Crimescribe

It’s often said that Hollywood history is the most unreliable kind anywhere. The dreaded phrase ‘Based on a true story’ is often short-hand for some bigwig buying the film rights to a true story, then proceeding to alter it almost out of existence. A book isn’t just better than the film, it’s usually infinitely more accurate. Hollywood’s treatment of Henri Young, a defendant whose lawyer tried to put Alcatraz itself on trial, is a case in point.

That Young killed fellow-convict Rufus McCain is in no doubt. Young himself admitted it, plenty of witnesses saw him do it and it probably should have been an easy case for the prosecution. It would not be an easy case courtesy of Young’s court-appointed lawyers who made an incredible (and successful) effort to see their client avoid San Quentin’s gas chamber. That they did so ia a matter of public record, a record that the 1995 movie takes the most flagrant liberties with.

So, who was he? How did a career criminal with a lengthy and violent record become so far removed from what he actuallu did and who he really was. To begin, let’s examine his actual criminal record and why he was sent to Alcatraz in the first place. It certainly wasn’t over a single instance of petty theft for a noble reason.

If your first point of reference is the movie, you probably think Young (played brilliantly by Kevin Bacon) went to Alcatraz for stealing five dollars to feed his starving sister. Having stolen it from a post office made it the Federal crime of mail robbery instead off petty theft. At the time Federal mail robbery laws were applied far more broadly than today. A mugging committed on the steps leading into a post office could be considered mail robbery and another Alcatraz convict went there under precisely those circumstances.

Young was not a petty thief, far from it. He was a serious thief, burglar, armed robber, kidnapper and murderer before he even set foot on Alcatraz as Convict AZ-244. If Henri Young ever stole a mere five dollars in his life it may have been all a victim had left in their wallet. He arrived on The Rock on June 1, 1935 from the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla having been jailed for murder in 1933. That killing was only one of many violent crimes to Young’s discredit. He had also served time at the Montana State Penitnetiary at Deer Lodge.

In fact, Young’s ascent to the ranks of America’s Most Wanted started very quickly. His first offence? Stealing a flashlight. That had earned him fifteen months at Deer Lodge and he was embitterd by so long a sentence for pettty theft.. His second? Attempted theft of a suit. His third? Robbing a bank in Lind, Oregon which earned him a twenty-year sentence. Had the getaway car not blown a tyre, he might have been robbing and perhaps killing his way across the country.

His time at Walla Walla proved, contrary to cinematic belief, that he thoroughly rated Alcatraz. In fact, Henri Young was exactly the kind of felon that The Rock was designed to contain. Walla Walla turned him loose on October 12, 1934. By his own admission, Young immediately obtained a pistol and murdered a bakery worker in a robbery at Everett in Washington State. The haul? Around ten dollars. The potential penalty in Washington State? Death by hanging.

This was Young’s first flirtation with the death penalty. It would not be his last. Alcatraz, an unsucccessful escape attempt and a certain Rufus McCain would see to that. Young was caught for the Lind robbery on November 3, the blown tyre would see him handed twenty years on McNeil Island and, although he was not classified as a major risk, he was soon transferred to Alcatraz.

It was there that he met Arthur ‘Dock’ Barker of the Barker-Karpis Gang, Dale Stamphill (serving life for kidnapping and robbery), William Martin (twenty-five years for mail robbery) and Rufus McCain. McCain was already serving ninety-nine years for a bank robbery and kidnapping in Oklahoma when he staged a violent escape from the dreaded Tucker Prison Farm in Arkansas, a prison later immortalised in Robert Redford’s movie ‘Brubaker.’

McCain’s trial judge, Federal District Judge Robert Williams, had lambasted the Oklahoma jury for not sending McCain to the electric chair under the National Bank Robbery Act of 1934. Under the Act, no bloodshed was necessary for robbing a bank, mere robbery itself was a capital crime. Chiding them for letting McCain live rather than die in Oklahoma’s electric chair, the charmingly-nicknamed ‘Sizzlin’ Sally,’ Williams remarked:

“In the next robbery, a son or daughter of one of you jurors may be taken as hostage.”

Once recaptured, the escape sealed McCain’s transfer to The Rock. Henri Young would see McCain leave not in a successful escape or transfer, but under a shroud. In that way, Young had been no better than McCain, it would not have been Young’s first time taking hostages, either. Federal Judge Stanley Spencer had sent him to McNeil Island for the Lind robbery. Both Spencer and prosecutor US Attorney Simpson described Young as:

“The worst and most dangerous criminal with whom we ever dealt.”

As for his personality and criminal leanings, they were equally clear:

“One who would not hesitate to kill anybody who crossed his path.”

Hardly a man who stole five dollars to feed his sister when a local grocer refused to give him a job. Young was a murderer, kidnapper and hardened stick-up artist before he even saw Alcatraz. His disciplinary record on The Rock was no less than staggering. Held there between 1935 and 1948 (the year Warden James Johnston retired), Young racked up McCain’s murder and the attempted escape alongside dozens of other major and minor infractions.

The murder of McCain has several possible causes. To believe the film it was entirely the fault of Alcatraz, the way it was run and those who ran it. Associate Warden E.J. Miller beomes ‘Milton Glenn’ and portrayed by Gary Oldman (very well, admittedly) as a raging sadist who personally slashes Young’s Achilles tendon with a straight razor. This never happened. Warden James Johnstone is portrayed by Stefan Gierasch (and played very well) as a bumbling, ineffectual buffoon incapable of running one prison adequately let alone three at once. This is also a falsehood. (Gierasch, incidentally, also played executed convict ‘Willy’ in cult classic ‘The Travelling Executioner’ but, with apologies to Stacy Keach, we digress).

That Young killed McCain is undisputed. Precisely why is unclear. It certainly was not all down to a destructive regime run by brutes and sadists looking to destroy those they could not bend to their will. It was probably far more personal than that. Young and McCain had a personal feud that had been building for some time before McCain’s untimely death.

Friday January 13, 1939 saw the major escape attempt involving Young, McCain, Barker, Martin and Stamphill. It failed, obviously, and was one factor in McCain’s death. The five had been planning their escape for months and from what was considered the most impregnable place in the prison; D Block.

D Block, about to be refurbished as the prison’s solitary confinement and punishment cells, was supposed to be the hardest part of Alcatraz to escape from. The refurbishment, ironically, came as a result of this escape. McCain was not originally supposed to be involved, but conned his way in when he intercepted a not from Young to Barker. Young, not a fan of McCain to begin with, now had him as an unwelcome escape partner.

That didn’t help the group’s cohesion and willingness to work together. Worse still after forcing his way into the escape to begin with, McCain had neglected to mention a small problem when breaking out of an island prison. He couldn’t swim.

The next forty-five minutes were spent hurriiedly scavenging driftwood and lashing it together with pieces of their own clothing. Had they all been competent sswimmers they would have been well on their way to shore assuming the current didn’t take them out through the Golden Gate or the cold didn’t give them hypothermia.

Finding driftwood was also difficult. Alcatraz officers regularly patrolled the shore pushing driftwood back out into San Francisco Bay. They fully expected escapers to try and build improvised rafts and had no intention of gifting them the wood to do so. At 3:45 that morning Guard Tom Prichard passed through D Block on a routine patrol, found the five empty cells and raisd the alarm. Young had spent months engineering the plan only for McCain to ruin it for everbody. Worse still, not all the would-be escapers would surrender without one last-ditch effort.

As the Alcatraz siren blared and the searchlight of a Coast Guard cutter split the foggy San Francisco night, the sound of approaching guards heralded the end of the escape. Some of the guards were armed and Arthur Barker fell, fatally wounded in the head and leg. Stamphill took two rounds in the legs. One severed an artery, but Stamphill lived. Young, Martin and McCain quickly surrendered to avoid sharing Barker’s fate. With Stamphill in the island hospital under heavy guard and Barker in the morgue, the others were soon in solitary confinement.

From Young’s point of view, McCain wasn’t what they called a ‘righteous convict.’ Young had surrendered as well, granted, but he was caught standing up, not on his knees begging for the guards’ mercy as McCain had been. To Young’s mind, McCain should never have even been there to start with. It didn’t help that before meekly submitting McCain and Young had disagreed over taking guards’ wives as hostages. McCain wanted to take them and Young did not.

Even before the escape the pair had loathed each other. According to Young, McCain had made a pass at him and, not being homosexual, Young had flattened McCain for making the approach. After the escape, their mutual antipathy turned into homicidal hatred. Each was preparing to murder the other. The only question was who would strike first.

McCain and Young’s feud only worsened while they languished in the punishment cells. Blaming Young for their failure, McCain called a ‘yellow punk bastard’ and remarked that soon only one of them would be lleft on Alcatraz. The failed escape had also cost McCain all his time off for good behaviour, around thirty-five years of it. McCain repeatedly made threats and insults intended to anger and intimidate Young and Young wasted little time taking permanent action.

According to the movie, Young attacked McCain in the dining hall and stabbed him through the throat with a spoon. He didn’t, not that an ordinary sppon is the ideal stabbing weapon to start with even in the absence of anything sharper. The movie also claims Young had been out of one of the dark cells for around thirty minutes, having languished in darkness and filth while being regularly beaten and thrown down flights of steel stairs since the failed escape. This is also flagrantly untrue.

There was no spoon. Nor did Rufus McCain die on the dining hall floor, he died hours later in the prison infirmary. Young had already prepared two shanks when he approached McCain in the prison tailor shop, the shanks hidden in a canvas holster under his shirt. At least they were until Young plunged one into McCain’s stomach, then surrendered the other to guards. For a man whose lawyers later claimed had been driven into a psychological coma by his captors and their regime, he seemed remarkably aware of what he had just done. That alleged ‘coma’ did not stop him remarking, while standing over McCain’s body no less:

“I hope I killed the bastard.”

Young knew exactly what he had done, that it was a crime and that the airtight steel door of San Quentin’s gas chamber was now open wide and ready to receive him. His court-appointed lawyers, though, begged to differ. Given they could not dispute Young having actually killed McCain, they decided that their client would not be on trial, but the US Penitentiary on Alcatraz certainly would be. Young, they declared, had done the deed, but was not acting alone. The Rock, Warden James Johnston and Associate Warden Edward Miller (known as ‘Meathead’ and ‘Jughead’ by comvicts, but never in Miller’s hearing) had driven him to it.

Young himself didn’t seem to care whether he lived or died. When Federal Judge Michael Roche asked him about lawyers, Young was very specific:

“May I have two attorneys, Your Honor? Categorically speaking, I have a preference among attorneys. I would like to have for my counsel two young attorneys with no established reputations either for verdicts or hung juries.”

When Judge Roche remarked that this was rather unusual, Young went further:

“I want the two most youthful attorneys I can get. They probably won’t do any good for me, but maybe they can use the experience.”

The Court obliged Young with youthful lawyers, but not with second-raters or outright rookies. James MacInnis had several years experience under his belt and was a graduate of Stanford Law School. Sol Abrams also had experiience, being a former Assistant US attorney. A Stanford graduate and former prosecutor were far better than Young had expected, and certainly better than Prosecutor Frank Hennessey would have wanted. The trial opened in April of 1941 and was a media circus from beginning to end.

MacInnis and Abrams had promised to put Alcatraz on trial and duly did so. A parade of the nation’s most notorious offenders testified in Young’s defence. Among others bank robber William Dunnock, robber Sam Berlin, kidnapper Harmon Waley, bank bandit Ray Stevenson and mail robber Harry Kelly accused prison authorities of neglect and brutality, stating that Young had indeed lost his mind.

The defence team also engaged psychiatrist Joseph Catton. Catton was well-known and widely-respected for his work with criminals. That made him a very creedible (and very damaging) witness for MacInnis and Abrams. Catton particularly disliked the dark cells someime used to discipline prisoners. These cells, known as ‘The Dark Hole,’ deprived a prisoner of any light whatsoever and they could be kept in them for up to nineteen days under Fedeeral law. That Young had been kept in an ordinary, open-fronted cell, albeit in solitary, was brushed over. Catton’s criticism of the ‘Dark Hole’ was very firm indeed:

“God and Nature gave us eyes to appreciate masses and forms. We’re supposed to get messages from the things we see. Being alone for weeks in lightless xells works havoc.”

They could also show from official records that over thirty prisoners had left the island certified insane in the eight years it had been open. They cited bank robber Rufe Persful who had hacked the fingers off his own hand while mentally disturbed. Murderer Ed Wutke had been the prison’s first suicide, but not the last. Joe Bowers had been shot dead trying to escape, according to the defence it was widely known that Bowers was unstable and that his climbing a high fence in full view of the armed tower guard who quickly shot him constituted a suicide rather than a meaningful escape attempt. The prisoners also personally accused Associate Warden Miller of supervising sever beatings and joining in when he felt like it.

Sam Berlin was very clear regarding the mental well-being of himself and other prisoners:

“I’ve been over there six years. I’m going crazy. They talk about that being a prison for hardened criminals. Lot of young kids over there, for minor offenses, and they’re going crazy like I am. Since I’ve been there I’ve seen thirty prisoners go crazy, be put in a straitjacket and get shipped off to some government hospital. There are few visitors. Most of the inmates are from poor families, whose relatives can’t afford to trvel this far to see them.”

Regarding Young himself, Harry Kelly was very clear in his thoughts:

“Young came to Alcatraz a well-educated, sane young fellow, but after those years in solitary he was about crazy, mentally unbalanced. One morning he started to the dining hall without his trousers. I had to help him. I told him he couldn’t go to eat that way. One Sunday we happened to have steak for dinner. He walked right by the steam table and sat down without any food. He didn’t seem to know he was in the dining hall. I had to share my food with him.”

Young’s testimony was the headline act and he did all in his power to shame the Alcatraz administration. Aside from the beatings and claiming Miller personally tossed him down a flight of steel stairs while handcuffed, Young also accused Miller of regularly flouting his own adminnistration’s rulebook. He claimed that when he showed Miller the Federal rulebook Miller simply responded:

“You don’t run Alcatraz. I run it. And Alcatraz is not a penitentiary. Alcatraz is Alcatraz…”

Miller was a stern disciplinarian, certainly, and it’s possible that he sometimes over-stepped his authority. That said, the word of convicts with nothing to lose by lying is as open to question as that of prison officials who might something to hide. As a former assistant US Attorney put it:

“A dozen convicts will watch an inmate stabbing, but it’s imposible to get a conviction. They will all swear they didn’t see a thing. Perjury means nothing to them.”

They could have been telling the truth or they could have been lying, it made no difference once the jury had heard witness after witness testify to the cruelty of Alcatraz and the insanity of Henri Young. The jury were thoroughly sold by Young’s defence and fuelled the media fire with their verdict; Not guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Judge Roche had little choice but to impose three years rather than the death sentence everyone involved had expected when the trial began. The gas chamber door swung shut, closed by a masterful defence from MacInnis and Abrams.

The jury did not stop at sparing Young’s life. They bought the defence wholesale. In addition to acquitting Young of murder they effectively found Alcatraz, Warden Johnston and Associate Warden Miller guilty as charged. A statement issued by them to the press made their opinion of Johnston and Miller’s regime abundantly clear:

“That conditions as concern treatment of prisoners at Alcatraz are unbelievabky cruel and inhuman, and it is our respectful hope and our earnest petition that a proper and speedy investigation of Alcatraz be made so that justice and humanity may be served.”

Miller had started at Alcatraz as a guard in 1934 and worked his way up to Associate Warden by 1940. He brooked no insolence or disobedience from prisoners or staff alike, but was not a power-hungry sadist. He ad even saved the life of one prisoner, former Capone triggerman ‘Lefty’ Egan. Egan had fallen off a ladder while painting part of the main cell-block’s roof. Miller put himself between Egan and the solid concrete that lay beneath him, injuring himself in the process.

Referring to the Egan incident years later, a former Alcatraz convict described Miller with approval, albeit qualified:

“Miller was all right. He might beat the hell out of you one day, but the next day you ask him a favor and he did it. He was a good guy.”

Another convict was firm about Miller saving Egan’s life when he hadn’t had to:

“Lefty told me later if Miller hadn’t risked his own neck, he’d have been a goner, sure as hell.”

Hardly the behaviour of a man given to randomly maiming convicts on a whim or in a fit of temper. According to the film Miller was also dismissed over his alleged brutality and never worked in a prison again. In reality Miller stayed within the penal system. Far from being brought up on charges and dismissed, Miller became Warden at Leavenworth in 1947 and died there in 1959.

Warden Johnston of Alcatraz became ‘Warden Humson’ in the Hollywood version, possibly to avoid any lawsuits that might have arisen from his being so unfairly maligned. It is true that Johnston was Warden of three prisons, but not at the same time.

Johnston was Warden at Folsom from 1912 to 1913 and actually did much to make it a more civilised and humane place. He did the same at San Quentin from 1914 to 1924, also dragging it kicking and screaming out of its medieval era. Known as ‘Old Saltwater’ for his habit of soaking unruly convicts with a fire hose, Johnston was the first Warden at Alcatraz from 1934 until he finally retired in 1948. He died on September 7, 1954, less than two months before Alcatraz alumnus and Depression-era gangster George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly suffered a fatal heart attack at Leavenworth.

Incidentally, no American Warden has ever run three prisons at once, nor have any run State and Federal prisons simultaneously. Johnston ran Folsom, then San Quentin for the State of California. He ran Alcatraz for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. By the standards of the time he was one of America’s more humane and civilised Wardens. Strict on discipline, granted, but not habitually inhumane or arbitrarily cruel.

Like Miller, Johnston was known as a strict disciplinarian. He was certainly not a bumbling incompetent miraculously chosen to run the toughest prison in the nation holding its most difficult, dangerous convicts. He also dealt in redeeming and reforming prisoners whenever possible, not destroying them.

Johnston and Miller were, by the standards of their time, decent enough. There were certainly far worse places a comvict could be, with far harsher regimes and far crueler officials. The Tucker Prison Farm in Atkansas from which Rufus McCain had escaped, for instance. By today’s standards the system at Alcatraz would have been considered unconstitutional, at least parts of it anyway. In 1934 when Alcatraz opened public and professional attitudes to crime and criminals were very different and penal policy reflected that.

Some aspects of the 1934 Alcatraz regime would not be allowed today, but they were not considered inhumane or cruel at the time. For the 1930’s and 1940’s (also the most prolific decades for executions) Miller was a typical prison official and Johnston a humanitarian and reformist. They were hard men by modern standards, but not the brutes and buffoons of Hollywood myth.

Henri Young, on the other hand, was no reformist. He never reformed himself, let alone anybody else. Sentenced to an additional three years for manslaughter for McCain’s death, he was returned to Alcatraz. Far from dying there in 1942, taking his own life after scrawling ‘Victory’ on a wall with a chunk of rock as the film claims, Young remained on the island until 1948 and continued breaking the rules. His last infraction was in 1947 and only cost him two weeks yard time. The imposer of this mild, non-brutal punishment? Associate Warden E.J. Miller.

He was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Illinois to finish his Federal sentence, then back to Walla Walla in 1954 to serve out his 1933 murder conviction. He was released in 1972, almost immediately jumped his parole and remains missing. Presumably, Henri Young died as he lived, a hardened recidivist and fugitive from the law.