Alcatraz (76 page)

I did a lot of walking around the hills and also along the beaches and just laid around for about three months. Work was hard to get . . . so I took a job as a plumber’s helper that a friend got for me. A friend of mine had a half interest in a bar and wanted me to work for him. I didn’t care for that kind of work but being in need of work I took it and have been there ever since—three years this month—haven’t missed a day or been late. Things would have been much harder if it wasn’t for people I knew helping me . . . my mother left me a little money and we put it down on a house, so between my job and working around the house I’m pretty busy. That is the score as of now. The bar I work in is across from the main post office. The next time you are in the city give me a ring as I would like to talk to you.
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Berta had three more encounters with law enforcement agencies. In August 1952 he was given a thirty-day sentence for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions before a federal grand jury investigating New York gangster Waxey Gordon’s narcotics business. While out on bail, Berta filed an appeal, and the sentence was vacated. In May 1954 Berta and another man were arrested by San Francisco police on suspicion of burglary and grand vagrancy. In the town of San Anselmo in Marin County, a police lieutenant observed Berta and a friend driving around and arrested them, thinking they were there “to case taverns, motels, and some of the homes.” The two men were released on writs of habeas corpus several hours later after they argued, apparently successfully, that they were “merely putting some mileage on a new motor car.”
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As a result of this arrest and the subsequent newspaper article, Berta’s criminal record became public, and he offered to quit his bartending job to avoid embarrassing the owner; his offer was rejected. Several years later when a man attempted to hold up the bar, Berta took the gun away from the robber and called the police.

In the mid 1970s, after Alcatraz became a tourist attraction and criticism of the prison was again heard, Berta was irritated:

Those criticisms of Alcatraz–that’s bullshit, they want to make a big thing of cruel and unusual punishment. Alcatraz was a good place to do time, in my opinion. At Leavenworth, man, in the summertime, you was roasting in that cell, you’d have to be stripped naked and the humidity was so bad, everything was all wet. They had to come around and give you ice cold water to cool you off. Alcatraz was terrific; you had to use a blanket every night, the weather was beautiful. When you were out in that yard, you could look around, the good fresh air; you could see the sunset, Sausalito, the boats coming in, the aircraft carriers coming in, the battleships coming in. You couldn’t see that up in Leavenworth or McNeil Island. That place—Leavenworth—stunk. There were cockroaches and bedbugs. . . . The mess hall was filthy. Leavenworth was wide open for marijuana, cocaine, you name it, it was there—not at Alcatraz. And no queers; the homosexuals couldn’t run around loose in the cell block. That’s one of the worst things in prison, it causes all the killings; none of that was going on at Alcatraz, supervision was too tough.
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When he left Alcatraz, Quillen had accumulated eighteen misconduct reports—eight were for contraband; others were for disobeying orders—two for insolence and four for refusal to work (characterized as the leader of a strike in two refusals). He forfeited 1,113 days of good time for destroying property in his cell in disciplinary segregation. He also had one misconduct report for “uncleanness—while cooking hot cakes for officers, he dropped the hot cakes on the floor and picked them up, put them on the plates, and sent them in for the officers to eat. He said officers are no fucking better than the inmates on the main line.”
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Before, during, and after the May 1946 battle of Alcatraz, James Quillen spent several months in D block for misconduct. The isolation, he noted later in an account of these years, gave him “considerable time to think” about his future. “The total weight of your time there,” he said during one of his interviews for this project, “really brought your mind to the futility of the whole thing. It’s like you took this much of your life and totally threw it away.” After being released back to the general population, Quillen began a remarkable transformation.

He signed up for three University of California correspondence courses and asked to meet with James Bennett on the director’s next visit to the
institution. He told Bennett he planned to finish high school and earn back the good time he had lost, and the director responded favorably. “He assured me,” said Quillen, “that if I would work and study for two years, he would recommend that at least five years of my forfeited good time be restored. It was a challenge that I accepted.”
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A change in behavior accompanied this resolution. In addition to spending time studying, Quillen played music and began attending Mass. The changes in his conduct were noted in special progress reports. Whereas a report on Oct. 24, 1947, described him as “headstrong, impulsive and aggressive and capable of violence” and concluded that he had made “a poor adjustment to date,” a report less than a year later, on July 16, 1948, said Quillen was “better adjusted at present” and mentioned as positive signs his new interest in music and attendance at religious services.

As a result of his attending Mass, Quillen began to associate with the Catholic chaplain at Alcatraz, Joseph Clark, who counseled him as they walked around the yard. When Clark’s altar assistant was transferred, Quillen assumed his position. Thinking that family support might help improve Quillen’s often-troubled frame of mind, Clark and another interim priest tried to locate members of his family. Clark learned that Quillen’s mother had died, but he was able to contact and meet his stepfather. One day Quillen was very surprised to receive a visit from his stepfather and stepmother, and then another with his stepsister and her husband, at that time an Oakland police officer. In his interviews, Quillen identified this reunification with family members as a major turning point. He finally had “someone in the outside world to communicate and share with.” With this support, said Quillen, “I resolved to turn my life around.”

A progress report in 1952 corroborated the importance of his contacts with his stepfather and stepsister: “Their influence and encouragement contribute to his increasing stability and determination to avail himself of the institution’s educational opportunities.” The report went on to note an admirable commitment to his scholastic work. “This inmate, a brash and defiant malcontent earlier in his incarceration here,” concluded the report, “has responded remarkably to the counseling offered by relatives formerly wholly uninterested in his welfare.”
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Two years after their meeting, James Bennett fulfilled his promise and restored five years of Quillen’s good time. Continuing to receive monthly visits from his family, Quillen applied for an assignment to a job as an orderly in the hospital. To his surprise, Warden Johnston approved the assignment and he was allowed to live in the hospital. After he showed
strong interest in the work, the resident physician and medical technical assistants taught him how to conduct tests and perform other procedures. Soon he was giving injections, preparing surgical packs, and taking X-rays. Ten years and one day after his arrival at Alcatraz, and with the remainder of his lost good time restored, Quillen was told that he was being transferred to McNeil Island.

At McNeil, Quillen was allowed to continue working in the prison hospital. He was soon placed in charge of the tuberculosis unit and then moved into surgery as an assistant. During these years he had meetings with a psychiatrist whom he described in interviews for this project as helping him control feelings of anger and revenge:

I met a psychiatrist, a guy named Garvey, who was fresh out of medical school. I thought well, this is a golden opportunity. I’ll use this guy a little bit to get a good recommendation because I’m going up for parole. I was playing a game with Garvey, except that Garvey wasn’t playing my game and I didn’t know it. I was going to go in there and really slick-talk this guy, but I got to where I was going in there and really letting my hair down but I didn’t realize it. Finally, this guy made me see a whole lot about carrying all this bitterness. I wanted that guy that almost killed me in the jail, but talking to Garvey it didn’t make no difference anymore—it just kind of lost its importance.

Also at McNeil, Quillen had the opportunity to take a vocational nursing program that would give him a license and enable him to gain more experience as an X-ray technician.

At this point everything seemed to be going his way, but he still had a state detainer hanging over his head. He asked James Bennett for help in convincing the parole board to allow him to return to California so he could complete his state sentence and then become eligible for federal parole. Bennett suggested that a member of Quillen’s family contact the victims of his crime; this was accomplished and one of the kidnap victims wrote to the parole board stating that Quillen had been punished enough and that he had no objection to his release. Bennett wrote to the head of the California Adult Authority to determine if Quillen could be released under “joint supervision” if he was granted a federal parole.
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After several years at McNeil Island, James Quillen was transferred to San Quentin to resume serving the California sentence from which he had escaped. When he was released from San Quentin in 1958 on federal parole, he moved in with his sister and brother-in-law, a police officer who lived in Ukiah, California. The couple agreed to provide a home
and maintain him until he was able to find work. His own financial resources consisted of $150 he had earned fighting fires at a California Department of Corrections Forestry Camp and a $200 loan from his stepfather. In his interview he described his efforts to find work:

I applied at the state hospital first as a psychiatric technician. I passed all the tests but they weren’t hiring. I needed a job. So I went to work breaking up concrete—pick and shovel work. When I first came home I went down to the employment office and got all these papers and I was going to fill them out, but I got to draft status and all that garbage; hell, I didn’t know how to handle it. So I took them back to the employment office and told the guy, “Hell, I can’t fill these papers out.” He says, “Why?” I told him “I just got out of prison; I don’t know how to fill out all this garbage.” This guy was really nice and he said, “Come on in and I’ll help you.” So we sat down and filled out these papers. I said I had done quite a bit of hospital work; I had of lot experience in surgery, some experience in X-ray, and I had a LPN license. I got a call the following week to go up to Hillside Hospital. I went up there and the radiologist was a super guy. I laid out everything on the line with him and the administrator—that I was an ex-con, but I needed a job, but I didn’t know if I could hack it. They took me right in and I worked there for eight years.

Quillen married, divorced, remarried, and had a daughter. With the encouragement of the chief of radiology, he studied for and passed an examination to become a member of the American Society of Radiological Technologists. In 1967 he began work at a hospital in Marysville, California; two years later he was promoted to chief radiologist and radiology supervisor. In 1971 Quillen’s active parole supervision was terminated. In 1976, U.S. Probation Officer William A. Barrett wrote to the board of parole to seek an early termination of Quillen’s parole:

He has been employed at the Rideout Community Hospital in Marysville for the past ten years and is now director of the X-ray department. . . . Mr. Quillen has been married to a registered nurse for the past ten years. . . . He has a nine-year-old daughter. He owns his own home and is obviously a respected member of the community. One cannot help but be impressed by the complete rehabilitation of this man . . . not only has Mr. Quillen functioned as a law abiding citizen for the past 18 years but he has also, through hard work and despite many obstacles, risen to a highly professional level. If there is any way that Mr. Quillen can receive an early discharge or termination without the necessity of a hearing, I think it would be very appropriate in this case and completely justified. Mr. Quillen did not request that I write this letter to you.
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The early termination was granted. Quillen then petitioned for a presidential pardon, and this was granted in December 1980.

In two interviews for this project, Jim Quillen reflected at length on the reasons for the abrupt change in his behavior at Alcatraz and his success after release. At first he discounted the suggestion that Alcatraz itself played some role in his transformation and instead cited all the positive influences mentioned above: the opportunity to work in the hospital, support from his formerly estranged family members, the ability to complete and continue his education, and help and counseling from various people such as Father Clark, the McNeil psychiatrist, Director Bennett, and Warden Johnston.

In his second interview, however, Quillen acknowledged that the quiet and isolation of Alcatraz played some part in his resolving to turn his life around, but he pointed out that his change in thinking could have happened at any prison: “Sure, I started changing while I was at Alcatraz, but it was because I was tired of loneliness and tension and frustration . . . you could have had those anywhere.”

James Quillen was more fortunate than many of his fellow gangsterera releasees: he found meaningful vocational preparation, and there were many persons, in prison and out, who decided to help him. Other Alcatraz releasees were successful without the level of preparation and support Quillen received, but in almost all of the cases of success what seemed to make the difference was having someone—a parent, a brother, a sister, a wife, or friend—who provided acceptance, support, and encouragement.

After the failed escape attempt in April 1943—during which he spent several nights hiding in a cave at the northwest end of the island—Floyd Hamilton spent ten days in the prison hospital being treated for injuries, and then twelve more locked up in solitary confinement, much of it spent taking three steps in one direction, then turning to take three steps back for something to do. This gave Hamilton plenty of time for contemplation: