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Willie Radkay, a veteran of Alcatraz. He is seen here during one of the reunions in 2002, at age ninety-one. Radkay and Machine Gun Kelly shared cells adjacent to one another, and was also close friends with Dale Stamphill and Basil “Owl” Banghart.

Armory Officer Clifford Fish returned to Alcatraz in 2002, which was the first time since his retirement from the prison in 1962. He is seen with a Discovery Channel film crew filming inside the Alcatraz “Dungeon”.

Former inmate Tom Kent and Father Bernie Bush meet with visitors inside the cellhouse chapel to discuss their memories of Alcatraz during a reunion event.

Former Alcatraz Inmate Bob Luke with the author during his first ever look inside the East Gun Gallery in 2011. Luke had kept his past a secret for over 50-years, before finally going public and visiting Alcatraz as a free man.

Former inmates Darwin Coon (left) and Leon Thompson (right) with former guard John Hernan (center) inside the prison hospital during an Alcatraz reunion event in 2003. Thompson passed away in 2005 and Coon in 2011. Thompson’s obituary read in part: “He was a tough guy of the old school, a bank robber and hardened criminal who spent 24 years in prison including four years of hard time in Alcatraz. He also turned his life around, becoming a best-selling author who spent his last free years riding motorcycles and gardening, painting and raising two wolves, among other pets, at his home in Fiddletown, an old Gold Rush town in Amador County.” Darwin Coon was also an important presence on the Rock and frequently returned to meet with visitors. He lived in San Francisco with a prominent view of Alcatraz outside his window. He openly shared his story and helped shape the real story of life inside Alcatraz.

Thompson on Alcatraz in July of 1960.

Alcatraz’s youngest Correctional Officer Frank Heaney, with former officer Larry Quilligan in 2008. Both men arrived on Alcatraz during the same period and roommates for a brief period on the island.

Frank Heaney arrived at Alcatraz in 1948. He was hired by Warden Swope when only 21-years of age and became the youngest officer to serve on the island.

In 1972, Congress created the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Alcatraz Island was included as part of the new National Park Service unit. The island was opened to the public on October 25, 1973, and it has since become one of the most popular Park Service sites, with more than one million visitors from around the world each year. Today Alcatraz is considered an ecological preserve, and it is home to one of the largest western gull colonies on the northern California coast. The thrill of touring Alcatraz derives both from the awareness of its historical significance, and from the various portrayals of prison life that have been popularized through Hollywood motion pictures. People come from all over the world to meet eye-to-eye with the ghosts of America's toughest criminals. Meanwhile, many of the former inmates are still trying to come to terms with their imprisonment on Alcatraz, and they seek to understand why people would visit a place that represented for them only a monument of pure anguish and deep despair.

“There will always be the need for specialized facilities for the desperados, the irredeemable, and the ruthless, but Alcatraz and all that it had come to mean now belong, we may hope, to history.”

- James V. Bennett, Director of the Bureau of Prisons

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APPENDICIES

ALCATRAZ: INMATE RULES AND REGULATIONS

Alcatraz: Inmate Regulations, 1956

Note: These "Institution Rules & Regulations" were in effect at the United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz, during Warden Paul J. Madigan's administration (1955-1961). They were issued to all inmates in the form of a typewritten booklet to be kept in the cell.

REGULATIONS FOR INMATES U.S.P., ALCATRAZ REVISED 1956

INMATE Reg. NUMBER, _________________

This set of Institution Regulations is issued to you as Institutional Equipment. You are required