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United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, also known simply as Alcatraz ( English: / ˈælkəˌtræz /, Spanish: [ a l k a ˈ t ɾ a s] "the gannet ") or The Rock, was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The site of a fort since the 1850s, the ...
- 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
Al Capone. Bernard Coy. Sam Shockley. Frank Morris. Clarence Anglin. William G Baker. This is a list of notable inmates of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary . An inmate register reveals that there were 1576 prisoners in total which were held at Alcatraz during its time as a Federal Penitentiary, between 1934 and 1963, although figures reported have ...
Feb 1, 2024 · In 1933, the island was transferred from the U.S. Army to the Department of Justice, and in 1934, Alcatraz was repurposed as a federal penitentiary designed to hold the most troublesome inmates from other prisons—individuals who had a history of escape attempts or were exceedingly violent.
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In 1933 the U.S. Army transferred control of the prison to the civilian Department of Justice, and, from 1934 to 1963, Alcatraz served as a federal prison for some of the most dangerous convicts in the American
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Oct 27, 2009 · During its years as a military prison, the inmates at Alcatraz included Confederate sympathizers and citizens accused of treason during the American Civil War (1861-65). Alcatraz also...
Aug 15, 2023 · List Of Movies About Alcatraz. 1. Lupin The Third: Alcatraz Connection. Lupin and his crew are searching for some gold bars in a sunken ship off the coast of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, California. However, a fictitious organization known as the Society Seven wants the gold bars for their own purposes. 2.
