| Among the prison’s most notorious residents were Al “Scarface” Capone, brutal kingpin of the Chicago underworld during the Roaring Twenties; kidnapper George “Machine Gun” Kelly; bank robber Floyd Hamilton, an accomplice of Bonnie and Clyde; Arthur “Doc” Barker and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a member of the infamous Ma Barker Gang; Roy Gardner, last of the “Old West” train robbers; “Bumpy” Johnson, the Godfather of Harlem; Morton Sobell, convicted in the Rosenberg espionage case; and Robert “Birdman” Stroud.
Stroud was later immortalized by actor Burt Lancaster in The Birdman of Alcatraz film as a kindly bird lover. But in actuality, Stroud was a homicidal sociopath whom one longtime Alcatraz officer likened to “Jekyll and Hyde.”
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