvin: 11:24    On some occasions, depending on the circumstances, yeah, but ordinary visiting privileges were canceled while they were in D-block.

  Frank:   11:35    Right, except for Stroud. Didn't his brother come to visit him? Stroud?

  Marvin: 11:39    Yes.

  Frank:   11:40    His brother, he was probably one of the few that was in isolation that was allowed to talk with one of his family.

  Marvin: 11:46    Yeah.

  Frank:   11:46    Yeah, the brother lived up in Washington or something when he came to see him.

  Marvin: 11:50    Yeah, I believe you're right.

  Dave:    11:53    Did he have reading materials and writing materials while he was in D-block, there, too?

  Marvin: 11:58    Oh, yes. When he was up in the hospital.

  Dave:    12:00    In the hospital. How about in D-block?

  Marvin: 12:02    Well, he wasn't in D-block too long.

  Frank:   12:07    He was in D-block, he was in the hospital when I came here, but I understand he left D-block in 1948 and went to the hospital. Does that sound right to you, 1948?

  Marvin: 12:17    Round about that time, I'm sure, yeah.

  Frank:   12:18    Yeah.

  Marvin: 12:19    Somewhere around there.

  Dave:    12:20    The information we have said he got here in 42, spent six year in D-block, and then went to the hospital. Does that sound-

  Marvin: 12:27    Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

  Dave:    12:27    Okay. It's nice to get all this stuff confirmed. It helps a lot.

  Frank:   12:32    Let's talk about the type of personality that Stroud was because we're asked quite often about that. I remember when I first met him, I was told by a lieutenant that he was a man to be very wary of, he was psychotic, do not get too close to him, he could assault you, he's done it before. So I was very wary of him. Later on I got to find out that he wasn't quite as bad as what he was pictured. Now, Marvin, I'd like you to respond to that.

  Marvin: 13:04    Well, Stroud was basically a brilliant man, there's no question about that. He did extensive studying. He took courses from the University of California in physics and chemistry and so forth, and he mastered just about everything they could teach him, with the exception of the laboratory work, which he couldn't take. He was a brilliant man. He was also a cunning man. He never involved himself directly in any escapades or troublemaking, but he was a task master at inciting other inmates and working them up and working in the background. There's no question but what in spite of all that, he probably was a psychotic in many respects because anybody that possessed the talent that he did, and not have put them to a useful purpose, had to be psychotic in some respects. You know, I'll put it that way. But he was a brilliant man.

  Dave:    14:08    Can you think of any specific incident-

  Marvin: 14:10    Very cunning.

  Dave:    14:12    Yeah. Can you think of any specific incidents where he may have aroused the inmates to a riot or strike or something?

  Marvin: 14:18    Not anything specifically, but when he was in D-block, he more or less had them in an uproar all the time. He-

  Dave:    14:27    Nothing they could catch him on, I guess.

  Marvin: 14:28    That's right. He was very sharp about that, yeah.

  Frank:   14:31    I was told when I used to shake down his cell that I was to have the least amount of conversation with him, that I was to try to ignore him. This was the indoctrination I went through, and of course, later on, I did get to talk to him because he was a conversationist, as you remember, but the administration here had a kind of a thing where you were supposed to avoid him, you were supposed to keep him in isolation, even from us. Is that the way you remember it? From the administration standpoint.

  Marvin: 14:58    Oh, I suppose so, up to a certain point, yeah, but we had quite a bit of personal contact with him. I mean, in the course of the day's events, you know. I mean, I recall in Leavenworth, he wasn't a troublemaker back there. He was very docile and he might have been rude and so forth. He was allowed, in spite of his solitary status, he was allowed each Saturday to attend the movies with the mainline population, and an officer would pick him up from his cell in the isolation ward, bring across the yard towards the other building to attend the movies, and stay with him during the show, and then return him. And he came along very nicely, never caused any trouble.

  Dave:    15:48    Was that at the discretion of the warden at Leavenworth? Who was the warden there that decided he had these extra privileges even though he was in solitary?

  Marvin: 16:00    The warden did, yeah, with the sanction of the Bureau of Corrections.

  Dave:    16:00    You remember which warden that was?

  Marvin: 16:02    Warden [Zerks 00:16:04].

  Dave:    16:02    Zerks?

  Marvin: 16:06    And [Hudspeth 00:16:06].

  Frank:   16:06    I remember visits from the Director of Prisons, Bennett, James Bennett, and, to me, he always seemed to be a friendly sort, compared to a lot of administrators. He'd come over and shake my hand and ask for my name and say, "How you doing?" And then he'd always ask for Robert Stroud.

  Marvin: 16:22    Yeah.

  Frank:   16:22    Do you remember him that way?

  Marvin: 16:23    Yeah, yeah Bennett was a congenial sort of a guy.

  Frank:   16:26    He was a very congenial man, and not like Swope-

  Marvin: 16:29    Yeah.

  Frank:   16:29    Where he was like God in heaven walking on water, you know?

  Marvin: 16:32    Yeah.

  Frank:   16:40    Is there anything else you can recall that you would think would be interesting to know? Anybody else got any ideas? How about Bob? You lived here for quite a few years.

  Dave:    16:54    Yes, you mentioned earlier we were up there, incident about making a phone call-

  Frank:   16:58    This is Bob, this is Marvin's son.

  Bob:      17:02    Yeah, I did, to the tower up here-

  Dave:    17:03    To the dog tower?

  Bob:      17:04    Yeah, we wanted to sneak on the social hall and just go up here and phone the tower.

  Dave:    17:08    Oh.

  Bob:      17:09    You know, the officer picked the phone up, and he'd be facing that way, and we'd just run down the hill, and he couldn't see us, and we'd sneak up to the social hall.

  Bob:      17:16    It was really not that much different from growing up anyplace else. You know, people find out you grew up here, and they say, you know, that's kind of weird-

  Dave:    17:26    One of the-

  Bob:      17:26    But there's a lot of kids.

  Dave:    17:27    One of the volunteers was, I don't know if he got to ask her or not, he told me he wanted to ask you if, compared to how you grew up here and how you raised your son, do you think there's much difference? You had mentioned it wasn't a whole lot, but-

  Bob:      17:40    No, not really. The only difference, I mean, go to school and I rode a boat, everybody else hops on the bus.

  Dave:    17:46    How often did you not go to school because of weather? The boat not running?

  Bob:      17:49    I can only remember that happening maybe three, four times.

  Dave:    17:53    Yeah.

  Bob:      17:53    You know, it was rough quite a few times, but I can only remember three or four times we actually never ran the boat because it was too rough. But the boats ran, as I remember, almost 12 times a day. When I was a little older, in high school, there was a few problems occasionally, and the last boat would leave at midnight, and I'd miss the last boat, so I'd sleep in my car.

  Frank:   18:14    Yeah, right.

  Bob:      18:14    Other than that, you know, it was-

  Frank:   18:15    How did you feel, restricted on the island? What I remember about this place was, I was in the military twice and I hadn't seen anything so strict in my life. How did you, as a family member living on this island, feel restricted by this? Did you feel it at all?

  Bob:      18:29    No. Because I knew where I could and where I could not go. You just didn't go on the other side of that fence.

  Frank:   18:35    Right okay.

  Marvin: 18:35    We had quite a bit of activity. We had the handball court there to play handball. They all had bikes and so forth. One thing about raising a family on the island here, one of the advantages, is the fact that you always knew where your kids were. They couldn't get away from you.

  Frank:   18:52    That's right.

  Bob:      18:57    The only contact I ever had with the inmates was when dad was running the store and I would be working the store. There was a barge that used to come over here, I remember it was three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

  Marvin: 19:08    Yeah the old water barge with the food and supplies on top.

  Bob:      19:11    They'd deliver the groceries up to the store. An officer would bring one or two inmates up there, but I'd never like see them. They'd come unload the groceries but that was the only contact I ever had with them.

  Frank:   19:22    Do you remember, I recall this, once in a while they'd come over here with one tug, pulling this barge. We'd be up there and it'd start going backwards. They had to bring another tug over to it to help pull that barge over. Do you remember that? When the tide was running so fast that one tug couldn't make it. They'd have to bring another tug to help pull that barge over there. They had a lot of water underneath it, they had to pull.

  Bob:      19:48    Yeah it really wasn't that much different really than growing up any place else.

  Dave:    19:52    Did you ever sneak over the fence on a dare? Get a little closer to the cell block?

  Bob:      19:58    No. The only thing we used to do as far as going somewhere we shouldn't have went was down by the beach, something like that. Walking down that pathway or something like that. As far as climbing over that gate or anything like that going towards the penitentiary-

  Dave:    20:10    I suppose there's a good chance you'd get shot by a guard-

  Bob:      20:13    You just didn't do it.

  Frank:   20:17    I always recall that when I worked here you never called anyone a guard. There was no guards on Alcatraz. You were a correctional officer or an officer. They call it that now I guess. That term was never be used. I don't remember calling anybody a guard.

  Marvin: 20:33    That was the official title when I went into service?

  Frank:   20:35    Was it? But it was-

  Marvin: 20:37    It changed shortly after that.

  Frank:   20:39    It changed highly. You couldn't even use that term guard. I'm not saying we can't use it now but the way the feeling was on this island, you were an officer.

  Dave:    20:50    Was it ever [inaudible 00:20:51] CO-

  Frank:   20:50    Maybe as a CO correctional officer we would call each other. Maybe it was CO, maybe it was your name as opposed to lieutenant or something. Remember, wasn't an instructor the next step up from correctional officer?

  Marvin: 21:07    Instructor was another name for senior officer.

  Frank:   21:10    Yeah, senior officer right.

  Dave:    21:11    Then it went from correctional officer, senior officer to a-

  Marvin: 21:16    Lieutenant.

  Shirley Smith:    21:16    I can't resist, this is Shirley Smith, the large apartment on the end of this building here, building 64, was it reserved for the more senior guards?

  Marvin: 21:30    This building?

  Shirley Smith:    21:31    Yes. There's some larger apartments, the corner apartment on the second floor are much bigger and nicer.

  Marvin: 21:37    Well they were assigned to people who had their family here.

  Shirley Smith:    21:40    Oh so it wasn't by seniority it was by need?

  Marvin: 21:47    It wasn't seniority, no. There was quite a bit of turmoil here when these new apartment buildings were opened up for occupancy in 1941. There was a waiting list to even move on the island by men that lived in town, in the city. Naturally, when they opened up these new buildings they were beautiful, beautiful apartments. Everyone that lived in this old building and some of those old colleges up there wanted to move in up there. There were so many applications, Associate Warden Miller had charge of assignments. He finally threw both hands up and said I don't want any of you to move. He filled those apartments with people coming on the island.

  Marvin: 22:32    I moved from High Street right straight into a three bedroom apartment, brand new.

  Frank:   22:37    That must have really got some of those old timers.

  Marvin: 22:39    It means you're stuck there for a while.

  Shirley Smith:    22:39    Was the rent any higher in the new apartments than it was here?

  Marvin: 22:39    A little bit yeah. At the time, we had a three bedroom apartment, completely furnished, oak hardwood floors, fully carpeted, drapes, curtains, the whole bit, $35 a month.

  Frank:   23:02    And laundry.

  Marvin: 23:04    And your laundry.

  Dave:    23:06    In 1939 right?

  Marvin: 23:06    Yeah.

  Dave:    23:08    What were you paying when you left?

  Marvin: 23:10    $50.

  Dave:    23:10    In 1960?

  Marvin: 23:11    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Bob:      23:11    I remember when they used to deliver milk up there too.

  Marvin: 23:15    Yeah.

  Bob:      23:16    Used to open the door and there was your milk, right out front.

  Frank:   23:17    Who was delivering the milk? One of the boys that lived on the island or?

  Marvin: 23:17    Inmates, with an officer.

  Frank:   23:18    Oh inmate with an officer.

  Marvin: 23:24    Mm-hmm (affirmative). We had several outside crews. We had the garbage pickup crew.

  Frank:   23:32    I remember that. Levinson used to run that, didn't he for a while?

  Marvin: 23:35    Yeah, what they called the clean up crew. They swept all the streets and so forth, took care of the flour bins and that sort of thing. There were different times when they might have an inmate electrician or plumber working down the road [inaudible 00:23:54]. Always with an officer.

  Dave:    23:55    How about gardening?

  Marvin: 23:59    The gardening that would be the clean up crew.

  Frank:   24:01    They had some officers and wives that did some of the gardening too if they wanted to. They kind of did some of the gardening.

  Marvin: 24:08    Oh a little bit, they'd tinker around after the flowers.

  Frank:   24:12    The warden's secretaries-

  Marvin: 24:14    The thing about this place as a maximum security institution, that included the entire area of the island, there was never an inmate at any time, any place, doing anything that he wasn't under direct gun guard.

  Frank:   24:36    That's right. Every inmate I ever talk to he says he couldn't turn around without seeing one of us looking at him.

  Marvin: 24:43    The outside crews, the trucks with the garbage crew would have two or three men assigned to it. The officer drove the truck and the inmates had to ride on the running board or they were inside of the tire [inaudible 00:25:00] so they could see them.

  Dave:    25:01    How did that security compare with, say, Leavenworth when you left there?

  Marvin: 25:04    Oh much different.

  Dave:    25:08    Did they have a lot of time where they weren't supervised at Leavenworth?

  Marvin: 25:10    Oh yeah, they had all kinds of outside assignments and trust and farm works and dairy and what have you. Hundreds of them that were out there.

  Frank:   25:20    Why did you come to Alcatraz Marvin?

  Marvin: 25:23    Well that's kind of a long story. When I first came to the service in '33, I came to Leavenworth, the designation then, the title of the job was guard. Shortly after that, the Bureau instituted this promotional set up. To begin with, everyone there, every correctional officer, we'd pick a study course every year and then we'd take an examination. From those grades, they held interviews and selected. I think at that time we had about 250 officers there. They selected 40 of that group to promote to establish the grade of senior and junior officers.

  Frank:   26:15    Instructor.

  Marvin: 26:16    They promoted 40 of us to senior grade. Then, there were a few, as time went on, a few promotions made even from that group to lieutenant and what have you. It got down to there were about 20 of us left. One day, Haddock, the Assistant Director came to Leavenworth and informed us and gave us the story that we were needed at Alcatraz. They were short of experienced help out here and this that and the other thing. In other words, he gave us the option of coming to Alcatraz or being demoted to junior officer.

  Frank:   26:58    So that's-

  Marvin: 26:59    Several of them stayed and took the demotion.

  Dave:    27:01    Yeah, I heard something about that. A lot of people volunteered for the job here and a lot were volunteers.

  Marvin: 27:06    I signed my transfer on the evening of the last day of the deadline. When we got here there were only, I think, two senior officers here. All together there were about 12 or 13 at that time.

  Frank:   27:23    That's in 1939?

  Marvin: 27:23    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Frank:   27:27    Now, you probably recall, I sure recall, any new officers like myself that came to work here had a very short longevity of time. Maybe a few weeks, a few months. That would be the end of them, we wouldn't see them again we'd get somebody else new. That's the way I recall. Does that seem to be pretty much the picture?

  Marvin: 27:47    What do you mean Frank?

  Frank:   27:48    Well I remember I was here for two years. In two years time, for new officers starting work here, I'm not talking about the old timers who transferred here from other federal penitentiaries. New fellows who started here, particularly in the younger ages, either wouldn't put up with this type of set up they had here, I know very strict and inmates would put you through this hazing treatment of pulling tricks on you, they'd quit. They'd just have somebody else come in. Or they'd fire you because you couldn't take it. Do you remember that?

  Marvin: 28:20    Yeah I think that's true in many cases. We had a lot of men come here. They got here and saw the picture and the set up. They weren't too happy about it.

  Frank:   28:31    No.

  Marvin: 28:32    And they moved on.

  Frank:   28:37    Well because I think one of the main reasons was the older officers, or the ones who transferred from other federal penitentiaries, the inmates didn't put them through the same penitentiaries as they did with the newer ones, like brand new guys like myself. I know people once asked me how they knew I was new. Here I'm 21 years old, the warden said I looked about 19. They knew I was new. I went through the treatment.

  Shirley Smith:    28:58    What kind of treatment?

  Frank:   29:01    Well the treatment is they give you the old fish eye or evil eye. They give you thing finger by scratching their nose, they give you the middle finger this way.

  Marvin: 29:10    Oh they'd try all kinds of tricks that they wouldn't try on an older officer.

  Frank:   29:13    Right. They wouldn't do it to older officers.

  Shirley Smith:    29:19    Mr. Orr did you have that done to you? Or did you escape that?

  Marvin: 29:21    I don't think too much no.

  Frank:   29:24    Well he came from Leavenworth so he wouldn't have gotten that.

  Shirley Smith:    29:25    He was an older-

  Frank:   29:27    Yeah. I don't know whether he went through it when he first was a new officer at Leavenworth though.

  Marvin: 29:30    I knew a lot of these inmates at Leavenworth before they came out here. Word gets around you know.

  Frank:   29:35    Sure.

  Dave:    29:38    After the escape attempt in 1946, that seemed to have a prettY heavy duty effect on escape attempts until 1962, do you think that was a major thing that kept guys from trying to escape between those periods?

  Marvin: 29:55    Oh I don't know. You mean did the success of some of those escapes encourage others, is that what you mean?

  Dave:    30:05    Well the failure, the '46 one discouraging anybody from trying until 1962.

  Marvin: 30:10    Oh I think that was true, yeah.

  Dave:    30:12    There didn't seem to be many attempts or any problems between '46 and '62.

  Marvin: 30:18    When the place first opened they had the silent system here. When I was out here it was with a shipment of prisoners from Leavenworth in 1938, it was little over a year before I transferred here. The silent system was still in effect here. It's surprising but how you get used to it, a situation and an environment and so forth. We walked in that cell block that day with the silent system and even after having worked in Leavenworth five or six years and used to penitentiary conditions and working with inmates, that environment in there it would really send a chill up your spine. You could feel the hostility in the air.

  Marvin: 31:08    Once you get out of here and went to work there it wasn't long until you just seemed to absorb the whole thing and you went on with your work and paid no attention to it. You just took it as a matter of course.

  Frank:   31:18    That's the exact way I felt when I came here. I felt that air of depression. I felt it for some time but, as you say, you get used to anything I guess. I got somewhat used to it. That's what I had to get over was that air of depression. When I came back here as a park ranger I felt the same thing again. I went through it again.

  Marvin: 31:37    Probably.

  Frank:   31:37    I walked through there and I was getting emotional on my tours. It was really affecting me mentally. I was going to quit. I went and I did the same thing I did when I became a correctional officer, I stuck it out. I felt the same way when I became a correctional officer, I wanted to quit. Don't you think that was why it was difficult for a new man to start here? To overcome these depressions?

  Marvin: 32:02    We got so many men here that not only had they had no experience but they had no training. We went through a 90 day course at Northeastern Penitentiary in Lewisburg when we came into the service, we went to a school first before we were assigned. On top and in addition to that I had worked three years at the Kansas State Prison before that. At least I had a little background. A lot of these fellows came to work here directly off the streets. No training absolutely nothing.

  Frank:   32:35    You're talking about me. I came here right off the streets and I was trained about three months before I left. After two years I finally went to a training class. That was just before I left.

  Marvin: 32:47    Yeah.

  Frank:   32:47    All that time was just strictly what a sub senior officer or officer like yourself or anyone would tell me what to do. That was it.

  Marvin: 32:54    You had to keep a pretty close eye on a lot of them. As officer in charge of the cell house I was in there two or three years. You have the east end officer and the west end officer, junior officers, under your supervision, in addition to there were usually two or three or four extra officers in there. You'd use them to shakedown cells-

  Frank:   33:17    Yeah, utility officers. I remember.

  Marvin: 33:21    Sometimes you'd have to watch those fellows. They'd get clear out of line you know? Not intentionally but just from lack of training. You send them up there to shake some guy's cell down, the first thing you know you come by and he's up there, he and the inmate sitting on the bunk there having a big conversation.

  Frank:   33:40    Yeah, I remember that.

  Marvin: 33:44    They don't seem to perceive how to maintain control and still keep their distance. They get to fraternizing with them, they get too close to them. First thing you know the inmates got them around their little finger.

  Frank:   34:02    Yeah.

  Marvin: 34:02    We had an awful turnover too during the war.

  Frank:   34:05    Oh I imagine.

  Marvin: 34:05    A lot of our men and women in the service and they were hiring them off the streets here. All ages and descriptions. Old men 65 years old. Surprisingly, that period during the war was probably the smoothest period of operation that I ever experienced up here in my 20 years. I think the reason was there was a demand for the stuff we were making here in the shops. Cargo nets, rubber nets, and this immense load of laundry.

  Frank:   34:39    Submarine nets for the Golden Gate Bridge Area too.

  Marvin: 34:40    Yeah. All this laundry. These men were busy and they were making money in the shops there. Plus the fact that a lot of these fellows had relatives, brothers and uncles and so forth-

  Frank:   34:57    In the service.

  Marvin: 34:57    In the service.

  Dave:    34:57    Could be the first time in their life they felt like they were being useful.

  Frank:   34:57    Kind of a patriotic spirit would you say?

  Marvin: 34:57    They weren't allowed newspapers but we had a bulletin board there right at the entrance to the mess hall. Each day the Warden's Secretary would come in there and write down the highlights of the news, the war news and so forth. They were deeply interested in that bulletin board. We had less trouble during that war period than any other time.

  Frank:   35:15    You know what I recall-

  Marvin: 35:16    With less experienced officers.

  Frank:   35:18    Right. I think it was probably a patriotic feeling amongst them.

  Marvin: 35:22    It was.

  Frank:   35:23    What I remember about that board, Marvin, is an inmate, of course I came in later on, an inmate used to write the headlines down on that board.

  Marvin: 35:31    Yeah.

  Frank:   35:32    Do you remember that after, I guess the secretary did it but then an inmate would do it on in later years.

  Marvin: 35:38    Birchman would scan the newspapers and select items, type them out on a sheet and bring them in and the inmate would write it on the board.

  Frank:   35:46    Inmate would write. That's the way I remember.

  Marvin: 35:46    It consisted mostly of sports and war news.

  Frank:   35:52    Later on when I got here it was just general news because that was in '48 when I started.

  Dave:    35:56    Let's get in a little bit more to what family life was like out here because we have a lot of guests who are really interested in what you did out here. [crosstalk 00:36:08]. Do you remember a day in the summer when you were 14 years old, what were you doing?

  Bob:      36:16    We had a handball court there, you could go in and at least play basketball and volleyball. Dad painted a baseball diamond up there on the playground. We'd play baseball. I remember first living on the island, I remember when I first came on here you couldn't have bicycles. I don't know how long we were here before they said okay you can have bicycle.

  Dave:    36:37    How about pets?

  Bob:      36:39    No. That's the one thing I can remember. The only dog I've ever seen on this island was the one that belonged to the warden. It was a big Irish Setter. Every so often that dog would get out and get down to the playground. All the kids would chase that thing like-

  Marvin: 36:50    There's an insight into Swope's makeup.

  Bob:      36:55    Yeah don't do as I do, do as I say!

  Marvin: 36:59    One of the men that worked at the lighthouse his wife had seen the warden coming here. Warden Swope had a big Irish Setter and brought him over here. That's the only dog that was ever on this island. Mrs. Wiley, the wife of one of the lighthouse keepers wanted a dog. She asked the Warden Swope if she could bring a dog. He said no and she said, "Well you've got one." He said, "Mrs. Wiley" at least he was direct about it, "When your husband gets to be warden he can bring his dog over."

  Frank:   37:29    Yeah, it's always do as I say don't do what I do.

  Dave:    37:36    Did you ever play around like the lower parts, building 64 here where the all casemates are, where we call it China Alley today. Did you call it China Alley down there too?

  Bob:      37:49    Chinatown. Yeah we used to play in there, mainly up at the playground. When I was older, when I was a teenager, I guess it was a medical technician, Shoemaker, he had two daughters my age. He lived in that great big house up there next to the Warden's house-

  Frank:   38:08    That the doctor used to live in before.

  Bob:      38:11    There was a basement down there. It wasn't a basement, it had for our five different rooms in it. We had a club up there and we had dances up there and we played cards.

  Dave:    38:19    Did you ever have dances in the social hall?

  Bob:      38:22    Yeah. Used to have Christmas dances and we used to have movies down there.

  Dave:    38:27    What about visitors from the mainland?

  Bob:      38:30    Pardon me?

  Dave:    38:30    Visitors from the mainland. Did you have friends over all the time? Did they have to go through any kind of special security?

  Bob:      38:37    Well when you got on the boat you had to tell the officer they were with you and they'd write their name down and all that kind of stuff. They couldn't just hop on the boat and come over here, they had to be cleared to come over. I used to bring all kinds of kids from school over here.

  Dave:    38:48    I bet they loved that.

  Bob:      38:48    Oh yeah it was a big deal.

  Dave:    38:51    Nobody else was going to have love this island.

  Marvin: 38:53    He don't tell you quite all of it.

  Dave:    38:55    Well go ahead and tell us the rest.

  Marvin: 39:00    One time he and a group of boys his age, it was when I was running the store up here, one evening I'm-

  Frank:   39:05    What age would you say that is Marvin? 14? 15?

  Marvin: 39:08    I don't think they were quite that old. They were more like-

  Frank:   39:08    12 or 10?

  Marvin: 39:12    12 maybe.

  Frank:   39:15    Okay.

  Marvin: 39:15    One evening I was in the store and I had that back door open, it was warm you know. Pretty soon a guy by the name of Forbes, the kids used to call him Big Bear, he was on patrol that night. First thing I know he ducks in the back door and hollers at me and says "Your kid and some other kids out here are shooting water pistols at me." They'd hide around the corner and when Big Bear come around the corner they'd let him have it. He was a custodian officer with a flashlight and a pistol, coming in for me to get these kids off his back.

  Bob:      39:49    Big Bear.

  Marvin: 39:51    He's the guy that vacationed here one time. I don't know where it happened, around here some place, some lake or somewhere. He went out in a boat and his boat sprung a little leak of some kind. He lights a fire in the boat for a distress signal and burned a whole in the boat and sunk it.

  Dave:    40:10    Oh man.

  Frank:   40:13    That was Forbes. You know in '48 or '49 I was a new officer here. Remember how they used to play that corny music out in the yard on the weekends? Some of the younger inmates come up to me and ask me if I can get that music changed. They asked me what kind of music was being played then. It was a kind of a music called bebop music. That was the type of rage music back then. I was very naive at the time and I thought well I didn't like that music either when I worked out there. I'd like to have a change of music, so I told them I'd try to change it. I went to Madigan, it was the worst mistake I'd ever made in my life because he tore me up and down. You know his face was red, it got even redder when he looked at me, when I said that. He said Mr. Heaney, your job is to contain these inmates and not to be worried about the type of music. But he said it in a more stronger way and I was scared, scared stiff.

  Frank:   41:05    Unfortunately I got a nickname which was called Bebop. I don't know if you remember that but I couldn't live that, once you got a tag on you you couldn't get rid of it. I got this Bebop tag and they called me Bebop. Here I was trying to do them a favor but you don't do those kinds of favors for them. You can't be a good guy too much otherwise you get in trouble.

  Dave:    41:32    What were you saying about bringing cigarettes up there in the commissary?

  Bob:      41:36    Yeah, running the store, anyone wanted to get cigarettes they came to me.

  Dave:    41:41    How old were you then?

  Bob:      41:43    I don't know, you ran the store how many times? Two or three different times.

  Marvin: 41:46    yeah.

  Bob:      41:48    The store used to open, the last time I remember working there, my brother and myself worked, the store used to open at 10:30 in the morning and it closed at 1:00 didn't it?

  Marvin: 41:56    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Bob:      41:59    Then dad would run it here. He was working 4:00 - 12:00. I would come home on the 3:30 boat and I'd run it from 4:00 to 5:30. It would close from 5:30 and either my brother or my mother would open it from 6:30 to 8:00 so it was open three different times but for like two or three hours. So we did that for, I don't know how many years.

  Frank:   42:18    How was the family compensated? I know the Yates when I was there. How did they compensate families for running the commissary?

  Marvin: 42:24    See the store belonged to the Officer's Club.

  Frank:   42:28    Oh yeah that's right.

  Marvin: 42:30    The Officer's Club paid them a salary. It was by election, they were elected store managers.

  Dave:    42:33    So it was over and above your regular salary as a corrections officer?

  Marvin: 42:36    Oh yeah, had nothing to do with it.

  Frank:   42:37    Yeah, it had nothing to do with the government. Who ran the post office?

  Marvin: 42:42    Don Martin's wife did for years. Before her was Ordway's wife when he lived on the island here. She died in ... After she died, Bill Owen's wife, who is of course deceased, up to the time I left.

  Frank:   43:02    Was that a government paid job? Or how did that work?

  Marvin: 43:05    Oh yeah.

  Frank:   43:06    That was a government paid-

  Marvin: 43:09    Post office department.

  Bob:      43:11    It was just like the papers, one kid delivered all the papers.

  Frank:   43:15    Every kind of newspaper? Every kind?

  Bob:      43:17    The Chronicle, Examiner, News Call Bulletin, we had them all.

  Frank:   43:20    You had them all?

  Bob:      43:21    You had to went through Henry to get a paper.

  Frank:   43:26    Yeah, right. So we had the Coast Guard governmental outfit and we had the Bureau of Prisons and the Post Office. Any other?

  Bob:      43:35    There was also, at the post office, I don't remember who did it all, I remember one kid who used to do it, he even signed a contract. He'd pick up the mail bags when they throw the mail in the boat. He'd pick the mail bags up and take them to the post office. That was his, I think he got $30 bucks a month [crosstalk 00:43:52]. That was his sort of thing. Everybody had a little thing going.

  Frank:   43:56    I can't remember how we got our mail. Did we go to down to the post office and pick up the mail ourselves?

  Marvin: 44:02    It was open.

  Frank:   44:04    I didn't get much mail because I-

  Bob:      44:04    It seems to me it was open once in the morning and once in the afternoon wasn't it?

  Marvin: 44:08    Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative). Not all day long.

  Frank:   44:11    Once in a while somebody wanted you to post their letters up there so they can get the Alcatraz seal on them. Right?

  Dave:    44:19    We had a guy who lived down here, I can't remember his name, he was out here from '51 to '57-

  Frank:   44:27    Is that one that you just interviewed?

  Dave:    44:29    No this was the guy that lived out here. He said something about going fishing a lot for striped bass. At times they'd catch enough to feed the whole population out here. Did you ever get ... You might have known this guy. I'll ask one of the Rangers who he was.

  Marvin: 44:43    I might have.

  Frank:   44:44    Where did you fish when you fished on the island? That's what I remember, yeah down there.

  Dave:    44:48    For striped bass? Down there?

  Bob:      44:49    That and sharks. We used to catch sharks all the time. Just come down here and cast down.

  Frank:   44:54    How about crabs?

  Bob:      44:55    No.

  Frank:   44:56    Didn't do much crabbing?

  Bob:      44:58    No.

  Frank:   44:58    There's still a lot of crabs down there.

  Marvin: 45:00    Those striped bass would come in sometimes. I tell you, over on the other side of the island, the sardines would come in and you could always tell when they were because the gulls would hover around and the bass would follow them in. That run would only last maybe three or four hours and then they're gone. A couple different times there, I was patrolling one night and coming down along the sea wall there by the outside of the laundry building and those bass were in that water, you'd see them with your flashlight just churning in there. I called Fred May or somebody, 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. He gets some other guys, first thing you know the whole house is down there fishing. They caught two truckloads of bass down there.

  Frank:   45:47    Is that right?

  Dave:    45:47    That must have been what that guy was talking about because he said one of the guards called and said the bass were running and they all went down there and caught enough fish to feed everyone on the island for a couple of days.

  Marvin: 45:56    Yeah, took a truck down.

  Frank:   45:58    Didn't Fred have a daughter about my age? She would be in her fifties now. He had a couple of daughters didn't he? I think I dated one of his daughters.

  Marvin: 46:06    One of them died.

  Bob:      46:07    Judy.

  Marvin: 46:08    Judy died. Freddy would be the one you're talking about. She was older.

  Frank:   46:15    One of them I dated, one of those girls when they were living on the island. I don't know which one it was.

  Marvin: 46:18    She married Warden Swope's son.

  Bob:      46:20    Freddy did.

  Frank:   46:22    Oh she did?

  Bob:      46:24    Judy married an officer here named Charlie Tennyson. Was that his name? Charlie Tennyson?

  Frank:   46:27    Yeah I remember Madigan had his daughter here and she married the nephew of-

  Marvin: 46:35    Clyde Stewart, Stucker's [inaudible 00:46:39].

  Frank:   46:38    Clyde, yeah. Like you said, he died not long ago. Well our tour will be going pretty soon in a minute.

  Dave:    46:46    Yeah, we better wind this up. We thank you a lot, both for coming out.

  Marvin: 46:51    Okay we certainly enjoyed it.

  Frank:   46:54    I might see you, Bob are you going to be up at that-

 

Prisoners in yard, Alcatraz.

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 19200

---

"Stroud and Karpis. Karpis was not anybody outstanding that I could see. Stroud was because it was like fame or infamous. But I think Franklin, do you ever heard of him?"- John McGoran

 

• John McGoran

  
  

  Interview with Ex correctional officer John McGoran about his time and various prisoners on Alcatraz island.
  Audio Transcript

  Speaker 1:          Testing. One, two, three. Testing. One, two, three. We're talking with correctional officer John McLaurin who was here as a correctional officer from 1954to 1955 Mr. McGoran, you were telling me as we went up the hill that things were a little bit different. For instance, inside the cell house, I was starting to talk about how status was achieved the higher up you move in the cell house, the different tiers in your, you're telling me something else about that.

  John:                   I feel it was just in reverse of that because from cell 101 and across from that one, whichever number that is, that'd be 201 I think wouldn't it? Those were the most desirable cells to have in the institution. Do you remember where the old barbershop is? That row of cells there and then the same like number one on that row on the main floor, those were the that most desirable to have. And I remember Barker I think was in that one and his brother I think was right next to it. Number two cell. I think 101, I believe it was, I remember it was a very slick check artist and he worked his way up to that cell and he had the most desirable one.

  Speaker 1:          A check artist?

  John:                    It's writing checks, forgery.

  Speaker 1:          Do you remember any of those different kinds of inmates? Could you tell us about some of the folks that were inside?

  John:                   Okay, well I remember Alvin Karpis and his name is Al Carpovich I think. I have a book or they call roster. Do you want me to xerox that off and send it to you?

  Speaker 1:          Oh, that'd be great.

  John:                   That'll give you the names of several. Most of the convicts that were in there at that time and their numbers. I'll send that to you.

  Speaker 1:          Well, what could you tell us about Karpis?

  John:                    Well, when I was here, he was in charge of the library, but he was also sort of the manipulator of all the other convicts. He never got into trouble himself, but he always had his hands in to manipulate things. I guess now he's working in Puerto Rico isn't he?

  Speaker 1:          He just committed suicide this last summer. At 71. Killed himself in Spain.

  John:                    Let me think now, Stroud. One of my jobs on Sunday morning, I had to go to the main gate, pick up a special razor that was called a locked-in blade and go up to the hospital where Stroud was, take him across the hall and sit there and watch him while he took his bath and shaved.

  John:                   And I remember that well because he used to try to, at times he had tried to teach me Spanish and he would guess he was pretty good at Spanish and French. Somedays he'd try to teach me French. I didn't listen. I wasn't supposed to talk to him and not say a word but we did because I thought it was just impolite not to. I answered him. I didn't instigate any conversation with him, but I'd answer him politely.

  John:                   I remember one day he says me, "I can take these two fingers and kill you." He says, "all I gotta do is get ahold of your wind pipe." And that little frail thing. He didn't look any bigger than this guy, but he thought he could do it anyway. Maybe he could've if he got hold of my wind pipe.

  John:                   Let me think of another somebody else over there. I told you about Miranda that I had to, when he came in after I think he shot up the Senate, didn't he? Then he was transferred here and I had to give him, make sure that he got his hair cut.

  John:                   I remember Osburn one day. He was right, his cell was right outside the main gate, the Sally Port they call it. He got very upset with me and he stood there like a ape at the gates and telling me I was a no good so-and-so, this and that. He was gonna kill me when he got out and everything like that, and I had to wait there while somebody opened the gate for me.

  John:                   So I just looked at him and I thought to myself, well, I'm not going to put him on report because that's what I was supposed to do, but I thought the guy was stir-crazy. Then the next time I saw him he was in line in the mess hall and he just glared at me. But he didn't make any more moves. I guess he was thankful that I didn't put them on report and throw them in the hole.

  John:                   But you got to kind of use your head on things like that. If a guy is really upset over nothing, give him a break. Let me think. Got Any ideas that you would like to know about that I might help? I'm not sure. It's been a long time.

  Speaker 1:          You know, two people at that we're constantly asked about is the person that spent the longest time, Alvin Karpis and Robert Stroud. If you could, could you go into more details on the two of them?

  John:                   Stroud and Karpis. Karpis was not anybody outstanding that I could see. Stroud was because it was like fame or infamous. But I think Franklin, do you ever heard of him?

  Speaker 1:          Whitey Franklin?

  John:                   Whitey Franklin. I think that he was probably pretty long termer, and probably done in several people. I think he was won that probably killed as many as seven that he was convicted of. At that time I understood that if he was turned loose he had to go back to the southern state someplace and stand for more murders they had they thought was against him. You told me to tell the group about being in the kitchen, and you know about the knives there. I got to think of my friend Glom. He was correctional officer Glom. One day he was in charge of the kitchen.

  John:                   He has also had the keys for the knife rack where it was, I don't know, cause I never said stood watch in the kitchen anyways, Franklin got into an argument with somebody and it was all quiet. When they argued you didn't know it, you weren't listening and tuning into it. Anyway, Franklin says to Glom and he says, "Mr Glom, I'm ready to peel potatoes now," and Glom says, "Oh no Franklin, not now wait a while."

  John:                   He kept an eye on Franklin, until Franklin cool-down Franklin, was very-lips were always pursed like that, never said a word to anything. But I always felt he liked me cause he all was made sure I got enough potatoes and meat when I was on all that. I tried to be fair with him, the policy was be firm but fair and that's what I tried to be and I think he respected that cause I always felt he really liked me, and I always admired him even though, did you ever hear about Franklin and the '46 riot?

  John:                   I understood, if I'm right now, that he somehow had to lay in the barbwire up on the old work building for several hours after he got shot there and no one went out and got him cause he was one on that climb that got on top of the roof and tried to attack the guard house up there. That's just what I heard anyway.

  Speaker 3:          He was involved in a little different escape. He was apprehended after he killed another correctional officer.

  John:                   Whitey he did?

  Speaker 3:          That's the way we understood all story. At least it was prior to the '46.

  John:                   So why am I thinking he killed anybody in this? Oh and in another institution here maybe.

  Speaker 3:          We have it here.

  Speaker 1:          I can't remember specifically what he did.

  Speaker 3:          Royal Cline.

  Speaker 1:          Royal Cline, bludgeon to death?

  John:                   I think he was one of the toughest men they had here. Then there was a guy in my name of Thompson that I'm sure that he was supposed to have killed several like 10 of them too.

  John:                   supplies were brought in, say like they bought in a bag of rice or flour or something like that. You ever hear about the probes? They'd probe in there with metal rods and make sure that no guns would come in bags of flour or so, and that was one of the jobs we had to do and had to look through.

  John:                   We'll see, Karpis, Stroud-and I know, did I mention to you that you, I heard you mention that there was no violence towards the convicts, but when anyone was brought-somebody who was in the hole and they were acting up, I stood outside there and myself, they usually get about four of us and then the biggest correctional officer, we had Mitchell I think and just arms like this, you take a sap and go in and work them over.

  John:                   While, we were standing outside, I don't know. We didn't need to because I think he could take care of anybody, but my job was to stand outside. I never worked anybody over myself, but there was another guy who went in to work somebody over one day and the convict moved and he's hit the wall and broke his hand.

  John:                   I can't remember the guys name, I was trying to think of it, but I got the list of the correctional officers I would remember. I’ll tell you another guy you could probably talk to some time that Sergeant Nukes of the California Highway Patrol, he worked here. He got hit, I think go across the side of the head with a guitar. It brings to mind that, on Saturday afternoon I think it was, my job when I was on duty was to go down and in the long end there was a laundry, not laundry, a shower room, you know the shower room where you get on the mains. And then there was another room off to the right where they would practice with electric guitars. And I think we must have had 10-12 people in there at times. All with electric guitars. And I'd go wild with all that noise. And they were allowed to do that. But they, I never heard them while they were in the cells able to, to practice up there.

  Speaker 1:          What are the kind of musical things were they allowed to do then? Did they have a full band or did they have a full choir?

  John:                   The electric guitars, is the only thing I remember and possibly a horn, I'm trying to think now. I think there was a trombonist in that and I believe he was a man that kidnapped the Weyerhaeuser boy, do you remember that. Weyerhaeuser or the lumberman. Oh, and now another seat. Well, I talked to a friend of mine with a Weyerhaeuser, a company the other day and I understand that the boy that was kidnapped hired the men under a different name and they're now working for Weyerhaeuser.

  Speaker 1:          The people that were involved in kidnapping him?

  John:                   Oh the man knows that. Yeah, but he's hired him apparently for some reason.

  Speaker 1:          That is a real case and loving your enemies.

  John:                   Human. I went to a course, at the college of Marin, and one of the men I attended the course with worked for Weyerhaeuser and he was telling me about that.

  Speaker 3:          You live around here now?

  John:                   In Corte Madera.

  John:                   He's from Chico, California, he's never been here so I thought it'd be interesting to bring him over here, you know.

  Speaker 1:          Could you tell us about your days living out here in Alcatraz when you were a bachelor in the quarters?

  John:                   I can't remember too much about those except I knew where I lived and I think now it's labeled the chaplain's office or something like that.

  Speaker 1:          Military Chapel?

  John:                   Military chapel is it? I believe there was Landers, myself, Henshaw and another man that lived together there and you just interviewed Landers and then we had our kitchen that overlooked the water here.

  John:                   It wasn't a very elaborate place to live but it was a place anyway. And I don't remember being charged for anything there except the our food. As far as the off duty, there wasn't much-well, when we were off duty we were required to make notes and write them up on how to make the place more secure.

  John:                   Like, could there be a mirror here or could we lower keys better? Another place, a thing like that. Just everything to make the place more secure. I think in the later years, I think that, one of the reasons this place deteriorated, the morale or the, I wanna say morale...integrity. I think of the men that made this place crumble more than anything else. They didn't really want to do their job as well as they did in the previous years. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but that was my opinion. It was always my opinion.

  Speaker 1:          What about the people that you worked for? Like which, which warden did you serve under?

  John:                   Under Swope, and he was probably, I think he was the last political warden, as they used to call them there. He would just plain mean I think. Everybody else, I think I thought the same thing. He had no mercy on anybody, but he was powerful.

  Speaker 1:          And how do you mean he was a political appointee?

  John:                   Well, I wouldn't think much of the time, but they always said he was political. A political warden. However you say on that while he was appointed because he did somebody, some politician a good turn. From that time on, then I think after that, I can't remember who the warden was after Rhino. There was several of them after that. And those people seemed like pretty good men. But I don't know if they could hold a discipline like Swope could.

  Speaker 1:          How did he hold the discipline? Can you give us some examples?

  John:                   Well, one of the convicts that was in the hole and a very, a lot of the restrictions, taking privileges, and the officers, he just fire anybody on the spot. You gotta be a watch for your, if you want to have a job, you gotta watch out what you were doing, he never made any mistakes.

  John:                   I'll tell you one of the mistakes I made, remember when we came down out of the yard? Well. Right up top there was a call box or telephone and one night about two in the morning I had to patrol the work area and they lived a little hairy. I'll tell you, it was dark going in those buildings, something slipped and made a little racket. You've got wondering, "the convict escape or not?"

  John:                   Anyway, I was a little bit nervous one night and I had to go up to the top of that wall and make a call in by not putting back the telephone properly. I mean, had to be right just right. It set off an alarm after a couple of minutes I think it was. Do you remember telling hearing that? One went off and of course it went off in his room and it woke him up and I'll tell you this, it was hell trying to-I had to write letters and this and that. What happened, and those things made you shook up a person. Especially if you're trying to hold a job.

  John:                   I had to write two letters all the time. I was here, but it wasn't pleasant.

  Speaker 1:          Did the warden ever have the correctional officer’s staff over for a party at Christmas time or anything. Did you ever go inside his home?

  John:                   No. I went in there with a convict with the name of Bynum one time. Bynum had to do this kind of the work around the place, but really I didn't get to go in much more than the inside the front door and I don't remember anything about it really. As far as what it looked like or anything like that. I wish I did. I was out of a beautiful building.

  Speaker 1:          Did the warden have a personal servant out of the convicts?

  John:                   I think it was Bynum the convict. That did most of the work there for him. I don't remember anybody else other than that.

  Speaker 1:          Did any warden's have pets?

  John:                   I don't recall any.

  Speaker 1:          We've heard stories that one of the wardens had a pet. Did any the correctional officers have any pets out here?

  John:                   Not that I know of. I'm not sure. I don't think there was any allowed out here really.

  Speaker 1:          Did you ever catch an inmate with a pet of any kind?

  John:                   No. Like we caught Bynum with a fellow pet one time. Bynum was a homosexual.

  John:                   I remember when we caught him, it was two in the cell and then myself and Mitchell, I think caught him. I remember Bynum saying, "Oh, I was just teaching Mandy how to pray."

  Speaker 1:          Did they-

  Speaker 3:          Well, you were saying there were two in a cell.

  John:                   Bynum and another convict in one cell. I think, like above 101 on the second tier I think it was. Somehow they got into-that was one of the things you gotta watch for. Make sure that each one got into their own cell or if they didn't just pull the wool over your eyes and two sneak into a cell. If they were both homosexual.

  Speaker 3:          Did that happen very often?

  John:                   Well they tried it.

  Speaker 3:          They tried it.

  John:                   You know, sometimes I wondered if they weren't just trying to play tricks with the officers, and I think sometimes that was a case where they would try to trip you up just for the fun of it, you know? No big deal.

  Speaker 3:          What action is taken for something like that? What would you do to the individuals involvement in something? I don't know whether you, would you consider that a minor infraction or major?

  John:                   Oh that would be, I think major, but you know where that desk you have right there. At Broadway and going into the mess hall. Well that was where the head guy, head correctional officer had his desk. Everything operated out of that. So anything that happened, we just go to that desk. Whoever happened to be on duty there and he'd take care of it because he was a senior correctional officer. It wasn't up to us to make any judgment.

  John:                   After that, then he would make out the reports and then the guy would go to court, what do they call it? I'm not sure what they call it now. If it was court or in the Navy it's mast. But they had held a court and then usually the assistant warden, deputy or whatever they call him, would pass judgment that we never really heard much what they'd get. Never paid much attention.

  Speaker 1:          What kind of people sat on the court as you say it to listen to an inmate's side of it?

  John:                   No, I don't think they had that privilege in this place anyway. Just the probably the officer would tell his story and the convict and tell his story and the deputy warden would decide what the guy got. like 30 days in the hole, man that's something else. So they got three days or something like that. Three or six days. A lot of times they got 30 that I know of and I want to say a lot of time, but I do remember that.

  Speaker 1:          Straight through 30? Or 30 with a break?

  John:                   30 days they could, they had to come out, but that's to look it up on the history book or something. But I know they got 30 days and sometimes they'd get pretty shook up in 30 days too.

  Speaker 1:          How about the upper areas of solitary confinement? Could you tell me some more details about that?

  John:                   Which now?

  Speaker 1:          The top areas. The permanent lockup unit?

  John:                   The top cell. It seemed to me that there was one the cell farthest that was number 14 was it? Okay. I think that was the a strip cell where they had nothing on, And they just threw them in there.

  John:                   The other cells were maybe they could have a jumper suit on. I think they didn't have any toilets in any of those, there was a hole on the floor. I remember.

  Speaker 1:          Some of them-

  John:                   From those they start working back into the open cell, and then they had toilets and those, but jumper suits. Then as they got better then they worked up to the higher cells. That's the way I remember it.

  John:                   Another thing I would wonder about too is you said that no one was ever paroled out of here. I don't think they got parole out of here, but they were turned loose from here because I remember one guy by the name on Washington went right out of TU. His time was up and they couldn't keep him. He says, I said, "Well Washington, what are you going to do when you leave here?" I'm pretty sure the name of Washington. He says, "the first thing that I'm gonna do is rob a bank."

  John:                   He might've been pulling my leg, but I never found out. You know, they weren't above that.

  Speaker 3:          That's kind of the, we understand it. If an individual was in here for a specific sentence and he finished his sentence, and of course you would be released, probably wasn't parole. Yeah, he would be taken back to another federal prison and then parole from there. Even if it was a relatively short time. He still wouldn't go straight out.

  John:                   Let's see, who was it? I know one of them was getting out and they're telling me how long they gotta go, like 30 days and this and that, you know. "Well, I only got 30 days to do," and one fellow says, "well, I got something like 230 days to do" And I was stunned, I says, "How come? What you're in here for 30 days?" He says, "No. Years." But he was joking on that.

  Speaker 1:          Did they ask to have maybe nicknames for other areas of the prison that I didn't go into or some slang terms that they used that you remember?

  John:                   I think they had, but I can't remember anything right now. I can't think of any terms now.

  Speaker 1:          What various areas did you work in within the prison facility? You mentioned that you worked in the T.U.

  John:                   I worked in all the towers at one time or another, at one and two. This one here. When I walked up then I thought it was rickety and ready to fall down. The thing would shake like mad, but it's still standing. That's pretty good.

  Speaker 1:          And it's still rickety.

  Speaker 3:          The other one fell down.

  John:                   Number two fell down? It did huh? Worked on both those towers, worked the wall, I worked the hospital, a barber shop for quite a while. Then I stayed down on that shower room. That's where we had to watch the men real close so they didn't get into the same showers.

  Speaker 3:          Did they have some kind of separation then, or was it just the-?

  John:                   It was open. It was at that time.

  Speaker 3:          It was open, so it was easy to watch.

  John:                   The clothing room, which is off the shower room and you'd see at different times of the day you would probably have a different job. Sometimes I might have the a barbershop, maybe nine o'clock to 11 o'clock and then I'd have to go into the mess hall during the lunch periods and in the afternoon maybe have a different job. You had a sheet of paper that told you what to do for a certain job. Job description.

  John:                   What else did I do? I guess I had to work on the armory once in a while. But I hated that job because the tear gas, even though it was contained it always made my eyes water. It was awful working in that place.

  Speaker 1:          Even though it was still in the canisters?

  John:                   Yeah, there was always tear gas somehow in the atmosphere and made my eyes water all the time. I think that covers the jobs I had to do.

  Speaker 1:          When you worked in the armory did you ever do any the monitoring of the visiting conversations?

  John:                   Never did. No, but that's right. They had visitors. I had to- in the Sally Port right outside the armory, there was a desk there that once in a while they'd put me censoring magazines. I'd have to look through any magazines and cut out that things I thought weren't just right, like anything on another prison or a convict. But I know when an attorney came and they had to talk between them they had to use a telephone I think. It was a very thick glass between them.

  Speaker 1:          When you were-you didn't have to monitor those conversations at all?

  John:                   I didn't do it, but I think somebody did. I don't remember having done that at all, that wasn't my one of my jobs. Once in a while I'd have to go up to the movies or when they had held mass, Catholic mass I had to sit in on that.

  Speaker 1:          Well, thanks very much.

 

Guard in tower, Alcatraz.

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 18346

---

"Trying to think of anything more, there was a lot of things, two years, it's like a lifetime in this place, all the incidents that happened." - Frank Heaney

 

• Frank Heaney

  
  

  Interview with Frank Heaney who was one of the youngest correctional officers on Alcatraz between 1948 and 150. He later became a Park Ranger on the Island in the 1970's
  Audio Transcript

  Ellery:   00:04    This is Tom Ellery, Park Technician on Alcatraz Island, March 31st, 1978. I've just done a tape interview with Mr. Frank Heaney who was an officer on Alcatraz from '48 to '50, one of the youngest officers here. And he lived on the island for a year’s time.

  Heaney:              00:28    Okay you want me to answer these on the tape you mean or-

  Ellery:   00:32    No, no, no. You can take one of those home, just where we were talking about Stroud was pretty interesting-

  Heaney:              00:36    Yeah. Well the time that I was here, he was in the hospital and well I used to go in the deed as I remember it was strictly going in and shaking down his cell. You go in there and you never told an inmate when you're going to shake down his cell. We did that to everybody. Everybody had their cell shut down at different times. And so I'd go in there and say, "Hey Bob. It's time for you to get your cell done, shook down." He'd have a few four letter words for me but he'd always get out and we'd put him in another cell and I'd go in there. And because of that fact that I'm sure he wasn't going to try to escape or anything like that or he's not going to worry too much about contraband. It mainly was recreation for guards to go in there and just to read his materials. And just to go in there and I used to go in and read his novels that he was writing.

  :             01:37    That was when he was in D-Block.

  Heaney:              01:39    This was when he was in the hospital. I didn't know him when he was in D-Block. See he was in the hospital. I was here from December of '48 until September of '50 and all the time I was here he was in the hospital. He was never in D-Block when I was here. And I'd go in there and shake down his cell and look through his stuff and then read a few novels because it was a good way to goof off a few hours.

  Ellery:   02:10    Right, right. So where would he be during those two hours? Would he still be in the cell?

  Heaney:              02:16    He would be in another cell. We'd put him in another cell. And he'd just sit in there until we got through.

  Speaker 3:          02:21    What would be a normal span of time as far as completing cell searches?

  Heaney:              02:27    About a half hour, forty five minutes. I'd say two hours is extreme on Bob's.

  Speaker 3:          02:38    Depending on how much [crosstalk]-

  Heaney:              02:39    Depended on how much you wanted to read or if you had a lot of things to do depending on if you had more assignments or something. But that would be the one that most of them would long because everybody liked to read his material. Because he was a pretty interesting writer. As I said, the one that I read was about this... I don't know whether he was the captain of the guards or he was just a regular guard but he was in charge of the kitchen area and linen work. And what he really was, and according to Robert Stroud was that he was madame organizer or he'd be a pimp. And he would, for a certain amount of money, I guess gained from the outside, because the inmates aren't going to give him any money, he would give privacy to a couple of inmates.

  Ellery:   03:28    Right, if they wanted to get it on.

  Heaney:              03:30    Right and this was one of the books I remember. Now he wrote a lot of other books but I can't ever remember what they were about because this seemed to be the most interesting. This is over 30 years ago. I do remember that part. I doubt if it ever got published. The only one I remember of his being published was Robert Stroud's Digest of Birds.

  Ellery:   03:48    That was pretty straightforward because he had too much sexual…

  Heaney:              03:52    Right.

  Ellery:   03:53    ... in that one. But what we have heard is that he was pretty notorious [crosstalk]-

  Heaney:              03:56    I know it probably sounds devious but the most problem is that I remember was mainly sexual orientated. They had couples and once in a while that's when one of them would go crazy because they'd transfer them to another prison or something or transfer them to another area away from their lovers. And that would cause a lot of fighting.

                               I remember one time I got beat up is, I had to go in to a cell after a guy that was going crazy, was tearing up the cell because they'd transferred his friend. And this lieutenant and I went in there, this lieutenant was pretty good.

                               I'd say he was a good guard but he was in the wrong about that we weren't allowed to carry anything but they did have blackjacks. He carried a blackjack, I didn't carry a blackjack but they probably would've used it on me. I wasn't big enough to carry a blackjack.

                               So I just went in there and this guy, man he was cussing, he was cussing, swearing you know, he was so pissed he said, "Come on in here after me." And he says, "We've got to go in there Heaney." God dammit. There's no way in the world I want to go in that thing but you do, you have to go in there. So I went in there and he started swinging at me right on site so the lieutenant went in after me. And I was more of a diversionary thing, me going in there. Me being fed to the lion. Because you know that guy was tough you know and he racked that guy in the back of the head. He'd slammed me against the side and then he got ahold of something and racked the back of the head and he went down. Now it may sound cruel but believe me that was the best thing that happened as far as I'm concerned because we would've wrestled around there for another 15 minutes or so.

  Ellery:   05:51    This is one of the small cells too, right?

  Heaney:              05:52    One of the small cells. Just an ordinary cell. We were getting ready to put him over to the “hole” you know and we got him down and really was coming out so they dragged him and put him in the cell. Now when we brought him… him we put right into the cell to start with. A “stripped cell.” Because he was going nuts, he was tearing up the cell so we put him in a “stripped cell.” And what we had to do was, when we brought an inmate from population into isolation, the first thing we have do is strip them completely down and I don't know if you went through this but what they did, they strip them down. Okay you strip a guy down, he goes against a wall like this [crosstalk] and then one guy would have a flashlight and you'd look underneath there and then he'd go like this and then he'd have to look up his ass with it too. And every spot that he'd have on his body that could be a place there'd keep something, you'd look for it.

  Ellery:   07:07    Did you say that before going to put them in a “stripped cell”?

  Heaney:              07:11    Before putting them into yeah “stripped cell” or in the “hole”, just one of the regular ones. You'd strip them down and look everywhere with a flashlight. And rub his hair, look in his ears, mouth.

  Ellery:   07:31    While you were here, nobody went underneath of the green doors in D-Block down in citadel while you were here, you don't remember?

  Heaney:              07:40    You mean shimmy underneath them?

  Ellery:   07:42    No I mean putting them down in there chained or anything like that?

  Speaker 3:          07:46    Yeah directly below D-Block, there’s a-

  Heaney:              07:50    I see what you mean, yeah.

  Ellery:   07:51    Yeah that's what they would call the dungeons.

  Heaney:              07:53    That's right the dungeons.

  Ellery:   07:55    They weren't used extensively but-

  Heaney:              07:57    I don't remember it, no. I don't remember anybody ever going under there. I've heard that too, where they have done it but-

  Ellery:   08:03    But like '46 when D-Block was blown up and everything, they would keep them down there.

  Heaney:              08:08    That could be yeah-

  Ellery:   08:10    [inaudible] they kept them on A, A-Block.

  Heaney:              08:11    I do know they told me about it, of course I wasn't here when Al Capone because he left in '46 and he was dying of syphilis, that's why they left. And they said, the inmates told me about him though that at the end there he was putting his clothes on backwards and everything else. He was really going nutty. So he wouldn't take the cure. Because at the time, I guess the cure was pretty painful [crosstalk] and he wouldn't take the cure and so he just stayed with the syphilis and it finally got to his brain and killed him. What I understand is he went down to this island that he owned down in Florida and died there. But they say he wasn't very well liked. At least that's what I understand.

  Ellery:   09:01    By the other inmates?

  Heaney:              09:02    By the other inmates.

  Speaker 3:          09:02    So when you were referring to “stripped cell”, is there a distinction in your mind between “stripped cell”and “hole,” was there 1 of 9 through 14 of these “stripped cells”?

  Heaney:              09:12    I think we went down at the end, the very end, as we came through... That wire case there, when I was there that was the Chaplin's office.

  Ellery:   09:20    Oh was it? I didn't know that.

  Heaney:              09:21    The Chaplin was in there. Because see the Chaplin and library kind of goes together. So the Chaplin's office used to be in there. That was the protestant Chaplin's. There was a protestant Chaplin that was full time. And there was a catholic Jesuit priest that came over and a rabbi from over in the city.

                09:43    And I remember they used to have movies. The only time I remember having movies, they had movies every holiday. And if they didn’t have a holiday, they had them not more than once a month. And they had them upstairs above that catwalk. I remember I used to take them up there.

  Ellery:   10:07    Right opposite from the Visitation Area.

  Heaney:              10:09    Right. I noticed they took the big bars, when you came into the main cell block, there used to be this gate that used to open up there and you would go through first gate and then you'd have to go through a second gate. And one gate had to be closed when the other was opened. We never had two gates open at one time, never.

  Ellery:   10:31    So while you were here, you had mentioned that in an isolation cell that they don't get toilets. They were already blocked up. You said that there would be no toilet facilities in there.

  Heaney:              10:51    I never really looked in there that close. But all of them had regular facilities except for one but it did have a hole so they could go in that little hole.

  Ellery:   11:08    A drain, a drain.

  Heaney:              11:08                   There was a drain in there yeah.

  Ellery:   11:09    When was that filled up? Because that's concreted over now.

  Heaney:              11:13    I see that yeah.

  Speaker 3:          11:13    That was filled up I think after GSA [General Services Administration] yeah.

  Speaker 4:          11:20    So were those three cells at the end, those were “stripped cells” and they would be in there with no clothes or, like a certain period of time?

  Heaney:              11:27    Right. They had absolutely no clothes on at all because they'd tear them up. Generally they'd wear coveralls, that's what they wore, coveralls and slippers. Which sucks that they were tearing them up. They were tearing up their clothes and tearing up their cells and the mattresses. They'd put them right in the “stripped cell.” Then they'd stay there until they thought that were ready to come into the regular “hole.” The one that's got the facilities in it.

  Ellery:   11:55    So you were usually going to 14 or the “stripped cell” first?

  Heaney:              12:01    Yeah you'd be sentenced to go right into the “hole” yeah. But sometimes if they weren't too bad they'd just go right into isolation.

  Speaker 3:          12:12    How did the circumstances change life?

  Heaney:              12:15    When I was here, generally the Associate Warden. Sometimes the captain or guards did it but it’s generally the Associate Warden and once in a while the Warden. Once in a while. But it was generally the Associate Warden. About once a week. This is one of the reasons if I caught somebody doing a minor thing and if they didn't see me, I wouldn't turn them in. Because of the fact that I’d more than likely have to come on maybe my days off because they didn't give you any compensation to come to the trial board. And most of the time the Warden would say, "You shouldn't have done that. That's not nice. You're not going to do it again are you? Okay you just be good and just don't try to do it." And then that'd be the end of it.

  Speaker 3:          13:07    Then you would just put them into one of the “holes” before they had any kind of hearing or sentencing if they are causing a lot of problems?

  Heaney:              13:16    Yeah if they were causing a lot of problems. A lot of the things was if they were talking when they weren't supposed to be talking to anybody or things like that. That's what I used to talk about, don't do it again. But you still had to go to court. They made you go in there and listen because they'd ask you.

  Ellery:   13:32    And they'd have the court right in D-Block then when they did have court?

  Heaney:              13:38    No the court was down at the…because I'm talking about people that were in population ready maybe to go to…but they would take them out and bring them, from D-Block and take them down there.

                13:48    We also had, one of the funniest guys I've ever see, we had about three Nazi prisoners here. And one guy, he must've really went bananas because he wore nothing. He wore absolutely no clothing at all and he didn't eat much because all he was, was skin and bones. And he was in isolation all the time I was here. And they say he was in there years before that. He never left isolation and he never wore clothes because I remember him just walking around with no clothes. Because it was warm in there, you know they had steam heat. And I remember I was there the day they transferred him out of there and he wouldn't put on any clothes so they walked him down the main cell block and all the guys are whistling at him. This is the first time a lot of them remember seeing him and they brought him down to the boat and I forget where he went, he was released or what. But that was about 1949.

  Ellery:   14:44    That was a German Nazi?

  Heaney:              14:47    That was a German Nazi guy yeah. The guy was really loony. You wonder where they got these guys from. There was three of them that I remember, two were loony and one guy was real intelligent, real smart. It's the only guy I remember, I don't know how they go the other two guys. But I think they're all born Americans. See what they did is they had a U-boat [German submarine] waiting outside of Florida in '42 and they'd drop these guys off there and it was supposed to be saboteurs. And one guy, I don't know if it's the truth or not but he was supposed to be in Chicago or something like that and he was in a taxicab. And the taxicab was pulled over by the cops and he says “I surrender.” He thought that they caught him. Now I don't know if that's the truth or not what, that's what I was told.

                15:38    And I used to read some of these records. Because their records were always accessible to us. I used to read the records and actually I read Al Capone's and his was the only one that I knew of that read “Occupation: Gangster.” Most of them were Truck Driver or Salesman or something. But his occupation was Gangster.

  Speaker 3:          15:54    Do the records that you read tell why they were sent here, to this particular facility?

  Heaney:              16:02    Yeah. It would say that they were either an escape artist or they had a hard time keeping [inaudible] or incorrigible.

  Speaker 3:          16:05    Do you remember what the record said on Al Capone? Why he was sent here?

  Heaney:              16:22    I know he came from Atlanta, but… it probably was in there but I forget, I forget what the reason was.

  Speaker 3:          16:29    What about Stroud? Do you know what the record said about him [inaudible]?

  Heaney:              16:36    I can't remember to tell you the truth I can't remember what the reason was on any of those. After 30 years, I guess I... I more or less scanned through them and I kind of forget exactly, except I remembered that occupation because it struck me as being funny, “Gangster”, I'd never seen anything like that. Because they usually had some kind of occupation, Laborer, Truck Driver, or something. But I can't remember on any of them, the exact reason why they were sent here. I do know the general reasons, that they were escape artists or they were troublemakers. We had a lot of the Army prisoners here to you know?

  Ellery:   17:14    Yeah that's a surprise but then you look at the statistics.

  Heaney:              17:16    In fact this guy Barnes, he was an inmate that was one of the… I think he's living around this area but he was an Indian, young Indian and I guess they had troubles with him on the reservation. Because we had a lot of Indians too. Because they were thorough people you know. He was one of the ones that was in that '46 riot and they were executed. But they didn't execute him because he was a...

                17:47    In fact he was a guy that came back and told a few things. Some of the things, I forget exactly what he said, I didn't think were true, but he was here a lot longer than I was, some of the incidents that were supposed to happen. To my way of thinking, I don't think the guards or officers or whatever you want to call them were that bad. There were a few that were semi-sadistic but I think in the main, the guy just wanted to do his job. That's why I think that movie about Robert Stroud was pretty factual. It showed the guards. They just wanted to just do their time, just a regular job. They didn't want to take it out on anybody. They kind of made you that way. It was a “me against you” type attitude after a while with some of them.

  Ellery:   18:33    Yeah, it would be. How about this, your letter of commendation from Warden Swope. Tell us about that in 1950.

  Heaney:              18:40    Okay. I was down here waiting. I think I was sitting right here at the time. And it was during the evening meal and I don't know what started it but I think at the time I knew there was a lot of grumblings about the food. There were always grumblings about the food but the food was getting so they couldn't stand it. And evidently, we had an inclination there was going to be a riot in the mess hall. Because we had informers, everybody had informers. They'd get paid off with candy bars or cigarettes. So we got a call down here, all available officers in the area go up to the mess hall because there's a riot up there so I was issued a carbine and I went to the catwalk on the outside and then I remember looking inside and they were just tearing the place apart. And I felt sorry for the... Just the tables were being thrown up and all the silverware's getting thrown around.

  Ellery:   19:54    Was there officers in there?

  Heaney:              19:55    Officers in there too.

  Ellery:   19:56    Trying to protect themselves?

  Heaney:              19:59    Trying to protect themselves. And we didn't know when they were going to pull those gas deals. You know they had those gas canisters up there for full scale riots. They were just about to but they didn't do it. And I got a combination because I was there but I was very fortunate I didn't have to go inside. I was from the outside I had carbine.

  Ellery:   20:22    So you didn't have to shoot anybody?

  Heaney:              20:25    I did not shoot anybody no. No that would've been the last. Remember you mentioned that Thompson sub-machine gun, that would probably be the last thing you'd ever use because it's inaccurate, it fires all over the place. We've got to fire it down there, that's the worst thing. That's before we used to put on earmuffs and I couldn't even hear for a day.

  Ellery:   20:49    Down there in the rifle range.

  Heaney:              20:50    In that rifle range. An indoor rifle range, can you imagine. You had to shoot a Thompson sub-machine gun in that thing, in that thing without earplugs. We had to shoot the revolver, we had to shoot the 30 Odd 6 [rifle], we had to shoot the carbine. The only thing I never shot was the gas gun. Of course you just put a shell in and just aim it in a general direction.

  Speaker 3:          21:12    So that dining hall disturbance, the way that pretty much ended was just that there were enough officers present that [crosstalk]--

  Heaney:              21:21    I think more than that they just wanted to get their point over. It was a way to get rid of their frustrations. In other words, it's like a guy going on strike for more wages or something. That's their way of showing grievances, I mean real grievances. And actually they were bitching about it for a long time but that's the main, main way of getting their point over is that it's a riot. No officers were hurt. They made sure of that I guess. The word was out, the word was out. Let's do it at a certain time and throw the tables up, just really mess it up and get our point over that we just don't like this food. There going on like a mission. Once in a while somebody would put some soap in the food. So the inmate back there would be dissatisfied, he'd throw soap in the food and boy that really made them mad. And no matter how bad the food was they always kind of looked forward to that because that's the only time they really got together.

                22:16    They did talk. They tried to keep it down, the talking down because previous to the war, World War II, they weren't allowed to talk hardly at all. And I remember in D-Block, quite a bit of the recreation in there was playing chess. Each one would have a chess board and they'd holler up to the next guy [crosstalk]--

  Ellery:   22:36    So that’s when they could talk to one another.

  Heaney:              22:38    Oh they talked to each other. They'd say… one of the main two words that were used, particularly in D-Block, was the initials of M.F. Everybody was an M.F. and everything that they talked about was M.F. That was number one. They couldn't even say nothing without M.F. Like it was M.F. rook would go to the M.F. king or the M.F. queen would take care of the M.F… that's all you'd ever hear you know.

  Ellery:   23:10    Well where did they have the chess sets from? Were they ordered those, or given those?

  Heaney:              23:13    Yeah they were given the chess sets, even in D-Block, unless they were… These were the guys in D-Block for a while that seemed to be getting better, so they allowed them to play the chess. If they were still rebellious, they wouldn't allow them to have that game of chess. But these were the longer term inmates that they still felt weren't ready to go back to population yet but they allowed them a few pieces because they may be in isolation for about five or six months or something like that. And they felt well let's give them a chess.

                23:53    Can I have another cup of coffee?

  Ellery:   23:56    Yeah sure.

  Speaker 3:          23:58    How common would it be to have somebody in one of those lower cells say 9 to 14 with the outside door open, you know would that [inaudible]-

  Heaney:              24:00    If you what?

  Speaker 3:          24:07    If you just leave the outside door open, you'd have a pretty much just be a light cell in a metal box.

  Heaney:              24:12    Oh you mean for the “hole”?

  Speaker 3:          24:14    Yeah.

  Heaney:              24:17    I think I remember I leaving those doors open once in a while. For a while.

  Speaker 3:          24:24    And nothing [inaudible] is the fact that solitary confinement would be in tight security. Sometimes men would ask to be put there, if they were being threatened at all?

  Heaney:              24:33    Oh yeah. You mean to go to isolation?

  Speaker 3:          24:33    Yeah.

  Heaney:              24:35    Oh definitely yeah. They wouldn't ask to go to the “hole” but they would ask to go to isolation, yeah, sure.

  Speaker 3:          24:41    Yeah definitely.

  Heaney:              24:41    Yeah they'd get ahold of one of us and tell us they feel that their life is being threatened. And once in a while, I don't know how they'd find out, I don't know whether it was an officer or what but they'd find out who the informant was and you'd almost have to get them out of the prison then. Because you can imagine how they treat an informant.

  Ellery:   25:03    Yeah I can imagine that went pretty bad.

  Heaney:              25:04    I personally didn't know any informants because they wouldn't let the average officer know who the informant is too because it would get back to the inmates probably, who the informant was. So I think only the ones who knew the informers were the Lieutenants, maybe the Captain of the guard and the Warden. But none of us, I didn't know who it was anyway.

  Speaker 3:          25:27    That's too much of a chance for the informers.

  Heaney:              25:30    Oh sure. No way in the world 125 officers could know who an informer was and not get to the inmates. Somebody would say it.

  Ellery:   25:42    Frank, this boat's going to leave and there will be another one in 45 minutes that you could-

  Heaney:              25:46    I could wait around that's all right.

  Ellery:   25:47    ... great. That'd be great for us.

  Heaney:              25:48    I've got time. I took the day off. I work 24 hours, I've been a firefighter that's why I work 24 hours. I've been meaning to come over here for a long time, you know you keep putting it off, putting it off, and then well I'm just going to come over here and do it. See I'm always going to bring somebody over but then I'm coming over myself because they may want to know some information and stuff I might give them like I'm doing now.

  Ellery:   26:16                   Anytime you want to come back just come on back and we will        

                                take you around, for today if you'd like or another time maybe 

                                better day to take you anywhere you want to go.

  Speaker 3:          26:24    Just like right now. Like you were saying the shower room.

  Heaney:              26:27    The shower room yeah. [crosstalk]

  Ellery:   26:28    The shower room is all stripped. [crosstalk]

  Heaney:              26:29    Is that right?

  Speaker 3:          26:29    There aren't any partitions in there. It just look like a large open shower room.

  Heaney:              26:35    Who tore it down? You think the Indians did that or?

  Ellery:   26:36    Either during Occupation [Indian] or GSA [General Services Administration] themselves. Or when the prison was dismantled, a lot of things left then. Most of the furniture for the apartments were all taken by people that were living in them in '62 and '63.

  Speaker 3:          26:47    So we have this whole thing above here too. In reference to the towers we referred, what is referred to as the main tower [inaudible]-

  Heaney:              27:03    On the main tower, the one they're talking about is right on top of the cellhouse. That was the main tower and I know that they were going to use it just occasionally because they felt you couldn't see enough things up there.

  Speaker 3:          27:17    Did the others, like the Hill tower have better visibility?

  Heaney:              27:19    Yeah the Hill tower was the one over here on the...the road tower… This was a dark tower. I'm trying to remember what all these towers were.

  Speaker 3:          27:34    Is this after when you were here? [inaudible]

  Ellery:   27:45    So the main tower was actually on top of the-

  Heaney:              27:47    On top of the main cell block yeah. And I know they didn't have that manned all the time.

  Speaker 3:          27:50    Yeah but then all of these other towers would have been manned, there more on the perimeter. Yeah, right.

  Heaney:              27:57    Yeah, right. See instead of calling a guy a captain they call him a custodial manager. They changed the names. Actual he was a captain.

  Ellery:   28:09    Here's our map and maybe you can point him out on here. It's the only map we have of our tour guide

  Heaney:              28:11    This is the old power house here. And this was the officers quarters. I lived in here for a while.

  Ellery:   28:23    You lived in 6402 huh?

  Heaney:              28:24    Yeah.

  Ellery:   28:25    Right on.

  Heaney:              28:26    Let’s see number three, that would be a salad bar. And then I lived here in this old army barracks here.

  Ellery:   28:35    Are you married?

  Heaney:              28:37    I wasn't married at the time so I was in the bachelor's quarters. And I lived here about a year and I got so I felt like an inmate myself. So I just started going back and forth. I lived in Berkeley but see the reason… it was a hassle, I had to come across the Bay Bridge, fight the traffic and at that time we took the boat from the foot of Van Ness Avenue which is off Fort Mason. And we took the boat from there which is right of that pier, the fishing pier. I didn't know if you knew that.

  Ellery:   29:12    Yeah I knew that.

  Heaney:              29:14    Yeah that's where we took the boat from. So sometimes it took me two hours from the time I left Berkeley before I went to work it would be two hours before I got home. So that's four hours of just traveling time. So I lived on and off every so often. That's why I lived here for a while, then I went back home again. Then I got tired, I came back here. That's where I got put in these other quarters. I lived there and then I finally just stopped going there.

  Speaker 3:          29:41    You did pay a minimal fee though for your barracks?

  Heaney:              29:44    Very minimal, I paid, it couldn't have been more than five dollars a month.

  Ellery:   29:49    So you could afford to move out whenever you really, it was getting to you too much?

  Heaney:              29:56    That was the only reason. Economically, it's the best advantage to be here on the island. Because you didn't have any transportation costs and it's so cheap to live here. I didn't like the food. The food was terrible. In fact, there used to be a delicatessen that we used to go over to on…you know where the church is? That's where we used to all go to mass if you're Catholic. There was a church up the street there.

  Ellery:   30:15    St. Lukes?

  Heaney:              30:17    Not St. Lukes, no. It's about four or five blocks up on Van Ness. Anyway, we used to go to church and there was a delicatessen, that's where all the guards, because they used to have good sandwiches, we'd go in there and buy our food for lunches and things like that.

  Ellery:   30:33    How about your commissary up here?

  Heaney:              30:35    Well then the married guys would buy the stuff there. Sometimes the single guys instead of making the stuff. Because see we had no place to keep things. We didn't have refrigerators or nothing. We had no place to keep stuff so we'd either have to eat up here. Once in a while you'd see breakfast because they'd at least have post toasties or something like that. But the other food was terrible, I couldn't stand the food.

  Ellery:   30:57    You mean in the inmate dining room.

  Heaney:              31:00    Yeah did you know where the officers ate there?

  Ellery:   31:02    I didn't know that [crosstalk]

  Heaney:              31:03    Yeah well where we ate is, when you go right through where the steam tables are, you go through the bars area and it's right to your right. Off to the right. That room in there that's where we ate. That was our eating place.

  Speaker 3:          31:20    I've got a question. There's a little tiny area, it looked like there was a tub or something located just beyond the metal doors to the right, passed the serving line going to your right just before you get to the door, there was a little tiny tub. It looked like you used it for washing something. It's a sink and it's tiled in and at the bottom of it there's a little area for the water to go down. What do you call that? What was that? I have people asking on my tour and we haven't got a clue what that was.

  Heaney:              31:54    I guess if I see it I would know.

  Speaker 3:          31:56    I thought it was a meat bath or something but it's in the wrong part of the kitchen for that.

  Heaney:              32:00    Would it be for washing vegetables or washing your hands.

  Speaker 3:          32:05    It's low.

  Heaney:              32:05    It's low?

  Speaker 3:          32:06    It's low to the ground. It's only got a rim about this high. It's just a question I-

  Heaney:              32:11    Yeah right I can't recall that particular thing. If I seen it I might recall what it is. But I can't remember what it is. I can't remember what that is.

  Speaker 3:          32:28    And how about the band room as long as we're talking about physical...

  Ellery:   32:29    Recreational.

  Heaney:              32:32    Well the band room was where the clothing room and where the showers were. That area that you walked down those stairs and you go in there. I remember, I think I told you about that incident when I first started to work here. They put me down in the band room and I had about a dozen inmates playing their instruments there. And I was there by myself. And all the sudden they stop playing and start staring at me. I was sitting there and they just stared at me. And I start sweating little bit, I couldn't figure out what's going on. And then I wanted to start scratching everywhere, but I didn't want to scratch because I didn't want them to laugh at me. But then I'd start scratching and then they'd grin. They'd keep on looking at me. And they did it for about 15, 20 minutes I guess. And then they gave up, they had their kicks on me I guess. And they really did.

  Ellery:   33:28    How many of them were down there?

  Heaney:              33:30    Oh about a dozen I guess.

  Speaker 3:          33:31    Well what time did they get them to be down there to play the instruments?

  Heaney:              33:35    About an hour or so as I remember.

  Ellery:   33:39    Were you unarmed at the time?

  Heaney:              33:40    Oh completely, always unarmed. Always. Always unarmed. The older officers carried blackjacks. I never carried a blackjack because they'd probably use it on me.

  Speaker 3:          33:52    Was there anybody you could radio for help or anything?

  Heaney:              33:54    Oh yeah.

  Ellery:   33:55    What if they had jumped you at that point?

  Heaney:              33:57    Well I could've hollered and-

  Ellery:   34:01    Oh somebody upstairs would hear?

  Heaney:              34:08    ... sure. You probably know that…They're not going to attack you unless you are means of escape or you have provoked them. They are not going to attack you. Why would they attack you?

  Ellery:   34:18    Do time, get sent in “hole.”

  Heaney:              34:19    Oh they know if they assault an officer they're really going to get it. And in fact the other ones… if somebody tried to they'd beat them up before they got to you because they feel they might be involved.

  Speaker 3:          34:34    Just being around.

  Heaney:              34:35    Just being around. I have never been assaulted deliberately. I've been assaulted trying to break up things like that in the yard. Most of it was not so much fights as there was knifing. See knifing is the way they liked to do it. What they do is, okay somebody was a “stoolie” or somebody was making a group of guys mad okay? They get him down to the yard and they have it worked out ahead of time. And then they get a shiv, some makeshift thing, a fork or something that they would've gotten. Made it into a knife.

  Ellery:   35:09    Found steak bones yeah.

  Heaney:              35:11    Okay all the sudden you see a gathering of inmates and then they all walk away and the guy would either have a thingy in him or it be way inside him or somebody would hide it. Usually they'd let it lay there because they didn't want it on them. Okay the guy got knifed. But I've never seen anybody get killed, they didn't want to go to death. But they wanted the guys to know what's going on. It’s nice and fast, everybody walk away, who did it? Nobody knows who did it. What happened? I don't know what happened. The guy is down there and he's knifed and he's bleeding. Nobody knows what happened.

  Ellery:   35:52    Who did you put his assault charge or anything like that? 

  Heaney:              35:54    Nobody.

  Ellery:   35:55    A bunch of them?

  Heaney:              35:58    Nobody. Nobody knew. You'd clear out the yard then and put them back in the cell and nobody would get blamed. Unless there was a “stoolie” that would turn a guy in later on. If you see an incident, you’re an inmate, there's no way in the world you'd ever tell a guard that you seen [crosstalk] right. You'd be the next one out in the yard getting stabbed.

  Speaker 3:          36:20    You mentioned a system of informers or whatever there are people that-

  Heaney:              36:24    That's what I understand.

  Speaker 3:          36:25    Yeah.

  Heaney:              36:26    I don't know that. I don't know that for a complete fact because they never told any of us ordinary officers.

  Ellery:   36:31    I had the impression that you'd be put into solitary, mainly for the more major offenses at Alcatraz, they would be considered to be assaulting an officer, assaulting another inmate or other personnel.

  Heaney:              36:46    If you were caught. But see this is knifing an inmate. This is knifing an inmate and nobody knows who knifed him. Because you've got say a dozen guys.

  Ellery:   37:00    You can't see through them.

  Heaney:              37:01    You can't see through them.

  Ellery:   37:01    You just see this... By the time-

  Heaney:              37:02    And they do go fast. It's a sudden merging of things. And the guys getting stabbed knows he's probably going to get stabbed too but what can he do. He can't go to a guard and tell him because… He knows he’s going to get it sometime.

  Speaker 3:          37:18    Were there very many people that were in protective custody while you were there?

  Heaney:              37:21    Oh yeah.

  Speaker 3:          37:21    These were people that were kept as “stool pigeons” and were known to be-

  Heaney:              37:25    That's what I understand, now I don't know. And actually the average officers didn't know who these so called “stool pigeons” were. There must've been “stool pigeons” because evidently, the “brass” seemed to find out things that we never knew about and the only way they could find out about it is from an inmate. And we wouldn’t be privy to this information, we had 125 officers. Somehow that's going to get to one of the inmates.

  Ellery:   37:55    And then the grapevine-

  Heaney:              37:55    Sure, through the grapevine.

  Speaker 3:          37:58    We had another man who was a correctional officer and spoke to us on the tape and I heard him say that he thought that the value of human life, in terms of guards, was not that high. He said that if you were injured or killed in the line of duty, you could be replaced. Did you have that feeling? That your life was not at a premium, that they might put you in dangerous situations?

  Heaney:              38:20    No. I don't think so. There was like what you talked about the “no hostage” stuff, that was for our protection. I felt it was for our protection. Because if they could take you at anytime and keep you as a hostage and get away with it, then it wouldn't have much protection. And I felt that was a protection. What I disliked about this place was it was so depressing. You'd come to work here and it was depressing. Just constant.

  Ellery:   38:55    Tell us about the depression.

  Speaker 3:          38:55    Yeah I think we share a lot of these.

  Ellery:   39:01    We share that, that's for sure. The place itself is depressing.

  Heaney:              39:04    Depressing yeah.

  Ellery:   39:05    But what depressed you the most about it? That these guys were just here forever or just you in particular?

  Heaney:              39:11    I worried about myself. I didn't care. At first I had a little bit of concern for the inmates. But I am more concerned for myself. You get this way. You get hard or you get self-protective. You don't care about them. Whatever they did to themselves, through own makings, you care about yourself. You're almost like an inmate yourself because you're locked up in that stupid cellhouse for eight hours. At least you get away from a block. But then when you live here you get this same atmosphere too. Particularly if you are single and there's nobody else. You can talk to the guys, the other single guys but then you run out of conversation.

  Speaker 3:          39:54    What about the recreation hall?

  Heaney:              39:56    Well that was kind of nice. Broke it up. We had kind of a Mickey Mouse bowling alley down there. And because you had to set the pins yourself, you had to go up there. They had no automatic pin setters. They didn't even have anything that would set it in there. You had to go up there and put them up yourself and then go back and roll the ball. And I forget, I think it may have been one of those. Did you ever hear of the “midget type”?

  Speaker 3:          40:23    Oh yeah.  Duck pins.

  Heaney:              40:25    Duck pins, I think it was a duck pin as I remember.

  Speaker 3:          40:29    Well maybe later on they added pin setters because in the industry area up there, if you crawl around up there, there are two runs with pin setters.

  Heaney:              40:34    Oh yeah? They might've added the pin setters too. I remember having to set those pins up there. That kind of bugs you. And it wasn't used that much, it was dusty.

  Ellery:   40:47    What else was there? In the-

  Heaney:              40:51    Well upstairs... Well in the lower portion I generally remember just that bowling alley. Upstairs they had a recreation area. They had a few weddings when I was here, receptions. Where the officers got married.

  Ellery:   41:04    Was Tiny married here when you were here? She's one of the people that got married here. Tiny. I guess she was a daughter…

  Heaney:              41:10    Well there's a daughter. I might have been here at that time. There was a father and a son that worked here. In fact I knew the guy his name was Hart I think. He was the officer that was here at the time of the Indians came in here. He's a real nice guy. And he was working for the GSA [General Services Administration] then I guess. You went from the Department of Justice to GSA. And watched that and then the Indians kicked them off. And he was a real nice guy. He was working here when I was here. He was an old timer on the island. He was one of the last ones to leave.

  Ellery:   41:41    So what else was in the officers club?

  Heaney:              41:45    Upstairs was kind of an auditorium type thing. And we used to have dances there and we used to play a lot of cards. This was kind of pre-television days because I worked here from '48 to '50 and T.V. in '48 to '50 was very minimal. And another disadvantage was that we had already DC [Direct Current] power at the time. Back then it was only DC power and actually you had to have a converter for anything you wanted to work on, any machinery or television.

  Ellery:   42:16    Record players, juke box or something like that.

  Heaney:              42:19    Right you couldn’t run anything like that because you had to have a convertor. All you could have was incandescent lights. And so we had to have a converter for everything, toasters and everything had to have converters. It was antiquated electric system.

  Speaker 3:          42:31    Was there ever any alcohol available for the guards? When you have these big weddings and dances like this, were you allowed to have a bar open or anything like that?

  Heaney:              42:43    I remember drinking. But I don't remember actually having a bar there. I think at the weddings we drank but they encouraged sobriety and I do remember it was real military type. When you addressed a captain, he was almost like it was in the armed forces. It was really strict. That's another thing I didn't like about it. I’m in the fire department, I’ve been in the fire department for 25 years and we have a semi-military thing but very, very minimal. You can call a guy by his first name whether he was an officer or not. But here they had a real strict system, a cast system. Like you do in the military.

  Speaker 3:          43:44    Like we have in the park service.

  Heaney:              42:43    It couldn’t have been as bad as we had it. It was really strict and we didn't socialize too much with any of the upper strata.

  Speaker 3:          43:44    That's one of the questions I've always been asked. How much interaction did they have with the warden? Did you ever go inside the warden's home ever?

  Heaney:              43:52    I went in there once.

  Speaker 3:          43:53    Do you know how many rooms he had up there?

  Heaney:              43:55    Oh it was nice. Real nice place. I only got to the lower area. But of course he had one or two inmates that used to work in there.

  Ellery:   44:06    Did they really have “Machine Gun Kelly” serve him dinner at parties. That's what we've heard spoke.

  Heaney:              44:11    No way in the world. I worked with George Kelly. George Kelly was down in the industries. He worked in the office when I worked down there and I was in charge of the shoe repair and the cleaning part. It was a small shop. I don't know if you know where that is. A real small shop off from where they had the washing machines, the dryers.

  Ellery:   44:33    Yeah I've been to that small shop.

  Heaney:              44:37    Did you ever hear of John Paul Chase? [crosstalk] Yeah I knew him. In fact Chase worked for me in that particular one and he was a guy that was caught with either “Baby Face Nelson”. He got caught in Chicago. Anyways, he used to be a rum runner up and down the coast here. He used to run in the alcohol, well scotch from Canada and from Mexico. These roads run up from Mexico and Canada. They used to have the drop like scotch or any of that stuff that was dropped in Mexico and Canada. Then they'd transport to this fast level boats that'd come down the coast and drop them off. Half Moon Bay, he told me Half Moon Bay was a place they used to make a drop. And he got away with it, he never got caught there.

                45:25    But evidently he got caught in Chicago and that I got to reading through this records. See he wouldn't tell me too much but evidently he got caught with, I think it was “Baby Face Nelson” in a shootout in Chicago. But he used to tell me about how the cops and them were always going up and down the street in armored cards. They used to shoot at each other and they had quite a time.

  Speaker 3:          45:51    Not much has changed in Chicago.

  Side 2

  Heaney:              00:02    Smaller type. Oh, he was average size, I'd say. He was Indian, and he was one of the three that was involved. They were going to execute him. They executed two of them over at San Quentin, but they commuted his sentence because of his age. Very quiet guy, never heard anything out of him, and all the time I was here, he was in isolation.

  Ellery:   00:29    You mean the “open-face” cells, right -

  Heaney:              00:33    The open-face cells, he was always in isolation. I don't know if he ever went back to population. Did he ever go back? Did you ever hear? I don't know if he went back to population or not. No? He never did go back?

  Ellery:   00:42    No.

  Heaney:              00:45    You see, the word was out on certain inmates, like him, the word was out on him. He wasn't going to get anything. We weren't going to give him anything.

  Ellery:   00:56    Give him anything, like what?

  Heaney:              00:57    Any privileges. We were going to do the best we can against him, because he was in on this thing. Of course, I wasn't here in '46, I started in '48, but there was an officer killed, I think, or shot.

  Ellery:   01:09    Yeah, a couple of them.

  Heaney:              01:11    These type of things, they tell us about, and these are the things we are supposed to remember that Robert Stroud killed an officer, and he wasn't going to get out and he wasn't going to get any more than we could give him.

  Ellery:   01:25    When did Stroud do that?

  Speaker 3:          01:25    When he killed the officer in Leavenworth?

  Heaney:              01:30    In Leavenworth? Yeah.

  Ellery:   01:31    There was a rumor that Stroud was homosexual, was there anything you ever saw that about that?

  Heaney:              01:35    I never heard, of course at the time that he was here, he was so old and he was so isolated that he had no opportunities, but I understand he killed a guy in a whorehouse in Alaska.

                01:57    He was either running the place and the guy wasn't going to pony-up with the money or something like that, he had some kind of a problem.

  Speaker 3:          02:02    The story we heard was more romantic, that it was a girlfriend or something of that order that was being mistreated.

  Ellery:   02:08    Well, that's a movie.

  Heaney:              02:09    Oh, yeah. Who knows what the truth is, even what I know may not be the truth, but I think that was what happened. That's supposed to have been what happened, that he was involved like that up in Alaska.

  Ellery:   02:23    Have we got any opinions of any other prisoners? Any other famous ones.

  Heaney:              02:30    Let's see, well, I always remember George “Machine Gun” Kelly because he's even been on television and any older person does remember him. Very distinguished fella, very well taught. He used to act as the altar boy when the Catholic priests came over, there was a Jesuit priest come over, he was the altar boy. He meticulously dressed, always -

  Ellery:   03:00    Even in prison here.

  Heaney:              03:02    Even in prison. Meticulously dressed, just the opposite they say when he first came in. He was rebellious, bad acting, hard guy to get along with, but when I was here he was doing real good time; worked in the office, did everything the way you are supposed to do, real quiet. Looked like a bank president or something. The guy was so distinguished looking. He had slightly graying hair. I understand he died of a heart attack later on back in Leavenworth or something. But he was a real distinguished guy, and as I say, he worked on industries next to me and this Paul Chase, he worked with me, and he was quite a character. He was a nice guy, seemed like. He was always on me to bring him candy bars; always on me to bring something. I never did bring anything to him. I was tempted to because he was such a nice guy. Not razor blades, but maybe candy bars, but then I always had in the back of my mind, once I started, I'm stuck. He's got me.

  Ellery:   03:57    Why do you think they wanted razor blades? You'd mentioned that. Suicide? Kill somebody? Use them as weapons or what?

  Heaney:              04:02    No. Because the razor blades that they used were terrible. They only issued razor blades. They were government-issued razor blades, real dull, although they had sharpening devices, but they wanted a good shave, and they only had this cold water to use, you know? And an old bar of soap, so then they’d like to have a nice sharp razor to shave by. And they had to shave, they had to shave, you know.

  Ellery:   04:29    Yeah, that's right. You have to shave.

  Heaney:              04:32    You have to shave. We used to go around, did you ever see a shaving board? We had a board with all of the blades on it, yeah, and go and issue it and then go back and pick them up. And those places, you know the door opening…we had to keep all the inmates away from there. I don't know why. It was so stupid, because those inmates knew, they'd say, "We know how to open it." I says, "I know, but I can't have you around here." So we had to get them away, so they wouldn't know how to open the door, any child can learn how to open the thing, but that was one of the tricks you had to do. You just had to keep them away from there.

                05:11    They had to make sure that they never read one of these assignments, you know like the assignment thing? You had to make sure that they never, ever read anything like that.

  Ellery:   05:19    So they would know where you were.

  Heaney:              05:20    Where you were, where the job assignments were being assigned.

  Speaker 3:          05:22    So which towers were unmanned?

  Heaney:              05:26    Right. They wouldn't have allowed anything like that.

  Ellery:   05:28    Were the towers all, the five of the, were they were always manned all the time?

  Heaney:              05:32    They were generally always manned, even the one that was...that was the Hill Tower, I think, over there. I didn't see it, because I couldn't see from up there.

  Speaker 3:          05:45    [inaudible] From the west side down.

  Heaney:              05:47    Oh, they took that one off. It's down now. There used to be a tower there. That was manned 24 hours a day. This was manned 24 hours a day.

                05:56    The one that...there's a little one there that's on the catwalk up there, that was only manned, that was for us to use in bad weather. We were supposed to come out of it every so often and walk up and down the…those are lousy jobs. God, it was boring. Cold, boring, you've got to walk up and down. Jeez, I hate it.

  Speaker 3:          06:19    What, outside the rec yard, you're talking about, catwalk?

  Ellery:   06:23    And also the that goes over to the shops.

  Heaney:              06:25    Yeah, that was manned, where the framework was, that was only manned once in a while, and then there was one way down at the shop area. That was manned when they worked in the industries and they took them off when the industries closed at 4 o'clock, and they brought them up.

                06:42    They used to bring them up and then come up that side of the hill, and they used to go through a metal detector. No, they didn't go through a metal detector then. There was a metal detector from the entrance of the main cellblock down into the yard, and we used to “shake down”, personally, “shake down” the inmates going in and out of the kitchen area. That was the personal “shake down.” You make them stand up there and you got to go through -

  Speaker 3:          07:07    Oh, what, the cooking crew?

  Heaney:              07:10    The cooking crew, and the mess hall crew all had to be personally “shook down.” Not taking the clothes off, like they would them put in isolation, but just go through your regular search.

  Speaker 3:          07:23    What's the longest you know of anyone staying in isolation?

  Heaney:              07:28    Couple of weeks, that I remember.

  Speaker 3:          07:28    Do you remember what the offense was? Are there any real offenses that stick out in your mind for a person staying in the “dark cell”?

  Heaney:              07:37    Assault.

  Speaker 3:          07:38    On an officer?

  Heaney:              07:39    Oh, really on an officer, yeah. That would -

  Ellery:   07:42    You had mentioned, when we were walking down, that the biggest reason, if you had to say, of all the reasons that somebody went to the “dark cells”, is homosexual behavior.

  Heaney:              07:53    I wouldn't say that was what we thought the most dangerous offense is.

                07:58    Anything to do with an officer is the most grievous offense. Anything other than that is minor.

  Speaker 3:          08:03    There was the board who actually decided whether the men went into solitary and for how long, I believe.

  Heaney:              08:09    I don't remember them having a board, I always remember mainly…but they did sometimes have…the Associate Warden generally ran it, the Custodial Manager, or the Captain of the Guards, or the Captain of the Officers, whatever you want to call it. He would do it in lieu of the Associate Warden. Maybe on a more grievous offense they’d have more of them, I don't remember, because I didn’t go…I only seen a couple of them when they went down there, because you would have to bring somebody down there. I tried to avoid it because I didn't want to be involved in it. Because I didn't want to go down there and-

                08:44    Well, not so much then. Generally, you do it on your days off and they made you come back, they didn't pay you. I didn't want to go back there.

  Ellery:   08:53    Where did they have it? You said they didn't have it in D Block. They had it in the main cell house.

  Heaney:              08:59    They may have had D Block, ones for D Block, but I remember it being down at the end where you first come in, when you come to the main cell block and where you got the visiting things off to the right down there. Down in that area, down in there.

  Ellery:   09:18    Sort of near A Block.

  Heaney:              09:20    Yes.

  Speaker 3:          09:22    [inaudible] you're coming in there and it's -

  Heaney:              09:24    Oh yeah, oh yeah. It would be right up there, right off the Warden - I was right, we came up those stairs, we'd walk through the Warden's office. That was a real nice place. That was the Warden's office, that's where I got hired.

  Speaker 3:          09:36    Okay.

  Heaney:              09:38    And that control place, that's where...see, they had these sliding doors. Here's where the sliding doors...somebody took them off.

  Ellery:   09:45    It's been gone for years, I’m sure.

  Heaney:              09:48    Those doors were never opened at the same time. One had to be closed before the other could be opened.

  Ellery:   09:57    Even the Armorer couldn't open all six doors to freedom, from the inside cell house to the outside.

  Heaney:              10:03    Yeah, right. They always had a check system in there to make sure couldn’t come all the way through.

  Ellery:   10:08    You had to go in like locks and then go back [inaudible].

  Heaney:              10:14    But like I said, the homosexual activities generally precipitated most of the incidents -

  Ellery:   10:24    Because we have heard from other officers that generally in the shower or something like that, it wasn't really going to cause problems they’d ignore it. They'd ignore it in some cases, or -

  Heaney:              10:39    Maybe they usually did –

  Speaker 3:          10:39    You'd have to take them in and report them to the -

  Heaney:              10:46    Well, I witnessed an incident down in the yard one time. There was two inmates and the yard is not quite the place to do, to delve into too many activities of that nature, except that...let's just say that one was stroking the organ of the other one, and I witnessed it and I walked the other way. They didn't see me, nobody seen me witness it, and I walked away because it would have meant that I would have turned them in, and that offense probably would have meant, "You are bad boys and you are not going to do that again, are you? Don't do it again." And that's what it would amount to.

  Speaker 3:          11:30    But they wouldn't have been put into isolation for that.

  Heaney:              11:31    Oh, I don't think so -

  Speaker 3:          11:32    [inaudible].

  Heaney:              11:32    I don't think so, no. I don't think so. [crosstalk] Unless they were connected too many times. It depends how many times they got involved in it. Yeah, if they thought that they would keep doing it every day or every week or something then they'd figure, "Well, let's put them away for a while and maybe they won't do it for a while."

  Ellery:   11:48    I wonder why. Why did they want…because this was jealousies among other inmates or something -

  Heaney:              11:54    Why would they want to stem this type of activity?

  Ellery:   11:57    What? It's a prison, I can see -

  Heaney:              11:58    The reason that they stem this is because they felt that it would be out of control. Control is the number one thing if you...once you allow a person to do something then it mushrooms and if one guy will do it, they'll all do it. They have to crack down sometimes, because then it would be -

  Ellery:   12:18    It couldn’t have been from any moral thing that was evil or anything, would they?

  Heaney:              12:22    It's not from a moral standpoint at all, I don't think. It's mainly for control. It's where do you make your stop? You've got to and anything like that…They felt it would have a mushrooming effect. And where would they stop doing it? Actually, you had no privacy here, so where could you find private areas? It's not like having a bathhouse in San Francisco or something like that, you know?

                12:51    It could get into bribing the guards. Maybe like Stroud wrote about, like maybe bribing a guard for having a private area or something.

  Speaker 3:          13:00    Maybe it was another part of the prison you weren't aware of.

  Heaney:              13:04    Yeah. It took me a lot of years to even talk about it, to even think about it, but I was propositioned quite a few times myself by some of the inmates. I think at the time I was pretty naïve and -

  Ellery:   13:23    Because you were young, too -

  Heaney:              13:24    I was so young and I know that if I was an inmate coming in here, I would have been involved, willingly or unwillingly, into a lot of homosexual activities.

                13:41    [crosstalk] Because of the fact that they all went after the young ones.

  Ellery:   13:42    Was there a lot of prison rape here and stuff like that?

  Heaney:              13:47    No, because of the fact there wasn't an opportunity to like they talk about. There probably is in San Quentin where there's a -

  Ellery:   13:57    Like Short Eyes [1977 film], they just have a real heavy, you know people are being raped.

  Heaney:              14:03    There was a lot of forced, where you say, "You better do it because if you don't I'm going to get you later on." But there's no opportunity, there isn't anybody maybe coming down the cell block and maybe somebody yanking them off to the side. There's none of that. It was just that, you had better be my chick. They used to call them chicks. That was the guy's chick or boyfriend or something like that, and they would make a pre-arranged time and -

  Speaker 3:          14:33    I mean they time, it was a [inaudible] process, they didn't have to drag somebody aside right away.

  Heaney:              14:32    They had all the time in the world. They didn't have to do any forcible rape, they just bided their time because there was no privacy for it. They had to get a spot. I felt sorry for the young guys coming in, they were going to get it in just a matter of time. They just couldn't avoid it.

  Ellery:   14:58    Seems like your job then was just trying to break it up, it was like holding back a tide, you know?

  Heaney:              15:05    Yeah.

  Ellery:   15:06    Like you say, it was inevitable, it was going to happen.

  Heaney:              15:09    I got propositioned twice and I just thought maybe the guys were friendly at first. As I said, I was kind of naïve and I just thought that a lot of them look friendly and a lot of times they were friendly because they had nothing else...a lot of them they were friendly because eventually they would proposition me for razor blades, candy bars, tailor-made cigarettes, cigars, anything they weren't allowed. Books that they weren't allowed, there's certain kind of books, magazines. And they'd try to get in your good graces in order to get these things from you eventually, and that's what I found. So I was suspicious of anybody after a while.

  Ellery:   15:49    Yeah.

  Heaney:              15:49    Because eventually if they were friendly to you for over an amount of time then they were after you for something.

  Speaker 3:          15:55    Were you ever propositioned by any fellow guards?

  Heaney:              15:59    No, I never had any problem. No. No, it was just two inmates, and they had beat around the bush about it and then finally they just came out and said what they wanted. They said, "Mind if I look [inaudible]" or something like that. Then I knew, okay, you know. Then I always stayed away from then on, because I thought they were friendly for just...but then I figured out well, that was why they were friendly.

  Ellery:   16:30    They could have gone to “the hole” just for that -

  Heaney:              16:34    Oh, if I had turned them in. Yeah, of course I never said it. I’d wouldn’t say anything like that. How could I go up and…you know. They didn't mean to do nothing, all they did was proposition me. I would have laughing stock of the place, you know.

                               The first day I came to work I remember walking down Broadway, the main cell block, walking down there and I don't know if I said this before, but I was with an older guard, an older officer and they were whistling at me and they were saying different things about how they would like to get me, you know? And whistles and the rest of that stuff.

  Ellery:   17:14    Was that pretty common like whenever a new officer comes in? That would be a sign of disrespect sort of thing, wouldn't it?

  Heaney:              17:21    Yeah. This would be for guys up above, though, and you didn't know where they were because these were the ones that were out of sight. You didn't actually hear them. They knew you were coming down and they could see you and it was after you passed their presence and the guy says, he told them before, he says, "They may be putting it on you because you're a new screw here and they're going to really lay it on you, and you're so young." I looked about 18 years old, that's why the Warden didn't want to have anything to do with me. He knew I was going to have problems, which I did, and they whistled and hollered and said dirty things to me and he said, "Don't say nothing, don't look around, try to look impersonal as possible", and that's what I did. I was highly nervous, but I tried to just look straight ahead and walk down the cell block.

  Speaker 3:          18:11    So what sort of preparation training did they give you?

  Heaney:              18:15    At first I didn't have too much. Did you see my time there? I got this actual training certificate in, what year was it -

  Speaker 3:          18:23    That was 1950, it looked like. It was after you'd been here two years.

  Heaney:              18:32    Yeah. I was here for a while. So they give me...I wasn't here too much longer before I left. So they had me down, this was a formal thing, they had me down there and taught me a few ways to handle individuals...Jiu Jitsu, I guess, in a way, and a lot of firing guns. I had a lot of that. It wasn't as highly trained as you'd think.

  Speaker 3:          19:02    Did you ever work in a gun gallery here, I might have missed that.

  Heaney:              19:05    Yeah. I think I worked every job there is, because eventually, if you're here for about two years, you're going to work every job. I worked in every gun gallery; every tower. I've worked in -

  Ellery:   19:14    What do you think was the best job? Or the least boring.

  Heaney:              19:19    The best job was what they call Island Patrol, because it was interesting. You walked around, except, one time I was on Island Patrol and I was fairly new and the older guards they loved to put the new guys on, they'd say, "Be careful when you walk down by the industries at night time, because once in a while the inmates get out." And no way in the world are they going to get out, but I didn't know that. They had a stupid foghorn up there and that thing will scare the hell out of you, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack going through there. I had a .38 [handgun] out and I was just scared to death, because I looked through every corner and then I still remember my Frankenstein monster when I was a kid or something like that, and listening to these tales that they tell me about. In fact, that was one of the scariest times we ever went through, was just my own imagination going through there, and telling me that there was a couple inmates maybe loose down there, you know?

  Speaker 3:          20:20    I'm going to have to leave in a second, but there's one question I've always wanted to ask people who were here and that is, at the time you were here, did you ever feeling that you were a part of a really incredible thing in history? A historical moment, or did you feel like you were just doing a job?

  Heaney:              20:33    That's why I went to work here, I felt it, but then after a while, you don't get that feeling anymore, you just get a feeling you've just got to come to work and you just put in your eight hours and you leave. I did at first, and then I got so that I disliked it, and disliked it, and then I hated it, and it's like some kind of a job you just think, "Well, what am I going to do? I've got to do something else." And I think I was about ready to quit and the Korean War started, see? And I was in the reserve and I got recalled back in the services and when I got out of the service, I didn't quit until I passed examination for the fire department. I went to the fire department and when I passed the probation, I came back over here and quit. But, remember you were talking about hardly anybody ever coming over here, which is very true. But we had movie stars over here all the time.

  Speaker 3:          21:20    Yeah?

  Heaney:              21:21    Oh, we had movie stars, what they would do is they would write to somebody in Washington or something. It was tough getting on this island. They didn't allow too many people, but they had connections, and I was always touring some movie star through here.

  Ellery:   21:35    Not through the cell house, though.

  Heaney:              21:36    Oh yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. These were some of the ones that I remember, they were making a movie, it was Sam Spade at the time, it was Howard the Duck?

  Ellery:   21:49    Oh yeah?

  Heaney:              21:50    He went through here. I seen him go by me, you know. There was a guy named John Sutton. He was an old time movie star, but who else?

  Ellery:   22:01    They'd show them everything, huh? Like, just -

  Heaney:              22:03    Oh yeah, we'd take them to the main cell block, we'd take them to the mess hall, we'd take them up to the hospital, we'd take them down to Industries. They weren't allowed in the yard at the time that there was inmates in the yard, we wouldn't let them do that, but we'd bring them to all the places. I don't think we brought them to D Block, we didn't bring them to D Block. We brought people, like penal people, people that came from other areas, they could come through it. We always had visitors, but mainly movie stars...people disconnected with the penal service, but we had foreign visitors from other penal institutions that we'd take to every place, even D Block.

  Ellery:   22:41    Inmates would be sitting right there in those cells?

  Heaney:              22:44    Oh, sure.

  Ellery:   22:46    Did the inmates say anything? Cat calls or anything?

  Heaney:              22:49    Oh, no. No, only if like me coming down, they knew I was new. It was fantastic, how they knew what was going on. They had a great mind that wouldn't quit. They knew what was going on in that place. That's why I got a kick when you started talking about the sharks, you know?

  Ellery:   23:06    Yeah.

  Heaney:              23:08    No way in the world…they all knew they were sand sharks that day, you know?

  Speaker 3:          23:14    How often did they actually get a chance to get out and see movies up in the auditorium?

  Heaney:              23:18    As I remember, about every holiday they had a movie. I'd say they had about ten to twelve movies a year.

  Speaker 3:          23:29    So practically one a month.

  Heaney:              23:31    About one a month.

  Speaker 3:          23:32    Jeez, that's not doing so bad.

  Heaney:              23:33    Not too bad, no. Not too bad.

  Speaker 3:          23:36    Was there any brutality?

  Heaney:              23:38    There was a couple knifings when they were in there.

  Ellery:   23:40    Oh, in the movie?

  Heaney:              23:41    In the movie.

  Speaker 3:          23:42    Did the guards ever direct any violence towards the...did the guards ever have any recourse to violence towards any of the inmates?

  Heaney:              23:53    Yeah.

  Speaker 3:          23:54    Did you ever see any beatings taking place?

  Heaney:              23:57    Yeah.

  Speaker 3:          23:57    Were those things that were reported to the Warden, or -

  Heaney:              23:59    No. Just amongst ourselves. Inmates that we wanted to get, that maybe acted up. I didn't. Now, don't get me wrong. In the main the officers were like ordinary people, there was a few of them that I'd say that are out of line. They took advantage of the situation to get inmates. I'd say the inmate...if you wanted to punish an inmate and you couldn't do it through normal channels, you'd do it on your own channels. You'd use the opportunity to use a little [inaudible] on them. But very minor, very minor, and not enough to really talk about it, not saying that this would be the norm.

  Ellery:   24:41    Well, of course, when the inmates come back that's what they talk about the most. They said, they had these stories of being beaten and all that -

  Heaney:              24:48    They were beaten, but they were...and there may have been beatings that I didn't see either, you know?

  Ellery:   24:57    Well, that's what I said, the inmates would [crosstalk] -

  Heaney:              25:01    And that could be true, yeah.

  Ellery:   25:03    Oh, this is a hellhole, there was never a prison that was more inhumane. That's what they're going to say, you know that.

  Heaney:              25:09    They're going a prejudicial view towards it.

  Speaker 4:          25:18    Well, what about the visitation of the inmates, could they have visitors once in a while?

  Heaney:              25:19    As I remember, the inmates were allowed visitors once a month. Family, close friends, had to be on a list, and they were allowed over here and talking about an hour through that intercom system. The lawyers were allowed to talk to them. They had one of us sit in there but as I remember, they made us sit far enough away that we couldn't understand...we were allowed to listen to the talking of the visitors, but we weren't allowed to talk between the lawyer and the inmate because that's a client, that's personal -

  Ellery:   25:57    They had absolute privacy then.

  Heaney:              26:00    As I remember, they had absolute privacy, a privacy of talking. They were visually seen.

  Ellery:   26:06    Oh they were, yeah. [Inaudible] they were actually inside the room?

  Heaney:              26:14    Right in the room, and they would be discussing things right in the room, one on one, like you and I are talking together.

  Ellery:   26:20    Did they have like a table or something?

  Heaney:              26:21    They had an old table in there.

  Ellery:   26:22    Could they have passed something underneath?

  Heaney:              26:24    They possibly could have, we were supposed to see that nothing was passed. Naturally, see, when a lawyer talks to an inmate, an officer is not supposed to be listening in. And nobody is supposed to be listening in because that's a client relationship. It's confidential, so, we weren't allowed to listen.

                               As I remember now, we weren't allowed to listen to anything the lawyer was saying to the inmate, but took look at them visually, there was somebody in there watching them. So, I don't know if anything ever got passed to them. I don't think so, it might have -

  Ellery:   27:04    Where would you be standing?

  Heaney:              27:06    I never did it.

  Ellery:   27:07    Oh, they'd probably be in the room with them though, or just out in the hallway or something?

  Heaney:              27:16    Yeah, they'd probably be outside. See, I never had anything to do with the visitors myself, and I remember talking about the policy that they had. They didn't let me do a lot of things because they thought I was too young and inexperienced, so they kept me mainly working in the gun gallery, the towers, working with the older inmates in the industries, in the main cell block, in the kitchen area, in the isolation. They even let me in the isolation at times, because they had another guard watching me. To tell you the truth, they just didn't trust me, I guess I was just too young.

  Ellery:   28:02    They probably thought you would get hurt or something.

  Heaney:              28:06    Well, they felt I wasn't old enough, or I wasn't sophisticated enough to handle a large amount of inmates, which I was glad they didn't, you know? I probably couldn't have, maybe at the time, I wasn't colonized enough for them. I was 23 by the time I left. At the end there, I was getting more colonized but of course, I was pretty naïve, and they used about every means possible to try and get anything out of me.

  Speaker 4:          28:37    So the inmates couldn't discuss current events or [inaudible], is that true?

  Heaney:              28:48    Current events --

  Speaker 4:          28:49    I know they would cut everything out of the magazines and they couldn't read the newspapers -

  Heaney:              28:54    Yeah. They could talk about current events, broad current events, they didn't want them to get into specifics of things that might aid them in doing anything on the outside, that might be an escape attempt or something that a guard would feel would be illegal. Now, from what I understand, is if he didn't like a conversation, he'd just pull the jack out, the phone jack. Yeah, oh sure, he could pull the phone jack out and he may not get that visitor for a year, or maybe never. If they didn't like they way the conversation was going.

  Ellery:   29:29    Well mainly they didn't want them having knowledge of current events so that they couldn't plug into maybe their buddies, other members of their gang, or something like that.

  Heaney:              29:38    Right, yeah. See, they were just supposed to be just talking with relations or, understand, close friends, but -

  Ellery:   29:47    Close friends could come, then -

  Heaney:              29:49    If they were on a list. They compiled a list and I guess if they didn't have any close relations, they might allow a friend over. As I remember, as I remember -

  Ellery:   29:58    Not an ex-con, though.

  Heaney:              29:59    Oh, no. We have a list, just those people on the list was the only ones allowed to come over, and that's it. They'd come over, we'd bring them up to the main cell block, and that's the one they took care of. Trying to think of anything more, there was a lot of things, two years, it's like a lifetime in this place, all the incidents that happened.

  Speaker 4:          30:39    Did the inmates have any special rituals or things they would do. Did they celebrate holidays or birthdays or -

  Heaney:              30:48    They allowed them to…They didn't have radios when I was there, no radios, and nobody had television anyway. No radios, but they were allowed to listen to the World Series in the yard, over the general loud speaking system, and as I remember, that's the only time they ever listened to the radio, was to the World Series, and that was the general population on the outside in the yard, and what they did on the outside was they played a little bit of softball out there, and they generally played cards with these little dominos, and gambling. You couldn't prove it, they weren't allowed to gamble, but they were gambling.

  Speaker 4:          31:27    We heard that they gambled work? Like if they worked on [inaudible] work instead of gaining credit for the work they’d done they’d give it to another person? Was there any -

  Heaney:              31:43    I don't know about that but I know…at Christmastime they were allowed a certain amount of tailor-made cigarettes. They had no tailor-made cigarettes here, it was all roll your own, roll [inaudible] type thing that was grown at another penitentiary. All they wanted… because at the end of the cell blocks, close to the mess hall, they had kind of a slot and they could pull out a sack whenever they wanted. So they had access to these really old cigarettes, but actually they liked to have tailor-made cigarettes -

  Ellery:   32:16    Where does that come from? Where does that cigarettes…that just came directly from -

  Heaney:              32:19    From some penitentiary down south, that's what they told me, that it was grown in a penitentiary down south and they set it to through out the, the penal system, the federal penal system.

  Speaker 4:          32:28    Were they allowed to smoke only in certain areas?

  Heaney:              32:31    Only in certain areas, yeah.

  Speaker 4:          32:33    Were they allowed to smoke in the dining halls? Somebody asked me that.

  Heaney:              32:35    No, no. We'd march them in and each officer was assigned one or two tables. You'd stand there, and you'd watch them, and as I remember they were only allowed a fork and spoon, no knives. Nobody was allowed a knife, they never had steak or nothing, so they never had to worry about a knife. They stand down there and whatever food they had they got from the food table. I don't think they ever went back, nobody ever went back. You mentioned, Tom, that possibly someone might have went back -

  Ellery:   33:09    Back to -

  Heaney:              33:10    To the “steam table” to get some more food.

  Ellery:   33:12    Yeah, I said one time. One time.

  Heaney:              33:14    I don't think they're allowed. I don't remember if anyone was going back, because see we didn't want anybody, everything was going to under control, and so inmates going back to get more food, that's kind of out of control. Everybody's got to move. Everything is done, okay, the lieutenant stands on Broadway and blows a whistle, that means time for us to open up all of the cell blocks. The inmates stand in front of the doors. He blows the whistle again, the first tier goes out, and then when that tier goes in, then the next tier comes down. Everything is in an orderly fashion, everybody walks in an orderly fashion, and then the next tier comes, and then the last tier comes down, and they all orderly line up and you don't get too many inmates grouping at one time because you got problems, you don't want too many at one time.

  Speaker 4:          34:11    You would march down with each group, with fourteen inmates?

  Heaney:              34:14    No, at meal time, that's when you had your most amount of officers on duty in the main cell block. Everybody came out, the ones that worked down in the industries, we'll all meet there in the main cell block for each meal time. And, each one of us would go to the box, the opening box, and on the sound of the whistle down below we would open up the doors. And then he'd blow the whistle and then the inmates were supposed to stand in front of the doors, and they'd blow the whistle, and then the inmates, they knew how to do it. They would file out, single file out of the doors, like one tier at a time. And then they would file into the mess hall, and I can't remember if it was continuous, ongoing, or you told them if the next one goes or not, but I know that nobody ever bunched up, you tried to keep them in control. And they went down from one end of the “steam table” to the other.

                               They started during the war because they used to ask how the war was going. They never knew what the news was, so they had a big chart. They had one inmate assigned, they'd put the headlines on this chart just going into the mess hall. They had great big blackboard and he'd put on the big top news events. Non-sexual, anything that had not to do with anything had to do with crime and just news events, and that's how they would find out what was going on. That started during the war, understand, the silent system stopped during the war, too. Before the war, the silent system…they couldn't talk. They couldn't talk in the mess hall, maybe they could talk in their cells, I don't know, but they weren't allowed to talk in the mess hall. But they were allowed to talk when I was there. Trying to keep it down to a minimum amount of talk though.

                               They're always trying to keep everything to a minimum, and they marched into the mess hall and they'd get in that line and they'd get the food and they'd march over and as I remember, they had to stand up at the table until the last one got to the table and they would sit down in unison. And then they'd eat in unison. And everybody sat there and you had to eat every scrap of food on your plate. Everything had to be eaten, and you would check their food and if they didn't eat that food, as I remember, they didn't eat the next day. That was it, they were off.

  Speaker 4:          36:53    And the food really was terrible?

  Heaney:              36:56    To my standards, it was terrible. I'll say, it's edible, and we even had a few officers, they didn't want to spend a buck would even eat it and I said, "How the hell can you eat that stuff?" Food's food, you know, or something like that. I couldn't take it.

  Speaker 4:          37:15    We heard it was the best food of any prison in the United States.

  Heaney:              37:19    Oh, who told -

  Speaker 4:          37:21    I don't know where I picked that up -

  Heaney:              37:24    No, I'd say it's wholesome food. Dietarily it's wholesome, but I remember the vegetables. I always remember the string beans because you couldn't eat those string beans unless you peel all the strings out, you'd chew and chew and chew. It was the worst grade of string beans going, and I don't want it be said that it's not wholesome food, but it was completely unappetizing food, but not less unappetizing food.

  Speaker 4:          38:00    Did they ever really give inmates [inaudible] in the “hole”, like where they would –

  Heaney:              38:00    You mean alcohol -

  Speaker 4:          38:09    No, no. One of the former inmates came back and worked for the park service for a time as a tour guide –

  Heaney:              38:13    Is that the guy that give the thing into the Tribune? I'd say most of those things, if they're not lies, they're complete -

  Ellery:   38:26    Exaggerations.

  Heaney:              38:28    Yeah, exaggerations.

  Speaker 4:          38:28    Because he said that they would throw together everything that all the other inmates were eating in a blender and then give it to the guys in solitary, or give them two meals, bread and water, the third meal would be what the inmates called a “Blood Mary”, and that would be just a conglomeration of everything else.

  Heaney:              38:49    Oh, no thank you, no.

  Speaker 4:          38:51    I just wonder if anything like that could possibly do that.

  Ellery:   38:52    They're on a restricted diet, they call it.

  Heaney:              38:54    I worked here form '48 to '50, so I can't say what went on. I can say almost what went on previous, because well I garnered inmates and officers both. After 1950, I couldn't say. Generally I think a person, even if he isn't familiar with the prison system would think that's a farce, because they wouldn't allow us something like that. They couldn't have relaxed it, because when I was here, it was really strict. It was strict on us. We had it strict, that's why I disliked it so much. It reminded me of the military so much. Our relationship with our officers, our superiors was a real strict relationship, and no way in the world they would allow anything like that to go on. Just like I told Tom, they would wheel in a steam cart into the D Block and from there, it was measured out by so many calories and then they would have an inmate dish it out and another inmate taking it up to him, and we would watch what going on. And it was all done dietetically as so many calories -

  Ellery:   40:14    This was a story about the “hole” that you get your food in a paper cup. You wouldn't have a lot of dishes, you wouldn't have spoons, you wouldn't have a fork, so you just get a nice little paper cup to be filled up with everything there was. Pour it in there, blend it up, sometimes.

  Heaney:              40:36    That could have been true. It could have been true after I left, because the prison was open for 13 years, it closed in '63 and that was 13 years and they could have been more permissive, or not so much permissive as being more lenient towards the inmates because when I was here, they didn't have radios, they didn't have...very few magazines, a restricted amount of books, and privileges were really lean, and they could have had something like that later on. I don't remember it when I was there. I don't remember that. I just remember them having a restricted diet.

  Ellery:   41:16    So they would get the same thing as anybody else if you were in the “hole.”

  Heaney:              41:23    They would get the same as the ones in the same part of isolation, yeah.

  Speaker 4:          41:31    Did you [inaudible] how long people remained in the “hole”?

  Heaney:              41:33    Yeah, as I remember, not more than a couple weeks. As I remember if the guy kept throwing his food out then we would put him on just water. We used to put them on bread and water, they wouldn't give them a meal. Yeah, I remember that, not giving them a meal, just giving bread and water and that's it, but it was their own liking. They chose that, if they throw it back at you or they spit on you, they would be usually treated like, you know.

  Ellery:   42:03    Yeah.

  Heaney:              42:06    We never felt it was cruelty, if they want to bring it on themselves; if they don't want to eat, let them go hungry. Because nobody ever starved, I don't think, not that I ever heard of. There was some slash...we had a lot of slashed wrists. We had a lot of that, a lot of slashed wrists. I don't think they really wanted to commit suicide, it's mainly to get into the hospital, because that was a good time. The hospital was good duty, you know? And this one guy, the only time I remember them eating feces, there was one guy that was supposed to have done that. Actually eating shit...excuse me, I shouldn't have brought it up.

  Speaker 4:          42:52    It's all right.

  Heaney:              42:56    These two guys they both come up. They were lovers and he extremely wanted to go and get transferred back to this...another good time was to get transferred to the medical facility back east. Springfield, yeah. And that's doing the ultimate, they’ll do it by anything. Now, this guy, he’s doing the ultimate I guess and I think he finally got transferred back there, but it would take quite a bit of...I mean they'd try to do every loony thing in the world to get transferred out of here, and actually go back to Springfield because that would be a good time, but I think this guy finally did. But you've got to do it over a long period of time because anybody can go through an act and if you can prove your act, I guess long enough, you might get your transfer. But it actually couldn't be a long-term act because they'd all be doing it, most of them would be doing it.

  Ellery:   43:54    That's what this medical technician told us that, if you were real crazy, then you could be sent back to Springfield. So what they would do is, then they had close observation for two to three weeks, and that was up in those tiled rooms. And you would be stuck in there and that was it.

  Heaney:              44:09    I never witnessed any of that, myself, but I know it went on, yeah.

  Ellery:   44:16    You went through the trials of hell really, to really prove you were crazy.

  Heaney:              44:17    And if you go through that...well, this one inmate, I told you about that German prisoner that…the one that was all the time. They finally sent him back to the nuthouse, but he proved his point, because he did it for a long time. It's pretty tough to stay like he did, just not eat and practically eat nothing, and roll around naked all the time, and just being in isolation, not even wanting to get back into population.

  Speaker 4:          44:55    Prisoners of War there?

  Heaney:              44:58    There was, yeah. These were saboteurs, they didn't execute them. I don't know why they didn't execute them because spying is usually an executionary offense, but these were, three of them, as I remember, three inmates that were landed from a U-Boat in Florida that worked their way up in the Eastern part of the United States and were subsequently caught. I don't know if they even got into the sabotage activities before they were caught, and they were getting close to being released then I was because they were war-time prisoners, but see, I think they were all born Americans, so that made it a little tougher on them. I think if they were Germans, they would have been released a long time before that, but they were Americans that went back to Germany.

  Speaker 3:          45:50    Do you know if they came to Alcatraz?

 

Prisoners in dining hall

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-3264

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"There were about 20 of us on the train. People had the idea that there were a lot more prisoners on Alcatraz. The maximum they got was 250…" - Elliot Michener

 

• Elliot Michener

  
  

  An interview with Elliot Michener about his time as a prisoner on Alcatraz during the 1940's. Interview conducted while walking around Alcatraz, various background noises are prevalent.
  Audio Transcript

  [First Tape – Side One]

  Interview already in progress, abrupt start.

  Michener:                    (looking at a picture) Jack Giles, and here’s Giles, Jack, and Karpavicz [Alvin Francis Karpavicz, AKA, Creepy Karpis], [Rufus] Franklin, Ripley Brant, I sat at the table with him one day and we were talking about national politicians and he was critizing and I said well don’t you think that maybe they’re a little smarter than you are?  And he was affronted. He says, ‘smarter than me?’ [Laughs]

  [Lloyd] Barkdoll. Barkdoll is dead now. We knew him from up in Salem he was there when Jack and I was. He was a rough tough kid but, pretty vicious. Ray Stevenson, there’s a man that did a lot of legal work. He wasn’t as good at it as Jack was but he helped a lot of people. And [John Richard] Bayless, I remember, Earl, Bruce, a lot of these fellows I’ve forgotten.  Baker, Hamilton, Gregor and Roger. Wilfong! That was one of those German spies wasn’t it? A rather stupid man. [Laughter] And well he was. I think he went around and tried to set a fire to a lumber yard over here some place, in Alameda. And they sent him as a spy during the war. And [Elliott] Michener, [crosstalk]. Basil [?], [Kurt] Ludwig, Stroud. Billy [Robert] Stroud, George Heck, he was a pretty nice guy.  Kramer, I guess that’s the end of them there, Oh no. That’s the German I’m thinking of. Roedel [Heinrich Herman], a big stupid Nazi. God, that’s the one we passed a can of peaches that was kinda broke, we passed through the gate down there to have him try it. [Laugher]. See if it was good. [Inaudible] Graham.

  Interviewer 1:             Morris, Frank Morris?

  Michener:                   I don’t ever remember some of them, it doesn’t’ jog my memory. It’s been 25 years ago. 

  Interviewer 1:             Oh lord yes.

  Michener:                   Cantrell, [inaudible] Miller, [George] Stubblefield I remember. [Radio in background]. Most of them, I’ve just forgotten.

  Interviewer 1:              I think these are newer people.

  Michener:                    Probably

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah, these people came on.

  Interviewer 2:             What did you think of Stroud?

  Michener:                   Stroud was, he was all right. He didn’t, he wasn’t a particular friend of mine or anything like that.

  Interviewer 1:             What’s interesting is because most of the people that I talk to, if they were here, they didn’t mind Stroud as much as the people that minded Stroud were the correctional officers and the guards that were with him.

  Michener:                   He was a man that was always against something.  He wasn’t going to be forced to do anything. He wanted to contest everything. He could have been out long long before, but he wanted to fight his way out, to force them to let him out. He wouldn’t go along with anyone though. 

  Interviewer 1:             Huh, that’s interesting.

  Michener:                   Jack knew him better than I did, I scarcely ever saw him.

  Interviewer 1:              When did you, when was it that you came here.

  Michener:                    Let’s see if I remember, it was either in 1939 or 1940. I think

  Interviewer 1:             Was there still a silent system here when you came?

  Michener:                   Well, it’s suppose to be but you could talk in the dining room a little bit and that was a challenge and it was the near the end of the silent system. And it was just after they had a hunger strike here and at that time they were being fed just wonderfully before that and then for some reason they went on a hunger strike so they just changed the menu entirely and put them on the same kinda rations that they would get in the rest of the penitentiaries. The original idea was if they brought them here and fed them well then they wouldn’t have any trouble but as soon as they get into trouble…[background talking].

  [Interview continues outside]

  Michener:                    We had some white crowned sparrows and they have the most beautiful song I can still remember (mimics sparrow).  But we had the white crowned sparrows down in Sierra Madre. But they actually sung.

  Interviewer 1:             Is that right?

  Michener:                   Never hear of it, Jack was always commenting on that.

  Interviewer 1:              Well, they’re very beautiful out here. This year, there are a lot more birds this year than there were last and a number of them have their nests out here so we find it very enjoyable as we are walking around to listen to them.

  Interviewer 2:             Is this the plant you were talking about?

  Michener:                   Yes, that’s Cymbryanthemum florabundum [Chrysanthemum (?) floribunda]. I didn’t plant this but on the other side, on those cliffs.

  Interviewer 1:             It’s beautiful. Looks like a waterfall. [Crosstalk].

  Interviewer 1:             Well gardening seems like it’s one of the better jobs here.  You’re your own master.

  Michener:                   Yeah, that’s right.  No one to bother you as long as you behave.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Interviewer 1:             So there was one greenhouse down this side of the Island.

  Michener:                   Yes.

  Interviewer 1:             Well that’s a natural area down there, it’s very flat. And probably, to me, the nicest part of the Island right there. It’s the calmest and there’s not very much wind or anything else.

  Michener:                   Yeah, it is.  He enjoyed gardening very much too.

  Interviewer 1:             And you talk about water being expensive.  Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a prison as a whole, you know, for a year?

  Michener:                   No, I don’t.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s interesting, we did some checking on that. In the latter years of course, the price had been going up and up but in 1960 we found out that it cost them $1.2 million a month to run the Island.

  Michener:                   [whistles] Yeah, and it was so unnecessary for 250 prisoners and most of them could have been hanged.

  Interviewer 1:             What was the, how many people were out here, medical type people were here when you were here?

  Michener:                   Well, they would have a doctor and a couple of assistants that would work part time up there and of course they would have a few prisoners that would help up there, as orderlies. Medical staff wasn’t big and they had a dentist that came over, oh, about once every 2 weeks. It wasn’t much then.

  Interviewer 1:             What about a psychologist? Did you have any psychologist that came over every now and then?

  Michener:                   None that I can remember. 

  Interviewer 1:              Okay. What about…having…did many people get sick?  Was there a problem out here with sickness? Did many people…

  Michener:                   Oh yeah, they, in every penitentiary there’re always a lot of goal breakers. They, it gave you somethin’ to do, go up and get some medicine, get some aspirin or get this or get that.  And there was of course some cases of real sickness I remember one fellow died of pernicious anemia just about the time he was due for release, or perhaps died after release. Jack Giles had a very bad ulcer about the time he was probably brought on about his escape plans and worry.  He nearly died up in the prison hospital up there.

  Interviewer 1:              Did they give you pretty good treatment?

  Michener:                   Yes, yes, it wasn’t bad at all. I think that’s all… 

  Interviewer 1:              I read about a couple of pill scandals they had here.  Were pills very easy to get?

  Michener:                   Oh yes, for a while they would give you nembutols and yellow jacket stuff and the guys would have to save them up and go on to jag. [Laughter] Well that was easier for them to do than to stand the complaints of all the. 

  Interviewer 1:             That was kind of a way of letting the prisoner have something and not worry about it too much.

  Michener:                   That’s right.  The main effort of most of the measures was simply to avoid trouble.

  Interviewer 1:              Keep things peaceful.

  Michener:                   Keep things peaceful.

  Interviewer 1:             You know, I was down below and asked you just for second, I’d kind of like to get a little bit of background information so anybody that listens to this tape will know a little bit about your background and if you could fill me in a little bit. We talked about it before I know and I hate to have you repeat everything.

  Michener:                   No, that’s alright. Where did you want to start?

  Interviewer 1:             Well I just kind of like to know how you came to Alcatraz, what brought you here?

  Michener:                   Well, in, I was, the one time I was doing quite a bit of time. 35 years in Waupun [Wisconsin] for forgery and then I was taken out of there and to federal court and was convicted of this counterfeiting.  So after that I did about 4 years in Waupun, I still had 30 years left here, they simply released me to federal authorities and I was sent to Leavenworth. And there was some labor troubles back in Leavenworth and I got kind of emotional about it, some friends of mine were involved and I thought that I would try to escape. Unfortunately, I confided to the wrong guy and he told the prison staff so I was sentenced to out here, that was about 1940 I believe. [Loud engine noise] And brought out of the prison.

  Interviewer 1:             For the attempt to escape?

  Michener:                   For the attempt to escape. Other than that I wouldn’t have been transferred over here. But as it happened, I’m glad I was, it was much easier to do time here than it was in Leavenworth.

  Interviewer 1:             You came here about 1940 then? 

  Michener:                    1940, it may have been 1939.  I’m not quite sure. And we got…as I said, when we hit the dock down here…Miller. Yeah, you claim you that you know about Miller.

  Interviewer 1:             I’ve heard many stories about Meathead Miller [Edward J]. Right. [Laughter]

  Michener:                   He was quite a character.  He made a song about the dock down there and he says ‘you’re sick, look sick and tired now. But,’ he says ‘I bet you’ll be a damn sight sicker tired before I get through with you’. [Laughter] But really, he was a pretty good guy. All bluff and big mouth, but he wouldn’t do you any harm and if he could help it.

  Interviewer 1:             If I remember right, Miller was involved in the ’46 riot in a pretty influential way, didn’t he get captured or something or he somehow he got involved with a number of people in that situation.

  Michener:                   I can’t remember what his part in it was. I know he wasn’t captured because he superintended all the business out in the yard there.  When he came in from the yard, the cellblock was full of tear gas and the windows were broken and shrapnel was rattling around. That was a rough couple of days I tell you. 

  Interviewer 1:             I heard it got kind of tough. Almost like Second World War out here.

  Michener:                   Yes it was. Oh, you can’t believe, they had gun bolts out here firing shots into D block and could hear the bombs rattling and out in the yard freezing to death.  We tore up some…we had some horseshoe parts out there and 2x4’s and 4x6’s around. Tore those up and put some fires out there.  Marines were all around the wall there. 

  Interviewer 2:             What did you do on a day to day basis in your cell?

  Michener:                   Well, when you working outside, you go out every day.  When it came, after the riot they brought us all back in we were in our cells there for several days.

  Interviewer 1:             You were outside though for what a day and a half or so? 2 days?

  Michener:                    In the yard for that afternoon, that night, and all the next day.

  Interviewer 1:             So, you didn’t even get to come back in the prison itself, it was all closed off?

  Michener:                   No, it was all closed. We spent the time in the yard, they herded us out there to get us in one bunch and then they had the marines around on the walls.  That was a cold morning.

  Interviewer 2:             I bet it was. I bet it was.

  Michener:                   All night long you could hear those grenades and mortar shells bursting inside of D block.

  Interviewer 1:             So you left here then in about ’49?

  Michener:                   ’50. It was either the last of ’49 or the first of ’50, I can’t remember.

  Interviewer 1:             So you spent all of 10 years out here.

  Michener:                   Almost 10 years.  I never went to school. I came back over to the house one day and she said ‘Well, go saddle your horse, your going back to Leavenworth’.

  Interviewer 1:             You must have had, what type of experience was it for you to be able to work in the Warden’s house can you go into some detail about it?

  Michener:                   Oh yes, that was, it was really quite a change for me inside of the prison. Went up there and Mrs. Swope herself was very nice. And saw the newspapers, and you had radio and you had comfortable living quarters. Of course we went in at night but we had rest quarters downstairs. And it was almost like being on the outside for a little while. Mrs. Swope was really a wonderful person. She use to go, and…we were both kind of interested in horse racing. She’d bring in the paper, the morning paper to look over the horses and then she’d, I had a lot of gardens around here and I grew a lot of flowers and when they had guests, I’d bring up bunches of flowers and they’d leave a tip for me, they wouldn’t give it to me but leave it with Mrs. Swope so she’d take this money and bet it on the horses. And she says ‘don’t you ever tell the warden!’ [Laughter] We’d look at, of course you can’t handicap horses out of a newspaper, but we thought we were, we were having fun. And when it came around my birthday why she’d buy me something, a pair of shoes or something and I’d retaliated or I mean, reciprocated by doing my work well, behaving myself. 

  Interviewer 2:             That’s nice. What were your duties? What would you do?

  Michener:                   Oh, I came out in the morning, get their cook, get their breakfast, serve breakfast, clean up the kitchen and then go around and make the beds and do general housework and then I’d go down, I had a garden down here, along underneath that wall. I’d garden there, garden around back, cut their lawns and clean up the house and just keep everything ship shape all the time.  And then I built the greenhouse right on the corner there and take care of that.  So it was all fine. I enjoyed it.

  Interviewer 2:             What was your botanical background before you got here?

  Michener:                   I didn’t have any, I just learned to garden here, got a lot of books and studied them. Just learned about it.

  Interviewer 2:             Were those out of the prison library?

  Michener:                   No, I think mostly they were seed catalogues and things like that. The Guards would buy you some seeds if they got permission it’d be alright to give you a package of this, a Scabiosa [Butterfly Blue] or dahlia bulbs. And in return, why you’d cut them big bouquets of flowers to take home for parties. Pretty good leeway. Now on Saturdays, I had permission to go from the warden’s house around to the, under the gate tower, because Jack was working down there and at that time he was in my old greenhouse I’d always get a bunch of cake and candy and so forth and so on and the guards knew me and knew that I wouldn’t carry any guns or anything so they would give me a little pat and let me through the gate, before they searched me down. One day the guard wasn’t there but Madigan [Paul J.] was on. The Lieutenant. And so he carried me around there and I got a little bit worried. And I said ‘well, I got a few little things under my shirt here,’ and he starts patting me. And I had about 5 lbs of stuff under there. And he says ‘you certainly have a little bit’. [Laughter] But he opened up the gate and let me through.

  Interviewer 3:             What’d you have?

  Michener:                   Well, I had some fudge I remember. And probably some cake and sandwiches, a ham sandwich, an egg sandwich, this and that. 

  Interviewer 1:              And Madigan is known as a fairly tough…

  Michener:                   Yes, but he was a sensible man.

  Interviewer 1:             Was he?

  Michener:                   Yeah, a very fair man. Most of the guards you couldn’t complain about. Most of the lieutenants, [Henry] Weinhold, Madigan they were all honorable.

  Interviewer 1:             Course Madigan, was that the same Madigan that went on to become Warden at McNeil?

  Interviewer 2:              And here.

  Michener:                   And here, that’s right.  He liked me and I liked him, we got along alright. 

  Interviewer 1:             Do you feel that having the type of job that you had, did you find that maybe not trying to think of how to escape as much as other people did here? Do you think that affected you in any way? You know, in that type of sense?

  Michener:                   Well, no because just about the time that they got that writ granted, I was telling you about. Got into the legal, they vacated half of my sentence I was around on the other side of the Island and I had definite plans for trying to escape. I didn’t want to do another 15 / 20 years. So, but then, as soon as I got the job out on the Warden’s House, I knew I was on my way out then. And so I could afford to behave myself a few years and get out. 

  Interviewer 2:             Cool it for a while.

  Interviewer 1:             But it did make a difference. You know, wouldn’t it make some kind of difference? 

  Michener:                   Oh yes.

  Interviewer 1:             You had some work you enjoyed and had some good feelings from the people that were running the whole prison.

  Michener:                   That’s right, correct, it made it much easier. The men that worked down in the laundry, now, I sympathize with them, pity them, because that was pure drudgery. Get up in the morning, go down there and stand at the mangle all day and put that in and come back again at night. That would have, I couldn’t have stood that. I would have done something.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, listen, let’s go ahead and walk on around here. This was burned in 1970 and maybe you can kind of give me an idea if we can stand back here where you can see into it at least at this point.

  Michener:                   Well, let’s see. The kitchen was right over there.

  Interviewer 1:             Off to the left. 

  Michener:                    Can I go in here?

  Interviewer 1:             Sure, sure.

  Michener:                   I don’t remember myself again now. Yeah, the kitchen was over there.

  Interviewer 1:             Now is that big fireplace there, did that, was that in the kitchen itself? Was that part of it? Did they have an oven in the fireplace?

  Michener:                   No, no they didn’t. Oh, let me see, kinda turned around here, it’s been so long.

  Interviewer 1:             The window, the bay window would have been over here to your right.

  Michener:                   That’s right. There was a door that opened up to the backyard.  You came up here and turned and went up to the stairs to the kitchen. That was the kitchen. Then this was the dining room and I can’t remember that thing down there.

  Interviewer 1:             That was in the basement.

  Michener:                   Oh, that was in the basement. Correct, I remember they used to have firewood cord that I cut and cleaned up down there. And all this area down here was quite empty. It was, a few tools around in there.

  Interviewer 1:             This must have been a living room right here.

  Michener:                   This was the living room. Oh, let me see. Where is the bay window?

  Interviewer 1:             The bay window is over there to the right. Yes.

  Michener:                   The corner, no that was the, strange I can’t remember that fireplace.

  Interviewer 1:             It probably looks a lot different with the walls down and the floors gone and everything else I’m sure.

  Michener:                   That’s right, but I remember Hall (?) when he was helping me, they had beautiful staircase going up to the upper story. With mahogany steps and a pale ivory colored banisters. And Hall, while they were gone, well, he decided he was going to do something to please him. So he found a can of white paint and went over these beautiful ivory banisters and not only that but all over the mahogany stairs. And Swope came back from his vacation and I happened to come out of his dining room and he was standing there looking up at the stairs, half of his foot...[laughing]

  Interviewer 1:             Ooh, why? I’m sure that a disheartening thing to look at after he had finished. 

  Michener:                   [Inaudible] you could never believe that such a character existed. 

  Interviewer 1:             Was he an Indian?

  Michener:                   Yeah, he was Indian. He pretended he couldn’t read and write and maybe he couldn’t but he was a very sly, and conniving person. And what he’d do, he’d want to get me into trouble so he’d go up and mess up some of the Warden’s records up in the office stairs, or her records, and the idea was that they knew that he couldn’t read so therefore I must have done it, I must have been prowling through their records.  Well, I never touched the records but he, I think Mrs. Swope understood that after a bit.

  Interviewer 1:             Let’s walk around over where you built the greenhouse.

  Michener:                   See this? [Wind] These were the beds that went down and we threw the mahogany…and one time I got it so full of leaf mold you could just stick your arm [Loud wind].

  Interviewer 1:             Well this must have been an interesting place to work with the view and everything else.

  Michener:                   It really was. Yes, and at night, after it got dark you could come out here and look over at San Francisco and see the lights [wind].  A little work area for potting things. That was closed in, and there were pictures taken right back along back of this greenhouse. 

  Interviewer 1:             Right, right, right. I told you about, there’s a steam radiator.  That’s why I was wondering if you knew…

  Michener:                   I can’t remember.

  Interviewer 1:             This was probably added on at a later day.

  Michener:                   I think it was, I don’t’ remember having any steam. [Crosstalk]

  Interviewer 1:             Didn’t some of the men used to pick up garbage? Or somebody would take garbage and have garbage runs down in the family housing area and things like that.

  Michener:                   That’s right, and then they’d bring them all around the Island down to the incinerator. They’d dump them down the thing.

  Interviewer 1:             Was that kind of a special job?

  Michener:                   Yes, they had a couple of trusted people, on the garbage trucks, picking up the cans. [Fog Horn]

  Tape cuts out

  Interviewer 1:             This is where you need your coat.

  Michener:                   I’d come in here and of course they’d shake me down when they came in this place and then pass me through into the cellblock, this is the armory right along here.

  Interviewer 1:             When you first came here, where were you, did you go through any administrative procedures? Did you come in down below or did you come in the front of the building?

  Michener:                   We came in through here.

  Interviewer 1:             Came in right in through here.

  Michener:                   Yes.

  Interviewer 1:             And all the administration was in this area over here I guess, from what I gather.  And then the Warden’s office was right in here.  Did you happen to…?

  Michener:                   Yes, I’d been to the Warden’s Office once.

  Interviewer 1:             It’s right in here, we are going in here. This is kind of the Captain of the Guards area, this area here, assistant Warden, Secretary.

  Michener:                   [Inaudible in background]

  Interviewer 1:             This is the Warden’s Office here. And this was his. I wonder what’s up on the wall, as far as…

  Interviewer 2:             Printing?

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah. That’s interesting. 

  Interviewer 2:             Yeah.

  Interviewer 1:             [Asked question, responds ‘no’]

  Interviewer 2:             [Inaudible] about discipline and character.

  Interviewer 1:             Character. Well I’ll be darned.

  Interviewer 2:             [Inaudible]

  Interviewer 3:             How many prisoners did you come in with?

  Michener:                   There were about 20 of us on the train. People had the idea that there were a lot more prisoners on Alcatraz. The maximum they got was 250…

  Interviewer 1:             No, the maximum we ever had here was 303 and that was only in one particular time. But the average was about 250, it didn’t fluctuate much from that, it was fairly close.

  Michener:                   The amount of money they spent on this place for 250 inmates was absurd.

  Interviewer 1:             It was pretty phenomenal and of course about 80% went for salary.

  Michener:                   Yes.

  Interviewer 1:             And maintenance was the next biggest expense, and then your food and water. We’ll walk on in and go on in to the main cellblock.  You might explain as we get in here, you know, the procedure that you would go through to get in.

  Michener:                   As I came in, I would come in just the door there, course that was locked. They’d let me in there and I’d step in here and frisk me and then they’d let me on in.

  Interviewer 1:             In order to get through here, you’d have to have one man open the door from the outside, right? Plus the man from the armory had to…

  Michener:                   My recollection of that isn’t too good. I would rather think that there’d be just one man who’d open that door, let me in, frisk me, take me back there and let me into the cellblock.

  Interviewer 1:             They didn’t, at any time, see there were two major door systems here and one right here.  …. type …

  Michener:                   That’s right, it might have been a little different.  And this is where we went up to the movies.

  Interviewer 1:             Right, that’s right, that’s exactly right.  Theatre is upstairs.  In 1960 they put up in an Officer’s mess up there, they moved it out of the mess hall back in the back and moved it up here and of course the change of the guards and stuff were up there, they kept it up there and that’s where you went into the walkway, the catwalk, outside there. 

  Interviewer 2:             Visiting?

  Michener:                   Visiting room. Yes, that’s where I came out with [Inaudible]

  Interviewer 1:             Course this probably looks a little familiar in here.

  Michener:                   Yes, it does. I had this cell to myself. Working out at Swope’s.

  Interviewer 1:             It’s interesting because this is the same cell, these 3 cells, were the cells involved in the 1962 breakout. 

  Michener:                  Oh they were? I didn’t know that.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s when, who was it?

  Interviewer 2:             Anglin Brothers.

  Interviewer 1:             Anglin Brothers and Morris took off, went through the back wall and right up through the top.

  Michener:                   That was a well-planned and well executed attempt.

  Interviewer 2:             Yes, I think everybody that worked here and was here will admit to that. [Laughter]

  Michener:                   And then over here. Some of the old isolation cells along there, and I was in the second one for 2 weeks. Once they had a strike down at the laundry when I first came and they, went to work down there. So they had about 6 of us along in there and some of the fellows that worked around the cellblock came up and they’d just throw tobacco along the front of the cell and you could rake it in. 

  Interviewer 1:             Did they…say, I guess it was about 1940 that they built the other isolation block on the other side.

  Michener:                   That was built just before I came here.

  Interviewer 1:             Must have been completed just right around 1940.

  Michener:                   Now on these cells down along here, there’s a brick made from these. When I first came they’d taken the doors off, you’ll notice they have flat steel in front of them.  They’d sawn them just below the rivet but they’d saw them at an angle. Of course the angle was necessary so that when they pulled them open they would be free to swing and I saw those doors down at the old model shop when they took them off and had them down there.

  Interviewer 1:             They didn’t keep, after 1940, they didn’t keep too many people in this area over here though did they?

  Michener:                   No, only when they had problems.

  Interviewer 1:             Special situation like they’d put too many, you know, like they had a strike situation or something like that.

  Michener:                   And then they would put a few of them over here but most of the time, I don’t think they ever used the bottom ones after the big breakout. But that was the time, [Arthur] Doc Barker I think got down on, got shot right down there.

  Interviewer 1:             While you were here did you have many problems with the people as far as food, strikes, sitdowns, or anything like that?  Never seemed to be too much of that problem here?

  Michener:                   Well, no but periodically, there would be people kind of talk it up.

  Interviewer 1:             To have something to do or was it legit? 

  Michener:                   No, I think mostly it was just to raise a little, break the monotony.

  Interviewer 3:             Where’s the hole that they put Jack [Giles] in.

  Michener:                   That’s over on the other side.

  Interviewer 1:             We’ll go over there in just a second, look around.

  Interviewer 2:              Did you have any knowledge of the area underneath this building?

  Michener:                   Not at all. Jack Giles knew a little bit about it but I didn’t.  He’d been down there horse whipped.

  Interviewer 2:             Charlie Berta spent a couple days down there. He said, he told me ‘they put him down there a little bit’.

  Interviewer 1:             But he said he deserved it. That’s what he said, he said that he deserved it.

  Michener:                   I remember Charlie- Tape ends.

  [Tape One – Side B]

  Michener:                   This is Broadway.

  Interviewer 1:             No, Broadway is one over.  When you were here, you know, we have a lot of confusion, we hear many different things, there was talk of, at one time this being called Michigan Avenue.  Did you ever hear it being called that during your day?

  Michener:                   No.

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah, I think it was some kind of fallacy that somebody picked up someplace along the line.

  Michener:                   I remember they had in one of these cells here, they used to put in a phonograph of a lot records, they’d play that on Sundays afternoon over broadcast.  And everyone got so tired of the records, they kept on playing over and over that someone smashed them all and even called him the Champ – he broke all the records. [Laughter]

  Interviewer 1:             You were here later in the 1960, about 1960…Oh you had one here too.

  Michener:                   I’d like to go up and see if I can find my old cell.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, we’ll walk up there. Sure.

  Michener:                   I can find it because I had a little place I could hide a razor blade. 

  Interviewer 2:             Did you carve your initials in there?

  Michener:                   No, I didn’t do that. When they had these periodic riots around here, that what really something.  See how these beds are hooked up.  They are hinged on this side and they can just pound, pound, pound and get every man in the place doing that and they would keep it up all night.  All night.  They could hear it over in the north side of San Francisco.

  Interviewer 1:             We’ve tried to fix this one up to be basically the way it was back in the earlier years with not too much in it.  Of course, there’s not as much in here as there probably would have been at that time. 

  Michener:                   No, there isn’t.  Most of the men had more books, wallpapers, magazines.

  Interviewer 1:             But it gives us people an idea of the size of space they had here to occupy and uh...

  Interviewer 3:             Now, could those beds be pulled up against the wall?

  Michener:                   Yeah. They could but…

  Interviewer 1:             Not many people did. They didn’t spend much time.

  Michener:                   You came in and you sat down on your bed and put your feet up on the little shelf, either that or against the wall or on this thing and read all day or all evening. Until it’s time to turn in.

  Interviewer 3:             Is that your only light up there?

  Michener:                   Yeah

  Interviewer 1:             You know, I was always interested when people talk about committing suicide in a prison etc. and I don’t know if there was much of that here, if there were attempts, I’m sure that there were, I heard of some, but were the lights glass?  Were they just exactly like that?

  Michener:                   Yes.

  Interviewer 1:             Seems like to me that if a man wanted access to something, that a light bulb would have been the best means of…

  Michener:                   Well, there were easier things you can always get hold of a razor blade.  For instance through the nembutol time, you could get all the yellow jackets practically, or aspirin. Save up enough stuff to do away.  I was around here during a number of killings, I remember there was a negro, up on, got stabbed up on Broadway and he came down the stairs there, coming to dinner I think it was, or just after dinner. Or something. And stabbed him across the abdomen he was spilling out beans coming down the stairway, took him up to the hospital.  He would then never say who killed him or stabbed him.  He died. I can’t remember his name.

  Interviewer 1:             Pretty dedicated. Isn’t it? I swear.

  Michener:                   He wouldn’t tell who killed him.

  Interviewer 1:             Because he was afraid if he lived then someone would really take care of him.

  Michener:                   Well, maybe that or maybe it’s just a natural code among inmates.  Brought up not to snitch.

  Interviewer 1:             Were blacks always isolated over in B, in Broadway?

  Michener:                   No.

  Interviewer 1:             Were they spread out throughout the prison?  Ok. In the earlier years, I know, up until about 1940, the blacks supposedly were isolated on Broadway in the first couple of tiers up there.

  Michener:                   They may have been but they were generally, they were spread out.  To some extent. Probably a lot of them like a cell next to each other. But some of them were major trouble makers.  They… [Lyle] Groves, now there’s a man, he was really bad, he was a vicious, tough… And he was not [inaudible].

  Interviewer 1:             You must have come just after [Al] Capone left, maybe a year, not quite a year or so?

  Michener:                   Yes, I never saw Capone. Jack Giles did.

  Interviewer 1:             Right, of course Giles was here at that time and Karpis. Was Kelly [George Kelly Barnes] here?

  Michener:                   Machine Gun Kelly, yes.

  Interviewer 1:             What was he like as an individual?

  Michener:                   He seemed to me a rather harmless amiable sort of fellow.

  Interviewer 1:             I’ve heard many rumors that his wife was the one that more or less ran the operation, that she had control of him.  I was just curious about…

  Michener:                   I don’t know too much about his career.  I did meet him back in Leavenworth later after he was transferred back there just before I got out.

  Interviewer 1:             Let’s go upstairs and see if we can find your cell.

  Michener:                   There was a gun cage over there. And Barney Coy, he was the plumber around the place. He was a very skinny man. And he went for about 4 days of starving himself to get even thinner and he took all of his clothes off and greased himself and got up there with a pipe spreader, spread some of those pipes, I don’t know just where it was, the bars apart and got into the gun cage.  Now, the man in the gun cage had gone through that door down there to D block and when he came back out, why, Barney Coy jumped him. And got his guns and so forth.

  Interviewer 3:             Well, how’d he get in there…

  Michener:                   Oh, and then, as I said…

  Interviewer 3:             But what’d he do? Did he climb up?

  Michener:                   He climbed up there.

  Interviewer 2:             Right there.

  Michener:                   Is this the place where he went through?

  Interviewer 1:             No, that’s not it.  He went up over here in the corner.  At that time, the crossbars weren’t in here.  The only bars they had were running up and down.

  Michener:                   Up and down, correct. And, so it was fairly easy. He was a plumber, he had access to his tools so he could spread them. And he got through there. And I remember we were talking, seems to me the name of the guy was [Burt] Burch the guard, wasn’t it?

  Interviewer 1:              Yeah, I believe so.

  Michener:                   And he was a harmless old fellow, a nice guy and he was telling Jack and I about it later, he said he saw this guy flying out at him that was all legs [inaudible].

  [Laughter]

  Interviewer 1:             I’m sure he wasn’t expecting it. 

  Michener:                   No.  And then they seized the guns down here. And there was a desk, right here. And another desk over there, that was Meathead’s [Edward Miller] desk where he… [Tape cuts out]

  Interviewer 1:             Original menu that was here in March of ’62 that’s when they closed down.

  Michener:                   We use to look at that every day and comment sarcastically.  Come in here, and I remember one time they had baked Texas turnips, or something like that. And we would say, ‘well, why the Texas?’ And Victory hash, that was during the war, that god damn steward, doesn’t he know any better to like something called Victory hash. [Laughter] Come along here and see. You pick up your, have your tray and go along there, and…

  Interviewer 3:              Did you pick out the food as went? Was it…could you take a choice of anything?

  Michener:                    Oh yeah, you could tell them what you want; light or heavy or… one of your friends on there and if they had stew why he’d go down to the bottom and pick the meat for you.

  Interviewer 1:              Was it kind of…the philosophy that we’ve heard here was take what you want but eat what you take.

  Michener:                   Yes, you generally have to eat pretty much everything, they wouldn’t be too critical about it but generally if you took something you really suppose to eat it.  That was the bake shop, in the kitchen back there. I’ve never been back there, but that’s where Karpis worked back there and smuggled things out of here.

  Interviewer 1:             Did a lot of home brew back there, I think.

  Michener:                   Oh yeah, that’s right. And, that was a favorite occupation around here, making home brew.

  Interviewer 1:             They had access to all the yeast and everything back in the shop.

  Michener:                   And smuggling coffee, everyone wanted coffee.

  Interviewer 1:             They were telling us that they use to bring it out in the mop bucket a lot. Dirty water in the mop bucket because the guards wouldn’t want to dip their hands down in the dirty water in the mop bucket.

  Michener:                   What used to be a great strategy around here was getting through those snitch boxes. Somebody bringing something in, not necessarily metal but then not only having the snitch boxes, but at the top of the stairs they’d have a man that would shake down the occasional ones, and shake them down. So they’d always send, if you wanted to get something in you sent someone ahead of you that would act just a little bit suspicious as if you were trying to avoid the guard and snatch him up and you could get right through.

  Interviewer 1:             That was pretty clever.

  Michener:                   There use to be an old grey [inaudible]… right out on this bank and we could look at big yellow flowered, the other side of that road there.  But it’s gone now.

  Interviewer 2:             How about knowledge of censorship, as far as information coming into the prison and information going out?

  Michener:                   Well, of course they didn’t’ allow any newspapers, after a long time they did allow sport sheets to come in but when I was first here it was pretty hard to get anything.  When the war was going on, they’d have a black board out there, they’d write down the names, score, of what was going on.  I remember… one day we came up through the gate there into the prison yard, or was I going out? I’m not sure. But they announced Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

  Interviewer 2:             What was your reaction?

  Michener:                   Oh, everyone was, generally, it was overjoy. They thought well now maybe they’d get out somehow.

  Interviewer 2:             Maybe send us to go fight.

  Michener:                   Yeah, there were all kinds of attitudes.

  Interviewer 2:             How about at the end of the war? Same kind of reaction?

  Michener:                   Yeah, well, no, some of the men hoped that Nazis were going to win against. Hope against hope. And when they had the blackout here they were lighting newspapers and throwing them down in the corridors so if any enemy bombers came over they could see the lights. A lot of pretty stupid foolish things.

  Interviewer 2:             Was there some problem between the warden out here and the mayor of San Francisco as far as leaving the…

  Michener:                   Lights? Yeah. They didn’t want to, they were very averse to shutting off the lights over here and finally they did, they made them shut them down. 

  Interviewer 1:             What I think we’ll do now is walk back down Broadway and we’ll come back up C Block and go into isolation. But what I’d like to do is, if we get close to a group or something we’ll just kind of drift on by them because what will happen is that you’ll get people starting to come over and they want to hear what’s going on and it starts disrupting our situation and it’s probably not good for you either.

  Interviewer 3:             This is the nicest way to see it, really.  He was so afraid he’d have to come up here and go through one of the tour things. You know, because…

  Interviewer 1:             No. We try and you know, anyone that comes out…

  Interviewer 2:             Seems like there was a massive modification in this...

  Interviewer 1:             After ’46.  This may have been put in even later than that because they did have a little gun place here where a man could come up and look in, as an alternate because they said something, if something happened over here, they didn’t have any place over here that they could have added protection so they put this little hole in here.

  Michener:                   Yeah, that wasn’t there when we were here.

  Interviewer 1:             I think there were a lot of things that changed after the ’46 riot because they found out they couldn’t hardly do anything in the main cell block here. 

  Michener:                   Here were the steps up to the hospital.

  Interviewer 1:             Right, right.  It’s very blank up there now, there’s nothing left up there whatsoever.  We’ll just drift on past these people here and go down the other end.  

  Michener:                   Don’t you think it would help kids out a lot when they were young if they were taken on a tour of an actual jail or prison and see the misfits and the horrible things men can do to themselves?

  Interviewer 1:             I think if you could, you know, work it in conjunction with possibly people that are coming here could also go to a place where there are people involved, where they can’t get funny and they can’t laugh about it because there are human beings involved.

  Interviewer 3:             You know, my husband and I went through the Ohio State penitentiary when we were there [inaudible]. And the company was taken through the penitentiary.  Do you know that it made the greatest impression on me of anything that I ever done in my life that was such a group, a quartet that sang for us, and this man that took us through was, oh he was so intelligent, and so great, and he explained all these things to us.  This quartet was a group of young men and they were so talented and here we set, and going through with this group of talent and recognizing this kind of talent and finding out that these men, these four men, were all in the corridor. And when we got all through and the man that did taking us through, got to the gate and said ‘well, this is as far as I can go with you. I’m in for life for murder.’  You know, I was very young and you know that it made a lasting, lasting impression on me and it was a long time before I really got over that experience because to see all of these people and see them actually in there.

  Interviewer 1:             It does make a lot of difference.  In ’46, when they had the riot in ’46, of course [Joseph] Cretzer and [Bernard] Coy were trapped in the corridor.  And this utility corridor here was were they were killed, actually it was in this one right here. And what they did, is that they dropped grenades, concussion grenades, and you can see there is still a hole in the ceiling where they dropped and it went through and you can look at the floor here and see where they were exploded and actually I think there’s about 10 holes in the ceiling all the way across the roof line here and they dropped those bombs down into the corridor and when they came in after they had exploded these bombs they found Cretzer and Coy, dead, in this corridor right here.  And one of the other men, two of the men were sent to San Quentin and executed in San Quentin after it happened.  And [Clarence] Carnes was the only one that was left and the reason that he got survived the situation was he was only 19 at the time, or 20 I guess, 20, he’d been here about a year but he was the youngest prisoner ever to come to Alcatraz at that time I believe, pretty close, one of the youngest.

  Michener:                   I was in that cell over there that night they dropped all those grenades in here. [Makes shudder sound] You’d ever hear them rattling all over and…

  Interviewer 1:             You mean actually, there were people actually in here when they were dropping them?

  Michener:                   Oh sure, I was.  There were a lot of prisoners over in there when they were dropping the grenades.

  Interviewer 1:             Well I’ll be darned. 

  Interviewer 2:             That must have scared the crap out of them.

  Michener:                   Oh yeah.  They may have been dead by then but they kept on dropping those grenades and then it was rough, it was dark.

  Interviewer 1:             What we’ve got, we’ve got a group of people that are just now going into D Block over there, what we’ll do is wait until they get finished and then we can drift in on our own and kind of look around.  We have about a 5 minute, 7 minute break between tours there.

  Michener:                   I’ve never been into D Block.

  Interviewer 1:             Oh, you never had any chance to spend any time over there, huh.

  Interviewer 2:             Congratulations.

  Interviewer 3:             What is D Block?

  Interviewer 1:             That’s the isolation block. It’s the newer one that was built to take the place of the one over on A Block, the old ones that he was talking about.

  Interviewer 3:             I see, this is the one where Jack [Giles] nearly lost his sanity.

  Michener:                   No.

  Interviewer 3:             No? Isn’t it?

  Michener:                   Meathead did like Jack [Giles] very much. And he said ‘well, he didn’t hurt anyone’ and so he had to put him in there for a while just as a matter of form but he kept him in there for 30 days.

  Interviewer 1:             Was that when he was going to escape, after his interrogation?

  Interviewer 3:             Where was the one he was in for…

  Michener:                   That was up in Salem.  Salem, Oregon, he was very young.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, I’m sure I’ve met another man, who was the other guy that was out here, that you worked with for while? That went back, that got busted on a charge and had to go back for a while but he’s out again. 

  Interviewer 2:             [Robert] Guilford.

  Interviewer 1:             Guilford.  Do you know John [Robert] Gilford?  John [Robert], he’s supposedly spent 97 days in cell 13, which is a strip cell, or 14, I guess, 14.

  Interviewer 3:             What do you mean a strip cell?

  Interviewer 1:             Well, it’s a cell that they take all of your clothes off and put you in there without anything on and I guess this was a common practice, not a common practice but more of an extreme punishment situation and that was the top of  the line punishment basically here.  I don’t know how often it happened, we don’t have anything that we can go back and check on.  Just by talking to people and of course you know sometimes, you don’t know whether to believe somebody when they tell you they did all this, if they are telling you because they want you to think it was really bad, or if it really did happen, because we found a hard time getting really accurate material here.  On both sides, you know you talk to a correctional officer and he’s not always going to give you accurate material because he maybe wants to glorify things a little bit too.  So you really have to weigh things carefully a lot of times and come up with, after you talk to a number of people, maybe a standard situation and work from there.  So you have certain extremes.

  Michener:                   Basically, I think that they treated us well.  In federal, in this place, there wasn’t any brutality as far as, I never saw a prisoner get hit or, and I think the ones that, if they ever were roughed up they asked for it.

  Interviewer 1:             Deserved it?

  Michener:                   Yeah.

  Interviewer 1:             You know the correctional officers carried a sand billy and it’s pretty heavy and I wondered if you knew anybody that got whacked by one of those. Seems like it would put a pretty good knot on you head if you got.

  Michener:                   I didn’t know that they did carry that, and I never saw anyone get hit.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s interesting.

  Michener:                   In fact, I’ve never seen any actual violence. I suppose that fellow Groves, that got, I’m not sure, can’t remember his name, got stabbed up there on Broadway, up on the tier, came down there holding his stomach and the beans spilling out.

  Interviewer 1:             That must have been… Hmmh.

  Interviewer 2:             Was Bumpy [Ellsworth Raymond] Johnson here when you were here?

  Michener:                   You mean Warden?

  Interviewer 2:             No, Bumpy was a black gentleman, I believe Washington D.C., he was a murder incorporator [mob boss]. He was here for several years.

  Michener:                   I wonder if that’s man was killed.  I can’t remember his name.

  Interviewer 2:             He’s dead now.

  Michener:                   He’s dead, he was a negro, heavyset, a young negro and that probably, seemed to me vaguely that his name was Johnson. I’m not sure of that.

  Interviewer 2:             There’s prisons where you see a lot of violence between inmates.  Did you see that here? Was that common?

  Michener:                   Yes, well among a few of them, there were these, negroes got involved in homosexual activities with some of the others.  That, I think, was the principal cause of violence and…

  Interviewer 1:             What type of homosexual activities were, you know, took place here? Was it something that was prevalent, like it is in most other prisons or was it something that was kind of low key here?

  Michener:                   Very low key as far as I know. There were a few homosexual men and then, of course, putting them in a place like this…

  Interviewer 1:             Bound to be. For sure, for sure.

  Michener:                   …make them worse. So they’d have their love affairs and be some jealousies. But that was mostly, seemed to me, among the coloreds. I never saw any instances in the whites.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, I think it’s interesting because I don’t’ know how they can expect people when they are put in an all male situation not to have problems and I don’t think it’s really a problem, it’s more of a release situation than anything else and they tend to, it is a problem that’s what they refer to it as in a prison systems. And I know Atlanta and I know Leavenworth both have a major homosexual faction and…Do you think it’s becoming more prominent in the prisons, something that is being, their not coming down as hard on the prisoners as they use to?  Do you think they’re more accepted in that situation?

  Michener:                   In a place like Leavenworth, I saw a great deal of it.  There weren’t any guards around and you could see guys making love, openly. And all that sort of thing.  In Alcatraz, there wasn’t the opportunity for it, and

  Interviewer 1:             Small amount of people.

  Michener:                   Small amount of people, and closely watched.  And so they needed someplace out on the yard, [crosstalk] something like that they could manage any kind of activity.

  Interviewer 1:             Ok, let’s go on over here and see if we can get in here.

  Michener:                   They had the library over here.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s right. I’ll talk to you for just a second and maybe you can explain a little bit about how you went about getting books, how you turned your books back in and things like that?

  Michener:                   Well, yeah, we had little library catalogues and you could, with numbers on the books and you could mark your, the numbers, listed numbers on the library card and turn them in with your book, you just leave them in your cell on your pillow and they could reach in and pick them up and take them down and change your books. And then when you returned them you crossed off that number and always keep quite a few.

  Interviewer 1:             So you were not allowed to come in here?  Right.

  Michener:                   Oh no.

  Interviewer 1:             This was always off limits. 

  Michener:                   I think I was only in here once for some reason, that I can’t remember now.

  Interviewer 1:             These kids over here, I’ll just tell you while we’re just talking. They’re all from the Delancy Street Foundation, are you familiar with the Delancy Street Foundation here in San Francisco? 

  Michener:                   No.

  Interviewer 1:             It’s a rehabilitation organization that is very highly recognized throughout the United States, it developed here in San Francisco where they take ex-prisoners and ex-drug offenders and they are in an unique program and what they do is bring kids over here to Alcatraz and they can take them through here and express the problems of being in prison. And it’s what you were talking about before but this is something that the National Park Service has worked out with them and we’ve developed a summer program where they do this and from here they go down to one of the local beaches and have a camp out and you know play games and do certain things like that.  And all the people that are teaching them are ex-offenders or ex-drug people.  So it’s worked out quite well.

  Michener:                   I think it takes some…

  Interviewer 1:             And some restaurants and quite a few enterprises that they [inaudible].  In fact, they were on Walter Cronkite about 2 weeks ago and on 90 minutes, they had a major segment on 90 minutes on TV. 

  Michener:                   How nice, how nice.

  Interviewer 1:             The man that was involved with getting the organization started here was an ex-Synanon man who was involved in that whole thing when it started and he didn’t’ like that idea so he moved on and developed something a little bit different here and it’s become very successful. 

  Michener:                   Yeah. Sounds like a good idea.

  Interviewer 2:             Synanon has remained so controversial. Whereas, Delancy Street doesn’t have a lot of [tape cuts out]

  Interviewer 1:             [tape starts in the middle of conversation] This is because [Robert, “Birdman of Alcatraz”] Stroud was here in 41 and down in 21 for a while, before he was moved upstairs into the hospital.  But I guess he was carrying on a lot of activity in here during that period of time, yelling and screaming and hollering around and covered up under his mattress and everything.  You know, of which I can’t blame him.  They didn’t’ even take the people out of here when that was going on.  They just…

  Michener:                   They were all in here. They got under, as you say, their mattresses, or under everything they could get and just shelling and shelling and rocked this place.

  Interviewer 1:             But why, why? I can’t understand why they didn’t take the people out of here?  Oh, I know why.  They thought that Cretzer and Coy were in here at the time. A/B Block.  Yeah, that’s what it was.

  Michener:                   As I understand it, as I remember it, they tried to get in here and it flashed some light, safety light, out in the armory.  They knew something was wrong so [H.W.] Weinhold came in to investigate it. And he walks around on the not Broadway but the next corridor there, and came around and they nailed him and put him in one of the cells over there.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s right. They had about 9 people at one time in that cell and that’s when Cretzer got happy with the .45 and started blasting away at them. A couple of the individuals were killed.

  Michener:                   I remember there was some stool pigeon over on that cell on that  far side, and as [H.W.] Weinhold was walking along the corridor coming in from the armory to see what was wrong, he walked up there and this guy didn’t’ say a thing. But Weinhold confronted him later and said ‘you bastard, you let me walk right in there to my death’. He said, ‘if you wanted to do some snitching, [inaudible] it would have done you some good. 

  Interviewer 1:             Did they have a number of stool pigeons here?

  Michener:                   Oh yeah.

  Interviewer 1:             Quite a few?

  Michener:                   A few. That’s right. Yeah.

  Interviewer 1:             Now, does the word usually get out on who was stooling? [Crosstalk]  Pretty obvious I would say. Pretty obvious. Seems like…

  Interviewer 2:             Do the guards get the word back? How’d it get back to them?

  Michener:                   Oh, just from circumstances. Could only be 2 or 3 people it could possibly be.

  Interviewer 2:             Process of elimination.

  Interviewer 1:             I’m sure they’d become fairly unpopular too.

  Michener:                   Oh yeah, they would.

  Interviewer 1:             Little dangerous for them too I would say. Taking their life in their own hands.

  Michener:                   Yeah. When they start doing that, yeah.  

  Interviewer 1:             Well, this, you know, of course, this area is more controversial in the prison system.  It’s the only electrically monitored cells are right here in the very bottom. 

  Interviewer 3:             These cells are larger than the ones on the top.

  Interviewer 1:             Right, all these cells are larger because the men spent 24 hours a day in here, not allowed out, except for…

  Michener:                   …some very short periods, when all of the people…

  Interviewer 3:             They have an inner door here too.

  Interviewer 1:             So when they opened this door these guys wouldn’t jump out at them.

  Michener:                   The men in here, [crosstalk] at least once or twice a week at least, I think perhaps everyday, I’m not sure, but before we went to work they’d take these few men out and exercise outside. So, I think they all got out occasionally for exercise.

  Interviewer 1:             Would it be some very small groups of these men in here right would go out? They wouldn’t take the whole group out?

  Michener:                   No, just a few of them at a time.  They’d go out there and play handball.

  Interviewer 1:             I’ve often wondered what it might have been like to have been a correctional officer here, being caged in this thing all the time too.  You know, you kind of wondered who’s on which side here sometimes. 

  Interviewer 3:             [inaudible]

  Interviewer 1:             Right.

  Michener:                   See now, this is the door that Burch…he came through from that…

  Interviewer 1:             Not the main…

  Michener:                   [Inaudible] the main thing, that supervise from, probably from in here. They check every hour or so, come through and see if everything was alright.  While I was in here they looked at that gun cage on the outside.

  Interviewer 1:             Now what had happened, right, there was an individual in here who was part of the plot and he started raising a ruckus in here and they knew that when he did that the man would have to come in here and check on it.  So when he came in here, the other man went up, it had to be within 2 minutes.  2 minutes or so. 

  Interviewer 3:             That’s timing.

  Interviewer 1:             Oh they had it down to a minute fraction.

  Michener:                   What did happen, what was quite impressive, was to get the key to this door to let them out into the yard.  They had, I’m not sure which…

  Interviewer 1:             Second cell. Second cell, I believe.

  Michener:                   They threw him in there, and he could get, reach the key to that door and hid it in there someplace.

  Interviewer 1:             In the stool, down in the neck of the stool.  Down below.

  Michener:                   Down in the..? That’s where it was. So, they tried to come in and get it and they had about 6 or 7 of these guards in the cell and the guys – [Joe] Cretzer just started firing into the group. [whistles]

  Interviewer 1:             Only 2 people got really hurt, or 2 people died out of that situation.  But out of 9 people, he emptied a couple of clips in there or something.  It was amazing that nobody else…

  Michener:                   [H.W.] Weinhold, got his lung punctured, I remember. He was in the hospital for a long time but he didn’t die. But they played dead, for one thing.

  Interviewer 1:             Oh yes.  For a day and a half, nobody could get to them for a day and a half.  One of them bled to death I think was his situation.  But the interesting thing that we heard talking to numerous people is that when he hid the key in here, he wrote on the of the bottom sheet in the bed what he had done with the key so if he got killed they would know where it was and what had happened and that was kind of an interesting story.  One of the men told us about that that was a correctional officer out here. 

  Michener:                   Those are the things that I don’t know. But they, another guy got killed up here during that riot.  They were trying to get into that, I’m not quite sure how it happened, but somewhere around this door, another guard got killed. 

  Interviewer 1:             I’m not sure.

  Michener:                   Trying to get into the, from the outside.

  Interviewer 1:             I don’t’ know. Well, I tell you, what we can do from here is, if you are interested, we can go down and look at the showers, there’s not much down there…

  Michener:                   No.

  Interviewer 1:             …but if you’re interested or we can walk on out here and go around the other side of the Island, and see what’s there.

  Michener:                   Yes, I’d like to see what’s out there.

  Interviewer 1:             Please watch your steps as you are going down there. [Wind]

  [Tape 2 – Side A]

  Interviewer 1:             Tuesdays and Saturdays were supposedly shower days.

  Michener:                   Yeah.

  Interviewer 1:             And then you had your recreation Saturday afternoons and Sundays. 

  Michener:                   No, it was on Sundays.

  Interviewer 1:             Now did you have a choice on Sunday whether you went to church or had recreation?

  Michener:                   Well, I can’t remember anything about church, I don’t’ think anyone…[laughter] as far as I know any one went.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s kind of the point I was trying to make. Church was carried on at the same time that you had recreation basically, wasn’t it?  Most people just didn’t’ want to go to Church, would rather come out.

  Michener:                   I don’t’ think, they may have been some people but I can’t’ remember anyone.

  Interviewer 1:             What activities?

  Michener:                   Well, Jack [Giles] used to play handball right in this court up here and when they waiting for time out or something, they’d sit on those steps down there and watch the other guys.  Jack [Giles] was a pretty good handball player. 

  Interviewer 1:             You said Giles was good. Yeah.

  Michener:                   [Seagulls in background] And they played horseshoes and all the fellows would walk up and down by that wall over there. And over there they used to get out and play baseball, softball and when they weren’t doing that they would sit over there and play bridge.

  Interviewer 1:             Seemed like to me, most of the pictures that I look at they were all huddled over there in the far corner playing bridge.

  Michener:                   Playing bridge. It’s out of the wind. 

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah, right.

  Michener:                   Then some guy, John Chase, he used to come out. He did some painting out here.

  Interviewer 1:             Oh really?

  Michener:                   Yeah, they’d draw, work out here, [loud engine noise] some of them. Basketball standards weren’t there.

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah, that was 1960 again.  A lot of stuff done out here during that period of time, I don’t’ know exactly what brought it all about.  Do you notice anything missing out here, if you look around?  Something of major importance?

  Michener:                   The tower.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s right,

  Michener:                   What did you do?  Pull it out?

  Interviewer 1:             No, what happened it was becoming very weak so we decided when we first took over out here that we would take it down.  So we pulled the tower down, it was a hazard.  We thought maybe it would fall on somebody so we had to. 

  Michener:                   Yeah, it was right over me as I worked in the garden and I talked to the guard up there and we’d discuss something.

  Interviewer 1:             I’m sure that the guards had their solitary confinement being stuck in a tower all day long too, they had to serve and 8 hour shift.  What did they call it the gold fish bowl or something like that?

  Michener:                   Most of the guards were pretty, pretty decent fellows.  I can remember only one or two that rather obnoxious. [Fog horn in background]

  Interviewer 1:             In talking with them, did most of them enjoy their jobs out here to a certain extent compared to other prisons?  Do you have any feelings about?

  Michener:                   I think so, yes. Generally, the guards here were higher I think that in the other federal penitentiaries.  There were some very reasonable men, Jack [Giles] used to like to talk to a lot of them. They went along with it very well. 

  Interviewer 1:             Well, you ready to mosey on down the way? We’ll go around and see your garden.

  Michener:                   [tape cuts] and we were out of the wind, we tore up these 2 x4s and the horseshoe pits and made fires

  Interviewer 1:             So they had men all the way around the outside here.

  Michener:                   Yeah, there must have been 100 marines around these walls and they were ready to shoot.

  Interviewer 1:             I’ve heard different stories.  One guy that was over here from Treasure Island where they came from, said he was a baker and he didn’t’ know a damn thing about a gun or anything else.  They just gave him a gun and told him to come on over here that he’d be guarding some prisoners.  [Michener laughs] And he said half the guys didn’t even know what was going on and he said a lot of them wanted to get into some action, they wanted to shoot, you know, they actually wanted to get involved and shoot some bullets around.

  Michener:                   Oh yeah, sure they would be very happy to. Well, [inaudible]

  Inteviewer 1:               Maybe you could point out a few things from right here while we’re standing up at a higher level.

  Michener:                   I planted all of this. [Edward J. Miller] Meathead gave me a job first job as the gardener on this side of the fence and he wanted all this mesembryanthemum [Latin plant name, not sure what plant Michener is speaking of] planted so I planted it piece by piece.  A lot of it’s gone by now, it was solid once. And, this is new down there, that wasn’t’ there when we were here.

  Interviewer 1:             I think they converted that into a snitch box situation down there.  It was kind of communications, west side communications area there.

  Michener:                   They had a snitch box down at the bottom thing there and that was all it was, as you came up the steps. That’s brand new.  And of course you know all about, I used to go around there and down there and chase shag balls down below there.

  Interviewer 1:             When they knocked them over the fence?

  Michener:                   Yeah, over the fence. I’d go along this narrow bit of bluff along the end, crawl down and get.  Then they’d knock them over this side too, but I had the freedom of the whole place on Saturdays and Sundays when we were playing ball so I could.

  Interviewer 1:             When you were here, did you ever have baby seagulls like they have down there right now? 

  Michener:                   Oh yes!

  Interviewer 1:             Was that a situation that I’m sure must have been kind of enjoyable for the men to watch the little gulls grow up.

  Michener:                   They weren’t up on this part of the Island but down along the incinerator, down there, just over the outside of the fence, we use to watch them along and when they first come up they’re very speckled, don’t look like gulls at all. 

  Interviewer 3:             These are very young gulls right here.

  Michener:                   Very young gulls.

  Interviewer 1:             Learning to fly. See them? See it?  He’s just bouncing around down there.

  Michener:                   I remember one New Year’s, day after New Year’s, I was working down at the incinerator, there was a pile of lumber along there and we got a drunk seagull.  Somebody got sick on the ferry and the seagull had eaten, cleaned it up.  So he was trying to walk along that.

  Interviewer 3:             [Inaudible]

  Michener:                   They could probably, some descendents of ?

  Interviewer 1:             Cousins and…

  Michener:                   Watch your step on

  Interviewer 3:              I will.

  Michener:                   Maybe how many thousand of times I’ve been up and down these steps.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, I’m sure. [Seagulls]

  Michener:                   Yup. And first I gardened here and on that hillside and this piece and down alongside the fence. Now there was a hedge before you came before down here and went straight down to the laundry on a

  Interviewer 1:             There’s a little pathway that goes on down and this is the way we usually go down but we’ve had to fence it off  because we’ve had people sneaking down in there and stuff like that so we’ve put this fence around it.

  Michener:                   And Jack [Giles] was quite a mycologist and I remember that, one time I took half an egg shell that came up this way from the laundry, up the path, and so I took the egg shell and put it on a little stem and very carefully marked it with some of the characteristics, I think it was an agaricus. Planted it over there where he’d be sure to see it coming up. [Laughter]

  Interviewer 1:             Oh what a mushroom.

  Michener:                   And here are my old fig trees.

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah, they sure.

  Michener:                   Yes, they have lasted a long time, just all these years.  I had a birdbath in here.  That’s part of it. 

  Interviewer 1:             [laughter] Part of the birdbath. Right. Uh oh, careful. 

  Michener:                   The …. I had it as a bowl. And around the bowl, I put some big brass wire and made it, set it in there with a bit of the arubia. Let’s see, ‘the bird of time? Has but a little way to fly, and lo the bird is on the wing.’

  Interviewer 2:             Tell it. Tell it. [Laughter] Great.

  Michener:                   I’ve eaten figs off of this tree.  Those are, that’s down on this side of the fence. …garbage that I’ve lugged up here to put in this bed.  That was pure hardpan.  Just…

  Interviewer 3:             [Inaudible] is what it was.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, we have done very little out here, work, I think it’s beautiful the way it is right now. 

  Michener:                   Yes. It is. [Crosstalk]

  Interviewer 1:             To see it growing naturally. 

  Interviewer 3:             Here’s raspberries.

  Interviewer 1:             We have blackberries all over the place, they are just thick out here, lot of blackberries in here.

  Interviewer 3:             Look at them in there.

  Interviewer 1:             They’re tasty. These are very good out here.

  Interviewer 3:             Did you plant these?

  Michener:                   No, this was all…

  Interviewer 3:             Look at them over in there.

  Interviewer 1:             These are crabapples? [Crosstalk]

  Michener:                   No, I remember I had one of the most gorgeous [loud engine]  solid bank of them.

  Interviewer 1:             There’s a walnut tree right here.

  Michener:                   I believe that’s new.

  Interviewer 2:             That’s new, yeah.

  Michener:                   No, the plant I remember is the fig trees on both sides of the fence there.  And there’s where the guard tower was, right there.  And let’s go down and look for the old greenhouse, I thought

  Interviewer 1:             Sneak through right here. You get a lot of people down here looking at it already.

  Michener:                    Yup, you’d open the door there and a lot of the glass, it’s all there, I could go in there and stay in there, the guard at the top could see me in here.  Except when I was doing something I wasn’t’ suppose to do and then I’d manage to kind of work in the center.[laughter]

  Interviewer 2:             Did you work at the center? Or in rows?

  Michener:                   Well, I, over there I had some work benches and with flats, flowers with seeds on them.

  Interviewer 3:             [Inaudible]

  Interviewer 1:             You did? Where’d you leave it?

  Interviewer 3:             I don’t know. This nice young man brought it to me.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, good for him.

  Michener:                   Can you get a picture of my greenhouse, Robin?

  Robin:                         I’m trying to now.

  Michener:                   Winehold, once he found out I was interested in doing something, why he would make sure that, there’s even an old piece of the glass. 

  Robin:                         Stand still now.

  Interviewer 1:             There’s the window.

  Michener:                   25 years ago I guess I put that in there, close to it.  The old cable next to it.

  Interviewer 1:             Must be interesting to come back.

  Michener:                   Yes, it is.

  Interviewer 1:             This is the one thing that we’ve always had a kind of special interest in too, wondering…

  Robin:                         How and when.

  Interviewer 1:             …how and what was going on here.  That’s right.

  Michener:                   Every bit of it. Laid the brick and put in the gullet. Some of these pieces were cut for me down at the wood shop but it was all second hand glass from old windows they had taken out someplace and took it all up, cleaned it up, put it in.

  Interviewer 3:             I don’t suppose there’d be anything wrong if I took one of these? Would there?

  Michener:                   No.

  Interviewer 1:             What’s that? Have her stick it in her purse so no one else sees it.  We get a lot of people out here wanting to uh…

  Michener:                   I was standing right here one time and I had a bush over there and had some penstemons and a little hummingbird came along and sat on that bush there and I picked that penstemon over and very carefully put it over to the hummingbird it sat there and drank from it. They used to dive bomb around here.

  Interviewer 1:              We have a lot of fun with the hummingbirds out here.

  Michener:                   Oh look at that.

  Interviewer 3:             Skyline, huh?

  Michener:                   No, just looking at that used to be solid with mesembryanthemum.

  Interviewer 1:             We have a lot of sour grass out here. 

  Michener:                   Oxalis.

  Interviewer 1:             Oxalis yes. It fills the hillside up during the early part of the spring.

  Interviewer 3:             [Inaudible]

  Interviewer 1:             A lot of that is rose bushes there. [Michener and Interviewer 3 converse in background]

  Interviewer 1:             I’m not a rose specialist as you can tell.

  Interviewer 3:             Did you plant all of this?

  Michener:                   All of that?  There was a little up there when I started and I planted the whole thing once and it was just solid with.  They started blooming in…

  Interviewer 1:             It sure is pretty.

  Michener:                   You could really see it in San Francisco.

  Interviewer 2:             You still can, when it growing on the other side over here.

  Michener:                   [Inaudible] The garden when I was coming from the, shook me down.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s when you would bring all you treats through.

  Michener:                   Yeah, that’s right. 

  Interviewer 2:             How about this little building down here. 

  Michener:                   That’s new. It wasn’t there when I was here [wind].

  Interviewer 1:             That’s a little garden shack. Looks like somebody worked over in this area. Possibly.

  Interviewer 2:             Did you work down in this area any?

  Michener:                   No, no I didn’t.  [loud engine and wind] while I was inside workin in the Warden’s House, coming over, visit Jack [Giles].

  Interviewer 2:             [Inaudible] features down there…

  Michener:                   Yes, I think that’s it. I wasn’t here then, was before my time.

  Interviewer 1:             He was, Mr. Michener was telling me about, were you down there when we were talking about Franklin?  And when he took off from the hobby?  Remember when he was out here last and he was telling us how they made the motors and stuff up, or [Floyd] Hamilton I mean. And he was going to be in on that little escape.

  Michener:                   I was working with the same detail and just about that time, they had that strike in the laundry and I got thrown into isolation and when I came back out, they made me work in the laundry for a little while and then they, I didn’t’ like that so . [Edward J. Miller] Meathead finally let me garden over on that side of the fence, the other side.  I remember I was working just the other side of the fence when I heard the shooting that day.  The shooting at the guys in the water as they got out.  I didn’t know the actual plan, I knew they had something going but I didn’t want.

  Interviewer 1:             It was so funny listening to him tell the story because he had built this board and had actually put a fake seagull up on top of it or something that he could, kind of match the water, that looked like a seagull was floating on this piece of wood in the middle of the water.

  Michener:                   Well, that was pretty good.  That was from the old model shop down there, the old model shop.  A guard killed once up on top if that, before my time, I don’t know.

  Interviewer 2:             Did you know Floyd [Hamilton] fairly well?

  Michener:                   Yeah, he wasn’t a friend of mine, I just knew him. 

  Interviewer 2:             He was back out here yesterday.

  Michener:                   Yeah, someone told me. [Crosstalk]

  Interviewer 1:             It’s been busy out here the last week or so.

  Michener:                   There used to be another greenhouse right down there by the incinerator.  About 8ft this side of the [wind] fence.  You got no fence up around down there but I use to have an escape plan to work down there.  And I was going to the chain link fence around that wall just this side of the incinerator was very rusty and knew that I could work it out.  So what I was going to do was to put a GI [Government Issue] can there with the lid on it, and have the side cut out of the GI can so I could get right there and work on this wire and get through and drop down and be out of sight of the guard, he couldn’t see down that cliff.  And then I was going to have a, I started making it in the greenhouse there, a can with an extension, a plastic extension around the outside.  Clear plastic so it would hold a little water on top, a tube coming up from underneath and a bellows on the bottom of this, so that it would compensate for the up and down the lift of the waves and I could get in there, that is if the can started to come up with the water on top held in with this plastic ring would keep it down and if I started to go down, the bellows at the bottom would drag in a little more air and stabilize it.  And I’ve always meant to try that out since I’ve got out to see if it would work. [Laughter]

  Interviewer 1:             A little experiment.

  Michener:                   Yes. You only get one shot at it.  I remember I was working on it in the greenhouse there one day with some rubber tubing that I had and I didn’t hear the gate open and one of the lieutenants came along, I cant’ remember which one it was now, and opened the door, I knew I must have given a hell of a guilty start but he looked at it and I guess he…

  Interviewer 1:             Sprinkling device.

  Interviewer 2:             You had to make a story.

  Interviewer 1:             That’s interesting.

  Michener:                   Yeah, you uh, it seems strange but you put in a good part of your life in one of these places and it has a, no matter how darn make it seem, might it seem to someone else as useless but it’s part of your life and has some meaning for you.

  Interviewer 1:             I was telling you about the catwalks, you can see how those have rusted through.

  Michener:                   Oh look, all those concrete guard royals they had along there, they’re all gone.

  Interviewer 1:             Right.  Bees love that don’t they?  Was this out here when you were here?

  Michener:                   I guess it was, I’m not sure. 

  Interviewer 1:             This is one of my favorites. See that one that’s under there?

  Michener:                   Oh yes!

  Interviewer 1:             I really like that, I think that’s really a nice looking cactus. 

  Interviewer 3:             Was this another greenhouse?

  Michener:                   That wasn’t’ there when I was here.  It looks older than mine but I can’t.

  Interviewer 1:             It’s possibly. You know sometimes things might have been here, if you dint’ have much association with them, as time goes by, you tend to forget about things like that, especially if they weren’t important in your

  Michener:                   That’s right, some of the things up there aren’t quite the way I remember.

  Interviewer 1:             Have you ever seen geraniums this size?

  Michener:                   Oh, yeah

  Interviewer 3:             They’re beautiful.

  Interviewer 1:             You don’t’ see geraniums that are grown in this capacity very often, these are like trees.

  Michener:                   I want to take a cutting.  And when Jack was up here before he took some, we got geraniums from the rock.  This is Martha Washington [geranium, var.]. 

  Interviewer 2:             Beautiful contrast.

  Interviewer 1:             Yeah, just try to keep them under cover because we tell all our people that come out here that they not allowed to. [Background talk] I’m trying to think there use to be a gentleman that used to be a secretary for Johnston when he was here and he was here for a number of years but he was a botanist and had an interest in plants and he planted these New Zealand, well this is his tree, this New Zealand Christmas, that’s what he calls it over here.  But he’s been out a number of times to check on his plants and see how they are doing and everything else.

                                      Boy the blackberries are getting ripe, getting ready to eat.

  Michener:                   Oh yeah, I can’t, as far as I know there were never any blackberries on the Island.

  Interviewer 3:             Look at them over there.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, they’ve sure taken over you know, they run right in.

  Michener:                   This whole area was pretty well trimmed and taken care of when I was here.

  Interviewer 1:             Right, well this type of thing would have poured too much of cover.

  Michener:                   Oh that’s right.  That makes sense, they had to be careful of that. 

  Interviewer 3:             Now what type of flower is this?

  Michener:                   I don’t know. 

  Interviewer 1:             That’s mallow.  I would say it’s in the morning glory family.

  Interviewer 3:             I was going to say it has that kind of feel.

  Michener:                   Yes, the blackberries are taking over aren’t they.

  Interviewer 2:             What do you call this tree?

  Michener:                   I don’t know. I’m not a botanist.

  Interviewer 3:             Jack [Giles] would I bet.

  Michener:                   It looks very much to me like a flowering eucalyptus. 

  Interviewer 3:             I think it is too.

  Interviewer 2:             Looks that way.

  Michener:                   The blossom on it is very much like, yeah. There’s so many…

  Interviewer 3:             Varieties [Inaudible]. I’m sure that’s a eucalyptus.

  Michener:                   What am I thinking of? I don’t know too much…

  Interviewer 1:             Looks like a Bottlebrush.

  Interviewer 2:             Yeah, it does. From Australia.

  Interviewer 3:             Well, David, Isn’t Australia where they brought in the eucalyptus trees from?

  Interviewer 1:             Yes. [Crosstalk]

  Interviewer 3:             But it sure has a eucalyptus look.

  Michener:                   There are a number of kind of eucalyptus.

  Interviewer 3:             These are going to harden, these little seed pods. Yeah, that’s a eucalyptus. [Inaudible crosstalk]

  Interviewer 2:             Was the structure still on Treasure Island when you got here?

  Michener:                   Yes.  They were getting it fixed for one of the World’s Fairs then.  Seems to me they were building both of the bridges then.

  Interviewer 2:             They opened the Golden Gate Bridge in ’39 I think, they opened up this one in ’37. 

  Interviewer 1:             Was that what it was? 

  Interviewer 2:             They finished with this but I looked it up the other day and showed people walking across in ’39.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, I’ll be darned.

  Interviewer 2:             I thought that was about 3 years later.

  Michener:                   Who was Eschscholtz [Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, German botanist]?  Was he a colonel or a general?  He visited the Island and Eschscholzia [California poppy] is named after him.

  Interviewer 1:             Well, I have no idea.

  Michener:                   He was a German that came over here just prior to the gold rush. He visited the Island. 

  Interviewer 1:             You can sure see a difference too, you can figure out.  The dark ones are beautiful.  The deep ones. 

  Michener:                   Had an office right in there.

  {Interview ends}

 

New inmates waiting for shower.

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 18352

---

"Yeah. There was never a guy, from the time this placed opened until it closed, paroled out of Alcatraz. Not one." - Robert Guilford

 

• Robert Guilford

  
  

  An oral interview with Robert Guilford who was a prisoner on Alcatraz from 1948 to 1960. The interview takes place while walking around Alcatraz.
  Audio Transcript

  Tape 1, Side 1

  Rumburg:        1342, Gardner Blvd, San Leandro, CA, phone number 562-1864. Mr. Guilford was here on Alcatraz from 1948 until 1960 and what we'll be talking about today will be helpful in gaining information that we need to help interpret our program here on Alcatraz.

  Now this is where you would have come in right here, right?

  Guilford:         [Unintelligible] …going to the basement…

  Rumburg:        Right. Now as a prisoner you know, like when you were transferred over here on the boat...is this where you came in, right here?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right here. You went in here, through here. This is where they used to store all the blankets and stuff like that.

  Rumburg:        Uh huh. Off to the right there.

  Guilford:         Then you'd go up here to the shower stall. Over here at this place, when you first came in, you'd come over here and strip. All this back here, this used to be, like this big box thing here...that was where each guy had a number. See those little metal slots there. Your name was on each one of them.

  Rumburg:        How did they number you before you came in here? If you came in here first, when did you get your number?

  Guilford:         I got a number right here. 926.

  Rumburg:        This is where numbers were issued, then right here at this point.

  Guilford:         Or whatever place you went to, didn't make no difference.

  Rumburg:        Was there any processing that was done at all on you when you hit the dock, when you first came in?

  Guilford:         No, I came up here and they brought an MTA [Medical Technical Assistant] down. As soon as I stripped, this is what used to, was the most, you know it just tore a guy's dignity up. You got to strip, then bend over, an MTA got a rubber glove, and bingo…ya know…and then you'd come over here and they'd give you a, at that time they were coveralls. They'd give you a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, a coverall, a pair of little felt things. They called them "slides." You took ‘em over here and there was benches along here and then you got under the shower and you had to shower, dry off. Then you put your clothes on and then you went up these stairs to the cell block and then you were assigned a cell. And you stayed there. I'll show you where, when you first come here, you went on what they call Broadway upstairs. Then the next day after you talked to the Associate Warden, they took you around and then you were assigned a cell somewhere else.

  Rumburg:        So there were just certain places up there, say, a new man coming in, would be put in a cell just for overnight purposes and then the next day he would be issued a cell that he would be in for a period of time. So, you said they showered on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  Guilford:         Tuesdays and Fridays.

  Rumburg:        Tuesdays and Fridays, oh.

  Guilford:         Tuesdays and Saturday mornings ‘cause, the reason it was Saturday morning, you couldn't go to the yard on Saturday morning because that was shower morning. When you come to the shower, you stripped down in your cell and they had a little cotton bath robe thing you put that on. You brought your dirty clothes to a desk right up there at the top of the stairs. You laid your dirty clothes down and the Guards then picks them up and shake ‘em down and give ‘em back to you. Then you came down here and they exchange ‘em right here for your dirty clothes and they give you a clean set and you took your shower and dried off and went back up to your cell. When you went back up, you went in the bath robe, you didn't put your clothes on here. When you took your clean clothes off, same Guard pick ‘em up and shake ‘em down, see you got nothing in them and give to you and you go to your cell and close the door and then that's when you put your clothes on.

  Rumburg:        What about Guards down here in the shower room?

  Guilford:         They had…one was in the cage there constantly and on bath days they had sometimes 4 or 5, you know or maybe more or maybe 3 or 4. It all depended on how many Guards they had, that they could afford to send down here.

  Rumburg:        I've heard a lot that from other people that I've talked to out here that the shower room was probably one of the easiest areas to become involved as far as the homosexuality aspect of it and things down here.

  Guilford:         I don't know how because there was no private showers. They were just out in the open, you know, and there was Guards all around. This kid that got killed here, Barsock[?], he was in D-Block. And his partner, his crime partner killed him, a guy named Simcox. Simcox got out of D-Block first and went to work down here, but he had told the Guard in D-Block that "I'm going to kill you punk when you come out." When you come out of D-Block, the first place you come is the shower...to get your mattress and stuff to take back to your cell.

  [Note: Edward Gauvin was murdered by Ronald Simcox in the shower. Joseph Barsock was murdered by Freddie Lee Thomas in the barbershop.]

  Rumburg:        They had mattresses down here, too.

  Guilford:         Yeah, they were stacked over there…

  Rumburg:        Oh, the storeroom was down here.

  Guilford:         They got under the shower, this Simcox came out and… [Claps] …bingo and hit him 3 or 4 times. This Guard’s down over here throwing toilet paper behind yelling ''Cut that out, cut that out." But he ain't about to run over there and try to stop him. He didn't want to take a chance on getting killed.

  Rumburg:        Now, on the average, this is supposedly a 50-man shower. Was it pretty full most of the time?

  Guilford:         On bath days, yeah.

  Rumburg:        Did they run them in shifts?

  Guilford:         A tier at a time. They’d never turn ‘em all loose at once.

  Rumburg:        So about 28 guys.

  Guilford:         About that, yeah.

  Rumburg:        That's very interesting. So, the water down here was hot, right?

  Guilford:         Yeah, fresh, hot water.

  Rumburg:        Did they have salt water you could shower in down here if you wanted to?

  Guilford:         No. Not that I know of. No salt water. For the first couple of years I was here about the only time I could really get warm was under that hot water because it was cold up in that cell block.

  Rumburg:        If you had to take an average guess at what the temperature was up in the main cell block, what would you say?

  Guilford:         I would say it was around 60. Some days it would get higher and some days, it all depended on the weather. On foggy days, it was cold. If you were in your cell you had to get under the blankets because it was just too cold.

  Rumburg:        Now, as far as blankets go…

  Guilford:         You could have as many as you wanted.

  Rumburg:        As many as you wanted up to a certain limit?

  Guilford:         No, there was no limit. I know one guy who had about ten blankets on his bed.

  Rumburg:        Jiminy Christmas, must be cold weather. [Both chuckle] Did you know much about the supply area over here, about what was stored in here? Let's just walk in here for a second. Mattresses in this first room?

  Guilford:         Huge stack of blankets over here. The clean blankets were stacked over there and the dirty ones over there. [Unintelligible] …they sent them to the laundry ... and then here...This was more or less, this door was always kept closed and then that other area, I don’t know what they kept over there. ‘Cause I never…Ah, that was the basement for the kitchen!

  Rumburg:        Right. It was the food preparation area. They had a freezer and... [Crosstalk] Would you like to walk back there?

  Guilford:         Sure.

  Rumburg:        They also had an elevator; you know that took food up to the kitchen. Do you know what this room was back in here? It looks...In the early years did they have the laundry in this area down here?

  Guilford:         I don't really know. Not in my time they didn't.

  Rumburg:        I was just wondering if this could have been used maybe as a laundry or something like that down here.

  Guilford:         It could be, I don't know. Over here, up until 1952 the guys that worked in the kitchen could come down here and bathe everyday if they wanted to. You know they had a shower, bath. [Crosstalk] They could come down and bathe every day. In 1952, after they had the food strike, the reason the food strike came about was they sent a new Steward out, Chief Steward. His name was Stotter and I got to where I really respected Mr. Stotter. But when he first came here, they closed the kitchen for a couple of days. Everybody stayed in their cell and the Guards fed you. Then he told everybody there were going to be some changes made. No more showers in the basement. Shower on the regular days down in the regular shower, same as everybody else and no more eating…cooking your own food. You'll eat what the main line eats and...

  Rumburg:        So, the guys that worked down here had kind of special privileges. It was a good job to be able to work in the kitchen.

  Guilford:         There’s where the shower mount[?] was.

  Rumburg:        I see, I see, that's interesting.

  Guilford:         Lotta guys objected to it so everybody went on strike. It was only 27 guys working in the whole kitchen, you know.

  Rumburg:        Oh, well, did they have, say the Steward, when we get upstairs, of course there is a glassed-in area up there. Is that where the Stewards office was, little room?

  Guilford:         The little thing there was his office, yes.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Guilford:         They tried Simcox for murder over in San Francisco and he got acquitted, self-defense. [Chuckles] That’s unbelievable. They had three Guards, three Guards was eyewitnesses to it and he still beat it on self-defense. This kid was stark-naked. So how is he gonna have a weapon?

  Rumburg:        So, this room clear back here in the back, the farthest one back is the bakery. What kind of stuff did they bake? Did they bake all the bread, you said?

  Guilford:         All the breads, pastries, they ate good here. Every morning they had fresh rolls or donuts or chocolate coated donuts or coffee cakes, there was something, you know. That was the proof box. That's where you put the bread, you put it in there to steam it up, proof it up. They had a big table right here to roll your bread on....

  Rumburg:        Kneading table. Well, then you said that the people that lived on the island, say the families, the Guards and stuff like that also bought bread and stuff. Did they have to buy it or was it given to them?

  Guilford:         No, they had to pay for it. But they got it at a much lower price than you'd buy in the City. And like their laundry, they had their laundry did here and they got it done so much cheaper.

  Rumburg:        And they also could buy their food here? All their food was then brought from down...

  Guilford:         They could buy most everything in the way of food. There’s the ovens and they had a big oven in here. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. That's where they baked all the bread and the pastries and stuff. You know right here was a big mixer where you mixed your dough.

  Rumburg:        Oh, just to the left of the doorways as you walked in. The kitchen looks like it was a very modern kitchen. It looks like all the appliances that they had here and everything else was pretty tip top. We're going to move into the dining area here and we'll talk a little bit about that. That's the part, there used to be a shower here or somethin', just a sink?

  Guilford:         No, that was a, let me think a minute, where they had the coffee urn.

  Rumburg:        Now, let's just start from the very beginning. Say, let's just get up for breakfast and come in here and just explain the process that you would go through on eating a meal.

  Guilford:         You come through the dining, you come single file, one behind the other. When you got up to here, one line could go this way and one could go this way.

  Rumburg:        So, they served on both sides of the table. The whole middle part of this was open, open space.

  Guilford:         The only places the tables were, were on the right side between these two…you know, between these pillars.

  Rumburg:        And you said ten men sat at each table?

  Guilford:         It was a wide table. Had five on each side. When the ten men got to the…when the first…you had to stand there until all ten of you got there. Then you sat down.

  Rumburg:        Now, you sat down when the Guard told you to sit down.

  Guilford:         You'd sit down when he’d tell you to sit down. So, you'd sit down and start eating. And me, anytime we'd come in the dining room…when I'd get to my table…you always ate at the same place with the same guys all the time. When I'd sit down, if you had a meal which required a knife to cut the meat, I would look and if there was no knife there, I wouldn't sit down. I'd call the Guard, "Hey, look."

  Rumburg:        I think everybody was very aware of that particular fact, right? That was something that other people I've talked to said the same thing. And there was a Guard at each table, right?

  Guilford:         Then when you got through eating, after your meal was over, you sat there until the Guard...He'd start down there at the first table, you know. One table would get up at a time and you'd march out single file. The five guys on the fore side would come out and then the next guys would follow right behind them. Then they’d come to the next table and they'd go like this. Everybody get up, march out single file, come all the way down and start over here.

  Rumburg:        What about the other silverware? Was it just left on the table?

  Guilford:         The spoon and the fork made no difference. All they were interested in was the knife.

  Rumburg:        Was there anybody that checked them when they went out the door?

  Guilford:         Checked the knives or…?

  Rumburg:        Were they frisked or anything?

  Guilford:         No, your spoon and fork, you picked them ahead of time.

  Rumburg:        Ok, they had a container that you put them in, then, right. There was somebody standing there watching you, right, all the time.

  Guilford:         Oh yeah. Sure was. Make sure you didn’t have a fork and a spoon.

  Rumburg:        Now the people that worked here in the kitchen, you said there were how many people?

  Guilford:         27.

  Rumburg:        27 people.

  Guilford:         A total, that included the bakery, the dining room and the kitchen.

  Rumburg:        Now, were all these people inmates? Did they have any people that were not?

  Guilford:         Well, they had three cooks in here, yeah. That's what used to be ridiculous, you know. ‘Cause they'd have the Chief Steward…let's see there was 1, 2, 3 other Stewards and they didn't do anything. The convicts did all the work. It was, I go “Man this is ridiculous”. These four or five people in here all the time, and the taxpayers pay them a salary and they don't do nothing. They're not earning it, you know.

  Rumburg:        So, there were no…those were civilian type people?

  Guilford:         Yes, they were government employees.

  Rumburg:        To your knowledge, was there ever any major problems that took place here in the mess hall, that you knew of, besides the food strike?

  Guilford:         Well, I don't know whether you'd call it a major problem or not. I'll give you a good example. One night when we all came in, they had spaghetti and meatballs and it was good. Man, I'm waiting to start…I’ma eat this. I sat down and I didn't even get a chance to start. The guy on the other side got up and just picked the end of the table up and went whew, table and all. It all just flew over and in less than two seconds, every table in here was turned upside down.

  Rumburg:        Just because one guy did it? Do you think there was anything planned on that?

  Guilford:         No. Planned nothing. They just followed...they see him do it and they’re all bingo, wham, they all went over.

  Rumburg:        So, what happened?

  Guilford:         So, they took us all out single file out of the dining room and, the guys in the kitchen cleaned the mess up, and they brought us back and we had sandwiches.

  Rumburg:        Was the guy that started the whole thing...was something done to him, as far as the instigator, nothin' really?

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        Nothing really, it was just...

  Guilford:         No, just bingo!

  Rumburg:        So, everybody was punished as far as sandwiches...?

  Guilford:         Everybody lost because it was a good meal.

  Rumburg:        So, what happened informally, did anybody have a chat with that guy or pass the word on to him...?

  Guilford:         No, ‘cause you know, sometimes...

  Rumburg:        Just frustrations are… [Crosstalk] People understand it, ok, I see.

  Guilford:         Once I seen one guy get stabbed right here, right over here. He was sort of a crippled guy. He'd had a little argument with somebody, I don't know, and the guy...didn't hurt him very bad. He did stab him right here. But outside the windows they had gun Guards, on both sides. If you started anything in here, man, they just…

  Rumburg:        Oh, I didn't even know there was a catwalk on this side.

  Guilford:         There used to be.

  Rumburg:        Oh, I see. There was one, there was a little ladder contraption on the outside over here.

  Guilford:         I guess it’s torn down but there sure used to be one. This one over here was probably still…

  Rumburg:        Oh, it is, you can see it from the outside. Do you ever remember any shots being fired through there?

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        No shots ever fired in here. What about tear gas, was tear gas ever used?

  Guilford:         I never seen ‘em use tear gas in here either.

  Rumburg:        Now, the tear gas that was used, it was all piped in. It was direct tear gas. Do you know where the storage tanks... Would it be up on the top of the building? [Crosstalk] I think it probably is.

  Guilford:         They were operated by electricity.

  Rumburg:        These doors right here, these were electrical doors?

  Guilford:         Oh yes.

  Rumburg:        Well, now here is the door I was talking about. See how this is built.

  Guilford:         Well it was all glass.

  Rumburg:        It was all glass, so they had a wide, wide view of everything.

  Guilford:         Yeah, of everything.

  Rumburg:        And this door, then, was always closed down into the...?

  Guilford:         In order to get down there, the Guard had to unlock it and then you'd go down into the basement through there.

  Rumburg:        I see, I see and then the Guard from the gallery there also had a viewpoint in from that mesh screen...

  Guilford:         Oh yeah. Sure did. They had mirrors up there. There was a hook… [Crosstalk] …and the mirror would reflect, where could see the whole thing.

  Rumburg:        180 degrees.

  Guilford:         Yeah, right. Out here there used to be a desk, right here, what they call the Officer of the Day stayed, right here.

  Rumburg:        Times Square…

  Guilford:         They didn't call it...that was Broadway. I ain’t never heard this place called Time Square.

  Rumburg:        Somebody referred to this, it was called "Times Square" by a couple of Guards even called it that. That's why I was curious.

  Guilford:         I never heard that expression when I was here, not once.

  Rumburg:        Is it true that this was Michigan Avenue over here?

  Guilford:         No. [Chuckles]

  Rumburg:        This is stuff we've picked in some of our research. But this was known as Broadway?

  Guilford:         [Unintelligible] ...the only people here were the guys that worked in the kitchen. Up here on the second tier, when I came in that's the first place I went, right up there in the cell. I got here about two o'clock in the morning and I stayed there until the next day. I ate my first meal, and then I went back to that cell and then a little while later they called me out. I went around to A-Block when they had a desk in there and I talked to the Associate Warden and Captain and Lieutenant. They always give you some kind of a briefing.

  Rumburg:        Well, now, you said the only people that were housed on B­Block, Broadway were the people that worked in the kitchens? [Loud noise]

  Guilford:         From here down to the cutoff. Up here on this tier there used to be guys celled here… [Loud noise] …but not for long.

  Rumburg:        Let's just walk down here...That noise from them throwing stuff down...

  Guilford:         This, now, all of the people that I ever seen cell up here was the guy that first came in.

  Rumburg:        Most of these then were empty? As far as B-Block goes? In this Broadway area?

  Guilford:         Yeah. Except for the 27 guys that worked in the kitchen.

  Rumburg:        Well, you know, we were told by the prison people that came through here, as far as Guards go, that the blacks were segregated on the top tier here.

  Guilford:         The blacks were segregated here. But they only had a few. They were here and a few up there...

  Rumburg:        2nd and 3rd tier on B-Block.

  Guilford:         He told you the truth. They were segregated.

  Rumburg:        Also, at mealtime? They were segregated at the same table.

  Guilford:         Yeah. They ate at their table and then the white guys at their table.

  Rumburg:        So basically, this whole area here on Broadway was pretty isolated.

  Guilford:         Yeah, right. And down here past the cut-off there wasn't much, wasn’t nobody.

  Rumburg:        Nobody past this first cut-off coming down from the mess hall. These were all empty cells down here then. Well, that's very interesting. That's something that we hadn't heard of before. What I would like to do is walk around right here and let's go over into A­Block area and talk a little bit about…

  Guilford:         I wanna show you where the visiting rooms are. Now these, these were not visiting windows at all.

  Rumburg:        Oh, they weren't?

  Guilford:         Right over there, right there...

  Rumburg:        The four windows. Is that right? This was the visiting hall?

  Guilford:         Yup. Right there.

  Rumburg:        So, this actually looks like it was an outside gun port that was put in after the riot.

  Guilford:         Well, there was something out here, too.

  Rumburg:        This is the port that looks out towards the City right here. They would talk to you from the outside of the building.

  Guilford:         Well, there was a shed-like thing there.

  Rumburg:        A shed-like structure put over there.

  Guilford:         They used to use it right here too.

  Rumburg:        I see...where the four windows are...

  Guilford:         l never did see four visitors here at one time. One right here. You'd sit here and you had a telephone over there and this was bulletproof glass here, and the other chair, and you sat here and you had...they'd plug the phone in for you and they had a Guard up here that monitored your conversation.

  Rumburg:        So, he monitored through the phone system?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right.

  Rumburg:        Right through the phone. Well, that is very amazing. Do you know, do you happen to know when this changed as far as visiting within the prison here rather than outside over there?

  Guilford:         That changed about, I would say around '51 or '52. I'm not sure.

  Rumburg:        But it was early 50's then, somewhere around there that they changed...

  Guilford:         But these four windows were never occupied at the same time. See you were only allowed an hour a month for a visit.

  Rumburg:        Now how did that... Did that go all the way up until the time you left? One visit per month?

  Guilford:         Yeah. One hour a month. Now, my visitor would come on the last day of the month and visit and then he could come back the next day, or she could come back the next day. So, two days in a row. You see, they come on the last day and then the next day is the first day of the month.

  Rumburg:        So, they could spend two days? Very interesting, very very interesting.

  Guilford:         This door over here, oh man, nobody went through...that door goes up to what they call the Board Room.

  Rumburg:        [Unintelligible] …us to walk up there right now?

  Guilford:         I'll show you where the Board Room was, what they called the Board Room.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        This is known to us as the stage area, recreation room, and movie theater. Guards also had their offices up here.

  Guilford:         This was the Board Room, right here.

  Rumburg:        The Board Room, the one with all the boards in it.

  Guilford:         [Chuckles] Now they had a big table in there and the Warden would sit at the head of the table. The Associate Warden would be here, then the Captain, then the Lieutenant, then the industry man and the priest, whatever, and you'd sit down at the end of the table. They would talk to you, but it never did amount to nothing. You wasn't going to get no parole out of here anyhow.

  Rumburg:        This was more, basically, the hearing room when your time…yearly parole hearing.

  Guilford:         Yeah. There was never a guy, from the time this placed opened until it closed, paroled out of Alcatraz. Not one.

  Rumburg:        That's interesting because I just talked to a prisoner who said he was paroled from Alcatraz.

  Guilford:         No sir, don't you believe it. Nobody ever left this place directly from here to the streets on parole. Never. [Chuckles] If they did, they did it secretly ‘cause nobody ever heard of it.

  Rumburg:        Is that right? That's interesting. I'd like to bring that up with somebody else again as far as...

  Guilford:         I've never heard of anybody ever being paroled out of here. You were either transferred away or you served your time, or you got out through the courts, or you went out feet first, one or the other.

  Rumburg:        Well, you seem to be very emphatic on that point. It seems to be something that was pretty obvious when you came here, that there was no parole.

  Guilford:         There was no parole from here. None. I never...not once I have never heard of a guy ever getting a parole from here.

  Rumburg:        Would that be something that basically prison people would know that were, say, within the prison?

  Guilford:         Sure, they would know. Anybody that ever worked here should know that nobody ever went out of here on parole, any Guard.

  Rumburg:        Very interesting...I'd like to bring that point up with some other people and discuss it with them.

  Guilford:         Well, you got 'ole "Double-Tough's" address, ask him, he'll tell you.

  Rumburg:        What was his name?

  Guilford:         Ordway. [Chuckles] I used to laugh at that guy ‘cause he was really, in a way, he was sort of dumb. Not dumb but he just put on such a tough-guy act. I used to laugh at him. Really, like over in B-Block one day, there was a bunch of guys over there and there was an Indian kid named Mitchell. So, this Mitchell hollered, "Hey Ordway." Ordway happened to be in B-Block[?], Ordway says, "Put a handle on that..." and he said, "Hey, motherfucker."

  Rumburg:        Mitchell said that? This seems to be a pretty common thing every now and then when people get pressured...

  Guilford:         You know, they gotta let off something. [Chuckles] It really tickled me, I had to laugh. I got sent to the hole, and also had to pay for a bed sheet. I was on the second tier in D-Block[?] and the guys on the bottom tier were on what they called "restricted diet." The guys up on the second tier that were getting full meals would save a little something and rap...and tie it on a...

  Rumburg:        String.

  Guilford:         A string and drop it over the tier. I didn't have no string, so I just ripped a piece of string off my sheet about so long and dropped it over and they...so they called me over and tried me for it. I paid $2, I had to pay a fine of two dollars and fifty some cents for the sheet and went to the hole for ten days.

  Rumburg:        Well, now the money you made here working in the industry and whatever, where did that go?

  Guilford:         On your account.

  Rumburg:        You had an account here.

  Guilford:         Well, they kept it on the books for you.

  Rumburg:        Now, could you draw out money any time you wanted here?

  Guilford:         What are you going to use it for?

  Rumburg:        Well, say you want to order books or something like that.

  Guilford:         You didn't draw the money; they paid for it and took it off your account. You never did see no money in here.

  Rumburg:        Did you ever get to monitor your account or see if you were getting the amount...

  Guilford:         Well, they sent you a statement every month, just like in Leavenworth. You never draw any money there either. You know, you go to the canteen and you…and they got a big canteen there…you give your number and the guy that’s got your cards, and everything, he pulls. The last time I was there you were allowed to spend $25 a month. He looked at your card and you could go once a week. [Audio skips] $25 dollars the first week, next week and so on...

  Rumburg:        In this area right here, is this where you came to watch movies and things like that?

  Guilford:         Yeah, this was the movie right here. The screen was right up there, and the seats were up there.

  Rumburg:        I heard, though, when you came in to watch a movie that it was a very uneasy situation because they had armed Guards around here. When the lights went off, if there was any slight sound or anything, they'd turn the lights on, and it was just kind of an uneasy situation.

  Guilford:         No, they didn't have no armed Guards in here. They ain’t about to put no armed Guards in here.

  Rumburg:        With all those people.

  Guilford:         No way, no way. I went up here a few times and I never did see nothing unusual and I never see them turn the lights on. Once in a while the movie projector would sort of foul-up and they'd turn the lights on then, until they got it repaired and working again, then they'd turn them off again.

  Rumburg:        And you had movies, how often did you say?

  Guilford:         I think it was twice, I think it was every other Sunday. Sometimes...

  Rumburg:        It would vary every now and then, but basically every other Sunday.

  Guilford:         Ordinarily, if everything was going normal, why, you'd get a movie every other Sunday, and, if it wasn't going normal, well... [Chuckles]

  Rumburg:        Was there anything else done up here in this room? What about bands, jazz bands?

  Guilford:         The band, they had what they call the band room, was down in the basement right there in the shower room.

  Rumburg:        Oh, it was in the shower room.

  Guilford:         You had to get on the list. I'll give you an illustration of one of them.

  Rumburg:        Why don't you wait just a second. I want to change this tape.

  Tape 1, Side 2

  Rumburg:        I want to talk to you just for a second about the band thing.

  Guilford:         Oh yeah, I’ll tell ya. There used to be an Associate Warden here named Latimer and in order to go down to the band room on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings, you had to be on what they called a band list. So, I went over to Latimer one day and told him I'd like to get on the band list.

  Rumburg:        He was Associate Warden?

  Guilford:         Yeah. He said, "Well, I can't put you on the band list. You don't have an instrument.” I said, "Ok.” So, then I went back, asked permission to buy a guitar. He said, "Well, I can't let you buy a guitar, you're not on the band list." And I said "Ah, this is ridiculous." [Chuckles] I just gave up.

  Rumburg:        Well, do you think you could have, couldn't you have bought a guitar or was that just something that...

  Guilford:         No, you couldn't buy unless you got permission. A few guys in here had guitars like Ray. Ray Karpis used to have a steel guitar.

  Rumburg:        Well, did the band ever perform, did they play?

  Guilford:         I think once or maybe twice on holidays, they let a few of them come up and play in the dining room while we were eating, but that’s all. Like perform for an audience? No.

  Rumburg:        No, I meant for some of the inmates...

  Guilford:         No, if you weren't on the band list you didn't go down there, period.

  Rumburg:        I see, now they went down when there was…weren't showering and things like that and they played downstairs. They weren't allowed to come up here and practice in the band room?

  Guilford:         Oh, no.

  Rumburg:        Was there a Guard room in this side up here?

  Guilford:         I don't know, I never did know of any Guard room up here.

  Rumburg:        I was just wondering as far as...

  Guilford:         Yeah, wait, they had some kind of little recreation thing up here, somewhere. I think they used... [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        It would have had to have been in here because this is the only other area that...

  Guilford:         They had a little, once in a while, they had a mat. I think they had a wrestling mat they'd put out here and for wrestling matches. Their handball thing was outside somewhere, I don't know where, I never did see it.

  Rumburg:        Oh, it was down below in the parade area. Ok, well, let's walk on down and we'll go along back into the main cell block. [Audio briefly cuts out] The only time, say you wanted to see the Warden, what process would you go through to see the Warden?

  Guilford:         Well, you'd write a request to see him and if he granted the request, why you'd come over here.

  Rumburg:        Ok, now, A-block was where the Warden has his requests table set up?

  Guilford:         [Crosstalk] …you wanted to ask...or sometimes they might just... [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        Were some of them better than others? As far as requests?

  Guilford:         [Unintelligible] …was the best. Right here past these steps they had a table somewhere.

  Rumburg:        Just in front of the stairway going down into the old fort or citadel area.

  Guilford:         Right. They had a desk here and Associate Warden would sit back there, and the Lieutenant would stand here. Another Guard would stand over here and you'd sit out here.

  Rumburg:        Did this line have anything to do with...?

  Guilford:         Yeah, you don't cross that line.

  Rumburg:        That line you didn't cross.

  Guilford:         No, so this is where he held his interview. You had disciplinary action taken here. They'd bring you here. This is where you get tried. Then you went from here to D-Block if you, if you went to the hole or they'd just turn you loose or whatever.

  Rumburg:        To your knowledge was any of this area ever used over here for anything?

  Guilford:         Yes, in 1952 when they had the food strike, they had D-Block so full that they kept guys up here on the second tier for about a month. The shower bath was down there at the bottom.

  Rumburg:        Do you know what…was that area ever used for anything else that you know of down there?

  Guilford:         That area through the gate? That was the barber shop.

  Rumburg:        When you were here was there still stairways. There used to be over here down at the end of this block area right here on A­Block looking up towards the gun gallery, there used to be circular staircases all the way through here and up into the gun gallery. Were you here when that was here?

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        Okay, that must have been...

  Guilford:         Long before my time. See, for a long time they didn't have screens over the gun gallery. I'll show you why when we get out here.

  Rumburg:        That was just after the '46 blast-out that they put the screen up. Now the screens were here during that time because, I guess, Johnston was kind of an aesthetic guy and didn't want to put ‘em up because they didn't look good or something. Were you, are you familiar with…I guess you wouldn't be because that happened just after you left? This is...these cells right here are the ones that the Anglin brothers dug out of, right here. Yeah, that happened right after you left. These are the two that they tunneled out of right here...

  Guilford:         And the guy that went with them, Morris...

  Rumburg:        Did you know Mr. Morris? One thing about the cells. When you were here were you allowed to do any painting within your cells or to fix them up in any way?

  Guilford:         No, you couldn't fix your cell up. No way. You had a little shelf up there and you had a little steel mirror about so close. It’s what you used to shave.

  Rumburg:        About three of four inches?

  Guilford:         Yeah. And your bed was here and these two tables, just like that. They fold out, and you had no razor blades in there. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday night a Guard would come by and lay a razor blade here. You get up and shave and put the blade back and you better have it back.

  Rumburg:        Did anyone try and cut their wrists or anything with the razor blades?

  Guilford:         Not that I know of.

  Rumburg:        One thing that...also, what about the light bulbs?

  Guilford:         The light bulbs right there...

  Rumburg:        Were the light bulbs controlled by you in the cell?

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        I see strings hanging off of some of them.

  Guilford:         Well, during the daytime you could turn it off if you wanted to but at night you had no...

  Rumburg:        Lights went out at 9:30?

  Guilford:         9:30. Lights out.

  Rumburg:        What about getting up in the morning? What time did you get up?

  Guilford:         When they rang a bell.

  Rumburg:        Bell rang, what, at 6:30?

  Guilford:         Yeah. Around 6:30 or 7 o’clock. I'm not sure. Right here, here's the barber shop. The barbers in there used to have a pair of scissors and a pair of clippers to cut your hair. So, one day a black guy was cutting another black guy's hair. White guys didn't cut the black guys hair. Black guys didn't cut the white guys hair. So, this black guy is cutting the black guy's hair and got in an argument. This guy stabbed him with the scissors and killed him.

  Rumburg:        The barber did? The barber stabbed the other black guy?

  Guilford:         Yeah and killed him. So, then they took the scissors out and all they had left in was a pair of clippers.

  Rumburg:        Well, now I heard…

  Guilford:         They got no shaves in there; they had no razors.

  Rumburg:        Well, that was interesting. Were the barbers people who worked here, were they inmates?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        I see. Well, now, this must have been a pretty heavily used area right here in B-Block, on this side of B-Block.

  Guilford:         This is what they call B-Section[?] People celled here.

  Rumburg:        It was pretty full, then, this area was all the way down. You know you were talking about...do you remember anybody...as far as people coming to visit the island, interested in cells where really important people lived. You know such as “Machine Gun” Kelly and a lot of those guys. Did they transfer people around a lot? You know, did you basically have the same cell...

  Guilford:         No, that was wrong. About the only time they ever do was, if you requested a cell change, why you might get one. Otherwise, you'd stay in there for as long as you...

  Rumburg:        The whole time you were here. Well, now, what about trying to...say somebody vacated a cell up here up on the second tier that you could see out of a window. How would you go about trying to get a cell like that or what would be the...?

  Guilford:         You just waited until one was open, and then put a request for it.

  Rumburg:        And then you put in a request for it? Would most people try and put in a request for a cell that was...a good cell like that?

  Guilford:         No. Once in a while when they first come in, they likes it, but after you’re here a while, outside didn't mean nothing. The best one's that I ever seen to have a good view was over in D-Block. You could sit in the cell and look out all day long if you wanted to.

  Rumburg:        Did most of the guys that spent time here, most of them spend some time in D-Block?

  Guilford:         No, John Paul Chase was here for 26 years I think, and I don't think he was ever in D-Block. He was what they call a model prisoner. Guys like Banghart and Karpis and a few other guys, they spent a lot of time over there.

  Rumburg:        Would you like to go on up into…let's go up to the hospital area and then we'll come down and go to D-Block.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Guilford:         He had been to the hospital. If he was coming back from the hospital. And Swope was coming up to the hospital and Swope always walked with his hands out like that and he'd talk in a whining voice and he'd call everybody "my boy." "How are you this morning, my boy?" I just ignored him...and Swope got up here… [Unintelligible] …and called down there... [Unintelligible]

  Rumburg:        Just because he didn't speak to the Warden?

  Guilford:         Just because he didn't say good morning to the Warden...

  Guilford:         9 months’ worth.

  Rumburg:        9 months’ worth?

  Guilford:         In D-Block. Not in the hole....

  Rumburg:        In the consignment cells. As far as control or access back and forth here there’s this large middle gate here. Was this closed at all times? Was there somebody Guarding this gate?

  Guilford:         There used to be a bench out here. When you came to the hospital, you sat on this bench until the Guard in the hospital came and unlocked the door and let you in. This was the dental parlor.

  Rumburg:        Let me ask you a question before we get there, what was this here?

  Guilford:         I don't know.

  Rumburg:        You didn't know that.

  Guilford:         I knew it was there but what it is was, I never...

  Rumburg:        I just wonder if it was a ventilator that they kept locked or... [Crosstalk] I've been trying to find out... It was just a...

  Guilford:         Like here is the mirror.

  Rumburg:        The Guard could look through.

  Guilford:         And see who is coming up.

  Rumburg:        So, this was, dental first room on my right as you walk in.

  Guilford:         And the dentist came over once a week on Wednesday, that's all.

  Rumburg:        Once a week on Wednesday.

  Guilford:         And here's where they fixed and repaired teeth so forth and so on.

  Rumburg:        Was their dental care pretty good?

  Guilford:         Yeah, you didn't have much chance to go to a dentist because there was only in one day a week.

  Rumburg:        Yeah, I see. They took probably the most severe cases in a...

  Guilford:         Here was the operating room.

  Rumburg:        First door on the left was the operating room.

  Guilford:         [Unintelligible] This is where they operated, right here.

  Rumburg:        Did they have a lot of chance for operation, probably wouldn't be too much of that, would there?

  Guilford:         No, if it was a major operation, real major operation, they'd probably transfer you to some other prison.

  Rumburg:        Either to Springfield or Leavenworth.

  Guilford:         They got a good hospital in Leavenworth.

  Rumburg:        What about taking you to the city to be worked on?

  Guilford:         Take you over, no way.

  Rumburg:        No way? Never take you into...

  Guilford:         Frisco? No. This is what they call...where they'd come in here for all treatment like...they had a big table in here, examine you, and this and that and the other, you know.

  Rumburg:        An examination room right across from the operating room there.

  Guilford:         And right here was the hospital...

  Rumburg:        Supply area...food...

  Guilford:         This was the kitchen. They’d bring it in here…food court[?].

  Rumburg:        Oh, I see, they would bring it up from downstairs, you mean.

  Guilford:         Yeah, and they had a little gas stove here. I used to be on a diet, and I could cook my food. I had ulcers real bad. I liked to get my meat raw and I could cook it without putting a lot of grease and stuff.

  Rumburg:        This is your area, you worked up here, right. Now, was that kind of a special privilege or...?

  Guilford:         Yeah, I worked up here. Oh, no, nothing special.

  Rumburg:        Well, did you have your choice of working up here or working in the working areas down below?

  Guilford:         No, the only reason they put me up here was because I had to be on a diet, and they had no diet in the dining room. No. [Crosstalk]

  Here was the X-ray room.

  Rumburg:        Across the hall, again, from the supply room, still have the 'ole x-ray room.

  Guilford:         Here was Stroud's cell. Right here. This is where his cell was...and that toilet was put in there about '53 or '54, prior to that he used a bedpan and, he was so weak. You know, his muscles so deteriorated that he couldn't even flush it with his finger. Had to take the broom and put the broom in and then lean on it. That's true and then once a week, on Saturdays, was it here? Yeah, it was in here.

  Rumburg:        Across the hall...

  Guilford:         They'd bring three Guards up here and he'd come out and go in there and take his bath. Go back to his cell. That was it.

  Rumburg:        He was pretty weak during that period of time.

  Guilford:         His arms looked like little toothpicks.

  Rumburg:        And he spent, probably the majority of his time up here in this complex.

  Guilford:         Right here is where they kept hospital records and so forth.

  Rumburg:        Records, right across the hall from this...

  Guilford:         Bug cage.

  Rumburg:        Bug cage?

  Guilford:         Yeah, that’s what they called them.

  Rumburg:        Now these are stripped cells, right?

  Guilford:         No. In here, there are two, here and here...those were the showers...and the floor was kept warm. How, I don't know. They used to have part of a [?] toilet in there...

  Rumburg:        Now, there is a toilet on the other side...

  Guilford:         Yeah. Now this one, one could be...they put you in here and you were stripped but you still didn't get cold because the heat came up from the floor.

  Rumburg:        And everything was flushed from the outside, complete control from the outside.

  Guilford:         [Crosstalk] They were flushed right here.

  Rumburg:        Okay. See, now this one has the new aluminum cast toilet here...

  Guilford:         Yeah, right. That’s so you can’t work[?] here.

  Rumburg:        …and then food would be slid in through this opening here.

  Guilford:         Right through here.

  Rumburg:        And then you would be observed in through the windows right there?

  Guilford:         Yeah. [Unintelligible] …glass here too.

  Rumburg:        Well, it’s been broken out.

  Guilford:         But these panes[?] you can’t touch. They’re hard, you can’t even break that.

  Rumburg:        They’re about two or three inches thick, I think.

  Guilford:         [Unintelligible]

  Rumburg:        So, you would spend time until you quieted down?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        Probably had some kind of a relaxer, or shots, or something like that?

  Guilford:         [Unintelligible] …for the doctor. I’m trying to think of that guy’s name. He’s the head psychiatrist over at the University of California, and he would come over and interview him right in here.

  Rumburg:        In this room with the wooden door right here was his...? [Crosstalk]

  Guilford:         Psychiatrist used to interview them.

  Rumburg:        Now, how often would he come over?

  Guilford:         Sometimes once a month, maybe twice a month. All depended on when they really wanted to come over. These were the hospital wards. They either had one man or three men. Used to be one big huge ward. These didn't used to be here at all.

  Rumburg:        They weren’t partitioned off with the steel cells?

  Guilford:         '53 or '54, I'm not sure. I sort of lose track. There was a bathroom back there in the hospital. They had no hot water up here. Even after they put earphones in here, a guy in the hospital couldn't have no earphones.

  Rumburg:        Oh, they did have earphones in here to listen.

  Guilford:         No, no sir.

  Rumburg:        Not in the hospital, but down below in the cells. You said those were put in about '57?

  Guilford:         '57. The first thing I ever heard was a World Series between Milwaukee and the Yankees.

  Rumburg:        And that was a great series in 1957, that was when the Milwaukee Braves were quite a powerhouse.

  Guilford:         Yes, indeed.

  Rumburg:        Atlanta fan now, of course, but that time it was Milwaukee, Warren Sphan, fine ball club.

  Guilford:         I spent a lot of time in this ward over here. [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        The first one on the left here? With your ulcers?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        And TB, you said you got TB here.

  Guilford:         No, I didn't have TB until after I left here but I think it got started down in that strip cell.

  Rumburg:        So, this was remodeled in here, you said, in the early 50's?

  Guilford:         Yeah, it used to be just one big ward.

  Rumburg:        And what was the reason between either one man or three men, why not two?

  Guilford:         Why, I don’t know. That was just their way.

  Rumburg:        Never two men per cell. Either it was always odd, one or three.

  Guilford:         Always.

  Rumburg:        Now what was in the back area back here?

  Guilford:         Back here was sort of a storeroom...

  Rumburg:        Any drugs or things like that back here?

  Guilford:         No, that was kept down there in the safe with big locks.

  Rumburg:        Ok, they had a safe here that kept all the drugs, right?

  Guilford:         Yes. This is just more or less nothing, kept little stuff stored back here.

  Rumburg:        I see, a storage room. This room back here, do you have any idea...

  Guilford:         I have no idea what...

  Rumburg:        Just a storeroom? OK.

  Guilford:         Just a storeroom, I suppose. I was never back here. No drugs were kept back here at all. Up there in the doctor's office in a safe.

  Rumburg:        Now, as far as the doctor's office. We didn't talk about that too much...

  Guilford:         Well, his office was everywhere but his safe was right in here.

  Rumburg:        Now I had, there was one thing...

  Guilford:         There used to be a big huge darn safe right here in the corner. This was always kept closed, nobody got in there.

  Rumburg:        I see, in this room, right across from the psychologist's room.

  Guilford:         Right.

  Rumburg:        Ok, now, there’s a room right here that's interesting, and I just wondered, maybe you might have some ideas. Why was that stool propped up on top of that like that? Do you have any idea?

  Guilford:         Well, this was for the doctor's benefit, I guess, and the MPA's. I was never in here. I never did use it.

  Rumburg:        I was just wondering why… [Crosstalk] …why would they build it clear up on this platform. Everybody that comes in here, even the Wardens couldn't figure that out.

  Guilford:         I don't have no idea.

  Rumburg:        The Warden's referred to this area as a strip unit, but they said it was for the people, violent people, people who did have psychological problems or something else like that.

  Guilford:         Well see, those were put in here in the 50's, those cells. The bug cage used to be right here. This is the bug cage.

  Rumburg:        Oh, right next door to it here?

  Guilford:         Yeah, weren’t nothing in here. That was the bug cage.

  Rumburg:        Small, too. One person here at a time maybe? There would only be one person, right?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        There would have to be only one person. So, this is quite a familiar area to you.

  Guilford:         I used to feed him [Stroud], you know. I liked to talk to him. They'd all, like I told you, it all depended on what Guard was on duty. Some I could stand to talk to a while, some I couldn't.

  Rumburg:        Well, you know what was, he must have been, early 50's when he was here, right? In this particular area here.

  Guilford:         He was more in his 60's because he died in 1963 when he was past 70.

  Rumburg:        I think he was 72 when he died.

  Guilford:         Something like that.

  Rumburg:        That’s right. He was in his 60’s. You know when he died at Springfield, I guess he died from coronary, right? I was talking to some people the other day about that.

  Guilford:         Well, he spent a long time in there...

  Rumburg:        What would be some things that you'd talk about?

  Guilford:         He liked to just talk about general things, and he had some funny things that he used to do. I guess you'd call it, what's the word, idiosyncrasies? When he would shave, he would shave from here to his toes. All the way down. And he would eat no cooked vegetables, all raw. They sort of babied him a little and he would drink no milk unless, when they give him his milk, they'd give him a couple drops of ascorbic acid and then make the milk sour and curdle. He would take that, and he’d get some of the, what they call 4 by 4's and some gauze, and he'd make cottage cheese. He’d make his own. He drank nothing but tea. Drank no coffee but drank tea by the tons. He would eat no sweets of no kind, and when he got his hamburger, his fish, he like to get it raw. He used to amaze me. He wore little eye shade things he'd made out of cardboard.

  Rumburg:        Kind of like an old telegraph type hat.

  Guilford:         Yeah, right.

  Rumburg:        That's really interesting. Well, how long did you spend in this area up here as far as work?

  Guilford:         Oh, about a year, a year and a half, something like that.

  Rumburg:        We were talking a little bit earlier about how you came to Alcatraz and you were talking about...you came on bank robbery and kidnapping.

  Guilford:         Just plain robbery.

  Rumburg:        Oh, was it just robbery?

  Guilford:         Robbery and kidnapping.

  Rumburg:        There wasn't a...

  Guilford:         There wasn’t a bank, no.

  Rumburg:        Oh, I see.

  Guilford:         This was always kept locked. These were always locked except...

  Rumburg:        Going into the mess hall.

  Guilford:         ...the only time they could be opened, the Guard here couldn't open them. The guy up here in the gun gallery had to open them.

  Rumburg:        Now the gun gallery individual had control of what areas down here as far as?

  Guilford:         He only had control of this. He didn’t control the cell block.

  Rumburg:        ...just that gate. What about the recreation area?

  Guilford:         Well, no the Guard here... [Unintelligible]

  Rumburg:        That Guard that was down here, okay. Now you had, what about cigarettes? You know I see...

  Guilford:         They gave you three packs of cigarettes a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday night you were issued a pack of cigarettes, but you had tobacco here.

  Rumburg:        That you could roll your own with.

  Guilford:         All kinds, you had Prince Albert, Marlboro, Union Leader, Ranger...whatever. You had a choice. It was good tobacco.

  Rumburg:        And it was just constantly filled?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        You know this seems to be, probably the best cells in the place as far as being able to live.

  Guilford:         It was.

  Rumburg:        A little bit warmer over here because of the sun...

  Guilford:         Yeah, because of the sun. On Fourth of July you could put the cross[?] over to Marin and see the fireworks from down there.

  Rumburg:        I've even heard stories that people made their own telescopes out of glasses.

  Guilford:         Yeah, glasses and a cardboard you roll up and you put... [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        Like an old toilet paper roll thing.

  Guilford:         Or a piece of cardboard. Right here is where I celled for a long time.

  Rumburg:        Right here, right across from the library.

  Guilford:         Karpis’s cell was right here.

  Rumburg:        Karpis was right next to you. Oh, you were right next door to each other then.

  Guilford:         Yeah, we used to talk to each other. You know when he was doing life for kidnapping Theodore Hamm. Kelly had kidnapped Urschel…

  Rumburg:        That's right Kelly.

  Guilford:         Karpis had kidnapped Theodore Hamm.

  Rumburg:        Right, Hamm, that's right.

  [Note: Karpis and his gang kidnapped William Hamm, grandson to Theodore Hamm, who was the founder of Hamm’s Brewery.]

  Guilford:         So, in 1957 when they put the earphones out here, the Giants were out here, too. Ham's beer used to sponsor. [Both chuckle] They used to play that song "The land the sky-blue waters". I'd pick on Ray, I'd say "Hey, Ray," "Yeah, what do you want?" "Get up, man, they’re playing your theme song." [Both laugh]

  Rumburg:        I bet he really enjoyed that.

  Guilford:         The library was over here. They had a three guys sit in here, they had three librarians all the time. They had a couple of guys working there.

  Rumburg:        But you never got to use it as an inmate, right?

  Guilford:         Oh, no.

  Rumburg:        You always had to have your materials brought to your cell.

  Guilford:         You had a library card and full of numbers. And you was supposed to keep 20 numbers on there. The numbers would correspond with the titles of the book and each day you put your card up there when you go to work and one of the guys that worked in there would come and pick the cards up and then they'd go in there and they'd look and try to get the book, the number one choice. If they couldn't, they take number two choice and deliver them to your cell.

  Rumburg:        Well, now, how would you know what books they had in here?

  Guilford:         Well, you had a library catalog in your cell.

  Rumburg:        Oh, the catalog! Would they renew it every now and then as far as what new books they got in or anything like that?

  Guilford:         I never did see ‘em get any. They might get one or two, once in a while.

  Rumburg:        Did they have a fairly decent library?

  Guilford:         Yeah, you could read most any on any subject you wanted to. They had a lot of biographical, historical, a lot of fiction, lot of textbooks.

  Rumburg:        What about law books? Could you order law books to study here?

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        No way, right. It was just almost impossible.

  Guilford:         You see that's the difference between here and Leavenworth. Leavenworth had a huge library, law library. You could get any law book you want but here, they had nothing.

  Rumburg:        But what about current events? I've heard that there were no current events on Alcatraz, basically.

  Guilford:         What do you mean, current events? Could we hear about the current events outside?

  Rumburg:        Like the news, daily news?

  Guilford:         We didn't get no news until they put the earphones in '57.

  Rumburg:        And then it was monitored, right?

  Guilford:         Oh, yes.

  Rumburg:        What about up to date newspapers and things like that?

  Guilford:         We didn't have no newspapers here.

  Rumburg:        That's right, that's what I am talking about, current events, being able to keep up with everyday events.

  Guilford:         No, way, no way, na-huh. See the Chronicle offered at one time to send 250 green sheets over here. You know, sports sheets and old Ed Swope denied it. And one Christmas Ghirardelli Candy Co. offered to send over some candy, and they denied that too. I never bought...the last Christmas I was here, in 1959, they let everybody that wanted to order a two-pound box of chocolate candy. There was 262 guys here and there was 262 orders for that chocolate. [Chuckles]

  Rumburg:        I heard that candy was a really important item here because there was very little candy that was ever given out. At Christmas time I heard you got a...

  Guilford:         Yeah, 6 bars.

  Rumburg:        What would you get at Christmas time as far as Christmas packages?

  Guilford:         You got 6 cigars, 6 candy bars, maybe a hand full of hard candy and an apple and an orange, that's it.

  Rumburg:        What about...heard there was a lot of gambling over those little Christmas packages?

  Guilford:         That's the only thing they had to gamble for. You couldn't buy nothing else. During the football season, they would bet on different games, or go out there and play dominos or something ‘cause they didn't have no cards.

  Rumburg:        Did people ever get into trouble over gambling?

  Guilford:         No, not that I know of.

  Rumburg:        What were some of the problems they had here? Do you know, basically problems within the inmates?

  Guilford:         Well, just little things that, you know. You know when you're in a place like this, a little thing that really means nothing will build up, like making a mountain out of a mole hill. It builds up in you and builds up in the other guy too and you begin to hate each other. First thing you know, you're in trouble here.

  Rumburg:        You take your frustrations out on each other? Let's go on in here into the solitary unit for just a minute.

  Guilford:         Eh.

  Rumburg:        Your favorite, I guess.

  Guilford:         I never did see this door open.

  Rumburg:        This door was always closed? Cell number 14...

  Guilford:         That's what they call the strip cell. They literally meant stripped ‘cause you were stripped.

  Rumburg:        I was wondering why there wasn't a toilet in there.

  Guilford:         Well, you got a hole in the floor. They called it an "Oriental toilet."

  Rumburg:        A squat toilet.

  Guilford:         Yeah, that's all you had, and you had no water, no nothing. The Guard would bring you a Dixie cup full of water three times a day. He'd open this door, set a Dixie cup full of water in there and that's it. Set your food there, they brought it to you. That’s all. The rest of these cells, they had mattresses. You know, they had bumps in them, but you lost your mattress every morning then you got it back at night.

  Rumburg:        Now it was put right in between here. [Crosstalk]

  Guilford:         And your blankets was in there, too. Now, a lot of guys during the day would go down and fish[?] to open a blanket and pull it in and keep it during the day, but just before it got time to, they'd roll it up and put it back out.

  Rumburg:        And they probably knew they were doing that, didn't they?

  Guilford:         Probably.

  Rumburg:        Well, they'd have to, almost. I think that's only logical. What...

  Guilford:         All these cells were controlled by electricity.

  Rumburg:        Right, this is the only area in the whole place that was controlled by electricity except for the gate going into the mess hall.

  Guilford:         That’s right. These cells were, they were hole cells, too, but they were what they called, more or less, restricted diet. That's why the guys up here would save a little food, you know.

  Rumburg:        On the second ones. Well, now how would they drop the food down? Over the edge here, right to the front, on a piece of string and they would dangle it down.

  Guilford:         And the guys would fish it in.

  Rumburg:        Well, now, the gun gallery people didn't walk around here but...

  Guilford:         Every so often, except for mealtime they was always in here. And on Saturdays during bath time they was always in here ‘cause they had to let one guy out at a time to go down to the end of his tier. There's a shower bath... [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        But it's a two-man shower now? Only one man at a time ever used the shower.

  Guilford:         Only one man at a time. Never two.

  Rumburg:        Now, one question here. I have been told that these cells down here were cells that if a guy got in trouble, he would probably be sent here unless he was a constant troublemaker. He would be sent here first into these cells and then into the hole if he gave them trouble here. Basically, say you got into trouble, just kind of give me an idea, what would happen?

  Guilford:         Say you got in a fight out in the yard. Say two guys get in a fight out in the yard. They bring you up here and put you in these cells and you stay here until you go up to the Disciplinary Court. But you went to Disciplinary Court over here, right up there. You didn't go to A-Block. No, no.

  Rumburg:        You didn't go to A-Block. You had it in D-Block here.

  Guilford:         They had a desk and everything up here at the end. Then it was up to the Associate Warden. If he decided “I'm going to put you on a restricted diet in one of these cells” and he might tell the other guy "I'm putting you in a closed front cell" which meant you went down to one of these cells.

  Rumburg:        He may have been the instigator then?

  Guilford:         Yeah. The Associate Warden would listen to both stories and whichever one he thought was the guy that started it, he'd usually put him in the closed front cell and put the other guy up here.

  Rumburg:        And however, much time that he wanted them to spend basically was up to him.

  Guilford:         Yeah, right. He didn't sentence you. [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        He said, "I'm going to put you in there" and he wouldn't tell you for how long and it would depend on them how long they stayed in the cell, right?

  Guilford:         Once in a while, you could ask the Guard that was over here "How long am I going to be in here?" And the Associate [Warden] had already told him, "Well, you'll be in there for 10 days, or 15 days, or 21 days."

  Rumburg:        So, if you had a guy like we were talking about, maybe that would be a friend. Some Guards were a little more outgoing and would tell you something whereas other Guards would say forget it. It's up to you to find out.

  Guilford:         They used to have a Guard. I liked and respected him ‘cause he was such a, he was a big, tall guy, his name was Gregory. And he was out there. You see every Friday was inspection day. Swope would come by. Behind him, the Associate Warden, and behind him is the Captain. Every Friday. That desk out there where I told you the Officer of the Day sat. Swope’s looking at it and Gregory was Officer of the Day that day. Swope says, "Mr. Gregory, get down there and see if there’s any dust under that desk." Gregory said, "If you want to know if there’s any dust down there, you get down there and look." Swope says, "Why don't you retire, Mr. Gregory?" Gregory says, "Why in the hell don't you retire?" [Both chuckle]

  Rumburg:        Did you actually hear that conversation?

  Guilford:         Yeah, I was standing out there that day. I was waiting to get in the mess hall before going up to the hospital and I heard it. And another thing, this Latimer that I was telling you about, was bald headed. We called him "Skinhead." So, when I was in the kitchen there one day, eating, and this friend of mine come told me about it. Latimer was in the O and G and drinking coffee and having a donut or something. So, Gregory goes in there and says, "Mornin’, Skinhead." And Latimer called him, "Mr. Gregory, I've told you repeatedly, don't use that name to me." This guy says, "Ok, Skinhead." [Both laugh]

  Rumburg:        So they used to kid each other...the inmates that were here would have their little names for each one of the Guards, and every once in a while the Guards would pick up on it and maybe have fun and kind of kid around with the other guys?

  Guilford:         Oh, yeah. Like the guy I told you was throwing toilet paper down at the guy down there that was killing this guy, turn this off, after that he was called "Shit paper slim." And Mitchell was called "Blueboy". There used to be a Lieutenant here from, used to be Warden at a Utah State Penitentiary in 1951, and they rioted on him and tore it up. And they rioted on him again and tore it up so the State…finally came back here as a Lieutenant and his name was Severson, called him "Utah Slim." Like Ordway, they called him "Double Tough." And there used to be another guy, his name was Fisher, F. F. Fisher.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        I'm sure you can pick up some pretty interesting names for ‘em.

  Guilford:         [Chuckles] Oh yeah.

  Rumburg:        [Chuckles] So, this area here. Oh, I wanted to ask you, what's this area for right here, where the sink and all this stuff...

  Guilford:         This was for the Guard that stayed in here 24 hours a day. This was his toilet and whatever...kept a mop back here. Once in a while they'd let an orderly out to mop the floor.

  Rumburg:        Now, I saw on that little door here, it says bookcase. Did they have books in here for the guys that were in the cells up there?

  Guilford:         Yeah, they kept...your books were kept in here and you'd get one at a time. They take you one at a time up.

  Rumburg:        I want to ask you a couple other things, too. Now what about recreation time, within...say you were in here. Variations from down below here. If you were thrown in these cells you didn't have any privileges at all, right?

  Guilford:         None whatever.

  Rumburg:        Until you came up for the Disciplinary Board.

  Guilford:         Yeah, until you went upstairs.

  Rumburg:        As soon as you got in. Now, if you went into the second and third tier that meant that you were going to be in here for a period of time, right?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right. But, now, very few of them. Once in a while they would let you out, they’d come say, “Okay, recreation”. If they could find extra Guards, but most of the guys wouldn't go out. Because when you come down here you got to strip down, totally and completely, all this shit, this and that, bend over. Then you'd put your clothes on, go out in the yard about an hour or so, come back and go through the same thing again. [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        So, recreation was pretty limited, then if you were in those cells. You'd get out, say every now and walk around in here?

  Guilford:         No, not here, no way. You went out in the yard under an escort.

  Rumburg:        So, you couldn't get out one at a time and walk back and forth a little bit?

  Guilford:         No sir, not here in this place.

  Rumburg:        Well, some guys had to get out of there every now and then to get recreation, didn't they, just to get their bones loosened up a little bit? Or, would you just get used to it after a while?

  Guilford:         I used to do my own exercises, push-ups, squats and so forth. Do my own exercise ‘cause God almighty, who wants to go out in the yard and go through all that rigamarole? [Crosstalk] It was better to stay in my cell.

  Rumburg:        If you were going to be on the second and third tiers, what would be...2 months, on the average?

  Guilford:         Oh no, longer than that. I know one guy. A guy named Whitey Franklin, that you heard Ray talk about, that done 13 years over here. Joe Carnes done ten years over here. Louie Fleish [Fleisher?] done seven years over here.

  Rumburg:        Why would they get such a long period of time in here?

  Guilford:         Because they were just a little bit scared of ‘em.

  Rumburg:        They just couldn't handle ‘em?

  Guilford:         No, not that they ever caused any trouble or nothing. It’s just that they…

  Rumburg:        Were they a little bit rough or tougher talking or what?

  Guilford:         No, like Karpis and Chase, the guys, the most pleasant people you could ever talk to. It's just that they didn't want them a part of…

  Rumburg:        Of what was going on elsewhere.

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        They’d rather be kind of isolated than have anything to do...

  Guilford:         I didn't mind it over here, really, because you had, for a long time you had linoleum on the floor, and once in a while the orderly...

  Rumburg:        Well, you also had more heat over here. You had heaters in here. It was probably warmer in this area.

  Guilford:         Warmer. You see all these things worked and another thing they had, these lights up here were on 24 hours a day. You could read all night long if you wanted to. Instead of laying with your head that way, turn your head this way and read all night.

  Rumburg:        Was it pretty bright in here? I mean, course it would be. You’d get used to it, to the light every night.

  Guilford:         And the lights in your cell were, I guess you'd call it indirect lighting. They were back where you couldn't touch them. See that hole up there? The light was back there, and it had a screen on it, so you had no control of it.

  Rumburg:        I wanted to ask you about that light. Was it bright enough to read by?

  Guilford:         Oh, yeah, sure.

  Rumburg:        It was? Well, you know you notice a wire covering over it...it doesn't seem like much light could get out.

  Guilford:         You could read by it real easy.

  Rumburg:        That's about all I can think of in here.

  Guilford:         You see there's all the electrical wires there that control the thing by electricity. This guy up here, the gun Guard, he got a panel up there that had a switchboard and say the Guard down here "Alright Jim, open cell 18." He just pushed the button and 18 would slide open.

  Rumburg:        Oh, I see, he controlled all that...he could either control it from up there or right here, right?

  Guilford:         No, this guy had no control over the cells.

  Rumburg:        What about...?

  Guilford:         I don't know what that was.

  Rumburg:        All these. See, those control 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 9-S, 10-S, 12-S.

  Guilford:         I never seen a Guard use that to open a cell. Always this guy up here.

  Rumburg:        See, if you'll notice here, these are all the steel door cells. That's why they have 9s, 10s. You see those were all controlled. They had the ability, it looks like here, to open that whole first tier.

  Guilford:         Well, they still don't... there’s 5, 10, 14. Well, that might have been, maybe...

  Rumburg:        But see, this was always locked and I'm sure this was controlled in coordination with that box up there, too. He had to probably push a button up there.

  Guilford:         Maybe so, probably so. I don't know why they had two showers here. There ain't never been two guys in there at one time. One only. Now the ones on the other tier, I don't think they have two showers. Let me see.

  Rumburg:        Yeah, they do. You can stand back here and look up there.

  Guilford:         I didn’t know that. See, I didn’t remember. But, I know there's never been two guys in there showering at the same time, only one at a time. You came down the tier in your shorts with your towel and when you got here, when you went in to bathe, when you came out they gave you clean bedsheets, and clean shorts and a clean towel.

  Rumburg:        Once a week?

  Guilford:         Once a week. Every Saturday.

  Rumburg:        You could shower twice a week, but you only got clean clothes once a week?

  Guilford:         No, you could shower once a week here. You could shower twice a week if you were out in population.

  Rumburg:        Once a week in here, twice a week in population. Twice a week you get clean clothes in population.

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        Only once a week in here, though. And not even that, if you were in, say the strip cell or whatever. You didn't get anything in strip cell.

  Guilford:         You don’t get nothing.

  Rumburg:        Let's step outside into the recreation yard.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Guilford:         ...the little green lining, that's where they controlled the snitch box. See where it set right down there.

  Rumburg:        So, there was a box as you come right out this main door here.

  Guilford:         A Guard was standing here, you know, if you went through there, they had a little green light in it, I used to look at it, and if you went through there, it would go bzzzz. That light would go like that.

  Rumburg:        If you had metal on you?

  Guilford:         If you had metal on you.

  Rumburg:        Now were armed Guards walking all around the outside...

  Guilford:         Around the wall, yes.

  Rumburg:        Around the wall at all times. And you had armed machine gun Guards here that controlled the mess hall from this side and also on the other side, too. And the snitch box was down here. Was this a double snitch box or just a single?

  Guilford:         Single. No, it was a double! The one outside the…going to the work area, it was a single. This was a double. Had one when you walked over there, and one when you went through here. One was sitting right here, and you go through there. Another one would come through there. There was a Guard standing right here and if it rang, he'd tell you to go back and come through again. And if it rang a second time, they searched you to see what you got. [Plane flies overhead]

  Rumburg:        Now if a man came out here for recreation, let's just go over here and sit down for a minute and we'll talk. You know guys...recreation is something that seemed to vary an awful lot during the years that this was a prison.

  Guilford:         You see those shuffleboard things there. Well, those were put there after I left here because it wasn't here when I was here. You could play handball against the wall. There was a handball court. And they had a little ball diamond up there where you see the grass. And there wasn't baseball or wasn’t softball, there was... [Crosstalk] …a hard rubber ball. After you hit it a few times, it got mushy. You'd get so many a week and I used to play out there once in a while. Most of the recreation was right up there in the background over there and they played Bridge.

  Rumburg:        Played a lot of Bridge?

  Guilford:         Oh yeah. That's where I learned to play Bridge.

  Rumburg:        Cards was a pretty...?

  Guilford:         Not cards, they had them…like dominos.

  Rumburg:        Oh, bridge with dominos.

  Guilford:         It was a regular card thing, but the cards were made like dominos.

  Rumburg:        Big cards, I don't know what you mean.

  Guilford:         You know the size of... [Crosstalk] …for a King it would be like a double six would be a King, with a K on it. The other one, you know they have a J for a Jack, ten for ten but they were in different colors.

  Rumburg:        You could also use them as dominos too, then right?

  Guilford:         You had regular dominos to play dominos, you could if you wanted to, but they had regular dominos to play dominos with. And chess, they played a lot of chess.

  Rumburg:        What about sitting up here and playing? Did people utilize these steps at all?

  Guilford:         You could sit up here and look out. You could do that.

  Rumburg:        Did that seem to be a very popular thing to do, just kind of relax up here? Most guys wanted to get out and exercise?

  Guilford:         Yeah, I used to play a little handball, play a little baseball, play Bridge. I never did care for chess. I never did even learn but I loved to play Bridge.

  Rumburg:        Was that the most popular game?

  Guilford:         Yeah, it was the most popular game. They used to play by...you were only out on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.

  Rumburg:        Was Sunday all day?

  Guilford:         Yeah, up until around three o'clock. Used to be partners, like me and Ray were partners in Bridge, and we'd play John Chase and Banghart and you'd play a fifty thousand series. Might take you a couple months to play the series, long drawn out affair. It was really enjoyable.

  Rumburg:        So, you and Alvin were partners?

  Guilford:         Sometimes. Ray liked to walk a lot and, man, he walked like a big [Unintelligible]

  Rumburg:        He was a pretty good size man wasn't he, fairly tall, thin?

  Guilford:         Yeah, he is. Tall, thin, slender and he used to walk up and down, and I'd walk with him sometimes for an hour and say, "Man, walk by yourself. I'm going to sit down." [Chuckles] But he did, he liked to walk a lot.

  Rumburg:        That's very interesting, what else? I see a lot of lines drawn down here, too?

  Guilford:         This was for the handball.

  Rumburg:        Handball was here. What about the little courts over there and things like that...the circle...?

  Guilford:         That was a handball...you'd play handball against the wall over there, too. That circle. I don't know what that circle was for. That’s after my time. Basketball things was after my time, too.

  Rumburg:        They looked like they were fairly new. What about, when you lined up for work detail or when they had work details out here...

  Guilford:         You lined up. Like the glove shop lined up in one line, the model shop lined up in another line and the tailor shop lined up in another line. The Guard would be down at the door and say, "Alright, tailor shop" and you march out single file and go down through the snitch box and go single file. He'd call, "Model shop” or “Glove shop," whichever. You'd march single file right out the door, go down the steps, two long flights of steps and go through the snitch box down there and you'd turn right and go down to the work area.

  Rumburg:        What...you know we were talking about things that they did here as far as work. Now, it was up to you whether you worked or not, right? You didn't have to work you just had to stay in your cell all the time then.

  Guilford:         That's right. That's like I told about you about Beef Stew, George Sanders[?].

  Rumburg:        And another thing, too we were talking about. What about Guards? You know when you're going down there, did they have extra Guards on watching you when you went down?

  Guilford:         Oh, yeah, there’d be so many Guards out here. In fact, not only did they have the Guards, but they had the supervisors from whatever shop you were going to work in. He was out here, too. And this guy in the gun tower and that guy in the gun tower and there was a guy around the corner on the wall and there was never no trouble.

  Rumburg:        You said some of the guys made more money than others down there and some of them were paid a monthly salary instead of by the hour.

  Guilford:         No, they were paid by piece work. The more they did, the more they made.

  Rumburg:        Ok, you said some guys made up to a hundred dollars a month.

  Guilford:         Yeah right, sure. In Leavenworth I made as high as a hundred and five dollars a month. But I was what they call, a set up man in a furniture factory. I knew how to set up all the different machines, like the [?] saw, band saw…to set up to cut precise sizes of wood, different shapes of wood, the shaper, the router and everything. I set ‘em all up. [Plane flying overhead]

  Rumburg:        What about during the war years? What changed here? What were some of the basic changes they had during the war years?

  Guilford:         After the war, things loosened, before the war things were pretty tight. That's when they had the silence system and so forth and so on. And after the war…

  Tape 2, Side 1

  Rumburg:        You said something about Harbor Tours?

  Guilford:         Harbors Tours would come around and they had a record that they would play and the guide on there would say, the record would play, rather, and if the wind was not blowing too hard and was blowing right, you could hear it. So, this guide’d say, "Now, on the right there’s Alcatraz Island, where the most desperate criminals in the world are housed." [Both chuckle] It was laughable, talking about all the killers and murderers. The most desperate men of all are housed, that's where they lived. It was just laughable, that's all. The guys in here were no different than the guys at Leavenworth or any other prison. They just wanted to do their time, most of them did, and get away from here.

  Rumburg:        Do you think, you know, in your different travels around to other prisons and things, do you think the prison system has changed?

  Guilford:         Oh, Christ Almighty yes, good God, yes. [Chuckles] When I first went to prison. They still got the menu in San Quentin. When I first went to Folsom in 1935, six nights a week I ate red beans, bread and coffee and that's all. And six mornings a week I ate oatmeal, mush, bread and coffee. No milk and no sugar. That's all. On Monday at noon, you had lima beans for lunch. Tuesday at noon you had goat stew. Wednesday at noon you had spaghetti. Thursday at noon you had goat stew. Friday at noon you had hash. I don't know what they made that hash out of [Both chuckle] ‘cause there was no meat around there. On Saturday at noon you had this, some kind of watery soup or something. And on Saturday night they had what they called "moneroo beans," that was red beans with a little chili powder in it. That was good. And every other Wednesday night you got a little bowl of black strap syrup and a little piece of corn bread. That was the only dessert you got. Sunday at noon, you only got two meals on Sunday. Sunday at noon you either got a piece of dry, stringy roast beef or a piece of half-baked roast pork and a piece of gingerbread and what they call shorty-brown potatoes. Now that was your Sunday meal. And that went on until after the riot there in 1937 when the Warden got killed and a bunch of other people got killed, five guys went to the gas chamber. The food began to...they got a new Warden, a guy named Clyde Power who I think was the most understanding Warden, the most liberal that I've ever seen. He eventually got fired for what they called "coddling the cons" and he put better food in there, much better food. He put better work time, better work conditions. He let you fix your cell up. You could order rugs or bedspreads or a feather mattress, because at that time all you got was a straw mattress.

  Rumburg:        Still, for letting the people that were there live a halfway normal life, he got fired.

  Guilford:         He was there from December of '37 until about last part of November 1943. They fired him and then they brought a guy in named Bob Heinsey and he put... You see, under Plumber you could order radios. I had a portable radio; I had a General electric portable radio I could carry out in the yard. Or, you could order cabinet radios, anything. When Heins came as Warden all radios out, no more. Well, I had nobody to send mine to, so I took a baseball bat and shattered it and I had an RCA cabinet model in my cell and went in the cell house and got it. Some Guard wanted it and I tell him "No, I'm not going to give it to you. I'm going to tear it up." And I did. I took it out in the yard and put the baseball bat to it, too. I didn't want to donate it to the prison.

  Rumburg:        Well, listen, do you want to take a walk down in the work area and look around. As you came through the metal detectors coming up from work and you came into the rec yard here, then you'd have spot check, shakedowns. Were you here when there were the big doors here? The big metal doors?

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        Those must have been taken out earlier. I wanted to stop here for just a second. I'll ask you something about the work things. Now during the war did they alter their work things in any way to...?

  Guilford:         Yeah, they used to make submarine nets.

  Rumburg:        Submarine nets and buoys and things like that? Did they make some metal buoys in their welding shop?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right here was the loft.

  Rumburg:        Right. And it's also down below. They had some of the big machines down in the lower floor underneath.

  Guilford:         I can't remember this little building here.

  Rumburg:        That's what I was wondering now. There used to be some metal detectors here. This isn't...l don't know when it was built or anything like that. It’s made out of concrete.

  Guilford:         After my time. There used to be a metal detector right down here.

  Rumburg:        I have pictures of that in some of the old stuff that I have.

  Guilford:         You go through there and there was always a Guard standing there and if it buzzed, why they send you again. If it buzzed a second time, why they stripped you down and shake you down and see what you got. The garbage...right over there used to be, see that incinerator. Well, used to be a guy worked there to burn all the garbage and stuff. And a truck, some Guard would drive a truck up that little road there and dump the stuff in there and he'd burn what could be burned.

  Rumburg:        I was talking about gardeners and stuff to you. All this whole area down through here is one mass garden, rock gardens all the way around up there. Beautiful. I'll take you up there in just a little bit and let you see all the pretty flowers.

  Guilford:         I seen ‘em, but I don't remember anybody working out here. I sure don't. Not in a garden.

  Rumburg:        Not in a prisoner capacity, or whatever.

  Guilford:         No. In fact, all this stuff didn't used to be here. All this shrubbery and stuff, ya know? It was all kept clean. That was under Ed Swope, Swope didn't want nothing. He'd keep things in an uproar all the time. He'd even keep the Guards agitated.

  Rumburg:        So, you say a lot of this flower...a lot of these things were not even here.

  Guilford:         Weren’t here. Not to my knowledge.

  Rumburg:        What was down in there? That greenhouse has been there...

  Guilford:         Just plain grass, I mean plain ground. What they had back over here I don't know but I never remembered anybody working over there as a gardener.

  Rumburg:        But all they had there, you say, was just grass, nothing else? Well, that big tree has had to have been there for quite a period of time.

  Guilford:         But all this green stuff here, it just wasn't there.

  Rumburg:        Well, some of these plants have probably been brought out later because these are fairly native to this area and they were probably planted in the later year, but some of these things up here, like the geraniums, I know have been here for some period of time because they’re almost trees now.

  Guilford:         Maybe there were 'cause I just never did pay any attention, but I sure don't remember nobody working out here as a gardener. I just don't.

  Rumburg:        Okay, let's walk on down and go on down there.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        So, you came down, when you come down the ramp here...

  Guilford:         And go right around the building.

  Rumburg:        And the glove shop was down below there?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right. This is the laundry here.

  Rumburg:        It's interesting because there are some laundry shoots over here on the right, on this top floor. This was laundry in here. Well, down below there's the large laundry machines.

  Guilford:         All the laundry machines used to be here.

  Rumburg:        Oh! Well, this whole building was laundry then, basically?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right.

  Rumburg:        Well, what about the gloves? Were they down below, too?

  Guilford:         They were down below. The glove shop, model shop, tailor shop’s down below.

  Rumburg:        Now the model shop was where they repaired furniture?

  Guilford:         Repaired furniture and stuff like that.

  Rumburg:        Furniture would be brought in, what, from the City? Military furniture? What was it?

  Guilford:         There used to be a lot of military laundry here.

  Rumburg:        Yeah, that was one of the major work forces, I guess.

  Guilford:         Yeah, they used to bring them over from the Marine General Hospital, all the nurses’ uniforms and stuff like that.

  Rumburg:        So, this whole first floor was basically laundry?

  Guilford:         This was the laundry.

  Rumburg:        Do you remember what this area was in here?

  Guilford:         This was the head guy's office.

  Rumburg:        Honcho’s office.

  Guilford:         This back here was just, more or less, packages. They had a lot of stuff stored back here.

  Rumburg:        Not too much work went on in this area here.

  Guilford:         No.

  Rumburg:        Well, now, when guys came down here to work, what kind of restrictions were they under? Did they have kind of free movement? Were there Guards that were down here?

  Guilford:         No, they had free movement, more or less. Now, the supervisor had to check them every 15, look around to see that everybody was here. This was a loading platform.

  Rumburg:        How often did they have a head check here? Say, in a working situation?

  Guilford:         Well, they had...every 15 minutes the Guard would look around and every 30 minutes he called in the count.

  Rumburg:        Now, when you were in the main prison, say up in the regular main cell block, did they have a head count every half an hour up there?

  Guilford:         No, about every hour. At night it was every hour.

  Rumburg:        Every hour at night and the daytime, basically the same thing?

  Guilford:         No, well once in a while they'd prowl the tiers when the guys were locked up. At noon time when...they had a count at noon time. They 'd count in the morning before you left your cell for breakfast. Then you came out of breakfast back to your cells, everybody. Then they called the work detail. When the work detail went out, then the Guard counted everybody that was left in the cell block. Then at noon time when they came in, they were counted at noon time. Afternoon time they were counted after they came out of the dining room. Then they'd call, what they call sick line, and down below there they had a MTA was down there with a little desk and pills and stuff like that.

  Rumburg:        So, if you were feeling bad then you could go on sick call?

  Guilford:         At noon time, yes.

  Rumburg:        What about morning, if you were sick in the morning?

  Guilford:         Well… [Chuckles] …sort of slough if off if you could.

  Rumburg:        I see. See, this is what I was talking about here. They've got a lot of big machines. These are all laundry machines.

  Guilford:         They must have been…they were moved down here.

  Rumburg:        Oh, they were moved down here later on?

  Guilford:         The laundry was up there. The laundry was not down here.

  Rumburg:        This is all laundry stuff down here...big machines. These are all the rollers, the dryers…cleaners.

  Guilford:         Yeah, everything. It all used to be upstairs. Oh, this…wait! They had a dry-cleaning plant down here too!

  Rumburg:        Dry cleaning…that's exactly what this is, dry cleaning.

  Guilford:         Yeah, right, right.

  Rumburg:        Ok, that’s what it is. Yeah! This stuff is all dry-cleaning stuff. I see, well that's interesting then.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        With the stuff, like they remodeled furniture and things like that here. They had a dock down here, right? Did they come pick up anything off this dock over here?

  Guilford:         No. Only dock they had was down here.

  Rumburg:        On the other side? Where you came in today or where we landed.

  Guilford:         Yeah. They used to have the Army boat, once a week, would come over with a tank of water, ya know. Fresh water. [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        Right. Well, you know, there used to be a dock down here and I was just wondering if that was here during your time. It must have been in the early years or something like that because there's a major platform down here and steps that lead down and everything else that you can see.

  Guilford:         Now, here, this was the tailor shop, right here.

  Rumburg:        Tailor shop. The very first one on the bottom floor.

  Guilford:         Yeah. This was a the tailor shop, all kinds of sewing machines and stuff in there, ya know.

  Rumburg:        Ok, so that's a big room.

  Guilford:         Mostly just khaki pants. [Plane flies overhead]

  Rumburg:        Now that was for military?

  Guilford:         Yes. Once a month they'd have a military inspector come over to inspect it and then they would ship ‘em out. This was the door to go in there.

  Rumburg:        Ok, so this door opened up into the...this is all in the Tailor shop here. We can walk on through there. We'll just walk in here.

  Guilford:         Over there was the clothes shop. That place in there.

  Rumburg:        Oh, I see.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Guilford:         …big rolls of cloth.

  Rumburg:        They were all cotton gloves, right?

  Guilford:         Cotton.

  Rumburg:        Cotton gloves and they cut their own cloth...well, they just did everything. They did all the pattern work and everything.

  Guilford:         They used to have a big table here. This was a long table; it was called the cutting table and the guy that cut it’d unroll that thing and then they had patterns. Then they'd cut it out.

  Rumburg:        I see, so it was kind of a line type system?

  Guilford:         Yeah, right.

  Rumburg:        The guy would cut it and then it’d go to somebody else.

  Guilford:         Then over here, they had all kinds of sewing machines. And you put so many gloves, or so many gloves that they’d cut out and each guy would get a box. Then when he'd put ‘em all together, he had a little tag to put his number on it. Then he was credited for that, and he got paid for it.

  Rumburg:        I see, well, that's really interesting. So, each man basically made the glove himself. He would do the whole thing.

  Guilford:         Yeah. Except cut it. They had one guy that cut ‘em out.

  Rumburg:        Well, now, how did he get paid? He got paid…

  Guilford:         By the hour. But the guys that sewed them...

  Rumburg:        Got paid piece by piece. [Crosstalk] So, they were right next to the dry cleaning over there.

  Guilford:         Yeah. Then next one down there was…the model shop was not too big of a place.

  Rumburg:        They didn't do an awful lot of repairing then. [Crosstalk]

  Guilford:         In fact, there was only just a few guys working there.

  Rumburg:        Well now, the big building we see on the end of the island down there...

  Guilford:         This was a warehouse. See this tower up here? That's where Whitey Franklin and what was the other guy's name, Jimmy Lucas, was going to try to escape. And they tried to sneak up there and get to the guy in the gun tower and Franklin got shot. The guy shot him. That's why he done so much time over in D-Block.

  Rumburg:        Oh, I see, that's the one you were telling me about, the guy that was over there...

  Guilford:         One day up in the hospital, you see, he got shot in the lung and they never did take the bullet out. It's amazing, really. One day, he went… [Coughs] …like that, and the bullet came out. [Chuckles]

  Rumburg:        Is that right? I’ll be.

  Guilford:         This was all a storeroom.

  Rumburg:        Well, now, didn't they do some metal work here? Did they have any metal lathes or anything like that that they did any piece work on metal?

  Guilford:         Not that I know of.

  Rumburg:        So, this was basically just a storehouse, right.

  Guilford:         Just a storehouse. In fact, I was never over here but I know it was a storehouse because I used to...the guys...once in a while the guy in the laundry would take a couple guys, bring a little push cart thing down here. And they'd get so many different items out of here and take it back to the laundry, like soap and soap powders and whatever, you know, and take it back up to the laundry. As far as people working over here regularly, uh-uh, didn't have it.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Guilford:         ...so Severs[?] says, "Alright now, just stand here." So, after the line all went through, pick him up at the hospital, x-rayed him to make sure he ain't got nothing, shook him down, sent him to his cell. The next day they told him, you know, before they call the work area the Guard will come around the tier and say "So and so stay in, so and so stay in" and called and told him to stay in.

  Rumburg:        This was because of his incident. He was trying to bug out, right? Now, "bug out" is a term used for saying gettin' out of here to, back to...

  Guilford:         Later on, after the work area had gone, he says, "Alright Don come on, better get up to the hospital get you a ground wire". Old man shoved him in the bug cage.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        Did he ever get out?

  Guilford:         They sent him to Springfield.

  Rumburg:        Did they finally do that?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        Didn't take him...it wasn't very much trouble for him to get off, then.

  Guilford:         No, but once you start you have to continue with your act, or they will detect it and you're not gonna make it.

  Rumburg:        So quite a few people tried that?

  Guilford:         Oh yeah, sure. Quite a few of ‘em made it, too.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        Is it true when you were here, like in the recreation yard, that there was an imaginary line? See where the red marks are on the side of the wall. You could not go...

  Guilford:         No, you couldn't because you couldn't get in the corner like that.

  Rumburg:        Did that imaginary line run from this end of the wall all the way down to the other end?

  Guilford:         No, just in the corners.

  Rumburg:        Just the corners. What about the fence?

  Guilford:         That fence wasn't here.

  Rumburg:        Now, somebody told me when the Wardens were out here the other day, they told me the fence was put there to keep people from going over in that area because you’re getting too close to the gun tower.

  Guilford:         Bullshit. The guys used to sit dead against the wall, I sat dead against the wall time after time.

  Rumburg:        That's what I figure, too.

  [Tape cuts out]           

  Guilford:         Up in the corner...

  Rumburg:        Corners were pretty much disallowed. The Guard would tell you to stay away from the corners?

  Guilford:         Out.

  Rumburg:        Yeah.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        You said you spent your time here, basically, most of it?

  Guilford:         Yeah, except when [Chuckles] I was over in D-Block.

  Rumburg:        How many times did you go to D-Block?

  Guilford:         I'd say about, not too many times.

  Rumburg:        3 or 4?

  Guilford:         Yeah.

  Rumburg:        What did...you know what...verbal assaults...besides the time you punched the Guard out?

  Guilford:         No uh, refusing to do this, ya know whatever. [Crosstalk]

  Rumburg:        Right. Maybe not feeling like doing something?

  Guilford:         I never did, verbally...if I want to say something, I'm gonna do something. I didn't cuss someone out.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Guilford:         ...this was being remodeled. It wasn't a regular thing.

  Rumburg:        Oh, it was just used for a short period of time then, that hall down there. Well they remodeled this while you were here.

  Guilford:         Then they wired it all up.

  Rumburg:        Put the phone system in, that type of thing. What was it before that? What kind of a system?

  Guilford:         They only had one. It was like this only you couldn't talk through this. They had a phone, but it was only a single. Then they wanted more, why, I don't know. But I never did see two people down here at once. I guess they just wanted to make it look good for the public, or something. I don't know.

  Rumburg:        So, the whole time you could only have one visit a month, one hour a month. Now could you have anybody out here that you wanted to have?

  Guilford:         Oh, no.

  Rumburg:        It had to be a blood relative?

  Guilford:         A member of your family.

  Rumburg:        Or a lawyer. Or your wife.

  Guilford:         Your wife, your mother, your father, your son or daughter, if it was it was past 16. Or your lawyer.

  Rumburg:        If they were past 16, so nobody under 16.

  Guilford:         No. Nobody under 16.

  [Tape cuts out]

  Rumburg:        So, a lot of talk was made about swimming off the island and when the Anglin brothers escaped and when Roe and Cole took off.

  Guilford:         That was a funny thing about Cole and Roe. John Chase was their friend and they asked him to, this John told me. They asked him to go with ‘em. He told ‘em no, but I'll try to get you some outside help. They told him, well, if we make it, you’ll hear from us. That was in July and in November of the same year he got a postcard from Caracas, Venezuela and all it said was "Business was good in the month of July." So, whether it was them or not, who knows.

  Rumburg:        That's amazing, business was good in the month of July. You know I never got to talk to Paul that much, just one or two times. In fact, I had been...

  Guilford:         He was a nice guy, wasn't he?

  Rumburg:        Extremely nice, distinguished man, oh, very distinguished. When I was, had him up...he came up to the office and talked to us twice, and I was just getting ready to set up another appointment with him when he went into the hospital, and it was just about a month after that he died. It was in November last year.

  Guilford:         Sure, a nice guy.

  Rumburg:        He was just a fine gentleman.

  [Interview ends abruptly]

 

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