Escape from Alcatraz (18 page)

Were these men merely lusting after excitement or subconsciously wooing violent death? A less romantic view came from a nameless individual who walked into the
Chronicle
’s city room on Saturday, the final day of the battle, and talked to a top staff writer. His story:

EX-CONVICT TELLS WHY

By Robert de Roos

It is easy to forget that the convicts who died in the abortive Alcatraz Prison break had friends.

Yesterday, a former Alcatraz inmate who did his stretch of 11 years on The Rock came forward with this story, a story that is at once a thoughtful word for the dead and a bitter denunciation of the prison system he blames.

Calmly, sincerely, he criticized the harsh reality of Alcatraz Prison, a place without hope, a physical prison which is the more terrible because it is a prison of the mind. He should know. He was there from the time it became a Federal prison.

He criticized Warden James A. Johnston and James V. Bennett, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as symbols of the repressive system.

This is the convict, a mail robber, talking:

“I’m out now. I’ve got no beef. I just want to see something done so things like this riot won’t happen again.

“I know that if they treated the prisoners half civilly, they wouldn’t react like vicious beasts.

“You can’t coop up men and take all hope away from them.

“Warden Johnston always says the trouble with Alcatraz prisoners is that they want their freedom. That’s right. They want to get out.

“They realize they are in prison.

“If they were treated better they’d still try to get out, but they wouldn’t shoot innocent people in cold blood.

“A good example of this is Joe Cretzer. He was a nice young boy and I liked him. Well, he tried to get out of Alcatraz five years ago, remember?

“What did he do then? He captured four guards in the mat shop. He had knives and hammers. But he didn’t use them. He didn’t harm the guards.

“Now look. This time he was shooting people in cold blood, at least that’s what the reports say.

“You see the way the place worked on him?

“Look, I’ve been pushed around over there and I yapped right back. I had my share of troubles. I’ve been in isolation and in the dungeon—11 days barefoot on a concrete floor, six or seven days without food—and it’s tough.

“But not as tough as going without newspapers. Or only getting to see a show six or seven times a year.

“Every time we got any privileges—Johnston calls them privileges, but I say they are necessities—somebody had to suffer.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Johnston’s and Bennett’s system doesn’t work. If it worked they wouldn’t be in trouble so often.

“Of course, Johnston has to defend the system. And he has to whitewash everything. He’s got to make people believe he’s got 300 desperadoes on his hands. Shucks, there aren’t more than 50—I’ll bet not 20—really hardened, desperate men in the place.

“But they won’t give you a break.

“I was a seaman before I started stealing. Well, at the beginning of the war when they needed seamen so, I asked for a parole—I had three years to go—so I could go to sea.

“Johnston said he thought it was a good idea. But Bennett wouldn’t have it. They had to take the last drop of blood.

“Nobody’s asking them to take the guards away. Nobody’s asking them to turn the place into a country club. All the guys want is some, just a little consideration.

“I never saw anyone get smacked around over there unless he was really out of order. It isn’t the physical treatment, it’s the mental treatment you get.

“The only thing that kept me going was the thought that I could get out some day. I had a home to come to and a trade to get back to.

“My friends say I took it pretty good. Eleven years in Alcatraz is a long, long time. I wish something could be done about that place—the little things that would count.”

Two years before his violent end, Joe Cretzer gave a guard a poem penciled on a sheet of blue-lined paper; written very likely, the guard believes, with an assist from his in-law and cellhouse neighbor, Arnold Kyle. In its bitterness, it seems almost a portent of the slaughter to come. Cretzer’s outpouring:

     
I Wonder

1. You can see at once
As you are not a dunce
This is written of the man;
Not he they’ve broke
With that burdensome yoke
,
In life’s early span
.

2. But am I to say
In my humble way
If another’s right or wrong?
Or am I to judge
With never a budge
If another is weak or strong?

3. We speak of God
And the path He trod
And of that righteous day;
When in early dawn
With a loathsome yawn
He played with a piece of clay
.

4. From it man grew
As perhaps you knew
And he roamed the earth at will
.
The things he built
And the blood he spilt
Are a small mark on the bill
.

5. He was good-bad
,
He was happy-sad
,
He came down through the ages;
Then he wrote a code
In his own small mode
And he built for his brothers iron cages
.

6. Sat himself on a throne
That he alone
Might judge deeds of others
.
And through his greed
And wanton need
Created the sins of his brothers
.

7. He said with a sneer
I am the peer
,
And this is the rightful code;
(Lo to the unfair judge)
Before me you stand
Why lend a hand
It’s you who must carry the load
.

8. He put in the mold
A piece of gold
He said to himself
This is God;
It makes more complete
My lordly seat
For to it all men will nod
.

9. How long the lout
Could stand and shout
Of God and noble things
Then turn around
To knock to the ground
The man who laughs or sings
.

10. He looked at the brook
At his neighbor’s nook
Then laid a cunning plan
To sack his home
And break his bones
He spared the life of no man
.

11. Is this the part
God had in his heart
That man was borne to play;
Was it His dream
Omnipotent scheme
As he toyed with that lump of clay?

12. Did He really make
In that stupendous wake
,
A scale of right or wrong?
Does He sit on a throne
With never a grone
And watch with cynical sight?

13. Has this lowly creature
Mastered even the teacher
In his flight across the sun?
Does the Creator smirk
At his handiwork
Or smile and say, Well done
.

Chapter 14

O
VER THE YEARS EACH BREAK
, or violent break attempt, had dealt a reeling blow to the security-conscious prison authorities, both at Alcatraz and in Washington, for The Rock from its inception had been a pet of the Justice Department.

The Roe-Cole escape had first set them back on their heels by shattering the myth that Alcatraz was actually escapeproof, and particularly disillusioning was the ease with which the Oklahoma badmen had slipped off the island. Officials, recovering, announced that measures were being taken to make The Rock
more
impregnable but what these measures were, beyond replacing the toolproof bars sawed by the Oklahomans, was never disclosed.

The cellhouse itself, protected by the finest gadgets science and metallurgy could offer, had always been considered secure against assault from within. Then came the dismaying break of the quintet, not merely from the cellhouse but from the innermost security of the isolation block, with a fragment of a hacksaw blade. Director Bennett, patently shaken by the penetration of this “first line of defense,” set to work rebuilding the breached defenses, to make Alcatraz as “impregnable as the mind of man can conceive.” This was a simple enough job: the replacement of the old, soft-iron bars in that block left over from the Army days with bars of alloyed steel, presumably toolproof.

And then came the severest jolt of all, the Battle of Alcatraz with its staggering toll of five dead and thirteen wounded. Convict cunning and patience had again breached the first line of defenses. And again the defenses were rebuilt, made even more impregnable, as much as 90 percent more, Warden Johnston said. A mesh screen of heavy, tough wire was laid over the bars of the gun galleries, making it virtually impossible for any inmate to cut and spread a way through. Even if he did, a recurrence of the big blast-out attempt was now out of the question; there would be no weapons available; the guards in the galleries, like the guards on the floor, thereafter were unarmed. As a substitute, and to retain the deterrent effect of ready gunfire, ports an inch and a half in diameter were bored in the south wall, through which guards on a catwalk outside could shove rifle or machine-gun barrels, a system of surveillance already in use for the mess hall. The ports, though covered by metal flaps, heightened the howl of the wind, which could push the flaps aside as readily as could the guards.

This matter of the assaultable gallery and guard was not the only, nor the major, flaw in the security setup. The Battle of The Rock hammered home the truth of an old saying among prison people: regularity of bowel movement may be salutary, but not for guards. Too many eyes are always casing a guard’s routine to fit into an escape plot, thus making it the weakest link in the security chain. Warden Johnston, who had long before warned officers to regard every inmate as a potential escaper, now began to shore up the prison’s custodial defenses. He hired many veterans, chiefly those with military-police or navy shore-patrol experience, and revised the training course.

Senior guards instructed the rookies how to frisk an inmate suspected of carrying contraband from a shop to his cell, and how to shake down a cell to uncover a hidden tool, knife, homemade gun, or even an extra pair of socks. They were warned: “Leave the cell, which is the prisoner’s living room, in orderly condition so as to avoid any ill will and resentment that could be caused by a sloppy search.”

The course laid particular stress on the importance of counts “to insure safe custody.” Johnston said a guard must be quick and accurate “when he counts prisoners as they go back and forth from cells to yard, yard to workshops, to bathhouse, dining room, dock, outside detail, chapel service, or picture show.” The new officers were taught to guard against convict tricks and to avoid distractions, a favorite inmate pastime, which could cause errors of confusion.

One significant item of custodial care, the warden related, was alertness against “the use of ‘dummys’ (
sic
) shaped to resemble a human form with heads or hands or hair faked to deceive the inexperienced and the careless counter.”

A former guard tells of the devious ways a convict will harass an officer: “He’ll stamp his feet suddenly, or stand right near you and drop a book flat on the concrete floor, just to bug you. A guard should never show nerves, but in a place like that, you hear a sudden loud report like a dropped book—well, it takes steady nerves not to jump. A con likes to stare at a new man on duty in the dining room. He dog-eyes you, you dog-eye him. It becomes a contest. The guard usually wins—he’d damn well better, or the con might consider it personal.

“Then there’s what we called negative swearing. An inmate is talking to the man next him at table but he’s looking right at you as he says, ‘Screw you, mister,’ or ‘You’re a no-good louse, if I ever saw one, a real sonofabitch.’ Things like that, just to razz you. All you can do is ignore it, but a new officer sometimes takes it personally and tells the con to lay off. He doesn’t last long. Once they know they can get his goat they don’t let up, and his nerves snap. This happened even in the days when they had the rule of silence. Some of the convicts became damned good ventriloquists. They could call you a sonofabitch without moving their lips.

“We had two Negro guards, at different times, but they couldn’t take it. The prisoners left the mess hall in a loose line and a convict would walk straight up to the Negro guard as if he were going to tear him apart, then suddenly pivot away from him. The guard would look up at the ceiling, tense, holding his breath. One of the Negroes stood it four days, the other quit after two. For some reason, it was the colored convicts who kept harassing them.

“But they weren’t the only new guards who couldn’t stand the bugging or the tension of the place. Now and then a man would report for duty at eight thirty in the morning and take the noon boat back to the city. A half day, and he’d had it.”