Alcatraz (74 page)

He also thanked the warden for securing a reopening of his case before the parole board. With a new application for parole consideration, Bailey attached letters written by Kirkpatrick and the presiding judge at his trial in which both recommended his parole. This effort was unsuccessful, but in March 1962, two years later, Warden Gollaher of Seagoville wrote to the parole board concerning Bailey’s case:

I have talked with the Board members individually about this case and have repeatedly expressed my concern about the length of time that this man has served. On several occasions I have talked to Mr. Bennett and we had agreed that this is the time that Bailey should be given an opportunity on parole. Bailey is getting older and if he is incarcerated for a much longer period of time, his health will preclude any chance whatsoever he has for gaining employment. . . . I am of the opinion that serving any additional time will only be to his serious disadvantage. In summary, we are slowly reaching a point of “diminishing returns” in this case and will have to say that the treatment and training goals that Bailey has reached since being at Seagoville have our wholehearted approval. I believe that this is the optimum time to release him to the community.
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But there were those who did not agree with the warden. When asked by the chief of classification and parole at Seagoville about the local employment market, the chief U.S. probation officer for the Southern District of Texas replied:

I felt all along that it would be just a matter of time when something suitable could be found [for Bailey], however, a chance meeting with Judge Allen B. Hannay, until recently our Chief Judge, throws an entirely different light on the whole situation. Judge Hannay has a large picture in his office of a courtroom scene in Oklahoma City when Kathryn and George “Machine Gun” Kelly received a life sentence from Judge Edgar S. Vaught. He got to talking about the greatest crime of the century, and I happened to mention your recent correspondence about the above name. The reaction was immediate, and he directed me to have nothing to do with that man [Bailey]. I then was given a couple of books written by E. E. Kirkpatrick,
who was the payoff man in the famous Urschel kidnapping case. I have since read both books which were extremely interesting and have come to the conclusion that perhaps the Judge is right about Bailey. According to Mr. Kirkpatrick, his career in crime was without parallel in American History since the days of Jesse James. He was a strong suspect in the St. Valentine’s Day slaughter in Chicago, Kansas City Union Station massacre, and many other crimes. He is described as a very smart and persuasive individual who had been one of America’s most elusive criminals and a man said to be capable of conning himself out of hell. . . . I do believe, however, that it would be impossible for any district to receive Bailey without the word eventually getting out to the newspapers. This could be not only embarrassing, but possibly very dangerous and, as Judge Hannay said, “He is not worth the risk.”
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Warden Gollaher anticipated this problem when he wrote another strong letter to the parole board. The issue for the wardens who argued for Bailey’s parole was their concern that a prisoner who had a decades-long record of good conduct and cooperation with staff should reasonably expect that these good efforts would earn a parole—otherwise why go along with the program? In Bailey’s case, however, along with those of other notorious offenders whose arrests helped build the reputation of the FBI and its director, the opposition of Hoover was a serious consideration for the board of parole. In this letter the warden directly confronted the matter of Hoover’s intervention in the parole process:

We have been advised that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, is interested in sitting in on the review [of Bailey’s parole]. . . . Bailey, as you are well aware, will soon begin serving his thirtieth year on his
LIFE
sentence. In the past we have pointed out with regularity the fact that although Bailey is 75 years old, he is a very exuberant individual, is in good health, and enjoys a very good outlook on life. We cannot stress too strongly the fact that his healthy outlook, good physical condition and faithful disposition is certainly based partially on the hope that he has of leaving prison before he dies. . . . We note that during the late thirties, many books were written using Bailey and his modus operandi as a theme. We can recall one book entitled, “Farewell Mr. Gangster” which devoted an entire chapter to Bailey and which states, “If Bailey was not the best bank robber in the United States, he certainly perfected the method of casing a bank.” We realize that in his earlier life Bailey was no doubt a very, very serious threat to the community welfare. On the other hand, that information, along with other information that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has, is now thirty years old and we firmly believe that the material has little bearing on the current issue at hand. . . . If the law enforcement agency which seems to
have an interest in this case is allowed to color the decision of the Board, we are sure that Bailey will be convinced that his efforts during the past 30 years have been to no avail. . . . Our Classification Committee . . . can see no reason whatsoever why he should be retained in custody any longer.
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Regardless of the fact that Kansas parole authorities had indicated in 1956 they would recommend a commutation of Bailey’s state sentence, Warden Gollaher was notified that Kansas was intending to exercise the detainer for his escape in 1933. This information prompted Gollaher to write to the director of Penal Institutions of Kansas, arguing that since Bailey should be released to the community, returning him to the penitentiary at Lansing would serve no useful purpose. But Kansas authorities insisted Bailey be returned to serve the time remaining on his detainer, stating they were unwilling to grant concurrent parole.
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Finally on November 15, 1962, Bailey was paroled from Seagoville to his state detainer and returned to the Kansas state prison from which he had escaped thirty years earlier. He served two and a half years before his sentence was commuted and he immediately became eligible for parole. He was released on March 31, 1965, at age seventy-six, under the joint supervision of federal and Missouri parole authorities (since he was to live and work in Joplin, Missouri). Bailey’s release by Kansas authorities was effected due in large part to the efforts of the new chairman of the Kansas Board of Probation and Parole, the former warden of Leavenworth, Chester Looney, who ten years earlier had supported Bailey’s transfer to the Kansas state prison so that he could finish his federal and state sentences at the same time, rather than consecutively.

Upon his release, Bailey was greeted by his son and granddaughter. He was employed at a construction company as a cabinetmaker using the skills he had developed at Alcatraz and Leavenworth. He got married, retired in 1973, worked with a writer to produce a book about his career as a bank robber and was terminated from parole in 1976. He died three years later at the age of ninety-one. Harvey Bailey expected to pay a very high price for being the nation’s best bank robber. But he paid an even higher price for a kidnapping in which he did not participate—despite the strong support for parole he received from several federal prison wardens—because the press and J. Edgar Hoover made him one of the nation’s most prominent “public enemies.”

The book about Bailey’s life devoted only six pages to his years at Alcatraz but did reveal his philosophy for doing time: “Once you learn to live with yourself, then you have learned to live with your fellow man.
This is caused by meditation. The question you have to resolve; four walls and no place to go. A lot of men don’t ever learn what that is like; to have to sit down and meditate that
this is me
. I learned! . . . The main lesson is that crime don’t pay. You have to pay for it.”
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In prison, John Paul Chase, whose exploits with Baby Face Nelson (one of the country’s leading bad guys) were mentioned in
chapter 1
, was another “stand-up” convict, a “good con” who took his punishment without complaining. He was friendly and respectful to his work crew supervisors but communicated little with the custodial staff. A progress report written near the end of his stay at Alcatraz noted the following: “In the cell house his conduct is very quiet and orderly. It is reported that one wouldn’t know he was there. He spends his time reading or painting.”
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After his transfer to Leavenworth in September 1954, Chase began working on his release. In this effort he would be frustrated for many years, encountering the classic problem of a prisoner who committed a very serious offense but thereafter accumulated many years of good work and good conduct reports. While misconduct reports could result in the loss of privileges and provide a justification for parole denials, good conduct could not earn him a release. Chase had been convicted of killing an FBI agent, and during this era no federal offense was more serious—especially when it had occurred during a nationally publicized gun battle between J. Edgar Hoover’s G-men and “the gangster element.” Linked with Baby Face Nelson in every verbal and written report, Chase found himself in that category of convicts who could not earn a parole no matter how good their behavior. If the parole committees he petitioned over and over had been frank and truthful, they would have had to reply, “You are not getting out because you are John Paul Chase and J. Edgar Hoover won’t allow it.”

Even a letter of support from one of the FBI agents who participated in the gun battle that resulted in the murder of agents Cowley and Hollis did not influence parole authorities. Thomas McDade wrote to Father Clark in 1952, giving his version of Chase’s participation in the “affray”:

For my own part as one of the participants in the battle which cost Cowley, Hollis and Gillis their lives, I feel, and I felt then, that Chase’s part was slight except for the moral support which he lent Gillis. Perhaps I should speak only for myself and not for other agents who, at the time of Chase’s
apprehension, talked with him and formed an opinion about his character in general and the part which he played on that day. I can say, however, that I was not alone in the belief that he was a completely different type of individual than Lester Gillis and was perhaps led into the situation by that man. Considering Chase’s general character up till the time of that episode, and in view of the opinions which you yourself have expressed, as well as those of the warden and deputy warden at Alcatraz Prison, I would think that Chase would be a good subject for parole. . . . It is eighteen years since the event which put Chase in prison, and all things considered, I think that the risk of releasing him at this time is one which we can well run.
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As the years rolled by, Chase continued to take a variety of self-study courses, including human relations, Spanish, sociology, trigonometry, public relations, and the Dale Carnegie course. He also compiled a long list of assessments that his work in the shoe factory was outstanding.

In July 1961, in a petition for executive clemency, he asked for a commutation of his sentence to thirty years:

My conduct in prison has been an exemplary one. This prison can be likened to a community of like size population on the outside. In it there is committed every crime that is committed on the outside. In prison there is an environment for every hate, for every respect accorded to man, for every frustration, and for every achievement; and they are comparable to those desires and aspirations of the people who live in the free world. . . .

And we have ourselves and our time to do what we will with them. We are free . . . to earn the contempt and hatred of our fellow man, or to earn their respect and their compliments.

Man makes his own environment from how he thinks, his every act being the blossom of his thoughts. My record will show that my behavior and my thinking for these past 26 years is comparable to that of the behavior and conduct of successful businessmen in like-size communities on the outside . . . in a truly rehabilitative sense the officials of this institution . . . have achieved their goal.
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Chase ended by listing persons who could describe his “character” and confirm his “rehabilitation.” This list included sixteen Alcatraz and Leavenworth wardens, captains, lieutenants, officers, and work crew supervisors. And Director James Bennett headed it. Despite all this, his appeal was denied. Five years later another classification committee concluded unanimously that “there is little further purpose in confining Chase at Leavenworth.”
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Finally, on October 31, 1966, after thirty-one years at Alcatraz and
Leavenworth, John Chase was released on parole to San Francisco. He had $500 in savings and $7,000 in savings bonds that he had sent to his brother, a retired San Francisco police officer. Chase, then almost sixty-five years old, took up residence and went to work as a custodian at St. Joseph’s College, a Catholic seminary in the nearby town of Mountain View. Most of his free time was spent at his brother’s home.

During his first few years under parole supervision, Chase was kept under close watch by his parole officer, who noted,

I do not consider Mr. Chase a dangerous individual. He is perhaps not the most rational individual at all times but this is understandable in view of the facts and circumstances of the past 30 years. I do not think Mr. Chase could have survived from Leavenworth to a free society. . . . He went from Leavenworth into a seminary where he has a good deal of freedom but yet security, but it is still an institution and I think we can appreciate Mr. Chase’s negative yet realistic attitudes towards institutions. Mr. Chase has done well on parole; he keeps to himself. He basically has a good attitude toward authority. . . . I think Mr. Chase is now reaching the point where he might be able to move away from an institution into a freer society without damaging himself or the society. As pointed out earlier, subject wants Presidential Clemency. He is not ready for this but it gives him something to do, namely fighting the system.
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