Alcatraz_ A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years - Michael Esslinger [230]
Parker himself admitted that he took a bath and concealed this black bag under his clothing when he returned to his own jail cell. Parker spent three nights trying to saw through the bars of on the window of his jail cell. The bars were of such hard steel, that he was unable to make any headway. Then he commenced working on the bolt which locked his jail cell door, discovering in the process that it was of a softer steel and that he was able to cut through it.
On Tuesday morning, June 10, 1958, a jail guard and a trusty came into the cellblock to feed the prisoners. Parker did not eat that morning, and the trusty and the jail guard continued on past Parker’s cell to feed the patients held in the mental section. Thereupon, Parker opened the steel barred door of his jail cell, menaced the jail guard and the trusty with a .45 caliber pistol, and compelled them to get into one of the jail cells. He compelled the jail guard to take off his Deputy Sheriff’s uniform. Parker then put the Deputy Sheriff’s uniform on himself over his own clothing and fled downstairs into the jail kitchen. There he was unable to obtain the key to unlock the door that led immediately outside, because after the other prisoner’s escape from the kitchen, the practice had been changed. The cook was no longer entrusted with the key.
Parker then went back upstairs into the jail office. With his .45 caliber pistol, he shot the lock off the door of the jail guard’s office. The office was completely bullet proofed except for one little spot just behind the door’s lock. Parker compelled the guard on-duty to press the button, which electrically unlocked the iron barred door to the front of the jail.
Parker then fled out of the jail, through an alley behind the jail to an intersection at which traffic was regulated by stop-and-go lights. There he commandeered the private automobile of a Fort Wayne mail carrier, who had been stopped by the red light. At gunpoint Parker compelled the mail carrier to drive him out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the direction of the Ohio state line. Parker became lost on the back roads, which they followed and ran into a roadblock. The roadblock was manned by the Chief of Police and by an Ohio State Policeman. A gun battle followed in which the life of the mail carrier was gravely endangered. Parker was shot in the hip by the Ohio State Policeman and thereby recaptured. He had been free from the Allen County Jail a total of approximately five hours. Subject was then confined to the Terra Haute Penitentiary in the hospital, and also in the Federal Medical Center at Springfield until he was well enough to appear before the court. He was sentenced to fifty years in a Federal Penitentiary for his crimes.
Daryl Lee Parker arrived at Alcatraz May 29, 1959, as inmate #AZ-1413. Even prior to his attempted escape from the island, Parker’s incarceration was problematic. For example, on March 15, 1960 he was placed in the closed-front solitary confinement cell for exploding a homemade bomb, and only one month later he was caught behaving intoxicated after having ingested a specially concocted homebrew.
John Paul Scott
A mug shot series of John Paul Scott.
J. Paul Scott was born on January 3, 1927 in Willisburg, Kentucky, the second of six children in the family of Buelah and William A. Scott. His father, who served as the postmaster of Springfield, Kentucky from 1950 until his death in 1966, was an affectionate parent. He provided a good living for his family and offered all of his children a college education. His mother was also a college graduate and she never worked outside the home. From all indications, the home situation was most amicable.
In 1944 Scott