Alcatraz (90 page)

31
. Word of Persful’s self-mutilation took more than a month to reach the San Francisco newspapers. The Associated Press (AP) inaccurately reported that
“an inmate named ‘Percival’ secretly obtained an ax . . . filed the edge to razor sharpness and chopped off the left hand. He is said to have handed the ax to another prisoner with the plea ‘cut off my right.’ Warden Johnston would not deny or confirm the story.” AP release, July 29, 1937, Persful Alcatraz file.

32
. FBI report by N. E. Marshall, Little Rock, Arkansas, March 25, 1935, file 7–14, ibid.

33
. On October 12, 1934, a few months after his release from the Arkansas prison Persful was arrested and subsequently convicted on federal charges of kidnapping and violating the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. In one of these cases Persful and two associates at gunpoint took the night watchman at a store to the home of the store manager. While one of the men stood guard over the family, Persful and the second man forced the manager to return to the store and open the safe. The robbers took $1,000 in currency and some checks and left with the night watchman and manager, who were driven from Arkansas to Missouri, where they were left bound and gagged in a wooded area. Two nights earlier Persful and his partners had robbed a gas station and then forced the owner, his wife, and his sister to accompany them. The group drove to Oklahoma, where the victims were put out of the car and left on a highway.

Before Persful and his partners were apprehended in the kidnapping cases, the trio was involved in another crime that provided additional evidence of Persful’s attitude toward his associates. Persful, Dewey, Kent, and Riley Gunn attempted to hold up a gas station in Oklahoma but the proprietor had been prepared for such a possibility and kept a gun in his pocket. When told to “stick them up,” he pulled the pistol and fired at the robbers, hitting Kent. Persful and Gunn pulled the wounded Kent into the stolen car they were driving and sped away. Kent succumbed within minutes, and Persful, according to Gunn, “drove to Kent’s home. . . . Carried Kent in the house and placed him on the bed. . . . Mrs. Kent begged them to get a doctor. [But] Persful told her, ‘Lady, you don’t need a doctor; what you need is a burying squad.’ ” Ibid.

For this series of crimes Persful received what would appear to be a modest federal sentence of twenty years, given his prior record of convictions and penitentiary time.

34
. Persful BOP central office report, September 14, 1936.

35
. Persful to Warren Squier, June 29, 1943, Persful file.

36
. Hess, Chief Medical Officer, Twitchell, Psychiatrist, and Wolfson, Psychiatrist, memorandum of examination, April 9, 1937, Alcatraz, California.

37
. Hayes Van Gorder federal prison file.

38
. This letter from Johnston to Bennett provides further evidence that Bureau headquarters was aware that the warden was still placing inmates in the dungeon.

39
. Burton Phillips Alcatraz file.

40
. R. O. Culver, Day Watch Lieutenant, to E. J. Miller, Deputy Warden, Alcatraz, October 4, 1937.

41
. Alvin Karpis, as told to Robert Livesey,
On the Rock: Twenty-Five Years in Alcatraz
(New York: Beaufort Books, 1980), 88.

42
. Waley interview. Alvin Karpis made a similar observation in his book.

43
. International News Service release, San Francisco, September 24, 1937.

44
. Johnston to J. V. Bennett, October 11, 1937; Johnston to Director, BOP, November 6, 1937.

45
. “The Rebellion in Alcatraz Prison,”
Dallas (TX) Times-Herald
, September 29, 1937.

46
. “No Pity for Convicts,”
Rapid City (SD) Journal
, October 1, 1937.

47
. “Prisons Should Be Grim,”
Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review
, October 2, 1937.

48
. “What Happened at Alcatraz,”
Kansas City (MO) Star
, September 27, 1937.

1
. Conduct report, January 20, 1936, Ted Cole Alcatraz file.

2
.
San Francisco Examiner
, December 17, 1937.

3
. N. J. L. Pieper, Special-Agent-in-Charge, San Francisco FBI office, to Director FBI, January 3, 1938. This poem was found in the prison laundry.

4
. J. E. Hoover, memo to E. A. Tamm, December 20, 1937.

5
. M. B. Myerson, FBI report, January 7, 1938, file 76–390.

6
. Ibid., p. 32.

7
. A captain at Atlanta who had been a guard at Alcatraz, and in whose office one of the interviews with an inmate was conducted, told the agents that it was a complete waste of time for them to try to get information from the ex-Alcatraz inmate they had just questioned, giving an example of the man’s stoicism in the face of punishment that the captain had observed when both were at Alcatraz. FBI report by A. J. Lemaire, March 18, 1938, file 6–96.

____ had committed an infraction of the rules at Alcatraz and it was the custom of the warden there to require the prisoner to say that he was sorry. ___, because of his peculiar personality and his stubborn nature flatly refused to apologize, and as a disciplinary measure, he was put in the dungeon in chains. It was believed that such action would cause him to come about . . . he remained twenty-three days in the hole before he could be prevailed upon to say he was sorry and then it was only utter exhaustion that caused him to break.

8
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 29, 1941.

9
. Thomas Limerick Alcatraz file.

10
. James Lucas Alcatraz file.

11
. Several years later, in a letter to the parole board, which must be considered self-serving since he claimed that he was an unwilling participant, Lucas provided the following account of the escape attempt:

Limerick and Franklin picked a little after one o’clock as the time the officer in charge of the shop went into the office to check his count sheet. At Alcatraz, each officer must check his men on the count sheet every thirty minutes. He also looked over the orders and stayed in the office about fifteen minutes. This routine never varied just as the officers changed places every thirty minutes on the roof and never varied. The day of the break came, Limerick said I was to work with him. At one, Mr. Cline went into his office as usual. Limerick got out a wedge he had built to hold the window open and level when he stood on it. He put it on and waited. Franklin went into the file room. He was to watch the officer patrol the back side and when he started back to the far end of the building and his back was to the window
he was to walk out of the File Room. That would be the signal to go up on the roof. So that was the reason Franklin was in the file room. We stood on the floor near the window watching for Franklin to come out of the File Room. Then as we stood on the far side of the shop under the window, Mr. Cline came out of the office and walked slowly into the File Room. I don’t know why he came out of his office so soon, he never had before. He never looked around, just walked slowly into the File Room. Maybe he went there to check on an order for supplies. I just don’t know. I told Limerick let’s put it off. His eyes were cold as ice, he shook his head. He said he didn’t notice anything meaning Mr. Cline. We waited what seemed like a million years, but was only a minute or so according to time verified at the trial. Then Franklin walked out of the File Room with a hammer in his hand. Limerick grabbed my arm. Let’s go he said, and crawled . . . out the window and stood up on the steel sash of the window. I crawled out the other side and stood on the steel sash also. I looked up and could see the officer in the tower, his back toward us, looking over the work area. The door to the glass tower stood open. He was totally unaware to what was creeping up behind him. I was supposed to help Limerick cut the barb wire. Franklin was below us now waiting to crawl out the window as soon as one of us went up. Before I could put up my hand and pretend to cut the wire, Limerick cut through two strands. I had to act fast as the officer was still sitting unaware of anything. As Limerick cut the third strand, I lifted my foot and kicked out one of the windows. I looked up at the officer, he never moved, my heart fell. Below Franklin jerked my pants leg. As he held one pant leg, I rested that foot on the steel sash of the window and kicked another pane of glass out. The window was only 3 panes wide. I looked up. The officer heard that one break. He slowly turned around and looked back. Limerick was crawling up on the roof. He stood up and charged the tower throwing everything he could at the tower. The officer kicked the door shut and he barely had time to bring his gun into action. At that time, the other officer was on the far side of the building getting ready to move a scaffold for workers putting in new steel. I got up on the roof and Mr. Stites was firing at everything and everybody. I was barely able to save my life by crawling under the tower. Limerick was killed at the door. Franklin came flying into action and charged the door and struck several times against the glass with a blood stained hammer. He was shot down and he struck again and again with the hammer. After everything was over, they dragged me out from under the tower. . . . I thought all there would be was an attempt to escape against me. But I wound up being tried for murder. The very thing I sacrificed myself to avoid. There was no plan to kill Mr. Cline, he just walked out into the room where there was a man who already had a life sentence in Alabama for murder. At the trial, I asked Franklin why he killed Mr. Cline and he said when Mr. Cline came into the room, he tried to tie him, but was resisted. He said Mr. Cline reached for his sap. Franklin said he hit him several times with his hammer before he fell.

12
.
San Francisco News
, November 1, 1938.

13
.
San Francisco Examiner
, November 7, 1938.

14
.
San Francisco Examiner
, November 1, 1938.

15
. “Alcatraz Killer Held Sane,”
San Francisco Examiner
, October 29, 1938.

16
. Cline’s unpopularity with the inmates was noted by Alvin Karpis. Karpis, as told to Robert Livesey,
On the Rock: Twenty-Five Years in Alcatraz
(New York: Beaufort Books, 1980), 102:

Screw Cline stands six feet, four inches tall and brags openly of the “wetbacks” he had killed on the Texas Border Patrol. Every time a fight breaks out in the yard, he charges into the midst of the squabbling cons laying them out left and right with
his “billy.” His brutal actions inevitably initiate a chorus of boos from onlooking cons; he is hated for his sadistic streak.

Harmon Waley, in a note written to the author on April 12, 1982, regarding this escape attempt, commented, “Cline said to the inmates in the yard one day that he’d be glad to shoot all the men in Alcatraz if someone would pay for the shells; he wouldn’t pay for it because they weren’t worth that much—even dead. He used to take his sap [blackjack] out and pat it on his hand—Limerick patted him on the head with a hammer!”

17
.
San Francisco Examiner
, November 5, 1938.

18
.
San Francisco Examiner
, November 15, 1938.

19
. AP release, November 26, 1938.

20
. Dale Stamphill’s account and all of his comments are taken from daylong interviews with the author, April 23, 1981, and October 15, 1995.

21
. Henry Young, as told to George Dillon in “One Hour Pass from Hell,”
Cavalier Magazine
, February 4, 1962, 72. Young said of Dock Barker, “He was one of America’s most dangerous men. I knew, however, that he was determined and ruthless and that once he started on anything, nothing could stop him but death. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have with me on a break from Alcatraz.”

22
. The escapees hid some of the tools within toilet drains. The tools were attached to long strings and then lowered into the drain until they came to rest in the necks of turns in the pipes. The strings floated upward within arm’s reach, but out of the sight of any guard who looked into toilet bowls during shakedowns. It was important for the inmates to dispose of their tools, not so much to avoid detection, but to keep the staff from uncovering evidence that an escape attempt was in progress and thus launching a search that would likely discover bars that had been cut and replaced.

23
. N.J.L. Pieper, Special-Agent-in-Charge, San Francisco. FBI investigation file, January 14, 1939, pp. 36–37.

24
. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

25
. Ibid., pp. 20–21.

26
. Warden Johnston notified the surviving member of Barker’s family, his father, of the violent death of another son. Johnston was advised by George Barker—“Bury Arthur Barker there. Please send me location of grave to be moved later.” On January 17, 1939, Barker was buried in Mount Olive Cemetery in San Francisco. A memo from Chaplain Hunter to Johnston reported that, with the business manager and several funeral home and cemetery employees present, “I read a brief service which consisted of some verses of scripture and a prayer. . . . I feel that we gave Barker a decent and respectable burial.”

27
. Pieper FBI investigation file, p. 35.

28
. James V. Bennett to James A. Johnston, January 18, 1939, “Alcatraz: Escape Procedure,” PR-G.

29
. Memo to Attorney General, January 14, 1939; FBI investigation file, pp. 5–6. The agents incorrectly blamed the metal detection system for allowing the escapees’ tools into the cell house, since the paraphernalia was hidden in a razor-sharpening machine and brought to the cell house by an unknowing guard.

30
. Special-Agent-in-Charge Pieper to J. Edgar Hoover, January 16, 1939, p. 1.

31
. Ibid., pp. 7–8.

32
. The search of the industries area, described as “an unlimited source of materials for escape tools,” produced a miter box saw (a rectangular saw with a handle high on the blades placed in a wooden frame in order to cut wood evenly at a 45-degree angle), a putty knife sharpened on one side to a knife-blade edge with the other edge converted into a saw, a thin steel bar that had been made into a saw edge on one side, and two pieces of heavy wire some thirty inches in length with the ends curved, devices that could be used to push or pull objects from any area or from one cell to another. The shakedown also turned up two hacksaw blades; and another handscrew jack or bar spreader was found on the top of D block.