Letters From Alcatraz - Michael Esslinger [93]
From time to time it has been noticed that Stroud is permitted to be out of his assigned quarters when other inmates are in the hospital for outpatient treatment. It has also been noticed that he has been able to carry on a conversation with other inmates. It is of course necessary to administer to him as prescribed by the Medical Department, out treatments, baths, taking care of toilet needs or for any other reason it may be necessary to take him from his quarters is to be done when there is no traffic in the Hospital. Under no circumstances is he to be taken from his quarters when an inmate from “D” Block is in the Hospital for outpatient treatment. He is not to be permitted to carry on conversations with other inmates, and when he is out of his quarters he is to be under constant surveillance by a custodial officer.
Signed,
R.H. Tahash
Captain
Stroud was also allowed fewer yard privileges than were allotted to the general population at Alcatraz and his walks to the recreation yard were usually carried out when no other inmates were in the area.
Officer reports typically portrayed Stroud as a difficult inmate to manage, even while in segregation. One example was a disciplinary report written on June 19, 1951. The report submitted by Officer Robert Griffiths to Warden Swope and Associate Warden Madigan reads as follows:
Violation: INSOLENCE-DISBURBANCE, Under instructions from the Eve. Watch Lieutenant E.F. Stucker, I told the above inmate that I was putting out his light after his treatment was completed. I put out his bright light and he leaped out of bed and switched it on again. I told him not to do it again and switched off the light. He again turned it on, saying, “He didn’t give a fuck what Stucker said, the light stays on until midnight.”
In 1955, when Robert Stroud had been in prison for over forty years, and had been all but forgotten by the outside world, Thomas E. Gaddis created one of the most intriguing human tales of the 20th Century – the grim story of the Birdman of Alcatraz.
Working from an improvised office inside his small garage, Thomas E. Gaddis penned a book that would become an American Classic – Birdman of Alcatraz. Stroud was never permitted to read his own biography or to see the motion picture, for which lead actor Burt Lancaster was nominated for an Academy Award.
Gaddis had left his job as a teacher and probation officer in Los Angeles to chronicle Stroud’s amazing life. He had become intrigued by Stroud’s story and located Marcus in 1950. Marcus ultimately agreed to the idea of a book about his brother’s life story. Gaddis acquired hundreds of letters from Stroud’s correspondence, and conducted hours-upon-hours of interviews with Marcus, extracting every possible detail. While the book relied heavily on second and third-hand information to reconstruct Stroud’s side of the story, it appeared to be tangled with a plethora of fact based material, or at least from Stroud’s perspective.
In 1951, still early on in his research for the book, Gaddis wrote an article about Stroud for Cosmopolitan Magazine. The article helped to finance his project and once again, public interest started to drift toward Stroud. Working from a manual typewriter in an improvised office in his garage, Gaddis knitted together a classic American tale that would capture the attention of a nation. Gaddis’s book, Birdman of Alcatraz, was published in 1955 and became an instant success. It also launched a national crusade