Alcatraz_ A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years - Michael Esslinger [94]
Even more interesting was the fact that Stroud himself was restricted from reading his own biography. The strict policy of Alcatraz prohibited inmates from reading materials that referenced any crime-related activities. Morton Sobell, known as the famous “Atom Spy” and co-defendant of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, resided on Alcatraz for five years. He later recounted that he was the only inmate on Alcatraz who received the magazine Scientific American and that an article featuring Stroud slipped through the censors in September of 1957. Sobell managed to have the article smuggled to Stroud up in the hospital ward, and this would be one of the first printed biographies he would read on the subject of his own life. Jim Quillen also stated that while he wasn’t certain, he had heard that individual pages of the Gaddis book had been slipped to Stroud over a period of several years.
The years of seclusion ultimately took their toll on Stroud and he attempted suicide twice. His physical health also started to deteriorate visibly. He suffered lengthy bouts of depression, and there were rumors of his failure to thrive. On July 13, 1959, while being escorted to the recreation yard, Stroud was stopped and notified that he was being transferred once again, and was directed back to his cell. After spending seventeen difficult years on Alcatraz, Stroud was to be moved to the Medical Center in Springfield, Missouri. He would arrive there on July 15th.
Stroud was euphoric with his new environment in Springfield. In a brief letter to his attorney Stanley Furman, he wrote in part:
“I have already been told that I have the run of my ward, have met old friends, one going back to 1913, and have seen my first TV. I have twice as much space to walk as I had in the yard at Alcatraz. I am out in the ward up to 10:00 p.m. and I have a night call button in case of illness.”
In addition to being moved to a low security area of the medical prison, he was also given a private room in which he could open and close his own door. He was able to walk the vast grounds of the prison and spend time basking in the sun, which he had not been allowed to do since the beginning of his imprisonment fifty years ago in 1909. In addition to seeing his first television set, he was also able to listen to radio broadcasts freely. Stroud took employment as a bookbinder in the prison library and then as a tanner in the leather shop. Phyllis Gaddis, the daughter of the famed writer, later wrote that Stroud had made her a hand-tooled purse with his initials stamped on the face when she was a young girl.
A fellow inmate named Joseph Duhamel also took a keen interest in Stroud’s tale. He spent two years with Stroud helping to document his story In His Own Words for a magazine article that would later appear in Saga Magazine. The article was so popular that the issue quickly sold out and became the magazine’s only second print run in its history. To avoid detection by prison officials, Duhamel claimed that he purchased a World Almanac, and each day he would write notes while Stroud dictated to him in the prison yard at Springfield. Duhamel stated that he used oxalic acid, a chemical employed to treat leather, as a type of invisible ink. The agent would become visible with the application of heat from a clothing iron. Duhamel published the