Alcatraz (37 page)

Gardner described Alcatraz as “the toughest, hardest place in the world.”
Hellcatraz
was published after his release, and there were, as usual, no disclaimers or denials from Alcatraz or Bureau of Prisons officials.
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Back in San Francisco Gardner found employment on a tour boat. As the boat cruised around Alcatraz, Gardner told stories about “the lifeless automatons” on the “rock of despair.” (At the San Francisco exposition in 1939 he operated a booth at which he reiterated this same theme.)

While Gardner’s
Hellcatraz
confirmed the prison’s harsh image, events within Alcatraz supported the growing body of journalistic opinion that the federal government was treating prisoners so cruelly that they were ending up in insane wards, on suicide watches, or dying while trying to escape. Following Rufe Persful’s self-mutilation and Roe and Cole’s escape attempt in 1937 came the deadly escape attempted by Lucas, Limerick, and Franklin in May 1938 and ensuing trial for the murder of Officer Cline, the work strike and assault on Warden Johnston in September 1938, and the January 1939 breakout attempt led by Stamphill and Barker, which also had fatal results.

In addition, strikes and protests continued, and the press always seemed to catch wind of them. On February 26, 1939, seven men in disciplinary segregation began a hunger strike. Among the protesters were Henry Young, Rufus McCain, Whitey Franklin (who had killed Officer Cline), and Jack Hensley, the determined leader of the work strikes. According to Deputy Warden E. J. Miller, the inmates were protesting because they wanted to exercise in the yard and smoke and because “they didn’t want an officer to be placed in isolation to watch them all the time.”
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The hunger strike lasted five days. In July, following several nights of protests during which the prisoners yelled, sang, and banged their bunks into the floor, another hunger strike began over the same issues. The leaders, Young, Franklin, Hensley, and Stamphill, were moved from D block to A block isolation cells; four days later all resumed eating.

One year later, on July 15, 1940, another protest began, this time involving more than one hundred inmates; they came into the dining room for meals but took only coffee and bread. This protest was not accompanied by any work stoppage or the usual booing and shouting at non-participants. No particular complaints were presented, except that the protesters wanted transfers to other prisons.

To Warden Johnston, “it was apparent” that the men “were acting in
collusion according to an agreed plan.” He explained to Director Bennett what he believed to be behind the prisoners’ behavior:

So far as I can judge at this moment, the men seem to be making their annual bid for attention and perhaps came to the conclusion that striking was not the way to do it but going without food, ala Mahatmi
[sic]
Gandhi, would be a better sort of protest. But, really I can find no foundation to the complaints about the food; I think it is merely used because they think that is a spot in which the public has interest.
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To support his contention that the quality of food was not the basis for the protest Johnston sent a copy of the week’s menu to Bennett (see
p. 186
).
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Having learned that no event on the island could escape the attention of San Francisco newspapers, usually through information from civilian employees who worked in industries or maintenance jobs and lived in the city, James Johnston adopted a proactive posture by releasing news himself rather than waiting for rumors to reach the press. The problem with this protest was that like all other news about Alcatraz, it captured front-page attention. Johnston noted ruefully to Bennett, “
The Examiner
gave as much space to the food protest as was given to President Roosevelt and the Democratic Convention and more attention than [was given] to Hitler, Mussolini and the World War.”
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Bureau headquarters felt it necessary to send a memorandum to the attorney general suggesting that the purpose of the strike was to gain public sympathy for the prisoners’ lot.
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Alcatraz had become a major public relations problem for the Bureau of Prisons. All that the prison was supposed to represent—federal resolve to punish “public enemies,” a means of getting the worst troublemakers out of the other federal prisons, and setting a standard for state high-security prisons—became lost in the welter of denunciations directed at the Bureau for maintaining a penitentiary that seemed to contradict so many aspects of progressive penology.

No longer confident that the prison’s benefits outweighed its liabilities, James Bennett proposed to Attorney General Frank Murphy (who had succeeded Homer Cummings earlier that year) that Alcatraz be converted into a facility to house the Bureau’s “old and crippled prisoners,” along with West Coast drug users, and that the Department of Justice seek funds from Congress to construct a new maximum-security institution in southeastern Iowa to replace Alcatraz.
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In his memo to Murphy, Bennett acknowledged the importance of Alcatraz in the federal prison system, noting that it housed the inmates who disrupted operation in the other prisons, provided “deterrent punishment for the gangster, kidnapper and ruthless killer,” and countered the claims of those who believed “prisons did not deter crime because they were all ‘country clubs.’” But because Alcatraz had become “an extremely difficult institution to administer,” and because its per capita operating cost was two and a half times that of any other federal penitentiary, Bennett concluded, it was perhaps best to end its brief career as a maximum-security prison for “famous criminal personalities.”
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But Alcatraz still had powerful backers in the federal government and elsewhere. Former Attorney General Cummings, for example, responded to the criticism of Alcatraz with an article in
Colliers
magazine entitled “Why Alcatraz Is a Success.” The idea of ending maximum-security operations at Alcatraz joined all the other rumors about ending operations that prisoners and staff would hear throughout the life of the prison.

More negative publicity was generated following the evening of January 10, 1940, in a dramatic gesture, when Roy Gardner underscored his own point that doing time at Alcatraz left inmates psychologically damaged. Gardner sat down in his room in the Hotel Governor in San Francisco
and began writing notes. One note, addressed “to whom it may concern,” provided instructions for the disposal of his body; a second asked newspapers not to mention his daughter’s married name in reports of his death. After finishing these notes, Gardner wrote another that warned, “Do not open this door. Poison gas. Call police” and attached it to the outside of the door to his room. He then sealed the door from the inside, went into the bathroom, dropped some cyanide pellets into a glass of acid, placed a handkerchief over his head, and inhaled the rising fumes.

When the police entered his room, they found Gardner’s belongings neatly packed; on each of the four suitcases containing his worldly belongings they found a fifty-cent tip for the porter and the maid. They also found a fourth note, addressed “to the newspaper reporters”:

Please let me down as light as possible boys. I have played ball with you all the way, and now you should pitch me a slow one and let me hit it. I am checking out simply because I am old and tired, and don’t care to continue the struggle. There are no love affairs or disappointments of any kind connected with this in anyway, just tired that’s all. I hold no malice toward any human being, and I hope those whom I have wronged will forgive me for it. If I had realized what the future held for me, I would have “checked out” in 1920 and saved my loved ones the disgrace and shame that they have had to endure these many years. Also I would have dodged plenty of grief that I endured unnecessarily. All men who have to serve more than 5 years in prison are doomed, but they don’t realize it. They kid themselves into the belief that they can “come back,” but they can’t—there is a barrier between the ex-convict and society that cannot be leveled. . . . I did not decide to check out on the spur of the moment. In fact I bought the cyanide 2 months ago for this very purpose. I got it at a drug store on the north side of Market St. near Kearney. I don’t remember what name I signed, but my address was given 1404 Post St. Good bye and good luck boys, and please grant my last request. Thanks. Sincerely yours, Roy Gardner
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Gardner’s death by suicide was given wide publicity in the Bay Area. The United Press International news service sent a story across its wires, “The quiet end of a two-gun man,” which characterized Gardner as “the last of the train robbers, a 20th-century Jesse James [who] cashed in his chips with neatness and dispatch, will malice towards none, and the hope of forgiveness in his heart.”
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At the inquest that followed, San Francisco coroner T. B. Leland wrote Roy Gardner’s final epitaph: “This is the case of a man who was down and out, who was going blind, who could not make a comeback after his long criminal career. He did not want to be a burden on his family. That’s all.”
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