Audio
John McGoran
Transcript
Speaker 1: Testing. One, two, three. Testing. One, two, three. We're talking with correctional officer John McLaurin who was here as a correctional officer from 1954to 1955 Mr. McGoran, you were telling me as we went up the hill that things were a little bit different. For instance, inside the cell house, I was starting to talk about how status was achieved the higher up you move in the cell house, the different tiers in your, you're telling me something else about that.
John: I feel it was just in reverse of that because from cell 101 and across from that one, whichever number that is, that'd be 201 I think wouldn't it? Those were the most desirable cells to have in the institution. Do you remember where the old barbershop is? That row of cells there and then the same like number one on that row on the main floor, those were the that most desirable to have. And I remember Barker I think was in that one and his brother I think was right next to it. Number two cell. I think 101, I believe it was, I remember it was a very slick check artist and he worked his way up to that cell and he had the most desirable one.
Speaker 1: A check artist?
John: It's writing checks, forgery.
Speaker 1: Do you remember any of those different kinds of inmates? Could you tell us about some of the folks that were inside?
John: Okay, well I remember Alvin Karpis and his name is Al Carpovich I think. I have a book or they call roster. Do you want me to xerox that off and send it to you?
Speaker 1: Oh, that'd be great.
John: That'll give you the names of several. Most of the convicts that were in there at that time and their numbers. I'll send that to you.
Speaker 1: Well, what could you tell us about Karpis?
John: Well, when I was here, he was in charge of the library, but he was also sort of the manipulator of all the other convicts. He never got into trouble himself, but he always had his hands in to manipulate things. I guess now he's working in Puerto Rico isn't he?
Speaker 1: He just committed suicide this last summer. At 71. Killed himself in Spain.
John: Let me think now, Stroud. One of my jobs on Sunday morning, I had to go to the main gate, pick up a special razor that was called a locked-in blade and go up to the hospital where Stroud was, take him across the hall and sit there and watch him while he took his bath and shaved.
John: And I remember that well because he used to try to, at times he had tried to teach me Spanish and he would guess he was pretty good at Spanish and French. Somedays he'd try to teach me French. I didn't listen. I wasn't supposed to talk to him and not say a word but we did because I thought it was just impolite not to. I answered him. I didn't instigate any conversation with him, but I'd answer him politely.
John: I remember one day he says me, "I can take these two fingers and kill you." He says, "all I gotta do is get ahold of your wind pipe." And that little frail thing. He didn't look any bigger than this guy, but he thought he could do it anyway. Maybe he could've if he got hold of my wind pipe.
John: Let me think of another somebody else over there. I told you about Miranda that I had to, when he came in after I think he shot up the Senate, didn't he? Then he was transferred here and I had to give him, make sure that he got his hair cut.
John: I remember Osburn one day. He was right, his cell was right outside the main gate, the Sally Port they call it. He got very upset with me and he stood there like a ape at the gates and telling me I was a no good so-and-so, this and that. He was gonna kill me when he got out and everything like that, and I had to wait there while somebody opened the gate for me.
John: So I just looked at him and I thought to myself, well, I'm not going to put him on report because that's what I was supposed to do, but I thought the guy was stir-crazy. Then the next time I saw him he was in line in the mess hall and he just glared at me. But he didn't make any more moves. I guess he was thankful that I didn't put them on report and throw them in the hole.
John: But you got to kind of use your head on things like that. If a guy is really upset over nothing, give him a break. Let me think. Got Any ideas that you would like to know about that I might help? I'm not sure. It's been a long time.
Speaker 1: You know, two people at that we're constantly asked about is the person that spent the longest time, Alvin Karpis and Robert Stroud. If you could, could you go into more details on the two of them?
John: Stroud and Karpis. Karpis was not anybody outstanding that I could see. Stroud was because it was like fame or infamous. But I think Franklin, do you ever heard of him?
Speaker 1: Whitey Franklin?
John: Whitey Franklin. I think that he was probably pretty long termer, and probably done in several people. I think he was won that probably killed as many as seven that he was convicted of. At that time I understood that if he was turned loose he had to go back to the southern state someplace and stand for more murders they had they thought was against him. You told me to tell the group about being in the kitchen, and you know about the knives there. I got to think of my friend Glom. He was correctional officer Glom. One day he was in charge of the kitchen.
John: He has also had the keys for the knife rack where it was, I don't know, cause I never said stood watch in the kitchen anyways, Franklin got into an argument with somebody and it was all quiet. When they argued you didn't know it, you weren't listening and tuning into it. Anyway, Franklin says to Glom and he says, "Mr Glom, I'm ready to peel potatoes now," and Glom says, "Oh no Franklin, not now wait a while."
John: He kept an eye on Franklin, until Franklin cool-down Franklin, was very-lips were always pursed like that, never said a word to anything. But I always felt he liked me cause he all was made sure I got enough potatoes and meat when I was on all that. I tried to be fair with him, the policy was be firm but fair and that's what I tried to be and I think he respected that cause I always felt he really liked me, and I always admired him even though, did you ever hear about Franklin and the '46 riot?
John: I understood, if I'm right now, that he somehow had to lay in the barbwire up on the old work building for several hours after he got shot there and no one went out and got him cause he was one on that climb that got on top of the roof and tried to attack the guard house up there. That's just what I heard anyway.
Speaker 3: He was involved in a little different escape. He was apprehended after he killed another correctional officer.
John: Whitey he did?
Speaker 3: That's the way we understood all story. At least it was prior to the '46.
John: So why am I thinking he killed anybody in this? Oh and in another institution here maybe.
Speaker 3: We have it here.
Speaker 1: I can't remember specifically what he did.
Speaker 3: Royal Cline.
Speaker 1: Royal Cline, bludgeon to death?
John: I think he was one of the toughest men they had here. Then there was a guy in my name of Thompson that I'm sure that he was supposed to have killed several like 10 of them too.
John: supplies were brought in, say like they bought in a bag of rice or flour or something like that. You ever hear about the probes? They'd probe in there with metal rods and make sure that no guns would come in bags of flour or so, and that was one of the jobs we had to do and had to look through.
John: We'll see, Karpis, Stroud-and I know, did I mention to you that you, I heard you mention that there was no violence towards the convicts, but when anyone was brought-somebody who was in the hole and they were acting up, I stood outside there and myself, they usually get about four of us and then the biggest correctional officer, we had Mitchell I think and just arms like this, you take a sap and go in and work them over.
John: While, we were standing outside, I don't know. We didn't need to because I think he could take care of anybody, but my job was to stand outside. I never worked anybody over myself, but there was another guy who went in to work somebody over one day and the convict moved and he's hit the wall and broke his hand.
John: I can't remember the guys name, I was trying to think of it, but I got the list of the correctional officers I would remember. I’ll tell you another guy you could probably talk to some time that Sergeant Nukes of the California Highway Patrol, he worked here. He got hit, I think go across the side of the head with a guitar. It brings to mind that, on Saturday afternoon I think it was, my job when I was on duty was to go down and in the long end there was a laundry, not laundry, a shower room, you know the shower room where you get on the mains. And then there was another room off to the right where they would practice with electric guitars. And I think we must have had 10-12 people in there at times. All with electric guitars. And I'd go wild with all that noise. And they were allowed to do that. But they, I never heard them while they were in the cells able to, to practice up there.
Speaker 1: What are the kind of musical things were they allowed to do then? Did they have a full band or did they have a full choir?
John: The electric guitars, is the only thing I remember and possibly a horn, I'm trying to think now. I think there was a trombonist in that and I believe he was a man that kidnapped the Weyerhaeuser boy, do you remember that. Weyerhaeuser or the lumberman. Oh, and now another seat. Well, I talked to a friend of mine with a Weyerhaeuser, a company the other day and I understand that the boy that was kidnapped hired the men under a different name and they're now working for Weyerhaeuser.
Speaker 1: The people that were involved in kidnapping him?
John: Oh the man knows that. Yeah, but he's hired him apparently for some reason.
Speaker 1: That is a real case and loving your enemies.
John: Human. I went to a course, at the college of Marin, and one of the men I attended the course with worked for Weyerhaeuser and he was telling me about that.
Speaker 3: You live around here now?
John: In Corte Madera.
John: He's from Chico, California, he's never been here so I thought it'd be interesting to bring him over here, you know.
Speaker 1: Could you tell us about your days living out here in Alcatraz when you were a bachelor in the quarters?
John: I can't remember too much about those except I knew where I lived and I think now it's labeled the chaplain's office or something like that.
Speaker 1: Military Chapel?
John: Military chapel is it? I believe there was Landers, myself, Henshaw and another man that lived together there and you just interviewed Landers and then we had our kitchen that overlooked the water here.
John: It wasn't a very elaborate place to live but it was a place anyway. And I don't remember being charged for anything there except the our food. As far as the off duty, there wasn't much-well, when we were off duty we were required to make notes and write them up on how to make the place more secure.
John: Like, could there be a mirror here or could we lower keys better? Another place, a thing like that. Just everything to make the place more secure. I think in the later years, I think that, one of the reasons this place deteriorated, the morale or the, I wanna say morale...integrity. I think of the men that made this place crumble more than anything else. They didn't really want to do their job as well as they did in the previous years. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but that was my opinion. It was always my opinion.
Speaker 1: What about the people that you worked for? Like which, which warden did you serve under?
John: Under Swope, and he was probably, I think he was the last political warden, as they used to call them there. He would just plain mean I think. Everybody else, I think I thought the same thing. He had no mercy on anybody, but he was powerful.
Speaker 1: And how do you mean he was a political appointee?
John: Well, I wouldn't think much of the time, but they always said he was political. A political warden. However you say on that while he was appointed because he did somebody, some politician a good turn. From that time on, then I think after that, I can't remember who the warden was after Rhino. There was several of them after that. And those people seemed like pretty good men. But I don't know if they could hold a discipline like Swope could.
Speaker 1: How did he hold the discipline? Can you give us some examples?
John: Well, one of the convicts that was in the hole and a very, a lot of the restrictions, taking privileges, and the officers, he just fire anybody on the spot. You gotta be a watch for your, if you want to have a job, you gotta watch out what you were doing, he never made any mistakes.
John: I'll tell you one of the mistakes I made, remember when we came down out of the yard? Well. Right up top there was a call box or telephone and one night about two in the morning I had to patrol the work area and they lived a little hairy. I'll tell you, it was dark going in those buildings, something slipped and made a little racket. You've got wondering, "the convict escape or not?"
John: Anyway, I was a little bit nervous one night and I had to go up to the top of that wall and make a call in by not putting back the telephone properly. I mean, had to be right just right. It set off an alarm after a couple of minutes I think it was. Do you remember telling hearing that? One went off and of course it went off in his room and it woke him up and I'll tell you this, it was hell trying to-I had to write letters and this and that. What happened, and those things made you shook up a person. Especially if you're trying to hold a job.
John: I had to write two letters all the time. I was here, but it wasn't pleasant.
Speaker 1: Did the warden ever have the correctional officer’s staff over for a party at Christmas time or anything. Did you ever go inside his home?
John: No. I went in there with a convict with the name of Bynum one time. Bynum had to do this kind of the work around the place, but really I didn't get to go in much more than the inside the front door and I don't remember anything about it really. As far as what it looked like or anything like that. I wish I did. I was out of a beautiful building.
Speaker 1: Did the warden have a personal servant out of the convicts?
John: I think it was Bynum the convict. That did most of the work there for him. I don't remember anybody else other than that.
Speaker 1: Did any warden's have pets?
John: I don't recall any.
Speaker 1: We've heard stories that one of the wardens had a pet. Did any the correctional officers have any pets out here?
John: Not that I know of. I'm not sure. I don't think there was any allowed out here really.
Speaker 1: Did you ever catch an inmate with a pet of any kind?
John: No. Like we caught Bynum with a fellow pet one time. Bynum was a homosexual.
John: I remember when we caught him, it was two in the cell and then myself and Mitchell, I think caught him. I remember Bynum saying, "Oh, I was just teaching Mandy how to pray."
Speaker 1: Did they-
Speaker 3: Well, you were saying there were two in a cell.
John: Bynum and another convict in one cell. I think, like above 101 on the second tier I think it was. Somehow they got into-that was one of the things you gotta watch for. Make sure that each one got into their own cell or if they didn't just pull the wool over your eyes and two sneak into a cell. If they were both homosexual.
Speaker 3: Did that happen very often?
John: Well they tried it.
Speaker 3: They tried it.
John: You know, sometimes I wondered if they weren't just trying to play tricks with the officers, and I think sometimes that was a case where they would try to trip you up just for the fun of it, you know? No big deal.
Speaker 3: What action is taken for something like that? What would you do to the individuals involvement in something? I don't know whether you, would you consider that a minor infraction or major?
John: Oh that would be, I think major, but you know where that desk you have right there. At Broadway and going into the mess hall. Well that was where the head guy, head correctional officer had his desk. Everything operated out of that. So anything that happened, we just go to that desk. Whoever happened to be on duty there and he'd take care of it because he was a senior correctional officer. It wasn't up to us to make any judgment.
John: After that, then he would make out the reports and then the guy would go to court, what do they call it? I'm not sure what they call it now. If it was court or in the Navy it's mast. But they had held a court and then usually the assistant warden, deputy or whatever they call him, would pass judgment that we never really heard much what they'd get. Never paid much attention.
Speaker 1: What kind of people sat on the court as you say it to listen to an inmate's side of it?
John: No, I don't think they had that privilege in this place anyway. Just the probably the officer would tell his story and the convict and tell his story and the deputy warden would decide what the guy got. like 30 days in the hole, man that's something else. So they got three days or something like that. Three or six days. A lot of times they got 30 that I know of and I want to say a lot of time, but I do remember that.
Speaker 1: Straight through 30? Or 30 with a break?
John: 30 days they could, they had to come out, but that's to look it up on the history book or something. But I know they got 30 days and sometimes they'd get pretty shook up in 30 days too.
Speaker 1: How about the upper areas of solitary confinement? Could you tell me some more details about that?
John: Which now?
Speaker 1: The top areas. The permanent lockup unit?
John: The top cell. It seemed to me that there was one the cell farthest that was number 14 was it? Okay. I think that was the a strip cell where they had nothing on, And they just threw them in there.
John: The other cells were maybe they could have a jumper suit on. I think they didn't have any toilets in any of those, there was a hole on the floor. I remember.
Speaker 1: Some of them-
John: From those they start working back into the open cell, and then they had toilets and those, but jumper suits. Then as they got better then they worked up to the higher cells. That's the way I remember it.
John: Another thing I would wonder about too is you said that no one was ever paroled out of here. I don't think they got parole out of here, but they were turned loose from here because I remember one guy by the name on Washington went right out of TU. His time was up and they couldn't keep him. He says, I said, "Well Washington, what are you going to do when you leave here?" I'm pretty sure the name of Washington. He says, "the first thing that I'm gonna do is rob a bank."
John: He might've been pulling my leg, but I never found out. You know, they weren't above that.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the, we understand it. If an individual was in here for a specific sentence and he finished his sentence, and of course you would be released, probably wasn't parole. Yeah, he would be taken back to another federal prison and then parole from there. Even if it was a relatively short time. He still wouldn't go straight out.
John: Let's see, who was it? I know one of them was getting out and they're telling me how long they gotta go, like 30 days and this and that, you know. "Well, I only got 30 days to do," and one fellow says, "well, I got something like 230 days to do" And I was stunned, I says, "How come? What you're in here for 30 days?" He says, "No. Years." But he was joking on that.
Speaker 1: Did they ask to have maybe nicknames for other areas of the prison that I didn't go into or some slang terms that they used that you remember?
John: I think they had, but I can't remember anything right now. I can't think of any terms now.
Speaker 1: What various areas did you work in within the prison facility? You mentioned that you worked in the T.U.
John: I worked in all the towers at one time or another, at one and two. This one here. When I walked up then I thought it was rickety and ready to fall down. The thing would shake like mad, but it's still standing. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: And it's still rickety.
Speaker 3: The other one fell down.
John: Number two fell down? It did huh? Worked on both those towers, worked the wall, I worked the hospital, a barber shop for quite a while. Then I stayed down on that shower room. That's where we had to watch the men real close so they didn't get into the same showers.
Speaker 3: Did they have some kind of separation then, or was it just the-?
John: It was open. It was at that time.
Speaker 3: It was open, so it was easy to watch.
John: The clothing room, which is off the shower room and you'd see at different times of the day you would probably have a different job. Sometimes I might have the a barbershop, maybe nine o'clock to 11 o'clock and then I'd have to go into the mess hall during the lunch periods and in the afternoon maybe have a different job. You had a sheet of paper that told you what to do for a certain job. Job description.
John: What else did I do? I guess I had to work on the armory once in a while. But I hated that job because the tear gas, even though it was contained it always made my eyes water. It was awful working in that place.
Speaker 1: Even though it was still in the canisters?
John: Yeah, there was always tear gas somehow in the atmosphere and made my eyes water all the time. I think that covers the jobs I had to do.
Speaker 1: When you worked in the armory did you ever do any the monitoring of the visiting conversations?
John: Never did. No, but that's right. They had visitors. I had to- in the Sally Port right outside the armory, there was a desk there that once in a while they'd put me censoring magazines. I'd have to look through any magazines and cut out that things I thought weren't just right, like anything on another prison or a convict. But I know when an attorney came and they had to talk between them they had to use a telephone I think. It was a very thick glass between them.
Speaker 1: When you were-you didn't have to monitor those conversations at all?
John: I didn't do it, but I think somebody did. I don't remember having done that at all, that wasn't my one of my jobs. Once in a while I'd have to go up to the movies or when they had held mass, Catholic mass I had to sit in on that.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks very much.
Description
Interview with Ex correctional officer John McGoran about his time and various prisoners on Alcatraz island.
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