Uncle Al Capone (27 page)

Somehow Capone was “tripped up” by one of his “trustworthy friends”, Montgomery (#67), who informed the officials that Capone had some money planted in the Renovating Plant.

One of the fellows who had access to another $500 took it all for himself. This $500, or what was left of it, about $375 was given to Ralph and Ted just before they left. I saw them put the money into one of the cans then take it out and divide it, putting half in each. So each had half of the $375 plus some other money, plus the dagger made from files. These daggers were as sharp as a razor and made of tempered steel. I was told later that the cans were found on the beach near Ft. Baker, but there was no mention of the money or weapons.

During the months before the actual escape, there were many things to be done, including conditioning their bodies for the icy cold waters.

To this end, neither one of them wore any clothing except the “coveralls” they had to wear. In this way they conditioned themselves to withstand the cold winds, the rain, and the fogs as they walked the island.

They always cavorted and played around with water. In the shop they would have someone throw buckets of cold water on them. The clothes got very wet and they would keep them on as long as they could before the guard made them change. They always showered in cold water.

Out in the yard at recreation periods they went through all the strenuous exercises that were permissible. They played hand-ball, did push-ups, wrestled and took fast walks back and forth in the yard for long lengths of time.

They drank nothing hot. Always cold water. And again there was other “conditioning” to do. This was a conditioning of all those who were close to the Blacksmith shop. So that on the day they were to leave, every move would not be unusual or alert convict, or guard, that something was about to happen.

To this end we would get the guard used to “missing” one of us at count call, then after a while to miss two.

To do this, one of us would go over to the locker that Joe Steere kept things in, to which we had keys made from an impression of his. One would open it just as Joe Steere was about to count his men, and close the door behind him. This locker would just about hold one man, and he had to squeeze into it.

When the officer (Steere) would just about be ready to telephone in, that he was short a man, one of us would call him out of sight of the locker. The fellow in it would come out and then Steere would “see him” check him off the count sheet, then call in his “count” as being “okay” to the control room.

This hiding out got to be quite a game. At first the officer became concerned, then gradually he became accustomed to hunting down one or two of us, when we would keep out of his sight by hiding in the locker, or moving from one shop to the other. We could move back and forth between the blacksmith shop, the tinsmith shop and the mat shop by an areaway which was out of sight by the tower.

As the months passed, I worked myself into sitting in the guards’ chair, at his desk. Here he kept his count sheet, which he was supposed to check-off every ½ hour, and every 2 hours he was supposed to call the control room.

Joe Steere got to the point where he became lax. He liked to work at jobs, being a pretty good mechanic and a good electrician. So he sometimes neglected to check off his men at the ½ hour, waiting till he had to “call in” his count at 9:30 and 11:00 in the mornings and at 2:30 and 3:30 in the afternoon.

While I sat at his desk, and he came in, I would ask sometimes, ‘Everybody accounted for?’ He would then say, ‘Okay, John, check ‘em off.’ This I would do by putting check marks in the squares indicating the time in ½ hours, alongside each name and number.

We would also make excuses to have him “pass” one of us over to the electric shop at about “count time”, around the time he would have to call the control room. These trips paid off handsomely when Ralph and Ted left.

But in the meantime we started cutting the bars because the crew that went around testing the bars by hitting them with rubber hammers to see if they were firm and not sawed had made the tests in our shops. From the method they used, and from the length of time between tests, we figured it would be safe to cut the bars almost through, then put putty in the saw-cut to hide the fact that they were cut. Long before we cut the bars, we began knocking out the glass in the windows, which were small squares about 6 X 8 inches. Each time we knocked out a pane of glass (accidentally of course) we would then insert a piece of wood in place of the glass. This piece was held in place by twisting a lath-like piece of wood fastened in the middle. This lath-like piece when twisted horizontally would wedge against the steel frame and hold fast.

Of all the men that worked in these shops, it was amazing that the officials were not informed, or even alerted by the preparations that seemed so obvious. Although, after the bars were cut, I don’t believe more than 4 of us knew they were ready to be twisted out.

Next we began to get the guard on the tower used to answering the phone. We would dial his number (which was 06) when Joe Steere was over in the mat shop. At these times we would watch the tower guard, and when he was about to leave the tower to make his round, over the roof-top, looking around and down, we would call his number. He would then go back into the tower and answer the phone. Sometimes we would not talk and he would say “hello” a few times, then hang up, sit awhile expecting it to ring again, then go out. Sometimes we would ring a second time and then when he answered we would ask him if he could see Joe Steere around, not giving him a name or indicating who was calling. Sometimes we asked him to locate the electrician, or if the truck was in the area, anything to keep him a few more minutes in the tower.

Finally the winter months came. In December 1937 there were some dense fogs.

And to make things more exciting, one of the signs that we were watching for came off on schedule. We heard through a fellow inmate by the name of Amos, who came from Oklahoma, that he had been discharged some months before and had things to do on the outside for several Oklahomans who were in Alcatraz.

When he left, the prearranged signal was for him to ride the “
Eureka
” ferry boat from Sausalito at the time in the morning this boat always passed the island on the west side. He had to make sure the
Eureka
passed on the west side in order for us to see it. In order to make sure, he had to know which way the tide was running out the Gate. These boats always went on the side of Alcatraz that would make the ferry boat safe from crashing onto the Island if something went wrong as the ferry was passing the “Rock”.

The signal was for Amos to stand alone on the front of the “
Eureka
” whether it be rainy or foggy. We noticed while watching the ferry boats pass the Rock shuttling back and forth between Sausalito and San Francisco, that almost no one stood out on front of the boat. This was because it was so cold and windy.

One morning, sure enough, there was a guy standing out there on the
Eureka
! (There were many other ferry boats shuttling back and forth, but our boat was the
Eureka
.) To be sure that it was no fluke, Amos was to stand out there with only a suit coat on and no hat. He was to remain on the boat while in San Francisco, and be on it as it passed coming back toward Sausalito. And there he was! Our signal was simply dropping a white pillow case out the window at the end of a small cord. This white pillow case was seen and acknowledged by Amos as the boat went by.

Finally, on December 16 or 17, both Ralph and Ted were ready. The day before they left was a good day, but they couldn’t make up their minds to go.

The day was good and foggy. I said, ‘Two days like today and yesterday, are very rare. You’ll never get fogs as dense as these’.

So, as planned, as soon as Joe Steere made his count and reported to the control room that the count was okay, Ralph and Ted stripped off their clothes. Joe Steere left the shop with Bartlett; it had been prearranged for Bartlett to ask to go to the electric shop.

After stripping off their clothing, they smeared themselves with all the grease from the two 5 gallon cans. They had grease all over them good and thick; they took their 1 gallon cans, which were tied together like water wings, and their big stillson wrench. They were all ready to go out the window! The bars were jerked out! They both shook hands with me. Everybody else was working at their jobs.

When they left it was 9:40 a.m. They went through the window without seemingly touching the sides! I went over where I could command a view of the tower and the outside entrance of our shop.

Slim Bartlett came back, and with him was Joe Steere. It was about 10 a.m. and time for the guard to check his men.

When Joe left for the mat shop again I had to call the tower, because “Betty Boop”, the guard, was fixing to leave. He came back and answered the call, then waited. This guards’ name was Cokenaur; we had nick-named him Betty-Boop.

Joe Steere came back in and was trying to find his two men. Although he didn’t ask any questions I could see that he was concerned.

No one attempted to fix the window where Ralph and Ted went out. Luckily, Joe Steere didn’t look for an opening because it looked huge compared to the small frames!

As usual Joe Steere had not made any checks against the men’s names and numbers on his 9:30 count sheet.

By 10:45 Joe was really concerned now. One of the men working in the machine shop asked me, “Have those fellows gone?” I answered ‘they’ve been gone now for over an hour.’

Finally Joe Steere had made up his mind that he had lost two men and he started to take the telephone down to dial the control room. I spoke up and said, ‘Mr. Steere, you had better check your count sheet before you call in.’

He came over, picked up the count sheet and looked at it.

I told him, ‘you know Joe, the first thing the Captain will do when he comes in will be to pick up the count sheet to see when you checked them off last, and will want to know why you didn’t do it every half hour?’

So Joe Steere checked everybody in for all the squares, indicating everyone was there at 9:30, 10:00, 10:30 and now at 11 a.m. he picks up the telephone and tells the control room he was short two men!

The whistles blew, horns and sirens moaned out like hound dogs. “Whineholt”, the Captain, rushed in and, sure enough, the first thing he did was to pick up the count sheet and check it. Then he and the Deputy Warden asked Joe when he saw them last. Joe said, ‘sometime between 10:30 and 11:00.’

The Captain sent out an alarm to the Coast Guard. The boats were converging below us, coming in close, in the fog, then backing out.

The other convicts were all moving into the cell house, each detail with extra guards walking with them. Finally, we are all locked up.

Ralph and Ted had an hour and 25 minute head start. The report to the searchers was that they had been missing for about 15 minutes. This gave Ralph and Ted a free area from the search boats, because they concentrated their search close to the Island, figuring it would take more than 15 minutes to get any distance away.

It was very cold and the fog was thick. The whole population of Alcatraz was electrified. After we were all secured in our cells, the full custodial force searched the work area, hoping to find Ralph and Ted hiding somewhere inside.

When the F.B.I. arrived they commandeered the island’s boat and made an exhaustive search of all the small inlets (like caves) that had been carved into the island by the tides and the western winds over the years.

Two days later, after the bars were welded back in place, and we were back on the job, the F.B.I. agents were still searching. I looked out the window as the boat full of agents (F.B.I.) came toward where the window was located. As the boat eased in toward the island, one of the F.B.I. men trained his binoculars at the window I was looking out. I thumbed my nose at him.

Two months later, I was taken from Alcatraz to New York City to appear at a trial, and also before the Grand Jury. While waiting in the custody of the F.B.I. in the Federal Bldg in Foley Square, many agents came to where I was under guard on the 30th floor. One of them looked at me and put his thumb to his nose! I put my two hands to my eyes as though I was holding a pair of binoculars.

The agent laughed and said, ‘We know each other!’

I then asked him why they didn’t question me about the escape. They had called out everyone else who worked in those shops and questioned them, but not me.

The agent said they didn’t have any confidence in me or my answers because they still remembered Chicago.

During the 10 days after the escape, the F.B.I. were constantly at my brother’s home in Sausalito, expecting Ralph and Ted to show up there. So someone, or perhaps several inmates, must have told the F.B.I. during questioning that “Ralph, Ted, and I were always together.”

From all I can gather, I would say that Ralph and Ted did make land and were in good shape. They had planned for everything that could conceivably happen and had prepared for it.

I was informed that the gallon cans were found. But I never heard anyone mention the finding of any money, or the daggers that were in them. Over the many years, I never mentioned these cans, until one day I did, to an inmate named Chuck Cole (#535).

From the many talks I had with Ralph Roe and Ted Cole, the briefings on escape routes, hiding places and the importance of committing no crimes, I was convinced that if they did make shore, they also made freedom, as they envisioned what needed to be done to accomplish their freedom. And the finding of the cans minus the contents, leaves little doubt, but what they did escape.” -Johnny Chase

–“Hell, it’s a business… All I do is supply a public demand. I do it in the best and least harmful way I can. I can’t change the conditions. I just meet them without backing up.”

–“Don’t get the idea I’m one of those goddam radicals. Don’t get the idea I’m knocking the American system.”

–“I give the public what it wants. I never had to send out high-pressure salesmen. I could never meet the demand.”