Uncle Al Capone (11 page)

Once she got to the room to see her son, # 85, she had to sit on a chair facing a metal wall with a very small window. There were slats below the window through which she could hear his voice, but only see a small part of his face. He tried to move over as much as possible to let her see his eyes. She told me that, after the visit, she cried and prayed the rosary all the way back to Chicago.

Between visits, the entire Capone family kept in touch with Al via letters. But even their correspondence was restricted by the rules of Alcatraz. A prisoner was never allowed to read a handwritten letter. The prison staff would read every letter written to a prisoner, and then someone in the office would type it out and give it to him. This was a precaution against coded messages concealed in the letters, but seems cruel to imagine not being able to see the handwriting of a loved one or detect their scent on the page.

Prisoners themselves were only allowed to write one letter a week, and again, only to immediate family members. These, too, were reviewed by the prison staff. I can only imagine the gossip. They knew everything about every prisoner and probably used it against them when needed.

The following is a copy of a letter than aunt Mae sent to uncle Al. You will notice the reference to my Dad.

Capone ------- 85_4-15-37

My Dear Husband:

It is now three-thirty in the afternoon. Brown just came home with Joan but sonny stayed at school to play some handball. Brown will go after him later. He is just fine dear and doing nicely in school.

This morning Sonny received a letter from some friends of Ralphie’s. A very nice letter concerning Notre Dame. Sonny and I appreciated it but as far as Sonny is concerned he will choose his own college on its own merits and as he prefers it. He is like that doing things for himself. Goes places that he can get into and wants to be liked for himself. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have everyone to say a nice word for one and I know that Ralphie’s friends will do that for Sonny but Sonny has never needed help before and has made all his grades without aid, has been liked and respected by all because he is a good boy and does respect the rules and regulations and doesn’t think that he knows it all. I am sure that he will get by dear. The Nuns and Priests think the world of him and parents of the school children would rather have him around with them than anyone else. Dear, it is just the narrow minded people that cannot think that run people down, without knowing what they are doing it for.

We have nothing in this world to be ashamed of and we are proud of our Daddy so I want our son to go out in the world, face all, let all know who he is and accept him for what he is. There will be many obstacles that will face him during his life and I am sure that he will face them and be better thought of in the end.

Oh Darling, I could go on forever writing about things that I have in my mind but I know that you understand how I feel and what I want our son to be a respected man by all, just for himself for he has his life to live and deserves a chance like everyone else in the world so I never discourage him in anything that he wants to do, but shall help him always. No one has worried about his success or welfare before so I don’t expect it. We’ll get by.

Well sweet, I hope that you are OK. After all there are but two people in this world that I worry about and live for and those are my husband and my son.

God Bless you – I love you Love and kisses – Always,

Your wife and son

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Despite these tight restrictions on his correspondence, according to Johnny Chase, (see his letter in the appendix) Al did manage to get cash delivered to him by the Outfit, which he divided up into several batches of $500. He hid these batches in different parts of the island where they were accessible to inmates who had gained his trust.

Among the inmates who knew of Al’s hidden money was Roy Gardener, # 110. He was an escape artist and, along with my uncle, among the very first men to arrive at Alcatraz on September 2, 1934. Roy began planning an escape and tried to get Al to be part of it. When Al wouldn’t go along with the plan, he was stabbed in the leg in the laundry room. But Uncle Al’s money financed what was probably the only successful escape from Alcatraz in all its twenty-nine years as a federal penitentiary.

Over the course of those twenty-nine years, a total of 1,547 prisoners were incarcerated in Alcatraz. Thirty-four made fourteen separate escape attempts; of these, six were shot and killed, twenty-three were caught, and five were never found, and so were presumed drowned in the San Francisco Bay. But did they really die?

As I researched Uncle Al’s experiences at Alcatraz, I came across some truly fascinating writing by one of Al’s fellow prisoners, a man named Johnny Chase. I found a letter written to Father Clark by Johnny Chase.

Johnny was a rum-runner and had lived in the Bay area for many years. He was familiar with the Bay waters, knew all the roads around San Francisco where men could meet and hide, and he had associates living throughout California whom he could trust to assist him during and after an escape. Within the walls of Alcatraz, he was assigned to work in the machine shop, where all the essential tools required for an escape were available or could be made.

Johnny wrote that in the spring of 1937, two inmates named Ralph Roe, # 260, and Ted Cole, # 258, approached him wanting to discuss the feasibility of swimming to the shore from the island.

Ralph was from Muskagee, Oklahoma and had been in and out of the prison system since he was twenty years old. In 1934, when he was perhaps twenty-nine years old, he escaped from a prison and robbed a Federal Reserve System Bank. The money was never recovered, but Ralph was sent to Alcatraz. His friend Ted was an even shadier character. He was about twenty-three years old when he arrived at Alcatraz, but was first incarcerated when he was seventeen. During one of his stints in jail, he killed his cellmate, escaped, kidnapped a farmer, and forced him to drive him from Oklahoma to Texas. He was apprehended there and sentenced to fifty years in Alcatraz under the Lindbergh Kidnap Law.

Because they were constrained by the Silent System, their discussions often took place while they walked through the prison yard, or in muffled voices if they happened to find themselves next to each other in the bath line or on a “call-out,” when the guards took roll.

Johnny describes these discussions in his writing. “In general, wherever the opportunity came or presented itself, we would exchange views and thoughts pertaining to the tides, their speed, and the drift towards or away from shore. Which was the best chance to take? Should we go with the incoming tide or the outgoing tide? Which way was the water traveling and when was it moving towards the ocean or in across the Bay towards Berkeley? How fast did the tide flow? How long a start would be needed?”

After many talks, the three men decided that, despite the cold, low tides, and faster currents, January was the best option because the fog would provide the thickest cover. Both Ralph and Ted were athletic and worked in their cells to keep themselves physically fit. The three men agreed that Johnny would help facilitate the escape but would ultimately remain behind.

The agreed-upon escape route was through the barred windows of the blacksmith shop. Johnny had stowed away hacksaw blades in places in the shop that the guards were unaware of, which they would use to open the bars. The men would then have to drop down to the catwalk that ran along the outside of the building and make their way about thirty-five feet to a gate, which was held closed by a huge padlock. They would need to break the lock by twisting it with a wrench. From there, they could reach the water.

The water, of course, was the major challenge. As Johnny writes, “Someone came up with the idea of using one gallon cans for water wings. This was a very good suggestion, and it is the one item that makes me believe that Ralph and Ted really made it ashore and got away.”

These “water wings” are also how my uncle Al comes into play in the story. According to Johnny, both Ralph and Ted put sharp daggers in their cans and all their money. Johnny writes, “They had close to $400, most of it belonging to Capone (#85). Al Capone got into a swindle shortly before the escape plan began to develop. Capone had some money sent into the prison for him, which he divided into several batches of $500…. One of the fellows who had access to another $500 took it all for himself.” That fellow was Roy Gardner, whom I mentioned above.

Johnny continues, “This $500, or what was left of it, about $375, was given to Ralph and Ted just before they left. I saw them put the money into one of the cans, then take it out and divide it, putting half in each. So each had half of the $375, plus some other money, plus the dagger.”

Ralph and Ted prepared their bodies for the ordeal of swimming through the cold water by only wearing their prison-issue coveralls, which they were required to wear, and nothing else in the bitter winds, rain, and fog of the island. They would throw buckets of cold water on each other, and then walk around in their wet clothes until the guards noticed and made them change. They only showered in cold water, they only drank cold water, and they spent countless hours doing all the most strenuous exercises in the yard or in their cells.

In the blacksmith shop, the three men devised a scheme to condition the guard to not notice missing men when he took roll. While the guard was taking roll, one of the three prisoners would squeeze into a locker and hide. Just before the guard called in to report that his count had been off, the prisoner would slip back into rank, so that when the guard double-checked, he’d find that he had miscounted.

“This hiding out got to be quite a game,” Johnny writes. “At first, the officer became concerned, then gradually he became accustomed to hunting one or two of us down, when we kept out of his sight by hiding in the locker.” Finally, the guard “got to the point where he became lax.”

Finally, on December 16 or 17, 1937, Johnny told Ralph and Ted, “Two days like today and yesterday are very rare. You’ll never get fogs as dense as these.” It was then or never.

The guard made his count and overlooked the missing men. Ralph and Ted smeared themselves with a thick layer of grease to protect themselves against the water, jerked out the blacksmith shop window bars, which they had quietly filed away for months, and slipped out the window with their “water wing” cans. Johnny, who had developed a relationship with the guard, managed to distract him and keep him from re-checking his men and sounding the alarm for nearly an hour and a half.

When the alarm was finally sounded, it appeared to everyone that the men had only been gone a few minutes, and so the search boats stayed close to the island. They performed an exhaustive search of all the small inlets carved into the island by the winds and tides. According to Johnny, they were looking in the wrong place—Ralph and Ted were far toward shore by then. Johnny and all the other prisoners were immediately confined to their cells, so Johnny could not keep an eye on the Coast Guard and F.B.I. boats patrolling the waters, but he didn’t need to. He was sure his friends had made it.

“From all I can gather,” he writes, “I would say that Ralph and Ted did make land and were in good shape. They had planned for everything that could conceivably happen…. I was informed that the gallon cans were found on the beach near Fort Baker. But I never heard anyone mention the finding of any money or the daggers that were in them…. The finding of the cans minus the contents leaves little doubt but that they did escape.”

If Al Capone is found guilty, who is going to suffer—a masquerading ghost or the man who stands before you? You’re right; it’ll be me… Well, I’d much rather be sitting in a box watching the world baseball championship. What a life!

- Al Capone

Although Al Capone had exhausted his appeals and was barred from petitioning for habeas corpus, he had one last recourse. There was a provision at Alcatraz allowing that a prisoner could get time-off for good behavior. My uncle became a model prisoner.

Father Joseph M. Clark, S.J., was the first clergyman at Alcatraz. He became a good friend to Uncle Al and was loyal and kind to my family. He would call my grandmother on a regular basis and tell her and Aunt Mae how Al was doing.

My grandmother would ask, “Does Al go to mass every day?”

Father Clark explained that there really was no place at Alcatraz for mass. She insisted that she wanted her son to go to mass each day. When Father Clark told Al about this, he asked if they could build an altar.

Father Clark found a room outside the infirmary where they could build an altar, and he showed Al a bronze plaque of the Last Supper that he would like to see on the front of it. Uncle Al gave him money and the inmates built the altar, candlesticks and all, out of mahogany.