Alcatraz (80 page)

This bud of reform lodged and stuck in my mind, but it did not grow easily. It took many months before I could erase all the bitterness and despair from my heart. But fortunately it did stick and grow into full-blown. . . . During the months that followed my release from the dark hole, I gradually turned to reading and studying more. I had always liked to read but had for the most part neglected doing so until this time. But now I did turn to books for companionship. We had a good library stocked with all the better authors and it was to these I turned. . . . I started to rebuild my life. . . . The turmoil that had seethed in my brain for so long was still and my thoughts became clearer and I felt calm and peaceful. … If I were to pick out any particular assistance that helped me most in this struggle, I should have to choose the thoughts expressed in the
Book of Job
, the gentle teachings of Jesus in his first instructions to his disciples, and Kipling’s
If
.
⁷⁵

Because Whitey Franklin lived only a few months in the free world after his parole he did not have much time to test his resolve to “rebuild his life.” But his decision many years earlier at Alcatraz to reject the inmate code and side with “these enemies” was likely a much more severe test of his own transformation then any obstacles he would have encountered after his release.

Another reason for including the Franklin story in this book is that this man took on the difficult task of trying to explain to others the circumstances,
emotions, thoughts, and considerations—the rational calculation of costs and benefits—that brought about such a dramatic change in his life. He did not mention another factor that might have influenced his decision. Confinement at Alcatraz was in many ways a monastic experience, but isolation in a dark cell in disciplinary segregation unit was extreme; there were no distractions of any kind to interrupt Franklin’s reminiscences of life in the free world or, as George Kelly put it, “all the things that make life worthwhile.”

Those Alcatraz inmates who were returned to prison failed in different ways. Some, like James Audett and Gerard Peabody, represent a very small number of the genuine habitual incorrigibles who were sent to Alcatraz. Their criminal and prison careers lasted for their lifetimes; they stayed out of prison only at the end of their lives when they were old and infirm and released to die outside prison walls. Others, like Tom Holden, were able to stay out of trouble with the law for only a short time before committing serious crimes. The majority—represented below by Dale Stamphill—made serious attempts at living law-abiding lives but drifted back to crime and had to spend more time behind bars before finally succeeding late in life.

James “Blackie” Audett was one of the Rock’s most outstanding failures. He had the distinction of being the only man with three Alcatraz commitment numbers. Audett, the prototypical career criminal, led a life of crime and imprisonment matched by few others sent to the island. His first arrest took place in Canada in 1921 at age nineteen, and his last occurred in 1974 when he was seventy-two years old. He served time in Alberta and in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary before violating laws across the border. He was committed to McNeil Island Penitentiary for auto theft, violated parole, was returned, and then escaped from a train that was taking him to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. Recaptured, he was sent to St. Elizabeth’s, where a psychiatric evaluation concluded that his mental illness was feigned and represented only an opportunity for him to escape, an opportunity of which he had taken advantage. He was returned to Leavenworth and released from that institution in July 1933.

Six months later, back at McNeil on a new auto theft charge, he escaped again. When he was apprehended in July 1934, he was shipped to Leavenworth but only long enough to join the first trainload of convicts being sent to Alcatraz, where he was assigned number 209. He was released in May 1940 but was rearrested in August for bank burglary. For this crime he received a ten-year sentence that earned him a trip back to Alcatraz, and a new number—551. Seven years later he was conditionally released, but after six months he was charged with possession of stolen money and returned to McNeil Island as a conditional release violator. In September 1950 he was released once again, but two months later he was back in prison—this time in the Oregon State Penitentiary to serve seven and a half years (later reduced to five).

He was paroled in September 1952 to federal authorities, who wanted him for violating his conditional release. Audett went back to McNeil Island, finished time on his ten-year bank robbery sentence, and was released in April 1953. But by December of that year, he was back in the Oregon State Penitentiary for violating his state parole. Released from that prison in October 1955, he was arrested on a charge of bank robbery in January 1956. For this new conviction he was sent back to Alcatraz, this time as number 1217, to begin a twenty-year term. In March 1963 he was transferred to McNeil Island, where he served time until his mandatory release in January 1968. Six months later, in June, he was arrested in Portland, Oregon, for attempting to break into a food store, which resulted in one year in a county jail. A conviction for attempted burglary violated his federal release contract, and in May 1969 he was back, for the fifth time, at McNeil Island.

In February 1974, after another conditional release, Audett was instructed to report to the State of Oregon authorities, which he failed to do. A federal warrant was issued, but when he reported to the Seattle, Washington, federal probation office in April, the warrant was held in abeyance. Two months later, on June 5, 1974, he was arrested, along with ex-Alcatraz convict Gerard Peabody and two other men, all of whom were armed and masked when they robbed $17,500 from the Ballard Bank of Washington in Seattle. The driver of the getaway car was identified, apprehended, and soon gave up the names of his accomplices. Audett and Peabody were arrested the following day. Audett was subsequently indicted on a second charge that he had robbed another Seattle-area bank of $32,000 on May 8; he was also suspected of driving the getaway car in a third bank robbery.

Prior to sentencing, Audett provided a statement to the court, explaining
that his long list of law violations was motivated by a “dreadful disease” fed by “hate and bitterness,” and pleaded for “one break in life.”
⁷⁶
The judge, however, was unmoved and gave him a sentence of fifteen years. Audett was remanded to the Bureau of Prisons, which sent him to Leavenworth. There he settled back into the prison life he knew so well—had Alcatraz remained open, he might have earned a fourth commitment number.

As his health problems increased, Audett was transferred first to the Springfield Medical Center and then to the extended care unit at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky. As his health deteriorated due to heart disease, federal officials advanced his release date to allow him to return one more time to the free world. His case manager stated: “It cannot be overlooked that the instant offense was committed when Mr. Audett was seventy-two years of age. We do believe that he has ‘burned out’ due to the combination of age and ill health.”
⁷⁷
When given a form to fill out that asked who should be notified in the event of his death, Audett responded, “No one.”

Part of Audett’s remarkable criminal and prison career was documented in his book,
Rap Sheet: My Life Story
, and in a book-length article, “My Forty Years Outside the Law,” in
True: The Man’s Magazine
. These publications led to an offer from Jay Robert Nash (author of many true crime books) to assist Audett if he could be released to Chicago where Nash was located.
⁷⁸
With Nash as his sponsor, Audett was released from Lexington on July 23, 1979, telling staff members he was proud to have lived through so many years of “turmoil” in state and federal prisons.

Blackie Audett overcame the convict’s greatest concern—he did not die in prison (the date and cause of his death were not recorded in the records available to this project, however). He married twice during his brief periods of freedom. He never intended to “go straight”—he was proud of his gangster days, that his body was marked by seventeen bullet holes, and that he had been sent to the Rock more times than any other man. He was also proud to have known most of the noted gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s—John Dillinger, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Lester Gillis (alias Baby Face Nelson), Frank Nash, and Wilber Underhill—men he called “big leaguers.” He left an epitaph of sorts in the last paragraph of his article for
True:

If a heister [robber] gets along toward sundown and is still alive, it’s time for him to throw away his gun. Maybe he should have throwed it away when he first picked it up. But if he didn’t, like I didn’t, and it’s getting
along toward sundown for him, he better pitch it then. He can’t win single handed, even if he thought he could back there when he was young. There’s too many other guns. And all of them are aimed at him.
⁷⁹

Another notable Alcatraz failure, Gerard Peabody was coincidentally Audett’s rap partner in the 1974 bank robbery in Seattle. After serving eighteen months in the state reformatory in Rahway, New Jersey, and eight years of a fifteen-year sentence in the state prison in Baltimore, Maryland, for robbery with a deadly weapon, Peabody and several associates robbed four banks in Maryland—one of them twice, in order to “come back to get the money they missed in the first robbery.” In all four robberies, cashiers, bookkeepers, and customers were locked in the banks’ vaults “at the point of a gun.”
⁸⁰
Peabody was committed to the federal prison in Atlanta in March 1940 to serve a twenty-two-year term.

In 1944, with only one misconduct report, Peabody was described as “a shrewd, intelligent, prison-wise individual with a deep-seated antipathy toward institutional control” and recommended for transfer to Alcatraz because he “associated himself with the more violent, dangerous and troublemaking type prisoner and has required extremely close supervision on this account.”
⁸¹
(A more important factor in Peabody’s transfer recommendation may have been his appeals to federal court regarding his sentence and treatment while in prison.) In July 1945 he was transferred to Alcatraz—Atlanta got rid of a minor troublemaker and Alcatraz filled an empty cell.

Peabody adjusted smoothly to the regime on the Rock. His family made complete restitution of the money taken in the bank robbery for which he had been convicted (but had not admitted to). By the date of his transfer to McNeil Island three years later, in November 1948, no misconduct reports had been filed against him; he was described by officers as “friendly and cheerful.” Except for two minor violations that resulted in no action, his good conduct and work records continued at McNeil. The State of Maryland dropped a detainer that charged him with a parole violation, and he received monthly visits from his two daughters. He was reported to have inherited considerable financial resources from his parents’ estate before he was conditionally released in November 1953.

Three years later, on November 19, 1956, despite significant financial resources and a recent marriage (his third), Peabody and an accomplice
robbed the People’s National Bank of Washington in Seattle of $42,800. He was arrested the next day and a jury found him guilty the following April. Peabody and his co-defendant were sent to Alcatraz. The reasons for committing a fifty-seven-year-old prisoner with no record of escape, violence, or serious institutional misconduct to Alcatraz, and for keeping him there for six years, were not specified in institution records. At his annual review meetings, Peabody either asked to be excused or remained “absolutely mute throughout the interview.”
⁸²
He had six brothers, two ex-wives, two daughters, and a son but did not correspond with or receive visits from any of them. He continued to avoid misconduct reports, received good work reports, and was described as “popular” with other prisoners. His health problems and “nervousness” increased, however.

Dispersal of the prisoners before the end of operations at Alcatraz in March 1963 resulted in Peabody’s transfer back to McNeil Island in December 1962. He reestablished relationships with his daughters and his adjustment continued to be satisfactory until July 1965, when he was reported to be assisting other inmates “in plotting and planning escapes.” His motivation for helping others to escape was attributed to his belief “that he will not outlive his present sentence. . . . He is a highly sophisticated, criminalistic man who has devoted his life to outwitting the law.”
⁸³
The staff sought to have him transferred to a high-security penitentiary; a few months later, in September 1965, he was transferred to Atlanta, where he continued the convict lifestyle he knew so well, occupying his time working as a cell house orderly and reading. Like other Alcatraz transferees used to having their own cells, his most serious adjustment problem was in learning to live in a cell with up to eight other prisoners.

In October 1966 Peabody was returned to McNeil Island, where his daughters resumed visiting him. He spent many hours making leather goods in the hobby shop, maintained “an excellent attitude,” but had “resigned himself to dying in prison.” He became eligible for parole in 1957 but declined to apply due to the fact that “it will be necessary for him to admit his guilt to the current offense and that he is definitely not [going to do].”
⁸⁴

In June 1972 Peabody wrote in an application for parole, “I am 74 years of age and have only a few years to live. . . . I am old, infirmed, ill and am unable to be a threat to anyone . . . at my age there is little left in life except a few years of quiet living with my children and grandchildren.” On March 1, 1973, Peabody was released on parole from McNeil Island. Despite his claim that he just wanted time with his family,
it turned out that he had not just one, but three more bank robberies in him. He was arrested after a few months and, along with his Alcatraz partner Blackie Audett and another confederate, was convicted of robbing the Bank of Washington of $17,509. He was sentenced to fifteen years and sent back to McNeil Island.