On the morning of August 22, the prison train arrived at its destination, the small town of Tiburon, California, at the edge of San Francisco Bay. As the train approached the station, a group of about 200 spectators cried out for Al, but they received no reply, at least not from the convicts themselves. A child watching the spectacle was reported to have asked a guard, “Are there men as bad as Al Capone on that train? Ma says there are.”
To which the guard responded, “Listen, there’s no Capone or anybody by any name on that train. They may have been Capones once, but they’re just numbers now.”
The armored train creaked to a halt under the watchful gaze of heavily armed agents of the Department of Justice. Warden Aderhold, who had accompanied the prisoners on their cross-country journey, formally transferred custody of the men to James A. Johnston, the newly appointed warden of Alcatraz Island. The convicts were not allowed to disembark; they remained confined to the railroad cars, which were transferred to a waiting ferry. As a Coast Guard cutter trained guns on the vessel, the heavily loaded ferry, now bearing Warden Johnston and three armored cars containing forty-three prisoners, cast off from its dock and slowly entered the swirling waters of the bay.
“Alcatraz Island is the most striking natural object in the bay of San Francisco. In its commanding position between two great bridges it impresses with its boldness and beauty,” wrote Johnston, who waxed rhapsodic about the penal colony he was about to command.
To bay area residents viewing it at night from hilltop homes it looks like a huge ship at anchor. To ocean travelers approaching it through Golden Gate it looks like a stern sentinel thrust up by nature to protect the treasures of the inner harbor. . . .
Men of the sea regard its circling light as a beacon to signal and guide ships safely into the docks that project out from the embarcadero and its bellowing buoy and blasting fog horns as warning to avoid the rocks.
The perpendicular cliffside of the Island, exposed to the Golden Gate, is rough, barren, jagged and scarred, showing erosion from the bashing and thrashing of incoming tides, but above the water line there is a profusion of plants and flowers to which the moisture in the air gives luxuriance.
Most of the time the weather is fine and the ocean breezes give the air a tang and zip that is refreshing and invigorating. Then there are days when a filmy, wispy fog comes and goes around it like a gossamer veil, and nights when wet, cold fog envelopes it like a shroud.
As the warden and unchallenged master of Alcatraz Island, Johnston was in a better position than the men in his custody to appreciate its unique setting. Arriving prisoners regarded the island with unmitigated loathing, expecting their time there to be tantamount to a death sentence. “The convict’s dread of Alcatraz is due to adroit propaganda of ‘the law’ in American prisons regarding the terrors of ‘the Rock,’ ” explained Bryan Conway, the Capone-hating convict who followed his enemy from Atlanta to Alcatraz. “The build up makes Alcatraz pretty bad, but the reality is worse.” Another early Alcatraz inmate never forgot the hideous sense of foreboding that swept over him as he approached the island for the first time. “All of a sudden a feeling came over me that I would never cross this water again,” he wrote. “On my forehead and between my shoulders blades I could feel beads of cold sweat. . . . I was feeling the sweat of fear. I had been afraid before in my life, but not afraid with the kind of fear I was feeling now.”
As the ferry laden with its grim cargo of armored railroad cars approached the island, the men could discern the most prominent features of its twelve acres: the abandoned military garrison, the loading dock, the lighthouse, and, most impressively, the newly constructed cell house, an incongruously large edifice perched awkwardly at the summit of the rocky hill. Arriving at the dock after their brief, terrifying ride, Capone and the other convicts were at last freed from the leg irons which had painfully encircled their cramped limbs, though they still wore handcuffs. They emerged from the car in which they had spent the better part of three days. Slowly and stiffly, their ankles swollen from the leg irons, they marched up a series of switchbacks to the cell house, where the inmates lived. (Capone belonged to the second consignment of prisoners; eleven days earlier fifty-three men had come from McNeil Island.) It was a steep climb, equivalent to twelve stories, and each turn disclosed a more striking view than the last. In one direction, the men could see the graceful expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge, now under construction; in another the reaches of San Francisco Bay; and finally, most painfully, the city of San Francisco itself, spread before them in all its splendor, less than a mile distant. Separating them from this glittering city bursting with all that freedom and life had to offer was a stretch of exceedingly dangerous water. Prisoners were told that man-eating sharks infested the bay, and even if an escapee managed to avoid those predators, the treacherous crosscurrents would drown him in a minute.
Winded from the steep climb, the men reached the summit, where they immediately entered a large, dark, stone edifice: the cell house. It was here, in the cold depths of this building, that Capone would pass each day of all the years he would remain in Alcatraz. Along with the others, he was given his 3-by-5-inch card containing his name, number, cell number, and the work detail to which he belonged. He was now convict number 85, one of little more than 100 prisoners on Alcatraz, a group the Federal Bureau of Prisons considered to be the most dangerous and incorrigible in the entire system. He was then assigned to a guard, who carefully escorted him to the basement, where he took a much-needed bath. He received supplies consisting of a blue wool coat and trousers, two wool shirts, two pairs of brown shoes (one for Sundays), two suits of underwear, six pairs of socks, cap, belt, handkerchief, and his daily uniform—blue-gray overalls. Each item was marked not with his name but with his number, 85. As Capone immediately discovered, the guards and officers never called him by name; from now on, he was simply “Number 85” to them all. In fact, talking of any kind was rare. Warden Johnston had imposed a rule of silence on Alcatraz, and convicts were not to talk to each other, and to a guard only if absolutely necessary.
Capone, like all new arrivals, submitted to a rectal examination and a Wassermann test, which reconfirmed his neurosyphilis. Warden Johnston was well aware of the indignity of the medical exams; in fact, he considered the humiliation they inflicted on the men a vital part of breaking them down. “I never saw a naked man yet who could maintain any sort of dignity,” he claimed. “There is very little egotism left in a man when you parade him before other men in a birthday suit.” Despite these insults, Capone’s ego was intact and struggling for recognition, as Johnston noted in this vignette of the first encounter between warden and convict:
I didn’t have any trouble picking him out when he was lined up for identification his first day in Alcatraz. I had seen his pictures in the papers many times in poses that featured flashy jewelry and sporty suits. He was wearing coveralls that day instead of the Polo Coat that seemed so much a part of his press pictures in Chicago, but there was no mistaking the features. He was a big man. His fat face bore the marks that got him the nick name of “Scar Face.” His thick black hair was balding. His neck was thick and his lips were thick and his middle was paunchy but not so oversized as it was in his luxury-living days in Florida.
Before I called him to the desk for instructions I could see him nudging the prisoners near him and slipping them some corner-of-the-mouth comment. I signaled him when it was his turn. As he walked toward me he flashed a big, wide smile. He wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t want to talk to him because it was no time for unnecessary conversation. It was apparent that he wanted to impress other prisoners by asking me questions as if he were their leader. I wanted to make sure they didn’t get any such idea. I handed him a ticket with his number, 85, gave him the instructions I had given to every other man, and told him to move along.
Although Johnston was determined to treat convict number 85 in precisely the same way as he did numbers 84 and 86, the fourth estate insiste
d on obtaining news of Al Capone. Johnston finally confirmed what the world at large suspected, that Capone had been transferred to Alcatraz, but the cautious warden sought refuge in a general description of the strict regimen in his penal colony. “They are not even going to have an opportunity to know what goes on outside,” he insisted. “Those men were sent here because the government wants to break their contacts with the underworld. That is going to be done.”
Capone proceeded to his cell. Although it was new—the paint still shiny green, the metal bars and locks gleaming—the cell house had an oppressive, military atmosphere. Each prisoner had his own cell, the better to enforce isolation and prevent conspiracies. The cells rose three stories above a wide, echoing passageway named Broadway; at the far end, a single, stark clock told the time—the irretrievable minutes and hours, days and years of the convicts’ lives. Capone’s cell was on the second tier; it was exactly the same as the others: a five-by-nine-foot room made all the more oppressive by its low ceiling. It contained a narrow folding bunk bed attached to the wall with chains, a thin mattress covered with two white sheets, a blanket, and, at the foot of the bed, two additional blankets. Each cell had its own toilet (without a seat) located against the rear wall. The lack of privacy meant that prisoners used their toilet facilities in full view of the others; often a man sitting on his toilet would face another con across the way sitting on his. The cell also had a small tin sink with a lone spigot, a fold-down tabletop holding an aluminum drinking cup, a razor case, a cake of shaving soap, a toothbrush and tooth powder, a comb, and nail clippers. Capone and the other prisoners were also issued a corncob pipe, a sack of Stud tobacco, toilet paper, a green eyeshade, a broom, shoe polish, and the warden’s highly detailed book of rules and regulations governing all aspects of life at Alcatraz. A twenty-watt bulb cast a dim light over the cell’s contents.
During the brief intervals when he was not confined to his cell, Capone had access to a small library, another barred room stocked with a limited and closely monitored supply of books and magazines, but for him and the rest of the convicts, by far the most important room was the cafeteria. It was also the most dangerous, for it was here that the convicts handled cutlery, and trusted prisoners on kitchen duty had access to knives in connection with their chores. They were stored in a large, locked cabinet with silhouettes indicating the proper position for each knife. It was also the only location in the cell house where all the prisoners—at times as many as 200—congregated. Against the possibility of a riot, the cafeteria ceiling was honeycombed with canisters of tear gas; prisoners were told that the moment they became disorderly, lethal fumes would spew over them. As a result, the convicts christened the cafeteria the Gas Chamber. Despite the grim surroundings and constant rule of silence, the food, surprisingly enough, was edible; more than that, it was plentiful. Recognizing that prisoners often come to resent the monotonous, tasteless food more than any other aspect of penitentiary life, the Alcatraz administration was determined to make meals varied and appetizing. Prisoners could eat as much as they liked (the better to keep them docile), but they had to eat. If they refused three meals in a row, they were placed in D block—isolation.
Known by various euphemisms—Segregation or the Treatment Unit—D block occupied its own wing of the cell house and contained special isolation cells designed to break the will of an unruly prisoner. Five of the fourteen cells afforded total isolation, designed to punish the most serious offenders. Their massive iron doors swung shut after the prisoner, sealing him in total darkness. Nor could the men confined to isolation eat in the cafeteria; they remained in their cells twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and received spartan “meals” consisting of bread and water pushed into them through a narrow slot designed for that purpose. Their sole respite came when they were permitted to leave for ten minutes, once a week, to shower, and then they marched swiftly back to isolation and darkness. Minor infractions of the prison’s rules earned a prisoner three days to a week in solitary; an assault on a guard could lead to weeks of this terrible treatment. A spell in isolation often produced hallucinations, and a few prisoners reportedly lost their minds. In fact a quotient of Alcatraz’s convict population men went quietly insane each year, the routine of daily life sufficient to push them over the edge. Guards dragged them off to the prison hospital, and they were never seen again. One day a prisoner performing his assigned chores on the island’s dock suddenly took his ax and began to chop off the fingers of his left hand; by the time the guards overpowered him, he had severed them all and was pleading with the guards to chop off his right hand. He, too, was never heard from again, and the convicts simply referred to him as number 284 and shook their heads whenever he was mentioned. Indeed, all the men were crazed to some extent from the confinement and regimentation. “Men slowly go insane under the exquisite torture of routine,” an inmate who survived the ordeal explained.
Confined to his tiny cell immediately after dinner, Capone did not sleep well. Nights were the toughest to endure. The guards took target practice within the confines of the cell house, and the prisoners could hear the crack of their rifles reverberating throughout the building. “The guards always shot at dummies made in likeness of the human form,” an inmate recalled, “and these were left sprawled along the walkway with bullet holes in vital spots, as silent object lessons to cons who might be thinking of making a break for freedom.” Once the gunfire subsided, it was replaced by the snoring, coughing, and gurgling of the convicts in the other cells, unseen but all too close. Add to that the insistent, throbbing warning of the foghorns in the bay and the squeal of tires or the wail of a siren wafting across the water from the mainland, and effect must have resembled the sound track of hell.
Whenever Capone nodded off into a light, troubled sleep, he was soon awakened by the sound of the passing guard’s footsteps, the creaking of leather soles on the waxed floor. Lying on his cot, he brooded ceaselessly during these wretched hours. On his son. The unfairness of his punishment. The whole country was making fun of him; he, Al Capone, who had given his money to widows and orphans, was even in the comic strips. Outside of his family members and a handful of friends, no one really knew him. Didn’t they realize he had tried to keep the peace during the gang wars in Chicago? That he voted Republican? Ran soup kitchens? That without him Chicago would have been a far more dangerous place? If they could only see him now, sick, helpless, miserable, and lonely, would they be so quick to laugh at Al Capone?
Roused by a 6:00 A.M. wake-up bell, he began to acquaint himself with the prison’s daily regimen. He had twenty minutes to dress, and could shave only three times a week; on prearranged days, he balanced a matchbox on the cell door, and a passing guard placed a blade in the box. Capone and the fortynine other prisoners permitted to shave that day had to work quickly, for within fifteen minutes the guard returned to retrieve the blades. The blades were then sterilized and placed under lock and key until the following day, when they were issued to another set of prisoners. At 6:30 the guards commenced the day’s first count of the prisoners, a process they repeated throughout the day at thirty-minute intervals. Breakfast ensued: coffee, coffee cake, cereal, and, on occasion, pancakes. There was even butter on the table, a luxury unknown elsewhere in the federal penitentiary system. Although Warden Johnston prohibited talking, Number 85 discovered the men could converse sotto voce.
It was here, in the cafeteria, that he had his first look at the complete convict population. He immediately recognized Bryan Conway, whom he remembered from Atlanta, but Conway refused to talk to him. “Dummy up, Al,” he told him, “dummy up.” After a slight hesitation, Capone replied, “OK, pal.”
Capone was hardly the only notorious criminal confined to the Rock. An unexpected result of Attorney General Cummings’s plan to ship all the worst and most notorious convicts there was that the roster of Alcatraz prisoners became a Who’s Who of the decade’s most wanted—and most celebrated—outlaws. In addition to being the most feared
jail in the country, Alcatraz became the most glamorous; simply being an inmate there conferred a fleeting celebrity on a con. More dangerous than any mob on the outside, the gang of inmates sequestered at Alcatraz included “Doc” Barker, the son of “Ma” Barker; Volney Davis; Harry Campbell; Albert Bates; a Dillinger cohort named Bobby Sherrington; “Machine Gun” Kelly, the well-heeled bootlegger and bank robber; John Paul Chase, late of the “Baby Face” Nelson gang; a kidnapper named Harvey Bailey; Roy Gardner, briefly renowned as a train robber; Charles “Limpy” Cleaver; John Stadig, an erstwhile counterfeiter in San Francisco; and a throwback to a bygone era, Mack Smith, known as the “Wyoming Bad Man.” Most had never met before they reached the Rock; they had only read one another’s press notices: the headlines announcing their latest robberies, shootings, trials, convictions, and sentences. But now, day in and day out, they ate together, worked together, exercised together, swapped information, laid plans for jobs they would pull and gangs they would form on the outside after their release; the possibilities were endless. After all, the Camorra, predecessor of the Chicago syndicate, had begun in the jails of Naples, where prisoners had had ample opportunity to conspire. Penal colonies came and went, but the rackets went on forever.
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