Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [229]
Parker was thereupon moved upstairs to the maximum-security cellblock of the County Jail, adjacent to the section where mental patients were held. Jail officials and... B.I. agents searched Parker’s cell for the $1,000.00, which he offered to pay to the trusty. Parker was even required to strip his clothing and to be examined by a physician as part of the search. Parker’s shoes were taken to a local shoemaker for examination. The shoemaker tore the heels off the shoes and discovered two packets made of black electrician’s tape, each of which packets contained five one-hundred-dollar bills. Each packet was secreted in special indentations, which had been cut out of the heel of each shoe. The shoemaker who made the examination expressed the opinion that the work had been done by a skilled shoemaker. Further investigation showed that the shoes had been taken to a shoemaker in Canton, Ohio, to have the work done. The packets of money were already made up for insertion under the heel in each of the shoes.
Parker managed to smuggle out of the jail, plans of the jail to certain persons to enable those persons to deliver to him the tools necessary for escape. At this time, Parker was confined in a cell to the left of which was a cell occupied by a person named [deleted entry]. Immediately to the left of this person’s cell was a cell in which there was located a bathtub for the use of prisoners. [Deleted entry] had been the trusty detailed to empty the garbage from the basement kitchen of the jail. At the time the practice of the jail had been to entrust the cook in the kitchen with the key that unlocked the barred door from the kitchen that led directly to the outside. [Deleted entry] had secured the key, had unlocked the barred rear door of the kitchen and had gone out to empty the garbage. He did not return and was later apprehended and returned to the jail cell next to the cell occupied by Parker. Parker inquired and learned from this prisoner how he had secured the key.
On a stormy night prior to Tuesday, June 10, 1958, two men scaled the wall of the County Jail with an extension ladder. One of these men carried a dark oilcloth bag tied around his neck. He was able to get onto a roof below the barred window of the jail cell used by the prisoners for bathing. He tied the bag to the end of a rope, the other end of which had been previously tied to one of the cell bars of this cell. The rope had been painted black and was long enough to allow the bag to lie on the jail roof in such a way as be unnoticed from the window. The bag contained a .45 automatic pistol, ammunition, hacksaw blades, and money. Perhaps $75 to $80 dollars.
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,