Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [181]
Coy quickly lowered a Colt .45 pistol with twenty-one rounds of ammunition and several riot clubs to Cretzer, who was standing on the officers’ work desk. Coy then pitched down a large key ring that he was confident would hold the yard door access key, #107. After dropping these items down to Cretzer and now armed with a Springfield rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition, Coy entered the D Block Gallery, taking aim at the unarmed Officer Corwin. Coy directed Corwin to follow his orders carefully, and to stay away from the phone. He instructed him to walk slowly over and open the steel door that divided the segregation unit from the main prison. As soon as Corwin had rotated the key and the door swung open, he was met by Cretzer, who aimed the .45 directly at his forehead. As the barrel of the .45 was pressed against Corwin’s forehead, the cold metal felt as though it was biting into his flesh. Louis Fleish had opted not to get involved, but he encouraged Corwin to follow Cretzer’s demands so that he wouldn’t get hurt.
Coy headed back to Officer Burch and stripped him of all his clothing, then tied him to electrical piping that ran near the floor. After ensuring that Burch would be unable to trip an alarm if he regained consciousness, Coy retraced his steps to the top of the gallery, carefully squeezed through the bars, and climbed back down to the cellhouse floor. Meanwhile Cretzer demanded that Corwin rack open #D-14, the cell of Rufus “Whitey” Franklin, an inmate who was notorious as a guard killer and a master escape artist. Franklin was serving time in isolation for the vicious murder of Alcatraz Officer Royal C. Cline in 1938. Corwin pleaded that he couldn’t open the cell because the locking mechanism for all of the isolation cells was controlled from the gallery. Since Coy had already made his way back down, and would thus be able to open the cell doors himself, Corwin was stripped of his jacket, hat, and keys, and placed into cell #404 along with Captain Bill Miller, who was still unconscious. Coy then racked open the cells in the top two tiers of D Block, and Shockley and the other inmates started to emerge, attempting to size up the situation.
Though Franklin was left behind because they had been unable to access the lock mechanism to release him from his cell, Cretzer ordered an inmate to open the outer steel doors to all of the isolation cells on the bottom row. It is suspected that Floyd Hamilton, former outlaw and driver for Bonnie & Clyde, had also been in on the plot, though he did not take part in the attempt. In Hamilton’s inmate file there was a notation that reads:
Although Hamilton received but one misconduct report, the testimony of Mr. E. Lageson, cellhouse officer, who was one of the hostages in the prison escape plot of May 2nd to 4th, 1946, was to the effect that Coy, #415-AZ, ringleader to the rioters, was trying to get Hamilton unlocked from his cell so that he could join in the plot. This, with the fact that Hamilton had secured a lay-in for that day indicates he knew something about the plot and may have been involved to a certain extent.
As Cretzer passed through the steel D Block access door, he observed Burch straining against his restraints and looking over the steel shield of the gun gallery. Cretzer yelled to Burch in the gallery while pointing the .45: “I’ll kill you if you try to reach that phone!” Coy and Cretzer then started shuffling through the keys on the gallery ring, trying to find Key #107, which would grant them access to the recreation yard. After several minutes of fruitless attempts, both became frustrated and tried to force the lock with any key that would fit, as their plan was starting to fall behind schedule. They had hoped to get into the recreation yard, snipe off the tower guards and then escape through the yard access door. They planned to get down to the dock area by using hostages, so the next item on the agenda was to secure captives, probably family members of the correctional staff. They would then hijack the prison launch to take them over to the mainland,