by David Ward
Waley’s adjustment continued to improve in the 1950s. A consulting psychiatrist noted that while Waley’s attitude was “sarcastic, egotistical and truculent . . . no evidence of an overt psychotic reaction or organic deterioration was found.”44 However, a year later the calm was broken at a meeting of the classification committee when Waley “launched his verbal pyrotechnics [and] stalked from the room.”45 He was locked up in a closed-front cell. Two more incidents followed over the next two years, with his last trip in October 1953 to disciplinary segregation, as usual for refusing to obey an order.
In all, Harmon Waley spent seven of his twenty-two years at Alcatraz in disciplinary segregation or solitary confinement cells. He was written up twice for fights with other prisoners, three times for participating in a strike, six times for refusing to work or obey orders, five times for destroying government property, seven times for creating disturbances in the cell house or D block, eleven times for insolence or cursing or threatening officers and sundry other infractions such as attempting to attack an officer, possession of contraband, and violating mail regulations.
In October 1955 the classification committee, taking into account that he had “been at this institution for over twenty years, longer than any other Alcatraz inmate, and needs a new environment and opportunity for some of the privileges afforded at a larger, general custody-type institution,” recommended Waley for a transfer.46
A few months later, 300 days of good time, the last of 1,000 days he had forfeited, were restored. On February 14, 1957, he was returned to McNeil Island Penitentiary, where he spent six uneventful years before his release on parole in June 1963. Harmon Waley’s remarkable prison career was followed by a remarkable postrelease life (see chapter 13).
Richard Neumer
More than a few of the men sent to Alcatraz did not have the lawbreaker or prison troublemaker credentials that would seem to warrant a transfer to the nation’s toughest prison. Richard A. Neumer was one of these run-of-the-mill felons. His criminal history began at age sixteen with a commitment to the Boys Industrial School in Topeka, Kansas, for “chicken stealing, divers thefts, incorrigibility.” Two years after his release from Boys School, and after an attempt to enlist in the navy failed (due to flat feet), he was arrested on a robbery charge and ended up in a jail in Ripley, Mississippi. Noticing a hole in the ceiling of the small two-story jail, Neumer was able to climb up to the roof, drop to the ground, and get out of town. He made his way to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was again arrested and convicted on a robbery charge for which he received a term of five to six years.
After two years in the state penitentiary at Nashville, he was transferred to the Brushy Mountain Prison. One night, along with four other men, he escaped through a hole in the wall in the building in which they were housed. Neumer and two of the escapees stole a car but, at a gas station, his confederates drove off without him. A few days later when these men were captured and charged with bank robbery, and the gas station attendant identified him as being with them, Neumer was also arrested. He was charged with participating in the bank holdup and with violating the firearms act (a sawed-off shotgun was brandished in the bank) and the Motor Vehicle Theft Act. Although he claimed he was not present, Neumer nevertheless pleaded guilty to the bank robbery and auto theft charges because an FBI agent assured him he would receive a term of only ten years. He was shocked when he was given two terms of twenty-five and twenty years to run consecutively. When he tried to withdraw his guilty plea, the judge replied that he was not bound by any promise made by the FBI and that the forty-five-year sentence would stand. The judge asked Neumer, “Can you swim?” Stunned, Neumer made no reply. “For if you can,” continued the judge, “I’ll give you a break and recommend you to Alcatraz.”47
Neumer did not go directly to the Rock; he was committed to Atlanta in October 1935. Although he was “in a state of dejection,” he found the prison to be clean, the food “wholesome,” and the educational facilities and opportunities “good for a prison.” Neumer joined classes in art and diesel engineering and appreciated the fact that there was no “brutal treatment.” Although he adjusted well and did not break any rules, he was soon told that he was going to Alcatraz. According to Neumer, the Atlanta administrators were as dismayed by this news as he was: the deputy warden, wrote Neumer, “realized I was a model prisoner . . . and he would like to see me stay there, but there was nothing he could do. The transfer orders came from Washington.”48 Neumer arrived at Alcatraz on December 22, 1935. His conduct at Atlanta provided no justification for the transfer, and neither did his record—his escapes from the jail and the state prison had not involved force, weapons, or hostages; he had simply exploited weak or incompetent security arrangements. But his body was needed to fill space on the island. Nonetheless, Alcatraz authorities soon found that this inconsequential offender, this “model prisoner” from Atlanta, would be a major disruptive force for more than a decade.
Still convinced that his forty-five-year sentence was unfair, and angered by the baseless transfer, Neumer began resisting the regime soon after he stepped onto the island. Less than a month after his arrival he joined a work strike and was locked up in D block. Over the next several years he was written up for a variety of rule infractions including making contraband items, disrespect, wasting food (“left his cereal at morning meal claiming it was sour”), participating in another strike, and creating a disturbance in the cell house by yelling at other prisoners who were out on strike. For a period of three years after this he received no misconduct reports, but then he began to oppose staff authority again. He refused to obey orders, defaced government property, wasted food (“left parsnips on his tray”), wrote an obscene message (“fuck Officer Hanson”), was insolent, did his work in a “slovenly” manner during the 1945 laundry strike, destroyed government property in the April 1946 D block protest, and created another disturbance in the cell house (also recorded as “attempting to incite a riot”). He was also cited for writing a false statement about the prison’s use of blankets, sheets, and towels sent by the army to the Alcatraz laundry and for trying to smuggle this statement outside the prison by giving it to James Grove, an army prisoner about to be interviewed by army agents. In January 1946 he was charged with conspiracy in a case in which a guard was given $25 for smuggling a letter out to Neumer’s sister. His conduct improved after this point, with only one report in 1948 for having an extra shelf in his cell, and another in 1954 for arguing with an officer about a piece of wood at which Neumer “was looking with possessive eyes” (this incident was written up as “arrogance and disrespect for authority”).49
Neumer’s resistance went beyond eighteen misconduct reports, thirteen sojourns in solitary confinement or disciplinary segregation, and the loss of 3,000 days of statutory good time. He set the prison’s record for complaints about his health: from 1936 through August 1945, he reported to sick call 849 times. During the same period he was hospitalized ten times for a total of 151 days for ailments ranging from common colds and neuralgia to a fractured finger. A hospital report noted: “complains of headaches about twice a week . . . insists he has sinus trouble . . . has received considerable dental attention and has been furnished with six pairs of eye glasses since 1938, none of which has suited him for very long. His main complaints have been pains in the head and gas pains in the abdomen.”50 The prison psychiatrist described Neumer as “a sinister looking individual, who would be capable of all sorts of things.”51 In addition to amassing this remarkable record of sick calls, Neumer began adding another form of protest to his repertoire—filing legal briefs.
He petitioned the courts with claims of inadequate medical attention and sent the complaints to Bureau of Prisons headquarters and to the attorney general. He also filed petitions in the federal district court in San Francisco. In one he asked the court to “intervene in the administration of the institution,” and in another to “force the Warden to allow certain privileges, not granted under regulati
on, such as receipt of articles . . . sent by relatives.” In a third he claimed that his painting materials and paintings had been “stolen” by prison officials.
A fourth petition concerned the warden’s refusal to allow him to complete a University of California Extension course in English. For the course’s first assignment, which was to describe reasons for taking the course, Neumer had written,
I am preparing myself to write a book, upon my release from Alcatraz, in which I intend to expose the brutality of the administration. . . . My suffering and the suffering of my co-inmates has aroused in me a desire to expose the prevailing conditions of Alcatraz, and a desire to tell the public about the many men these vile conditions have driven insane and to insane attempts to escape. I have been a victim of these conditions for nearly eleven years. I realize that I must learn good English before I can expect to write a book that the public would read through to the concluding plea at the end: “Please help those poor men I left in prison.”52
Warden Johnston did not take kindly to this attempt to use a privilege for the explicit purpose of attacking the administration of the prison and ordered Neumer to be removed from the class. In response, Neumer contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California to enlist support for the writ of mandamus he filed in federal court in an effort to overrule the warden. In a letter to Johnston, the ACLU director agreed that while Neumer had no legal right to enroll in the course, he supported the request.53
Neumer took his case to U.S. Senators William Knowland and Alexander Wiley. In his letter to Wiley, who was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Neumer advised the senator that an Alcatraz inmate “does not throw away 3,000 days [of good time], more than eight years, in one moment of protest against the mistreatment of someone else and himself unless he has a very strong sense of social obligation and he does not write letters like this one unless he has some courage.”54
It was standard practice with such letters for Warden Johnston to forward them to Bureau headquarters along with his version of the truth:
The fact of the matter is, we would like him and other men to enroll for courses because we do our best to encourage every inclination towards self improvement, however, when Neumer enrolled and wrote out the first lesson which consists of statements why a student is taking the particular course, he made it the occasion for a diatribe against the prison and the Bureau; said he was taking the course in order to equip himself to expose the prison and its officials upon his release. It was such a misuse and abuse of privileges, such a manifest display of his desire to flaunt regulations and to flaunt his intention to continue his contumacious conduct that I told the Deputy Warden to turn back his enrollment and take him off the list until he got himself in a frame of mind to improve. Before he was in “D” Block, we did permit him to purchase some paints and art materials as we wanted to encourage him but after he led a disturbance in “D” Block, we decided he was not in the mood to continue art studies.55
Neumer’s efforts to reverse the prohibition on taking the English course were unsuccessful, and a year later he was back fighting the administration in one of his earlier styles—between January 1, 1947, and February 10, 1948, he reported to sick call 258 times, prompting the chief medial officer to comment, “It is my opinion that this man is a rather severe psychoneurotic, but seems better adjusted now then in the past.”56
Neumer maintained a clear conduct record, worked on various jobs and in December 1946, by court order, “won a reduction of his 45-year sentence to 25 years . . . as it was determined that the first count embraced the offense related to the second count.” In May 1950, when a major protest erupted in the dining hall, he did not participate. With the prospect of release now on the horizon, Neumer asked for the restoration of the 3,000 days of good time he had lost as a result of the destruction of his D block cell during the battle of Alcatraz. The classification committee noted that others involved in similar protests—William Dainard, James Quillen, and Howard Butler—had had good time restored but that Neumer had received “a heavier forfeiture than the others because it appeared he was the instigator of the plot.”57 Part of Neumer’s lost days were restored, but 1,427 days were still outstanding. Paul J. Madigan, who had been promoted to deputy warden, recommended that half of the remaining forfeited time be returned because of Neumer’s good conduct and his prospects for a job and productive life after release. As Madigan put it, “it would seem at this time he has no desire to associate himself with characters of the underworld.”58 Three months later, restoration of the remainder of Neumer’s lost good time was recommended. When the state of Tennessee canceled a detainer for his escape from Brushy Mountain Prison, his conditional release date was moved up to the following April. In approving the restoration of all Neumer’s good time Director Bennett commented, “I never thought I’d live to see the day when we could do this. But let’s give him his chance.”59
The last obstacle to Neumer’s conditional release came when he reimbursed the government for the destruction of fixtures in his D block cell from his earnings in the prison industries. He left Alcatraz on April 19, 1951, with $218; he was met in San Francisco by his sister and brother-in-law, who drove him to stay in their home in Los Angeles. Through the efforts of a cousin he got a job at a brewery loading beer cases on trucks—a job that had been approved by his probation officer. Later he worked as a carpenter and a cabinetmaker. He never came back to prison.60
Richard Neumer’s case is a classic example of a “surly and defiant” prisoner who was a management problem for many years and then made what staff called a “marked transformation.” As was true for many other Alcatraz prisoners, Neumer’s “transformation” was in part recognition that his days in prison were coming to an end. Having a parole or conditional release date gave Neumer and other prisoners like him a realistic goal toward which to work.
Burton Phillips
As recounted in chapter 4, Burton Phillips committed one of the most serious transgressions of prison rules when on September 24, 1937, he slugged James Johnston in the head and then kicked the unconscious warden in the face while he lay on the dining hall floor. Phillips himself was rendered unconscious by a blow to his head from a lieutenant wielding a metal billy club. Phillips was taken to the prison hospital, where he remained for two weeks. He was then placed in a solitary confinement cell until October 26, when he was moved to a segregation cell. He did not leave the disciplinary segregation unit until June 24, 1946—almost nine years later. Phillips had never participated in any of the organized strikes or protests; his was the action of a solitary prisoner protesting the failure of the warden to respond to his demands.
During his first months in D block, Phillips was limited to one full meal each day supplemented by bread and water at other meal times. When he refused to eat the full meal, claiming that the absence of vegetables or milk caused him to get “bloated with gas” and would make his teeth “fall out,” he was forcibly fed through a tube down his throat.61
Over the nine years he spent in D block, Phillips was written up for “agitating,” creating disturbances, calling guards “God damn rotten cock suckers,” singing loudly, destroying government property (tore a strip from a sheet to make shoe laces), being insolent (“called Mr. Kaufman ‘a goddamn kike’ ”), and throwing an urn of hot coffee at inmate James Grove (after Grove threw coffee at him). Each of these infractions resulted in Phillips being locked up in a solitary confinement cell.
Phillips was allowed out of his cell twice each week for yard recreation and was permitted to take correspondence courses in physics, math, and chemistry. His devotion to the study of physics was given surprising support. It all began in October 1939, when James Bennett walked through the disciplinary segregation unit, stopped to talk with Phillips through the cell bars, and suggested that Phillips write to him and describe “how he felt about things.”
Phillips’s response covered sixty-six pages. He began the letter by advancing his theory
that the horsepower of any internal combustion motor could be increased by 10 to 20 percent without an increase in the weight of the motor. Citing his experience in “souping-up” automobile engines, he asked Bennett to refer his letter to the National Inventors Council to which he could provide the reasoning behind his theory and obtain a patent. Phillips then began an account of his early years:
Born in Kansas . . . of a fanatically Baptist mother and an aloof, agnostic father, I early acquired the habit of questioning theological beliefs. These pious bumpkins were . . . on the side of the angels and against the missing links of Darwin whose Theory of Evolution seemed to me to be the obvious truth.
Phillips went on to describe a happy childhood and, at age fourteen, reading books on biology, history, war and the works of H. G. Wells. He purchased a series, The Boy Mechanic, and decided to become an electrical engineer. After he graduated from high school, however, his parents’ divorce cost him the opportunity to study engineering at the University of Michigan. He took a job as a dishwasher, delivered newspapers, and worked in a large bakery, all the while resenting society’s failure to provide him with the means to pursue a university education and a career in engineering. In his long letter to Bennett, Phillips cited the work of Wells, H. L. Mencken, Aldous Huxley, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell. He wrote approvingly of the Nazi effort to create a super race through selective breeding. Returning to his life story, he wrote that when withdrawal from difficulties became impossible only one course was left to him—aggression:
