Robert Franklin Stroud (January 28, 1890 – November 21, 1963), known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz", was a convicted murderer, American federal prisoner and author who has been cited as one of the most notorious criminals in the United States.
During its time as a prison, Alcatraz had no facilities for execution and never put any of its prisoners to death, although some inmates did die there. Prisoner violence was a big problem, which meant that some prisoners did die at the hands of others, while some committed suicide.
Bill Baker is part of that living history. He was Alcatraz prisoner number 1259. He is now 89 years old and one of the last surviving former inmates of Alcatraz. "When I was 18 I stole a car in Oregon.
Frank Lucas Bolt. Little has been documented about Alcatraz's LGBTQ+ prisoners, but gay men did play a role in the infamous prison. In fact, it was a queer man, Frank Lucas Bolt, who served as the prison's first official inmate.
Frank Morris, John Anglin, and his brother, Clarence Anglin have never been located since escaping the facility — which was at some point home to criminals like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Robert Stroud.
While awaiting the results of appeals, Capone was confined to the Cook County Jail. Upon denial of appeals, he entered the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, serving his sentence there and at Alcatraz.
Clarence Victor Carnes (January 14, 1927 – October 3, 1988), known as The Choctaw Kid, was a Choctaw man best known as the youngest inmate incarcerated at Alcatraz and for his participation in the bloody escape attempt known as the "Battle of Alcatraz".
Missing. On June 12, 1962, the routine early morning bed check turned out to be anything but. Three convicts were not in their cells: John Anglin, his brother Clarence, and Frank Morris.
In 1959 he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Missouri, where he would die that year. Although Alcatraz may have closed as a prison many decades ago, there are still former Alcatraz inmates alive today - including convited murderer and Irish American mafia boss James "Whitey" Bulger.
In terms of prisons, Alcatraz was no more brutal than most other prisons—in some ways, less so. The guards had minimal interactions with prisoners unless a prisoner acted out. That earned them time in the hole or solitary confinement where they only had a drain as a toilet and nothing else.
Eventually, they killed the three remaining men, Cretzer, Hubbard and Coy, the ringleader. Two prison guards were killed in the battle, with 14 more wounded. Two of the prisoners who gave up after the lock to the yard door was broken, Shockley and Thompson, were executed in a gas chamber for their role in the attempt.
Two Federal Bureau of Prisons officers—William A. Miller and Harold Stites—were killed (Miller by one of the inmates who attempted escape, Joseph Cretzer, and Stites by friendly fire) along with three of the perpetrators. Fourteen other officers and one uninvolved convict were also injured.
The film Escape from Alcatraz (1979) stars Clint Eastwood, Fred Ward, and Jack Thibeau as Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, respectively.
On March 21, 1963, USP Alcatraz closed after 29 years of operation. It did not close because of the disappearance of Morris and the Anglins (the decision to close the prison was made long before the three disappeared), but because the institution was too expensive to continue operating.
Al Capone died of cardiac arrest in 1947, but his decline began earlier.
The 1962 escape is probably the most famous prison break in American history, and the three men involved have never been located, dead or alive.
John Anglin, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris had escaped. On their pillows were papier-mâché replicas of their own heads, meant to mask their absence and throw guards off their scent. What happened to them remains a mystery to this day.
Alvin Karpis
He was the last of the depression-era criminals to be caught and served the longest sentence, 26 years, of any Alcatraz prisoner. Alvin and Arthur Barker, another member of the gang, were at Alcatraz and a part of the infamous breakout, during which Alvin was shot and killed.
Karpis served the longest sentence of any prisoner at Alcatraz: 26 years. In April 1962, with Alcatraz in the process of being closed, he was transferred to McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington state.
Assuming any of them survived the currents in the San Francisco Bay while fleeing the Rock (and that they also survived the intervening 60 years), all the men would be into their 90s.
In January 1947, the 48-year-old Capone suffered a stroke then came down with pneumonia; he died at his Florida home on January 25. Capone was buried at Chicago's Mount Olivet Cemetery, near the graves of his father and one of his brothers.
To Americans of the 1920s and '30s, he was the notorious gangster Scarface Al, Public Enemy No. 1. But when he arrived at Alcatraz in late August of 1934, Alphonse “Al” Capone took on a more humbling name: Prisoner 85.
African Americans were segregated from other inmates in cell designation due to racism during the Jim Crow-era. D-Block housed the worst inmates, and six cells at its end were designated "The Hole". Prisoners with behavioral problems were sent to these for periods of often brutal punishment.
And now federal officials are asking citizens to be on the lookout. Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris remain wanted fugitives for their June 11, 1962 escape from Alcatraz, where they were serving time for armed bank robberies.