Famous Alcatraz Inmates: Capone, Kelly, Stroud and Karpis

Alcatraz has a reputation as the home of every notorious gangster of the Depression era. The reality is more modest. This page sorts out which well-known criminals really served time on the island and what their stays were like.

The big names who never arrived

Most of the headline “Public Enemies” never saw Alcatraz. “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, “Baby Face” Nelson, Ma Barker and John Dillinger were all hunted down and killed before they could be sent. By the time the penitentiary was running, it received what you might call the second tier of gangland: Louis, Harry and Sam Fleisher of Detroit’s Purple Gang; Arthur “Doc” Barker and Alvin Karpavicz (“Creepy” Karpis) from the Ma Barker gang; John Paul Chase, a friend of Nelson in San Francisco; Walton Spark and Arthur Cherrington, who had links to Dillinger; and Basil “The Owl” Banghart of the Touhy gang.

The only names most visitors recognise are Al Capone, “Machine Gun” Kelly and Robert Stroud. Most inmates were regional criminals nobody remembers, convicted of offences typical of their time such as train robbery, kidnapping for ransom or taking stolen cars across state lines. The Alcatraz people remember belongs to the 1930s and 1940s, when crime, criminals and prisons were all different from today.

Al Capone

Capone did not die at Alcatraz, although he spent much of his time there in the hospital. He came in 1934 from the Atlanta penitentiary, where authorities believed he was buying special treatment. Newspapers printed accounts from former inmates saying he bribed guards for special meals and kept up contact with his organisation from his cell.

That ended on the island. He was inmate number 85, just another prisoner. He played banjo in the prison band and held jobs in the laundry, the library and as a janitor in the cellhouse and the recreation yard. He tried to keep out of trouble with mixed success: a scuffle in the laundry earned him eight days in isolation, and another inmate stabbed him in the back with barber shears in the shower room, though he recovered quickly.

The more serious problem was medical. On the morning of 5 February 1938 he seemed confused in the mess hall and wore weekend clothes instead of work overalls. Examination found paresis, the late stage of syphilis, which he had known about but never treated. Much of his remaining sentence was spent in the infirmary.

After six years and eight months of a ten-year term for felony tax evasion, with the rest removed as good-behaviour credit, he finished that sentence. In January 1939 he went to Terminal Island in Southern California to serve a further year on a misdemeanour charge, because Bureau of Prisons rules did not allow Alcatraz to hold misdemeanour prisoners. He was later moved to Lewisburg for release, received treatment at a private clinic and settled with his family in Florida, but was never the same. He died on 25 January 1947 from complications of the disease, including strokes, pneumonia and heart attacks.

Robert Stroud, the “Birdman”

The nickname is misleading, because Stroud kept no birds at Alcatraz. His bird-disease work took place at Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was also found with contraband including weapons, and that got him sent west in 1942 at age 52, after 33 years in prison.

He was originally jailed for killing a man in Alaska before it was a state. At McNeil Island he stabbed an inmate in a dispute over drugs, and at Leavenworth he killed an officer. The attorney general of the day summed him up as a man who “loves birds and hates men”. He avoided the gallows only through a controversial last-minute reprieve from President Wilson, and he spent 44 of his 54 years in custody in solitary confinement. At Alcatraz he served six years in D Block, then eleven years alone in a hospital cell because of a kidney disorder. He was transferred to a federal medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, and died there on 21 November 1963.

George “Machine Gun” Kelly

Kelly never tried to escape. George Barnes was a quiet bootlegger, bank robber and kidnapper, famous for his weapon of choice and for supposedly crying “Don’t shoot, G-men” at his arrest. The Urschel kidnapping, for which he was convicted in 1933, and his nickname made him a headline figure, so he was in the first group of prisoners sent from Leavenworth. Those who knew him described a well-bred man who seemed more like a bank president than a robber. He served as an altar boy at Sunday Catholic services, stayed out of trouble, and was sent back to Leavenworth, where he died of heart failure.

Longest stay: Alvin Karpis

Karpis spent more than 25 years on The Rock, nearly the entire life of the penitentiary except four years. He had mocked J. Edgar Hoover for failing to catch him, and Hoover personally made the arrest, the only one he is said to have made himself.

The most feared man

Some name Stroud as the most feared inmate, but he spent so long in the hospital that few encountered him. Among those who lived in the cellhouse, the name that came up was Jimmy Grove. He arrived with the first shipment from Leavenworth after time in prisons across several western and midwestern states. His convictions included burglary and weapons offences, then rape and attempted murder. At Alcatraz he killed a fellow inmate, Ben McMiller, and spent most of his time in D Block, which is explained on the page about solitary confinement.