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Badly behaved prisoners were liable to having their yard access rights taken away from them on weekends. The prisoners of Alcatraz were permitted to play games such as baseball, softball and other sports at these times and intellectual games such as chess.
- The Hopi Nineteen
- Frank Lucas Bolt
- Al Capone
- Robert Stroud, A.K.A. The 'Bird Man' of Alcatraz
- Morton Sobell
- Robert Lipscomb
- Ellsworth 'Bumpy' Johnson
In 1894, when Alcatraz was still operating as a military prison, the U.S. government arrested 19 Hopi men for refusing to send their children to American assimilation boarding schoolsalmost 1,000 miles away from their reservation in Oraibi, Arizona. From the late 19th century well into the 20th, the federal government, following a policy of “save t...
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. Bolt was serving in the U.S. Army in Panama when he was convicted of sodomy in 1932 and sent to serve time at a Pacific area military priso...
For notorious Chicago-based mobster Al Capone, doing hard time before Alcatraz was rarely that hard. During earlier stints in Atlanta and other prisons, Capone had recruited guards to work on his payroll and enjoyed special privileges—from home-cooked meals and cushy bedding to unlimited access to the warden. That all stopped when Capone arrived at...
By the time Robert Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942, he had already established himself as one of the most dangerous—and notorious—prisoners in America, with a rap sheet already decades long. Stroud first entered the penitentiary system more than 30 years earlier, in 1909, when he was convicted of murder and imprisoned in Washington State...
At the height of the Cold War, Morton Sobell was sent to Alcatraz after being convicted, alongside Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Though nailed for conspiracy, Sobell wasn’t convicted of providing the Soviet Union with stolen nuclear secrets like the Rosenbergs. Still, FBI DirectorHoovercalled Sobell’s offen...
By the time Robert Lipscomb arrived at Alcatraz in 1954, the African American Cleveland native had spent most of his adult life in midwestern prisons for auto theft and counterfeiting. Suffering from paranoia, depression and an abusive childhood, Lipscomb was declared psychotic and institutionalized by the age of nine. A psychiatric evaluation, how...
Infamous Harlem crime boss Ellsworth Raymond “Bumpy” Johnson was another of the many oft-overlooked Black inmates housed on the Rock. Johnson came to Alcatraz in 1952, at the height of his reign as the so-called “Godfather of Harlem,” after he was sentenced to a 15-year stint for a drug conspiracy conviction. Johnson served the majority of that sen...
- Aaron Randle
- 11 min
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- John And Clarence Anglin. #1476 And #1485. When the Anglin brothers turned to crime, they tried not to hurt anybody. When they robbed a business, they chose a time when the business was closed so that no one would get hurt.
- James ‘Whitey’ Bulger. #1428. For “Whitey” Bulger, his crimes before Alcatraz were just the beginning. Convicted of armed robbery, his first long-term prison sentence was at the Atlanta Penitentiary, where he volunteered for MKULTRA, an experimental CIA drug program.
- Morton Sobell. #996. Morton Sobell, along with Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, was convicted on espionage charges. The jury believed all three had supplied a Russian secret agent with classified information on nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
- Robert Stroud. #594. Robert Stroud became famous when Hollywood made a movie called The Birdman of Alcatraz. In the film, he was portrayed as a kind, gentle soul who raised birds in his cell.
Feb 1, 2024 · Alcatraz operated as a federal prison from 1934 to 1963. Why was Alcatraz considered escape-proof? Its location on an island in the cold, strong currents of San Francisco Bay, coupled with high security and surveillance, made escape nearly impossible. Who were some of the most notorious inmates at Alcatraz?
- Inmate #85: Al 'Scarface' Capone. Conviction: Tax evasion. Time Served at Alcatraz: 5 years (1934–1939) Post-Term: mental illness, death from syphilis. By the time Al Capone arrived at Alcatraz on the morning of August 22, 1934, he was past his peak as a crime kingpin.
- Inmate #110: Roy Gardner. Conviction: Armed robbery. Time Served at Alcatraz: 2 years (1934–1936) Post-Term: author, suicide. Alcatraz was repurposed by the federal government from a military prison to a general federal prison in 1933 expressly to deal with criminals like Roy G. Gardner, the man who was nicknamed “King of the Escape Artists.”
- Inmate #117: George 'Machine Gun' Kelly. Conviction: Kidnapping. Time Served at Alcatraz: 17 years (1934–1951) Post-Term: died of a heart attack in jail. It couldn’t be said that many of the criminals who ended up in Alcatraz were from good families, but Machine Gun Kelly was raised in a well-off Memphis household and even attended some college.
- Inmate #325: Alvin 'Creepy' Karpis. Conviction: Kidnapping. Time Served at Alcatraz: 26 years (1936–1962) Post-Term: author, pill overdose. Like "Machine Gun" Kelly, Alvin Francis Karpowicz saw kidnapping as an easier way to make large sums of money than bank robbing.
Jun 22, 1979 · We make good prisoners."As Mr. Siegel and his screenwriter have not provided their characters with lengthy case histories, they have also refrained from imposing on the film hints of larger...
Oct 27, 2009 · According to the BOP, Alcatraz typically held some 260 to 275 prisoners, which represented less than 1 percent of the entire federal inmate population. Famous Inmates.
