Alcatraz opened as a federal penitentiary in 1934 and was considered escape-proof. For two days in May 1946, six convicts held the cell house, and the Marines came to help take it back.
The Horror
Bernard Coy was a bank robber sentenced in 1937 to 25 years. He was moved to Alcatraz from Atlanta in 1938 and worked as a cell-house orderly, a job that let him move about the main block. He noticed that the bars of the west gun gallery could be spread, and that the officer there kept predictable routines. He lost about twenty pounds to fit through the gap, and used a bar-spreading device.
On May 2 he got into the gallery, overpowered Officer Burt Burch and took a rifle. He lowered a pistol, keys and gas grenades to his accomplices below. Joe Cretzer, Clarence Carnes and Marvin Hubbard were with him at first, and Sam Shockley and Miran Thompson joined once the attempt was under way. The plan was to reach the recreation yard, seize the launch at the dock and leave.
It failed at a door. The key to the yard door was not among the keys they had, because Officer Miller had kept it where regulations said it should not be. The convicts jammed the lock trying others, and the escape stalled inside the building. The key was later found hidden in a toilet in the cell where the hostages were held.
With the exit shut, the day turned murderous. Cretzer shot hostage officers at close range, urged on by Shockley and Thompson. Officer William Miller died of his wounds on May 3. Officer Harold Stites was killed during the attempt to retake the cell house. The Bureau of Prisons says he was shot while trying to regain control. Wikipedia’s account describes it as friendly fire on a squad entering the gun gallery. Fourteen officers were wounded in one count, and about 18 in another.
The warden asked for troops. Two Marine platoons came from Naval Station Treasure Island. Officers and Marines fired into the blocks, and the Marines drilled holes in the roof and dropped grenades to drive the convicts into a utility corridor. On May 3 the convicts phoned the warden about a deal, and he would accept only surrender. At 09:40 on May 4, officers found the bodies of Cretzer, Coy and Hubbard.
Shockley and Thompson were executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin on December 3, 1948. Carnes was spared after hostages testified that he had refused orders to kill them. He received a second life sentence, was paroled in 1973, was returned to prison and died in custody in 1988.
The Legend
Films have retold the battle. Brute Force of 1947, Birdman of Alcatraz of 1962 and Six Against the Rock of 1987 are fictionalised, and Birdman in particular is described as a largely fictional riot. Popular retellings add details of the plan, such as the grease on Coy’s body and his exact age, and these are unconfirmed. The count of dead depends on how one counts: two officers and three convicts died in the fighting, and two more convicts were executed afterwards.
The Modern Relic
Alcatraz Island is a National Park Service site, with a visitor programme of reservations and timed entry. The corridor where the battle ended, and the holes the Marines drilled, are part of the cell house. Which of these a visitor can see is unconfirmed. The story of the battle is well documented, and the gallery bars Coy spread and the key that did not turn were the whole of it.
