9781422284025

Violent and disruptive prisoners cause security problems in jails. Thus, it seemed like a good idea to lump the worst of them together into a single, secure place. In 1933, the War Department relinquished Alcatraz Island, which was acquired by the Justice Department. By 1934, it had been refitted and opened as a maximum-security federal penitentiary. The prisoners came from all over the United States: mail-train bandit Roy Gardner; bank robber and kidnapper “Machine Gun” Kelly; Alvin Karpis, who had been named Public Rat Number One by J. Edgar Hoover; and his fellow kidnapper, Dock Barker—a remnant of the infamous Barker family. (Ma Barker and son Fred were killed in a shoot-out with the police. Her two other sons were also criminals: Herman committed suicide when trapped during a bank robbery, and Lloyd was doing time in Leavenworth Prison.) The Rock—as Alcatraz was also known—was home to the highest profile gang- ster of them all, the murderous Al Capone, who was responsible for the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of his rivals. Capone was brought down in 1931, not by the Feds, but by the Internal Revenue Service, for tax evasion and other offenses.

Alphonse (Al) Capone, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899. Achieving worldwide notoriety as a racketeer during the Prohibition period in Chicago, he was sent to Alcatraz after a conviction for tax evasion.

11

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, California