Alcatraz (77 page)

It was so dark that I couldn’t see at first, I had run into a wall because I couldn’t see it but finally I learned how to pace my steps—I got to where I could stay the same distance from the walls. I got one meal every three days—it was usually just a little spoonful of whatever the menu was. It was never near enough; other times you’d get two slices of bread.

When my time in solitary confinement was over, they tried me and took all my good time. [Deputy Warden] Miller said [to a guard] “Put him up
in a cell next to the corner of the third tier and don’t let him have any privileges, don’t let him write to anybody or receive any mail and don’t let him have any clothes on but that pair of shorts. And give him an old mattress and two blankets—that’s all he gets until I give further orders.”
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Hamilton was allowed out of his cell to take a shower. During a shakedown of his cell on one of these occasions, his attempt to cut through the ceiling with razor blades was detected. (Years before Hamilton had cut his way out of a county jail using gem razors that had a blade on one side.) After the search he was placed in a second-tier cell:

[Deputy Warden] Miller came around a cussing and a swearing he said “Don’t let him have nothing, don’t let him write to his kinfolk, and no library privilege.” I stayed a whole year with just a pair of shorts on under those conditions. Then he gave me permission to receive mail from my mother and write to her and they gave me an old pair of shoes, a pair of pants, and a shirt and library privileges.

The months in solitary confinement gave Hamilton plenty of time for contemplation. After much introspection, he began thinking about God:

My first concept of God was sitting on a big, white throne. He had a long white beard and he had Jesus interceding for me. Others over on the other side were playing harps and singing to keep him in good humor. And I thought maybe if I catch him in a good humor I’d get out—that was my idea and that’s the way a lot of inmates think they’ll accept Christ as their savior if he’ll help them right then.

With his privileges finally renewed after more than a year, Hamilton, still in D block, began receiving mail from his mother and daughter and a Baptist preacher:

They wanted me to change my way of living—let God solve my problems. They would quote scriptures to me. Of course I didn’t have no bible; I didn’t have anything in that cell. I asked the chaplain to bring me over a bible. He sat down in front of my cell and went to instructing me where to find this and that.

Thinking that the preacher was just another employee of the government he couldn’t trust, Hamilton sent him away, but a seed had been sown.

After the inmate in the neighboring cell in D block died from a bleeding ulcer, Hamilton became very concerned about his own health because he believed that he too had a bleeding ulcer. Pushed in a spiritual direction
by his mother and daughter, he began to pray and underwent what he later called a religious conversion:

One day I read the bible and I finally became aware that there is, was, a spiritual being in me. I never told anybody and I never talked to anybody about it but anyway I felt I had a guardian angel who had been protecting me all my life. And you know, one day it seemed like a heavy load just lifted off of me and I felt real good. I had a feeling that everything would be alright, I don’t have to do more worrying and I was going to get out and be a respectable citizen. I told Bob Stroud next door and he was kind of an atheist and he made fun of me. I told him wait and see, I’m going to get out.

Floyd Hamilton’s conclusion that “a guardian angel” was looking out for him came as he reviewed incidents during which he narrowly escaped death in encounters with law enforcement officers. In one such incident, a Dallas police officer shot at him with a riot gun through a window during a bank robbery attempt, and despite being less than five feet away, missed. Hamilton also noted that his guardian angel must have been present while he was lying under discarded rubber tires in the cave at the end of the island while Deputy Warden Miller and other officers fired bullets into the tires.

During his three years in D block, Hamilton began focusing more on getting out of prison through legitimate means rather than by escaping. He saw an opportunity to escape during the May 1946 battle of Alcatraz but decided against it. After being released back to the general population, he won back the good time he had lost and received good work reports. With only one minor misconduct report he was transferred in August 1952 to Leavenworth, where he appreciated the treatment he received from the warden, former Alcatraz deputy warden E. J. Miller. “He gave all the guys from Alcatraz breaks,” said Hamilton. “He gave them preference in jobs and everything else.”

At Leavenworth, Hamilton continued on the path he had begun at Alcatraz, taking up an active study of religion. “When I got to Leavenworth, I went to studying the life of Christ and his teachings, the Old and New Testaments, comparative religion, and I took two courses in human relations,” said Hamilton. In 1956 his daughter, who had been a faithful correspondent, was indicted for poisoning her husband. With funds earned from his work in the shoe factory, he sent money to support his two grandchildren. He also hired an attorney to contest the computation of his sentence and his impending release to Texas authorities.

In December 1956 Hamilton was conditionally released from Leavenworth but then turned over to Texas state prison authorities—to whom he owed twenty-five years. He was taken to the state prison at Huntsville and locked up in a dark cell in disciplinary segregation with no reason given. He was soon transferred out of isolation—but into a regular segregation cell.
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After months in segregation,
Dallas News
crime reporter Harry McCormick learned of his whereabouts from Hamilton’s sister and began working to get him transferred to the general population. McCormick was apparently interested in Hamilton as a celebrated desperado from the Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow era.
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McCormick eventually succeeded in getting Hamilton moved out of segregation and into a work assignment in the electrical department. He received outstanding work reports and one year later was paroled—but only because of the efforts on his behalf by three men. One of these men was reporter McCormick; another was Ted Hinton, a former deputy sheriff who had helped gun down Bonnie and Clyde. Speaking of Hinton’s role in getting him released from prison, Hamilton wrote later: “I feel that God was working through Ted Hinton to try to help me. He used Ted Hinton because Ted was in a position to help me more than anyone else, because anyone, and at least the parole board, would listen to him.”
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The third person prepared to help Hamilton was William O. Bankston, an automobile dealer who had twice been allowed to visit him in the Dallas jail. McCormick, Hinton, and Bankston appeared on Hamilton’s behalf before the Texas Parole Board and his release shortly thereafter confirmed the considerable influence they had with the board.

After his release from prison Hamilton met with Hinton and Bankston. Hinton gave him $10; Bankston loaned him $150 and offered him a job, which he accepted. He worked for Bankston for sixteen years before retiring. During his interview with the author, Hamilton claimed that Bankston helped him “because my guardian angel was directing him.”

Hamilton and his ex-wife remarried shortly after his release, and they raised his daughter’s two children. In the years that followed, Hamilton helped establish a nonprofit organization, ConAid, to help ex-convicts and was invited to talk to numerous church groups about his new spiritual life. He encountered Chaplain Ray Hostra, head of the International Prison Ministry, and at Chaplain Ray’s request, Hamilton made a series of tapes describing his life of crime and his conversion into a law-abiding citizen. The International Prison Ministry broadcast the tapes, and parts were reproduced in a booklet for prisoners.
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During this time, Floyd Hamilton
had the unusual experience of returning to prison as a guest speaker—at Attica State Prison in New York, the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma, California Men’s Colony, and other penal institutions.

In August 1963 President John Kennedy commuted Hamilton’s sentence, “To expire at once.” Two years later, Hamilton applied for a presidential pardon, which was granted by President Lyndon Johnson in December 1966. Governor John Connally awarded him a pardon from the state of Texas in April 1967.

Hamilton’s association with notorious outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and his one-time status as “public enemy no. I,” followed him during all his years in the free world, and even into death. When he died in 1984, the news release from the Associated Press noted: “Floyd Garland Hamilton, 76, considered Public Enemy No.1 in the late 1930s and a close friend of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, has died after a lengthy illness.”
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Floyd Hamilton’s success after release can be attributed to a religious conversion at Alcatraz, to his wife, and to the assistance he received from a number of helpful citizens. Ironically, his benefactors consisted of men who helped him precisely because he had been a notorious Public Enemy.

Volney Davis was one of seven men sent to Alcatraz for their participation in the Bremer kidnapping case. From January 1936 through April 1939 he received nine misconduct reports, four for fighting with other prisoners. He engaged in a fistfight with Henry Young over a decision made by the umpire in a ball game, and he fought with two other men not connected with the Bremer case. In one of these altercations, “he untied [the other inmate’s] apron and when Wells shook his penis at him saying, ‘If you want it ask for it,’ it made [Davis] mad and he hit Wells with his fist [stating that] he was 37 years old and didn’t play anything like that [homosexual games].”
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One of these fights may have been related to reported tensions among Davis and his rap partners—it involved an attack on Alvin Karpis in which Davis was described as the aggressor. After three of these fights, Davis was locked up in disciplinary confinement for three days each time. He made D block on two occasions for participating in strikes; in one case: “He is not in sympathy with the strikers . . . but he thought he would stick with them for a couple of days to make a showing and then return to work.”
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Three other misconducts during this period were for minor violations.

During his remaining years at Alcatraz, Davis curbed his tendency toward violence. Although he was written up fourteen more times for misconduct, the offenses consisted of such minor transgressions as “eating unauthorized food” and stealing “a large corned beef sandwich.” On one occasion in 1942, an officer noticed that Davis was intoxicated: “Davis looked sheepish and was unsteady on his feet. Although I did not see him drinking, there is no doubt in my mind that he was under the influence of some concoction of an inebriaious
[sic]
nature.”
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Davis was transferred to Leavenworth on April 2, 1947. There he continued to earn money working in the prison industry and was able to send a total of $1,400 to his elderly parents. He registered for courses in advanced arithmetic and industrial safety and received average work reports.

Preparing for a parole hearing in April 1950, he wrote to J. Edgar Hoover asking the director to support his application. In the letter, he referred to promises of help he had received from Hoover in exchange for information he had provided, as well as promises of a shorter sentence from FBI agents.
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Davis informed Hoover that he had “taken a lot of abuse from inmates” and was determined to have no further contact with any of them outside prison. “Life even in prison can be pleasant if one can obtain peace of mind,” wrote Davis. “That is man’s greatest asset in this troubled old world. For with peace of mind the days pass one by one and you think of the past as little as possible.” Asking Hoover for help was remarkably naive for a veteran criminal; Hoover had no intention of supporting Davis’s parole request (when Davis was granted parole nine years later, Hoover would write on an internal memorandum: “this certainly is an instance of gross abuse of parole in the federal area”).
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As the years went by at Leavenworth, Volney Davis maintained good conduct and work records. He filed legal actions regarding his sentence, including a claim that he was not represented by counsel, was never apprised of his constitutional rights, was “held incommunicado in a distant city in chains and in secrecy,” and “was led to believe that if he entered a plea of guilty he would be given a [shorter] term.” All of his appeals and several other legal actions were denied. In 1956 he wrote to his kidnap victim, Edward Bremer, apologizing “for the sordid crime that was committed against you” and contending that he “had no part in the preparation and the commitment of the crime.” He asked that Bremer not oppose his release on federal parole to the state of Oklahoma where a life sentence was waiting for him.
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Davis’s efforts to finesse his involvement in the kidnapping injured his
chances for federal parole. After he claimed in a habeas corpus writ that he had “nothing to do with the Bremer kidnapping,” the United States attorney reacted with the following: “Positive evidence was introduced by the Government that he was handling the Bremer kidnapping money with full knowledge as to what it was. He was thus found, in effect, to have committed perjury.” The U.S. attorney also informed the parole board, “Mr. Bremer expressed to me that he thought [Davis] should stay in prison.”
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Davis continued to send his industry earnings to support his elderly mother and kept in touch with family members through correspondence and visits with his mother, his sister, and several nieces and nephews. He participated in the Alcoholics Anonymous group for twelve years, was a regular attendee at chapel, and when his mother died in January 1959, he was allowed to make a funeral trip from Leavenworth in the company of a lieutenant for her burial. The governor of Oklahoma granted him a parole from his life sentence, to be effective on the date Davis received his federal parole.