Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [183]
Officer Joseph Burdette had been busy tending to his duties down in the kitchen basement and had finally come up to inspect the dining area. Like Officer Bristow, Burdette was puzzled to find the Dining Hall gate open, with no sign of any floor officers in the vicinity. As he carefully looked around the area he noticed Coy walking by, and thinking that the prisoner was about to get into a fight with another inmate, Burdette made the ill-fated decision to venture out into the cellhouse and investigate. In a matter of only seconds, Burdette was captured, escorted through the cutoff and thoroughly searched before being placed in #404 with the five other occupants.
By this point, Coy was in a frenzy to locate key #107. He probably realized that his time was running out and that someone would soon notice that the guards were missing from their post assignments. Once the island’s siren was activated, it would be all over. The prison would go into lock-down mode and every guard, including all of the reserves, would be issued firearms and stationed at all points on the island. Coy started to verbally trace the chain of custody of Key #107. The guards being held captive could hear Coy’s desperation as he struggled to locate the key. Then Lageson and Bristow asked Cretzer if they could untie Miller, who was still bound to the bunk, and surprisingly Cretzer agreed. While Lageson and Bristow were untying him, Miller covertly passed the key to Burdette, who stealthily slid to the back of the cell. As the other guards stood at the front of the cell, blocking the view and distracting everyone’s attention by asking questions, it is alleged by some historians that Burdette quietly dropped the key into the toilet bowl, and then submerging his hand, pushed it back until it was out of view (It should be noted that in at least one of the official FBI statements derived from interviews with the hostages, it was indicated that the key was simply hid behind the toilet and not submerged. The above is simply the most common written theory, and it is likely inaccurate).
A few minutes later Coy returned to the cell front and demanded that Miller tell him where he had put the key. Quite heroically, Miller maintained that the key must still be in the gallery, since he remembered passing it to Burch. But Bernie Coy was furious, and opened the cell demanding that Miller’s person and every inch of the cell be thoroughly searched. Miller was forcefully removed from the cell, and was searched in an aggressive manner by Cretzer while standing in the aisle of Seedy Street. Still in acute pain from the attack, Miller held his ground, telling Coy that he would have to go back into the gun gallery if he wanted to find the key. Coy was incensed.
The conspirators then transferred the officers from cell #404 into cell #403. The two inmate hostages, Egan and Moyle, begged Cretzer to let them go, pleading that they didn’t deserve to be locked up with the guards. In what may have been his only act of kindness, Cretzer nodded and told them to go back to their cells. Both scurried out, looking for any open cell in which to take cover. Hubbard and Cretzer thoroughly searched the other officers, sometimes jabbing them with the barrel of the pistol. Thompson and Coy took a box of keys from the cellhouse officer’s desk, and tried every key in hope of finding a duplicate disguised with a dummy number. Both inmates went key-by-key, forcefully inserting them into the yard door lock tumbler, hoping to find a match.
Correctional Officers Ed Stucker and Emil Rychner.
Joe Fisher
Officer Ed Stucker was assigned to the cellhouse basement, to supervise inmate barbers Joe Fisherand William Bartlett, as well as the activities in the clothing room and the shower area. Stucker carried the reputation of a by-the-book guard who generally engaged in very little small talk with the inmates. There