Alcatraz_ A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years - Michael Esslinger [142]
We, the jury, find that the said Arthur R. Barker met his death attempting to escape from Alcatraz Prison from gunshot wounds inflicted by guards unknown.
On December 30, 1940, Henri Young fatally stabbed Rufus McCain. He would later claim that this act resulted from conflicts that arose during the failed escape attempt of 1939. In news reports describing the murder trial, it was reported that Young stated to the jurors: “McCain held a great deal of animosity toward me. He wanted to use the wives of the guards as shields in the break, but I wouldn’t do it. I obstructed the plan. I told McCain freedom wasn’t everything, but he wouldn’t listen.” Young’s life would later be fictionalized in the book and motion picture Murder in the First.
The escape of 1939 had been the first ever on the Rock to demonstrate a weakness in the main security system. This would be last escape to initiate from within D Block.
ESCAPE ATTEMPT #5
Date:
May 21, 1941
Inmates:
Joseph Paul Cretzer
Sam Richard Shockley
Arnold Thomas Kyle
Lloyd H. Barkdoll
Location:
Mat Shop (Model Industries Building)
Joseph P. Cretzer
Sam Richard Shockley
Arnold Thomas Kyle
Lloyd H. Barkdoll
The 1941 escape attempt by inmates Joseph Cretzer, Sam Shockley, Arnold Kyle and Lloyd Barkdollwould unexpectedly serve as a prelude to the bloodiest chapter in the prison’s history, known as the Battle of Alcatraz in 1946. The biographies of Joe Cretzer, Sam Shockley and Arnold Kyle are covered extensively in a later section chronicling the events of ‘46. Prior to their capture in 1939, Cretzer and Kyle had been considered the number-one bank robbing team in the nation. They had previously made spectacular breaks from other penitentiaries and would seize upon the slightest opportunity to break from the Rock. All four men were serving life sentences and were assigned to work details in the Rubber Mat Shop.
Lloyd Barkdoll was later said to have been the principle instigator of this escape attempt. He had previously been serving a life sentence for a series of bank robberies in Oregon, and he was transferred to Alcatraz on October 13, 1937 from the Federal Penitentiary at McNeil Island, where prison officials believed that he was planning a mass escape. Barkdoll had also been a key witness during the famous Henri Young trial, and Warden Johnston had subsequently stated in a newspaper interview that Barkdoll’s sole purpose for testifying had been to seek an opportunity for an escape.
The Alcatraz escape attempt took place on May 21, 1941. Just after the inmates had returned from lunch, Clyne Stoops, a correctional officer assigned to the Industries was lured into the mat shop under the pretense that a piece of equipment had stopped working. As the officer started to examine the piece of machinery, the four inmates overpowered him, bound his hands and feet with heavy gauge twine, and then gagged him. The prisoners then took control of the workshop and moved eight other inmates who chose not to participate into an adjacent room.
Taking turns and using a heavy piece of pipe, they struggled to pry open the inside casement, which was made of heavy wire. After nearly thirty minutes of intense prying, they were caught off guard when another officer entered the workshop. In a newspaper interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Warden Johnston later recounted the following events:
They had worked at it about half an hour when Manning, who wasn’t expected, entered the shop on a routine inspection tour. They had a lookout posted. When Manning entered one grabbed him on each side and one from behind, and they hustled him into the room with Stoops, binding him but not gagging him.
Then they went back to the window. By this time they had pried off part of the casement. They dragged over a small motor driven emery stone and began grinding away at one of the toolproof bars.
One of the convicts remained posted at the door as a guard, and when