Robert Livesey - On the Rock 2008: Twenty-Five Years in Alcatraz : the Prison Story of Alvin Karpis as told to robert Livesey

ON THE ROCK

TWENTY-FIVEYEARS IN
ALCATRAZ

The prison story of Alvin Karpis as told to Robert Livesey
Foreword
Albin Karpowicz was born in Montreal,Canada, in 1908. He grew up in Topeka, Kansas, where an elementary school-teacher changed his name to Alvin Karpis which he kept for the rest of hislife.

Karpis began robbing stores and warehouses in Kansasduring his teens; he reputedly stole his first gun when he was only ten yearsold. His first sentence was thirty days on a Florida chain gang for illegally"riding the rails". At eigh- teen he was given a five-to-ten-yearsentence for a warehouse robbery; he and an inmate, Lawrence Devol, escapedfrom the reformatory in Hutchinson, Kansas, in the spring of 1929 but werearrested in Kansas City. Karpis was transferred to the Kansas StatePenitentiary where he worked hard in the coal mines. He was released in the springof 1931.

In the fall of 1931 Karpis married Dorothy Slayman butthe time he spent with her was short. Karpis teamed up with Freddie Barker whomhe met in Lansing (the State Peniten- tiary) and the Karpis-Barker gang set outon its own crime wave robbing banks, stores, and warehouses across the Mid-west. The gang also successfully carried off two kidnap- pings: the firstvictim was William Hamm, Jr., a bachelor who was president of the Hamm BrewingCo. of St. Paul, Minnesota. The ransom paid was $100,000. The second vic- timwas Edward Brerner, president of the Commercial State Bank at St. Paul. A $200,000 ransom was delivered but the bills were marked and the gang haddifficulty distributing the money.

The Bremer kidnapping took place in 1934. By this timethe FBI was "coming down hard" on the nation's desper- adoes who wereKarpis's friends and associates: Freddie and Ma Barker were killed in aone-sided shoot-out at a cottage

inFlorida; the FBI gunned down Dillinger outside a Chicago movie theatre; BabyFace Nelson was killed by G-men in a shoot-out on a Chicago street in the fallof 1934; Pretty Boy Floyd was killed in a raid on a farm inOhio. Karpis was barely able to keep a step ahead of the FBI but in the fall of 1935 theKarpis gang pulled off a western-style train holdup in a Cleveland station.Karpis was forced to move around the country and finally, in 1936, the FBI closed in on Karpis and his partner, FreddieHunter, and arrested them in New Orleans. Public Enemy Number One, "OldCreepy" as the FBI called him, received a life sentence to be served atAlcatraz, the island prison in the bay of San Francisco.

In 1962 Karpis was transferred toMcNeil Island Penitentiary at Puget Sound, Washington. He was released in 1969 and deported to Canada. Alvin Karpis died in 1979.

New Orleans May1,1936

"AlvinKarpis, you're under arrest! Don't take your hands off that steeringwheel!"

Reflex snaps my head in the direction of the voice andI am looking into the business end of a .351 automaticrifle held next to my temple.

The street is in chaos. Machine guns, rifles, shotguns,and pistols dance in disorder. I look up to see two men lying over the hood ofa car with machine guns pointing directly at me. In the confusion, my partner,Freddie Hunter, opens the right-hand door and slips out of the car we justentered a few seconds previously. He crosses the green grass between Jef-ferson Parkway and the sidewalk and starts walking down the pavement. No onesees him leave, all eyes are on me as I am ordered from the driver's seat.

Suddenly a voice from above shouts, "Watch out,that man is getting away!" Four FBI agents overlooking the scene from anupstairs apartment spot Freddie. One of the agents on the street runs down towhere Freddie stands, looking as innocent as the situation will allow, andherds him back with the barrel of a machine gun.

FBI agents rush in every direction and crowds ofcurious civilians gather. I am given a half-dozen contradictory orders by asmany panic-stricken agents.

"Put up your hands!"

"Don't move!"

"Sit down on the running board!"

"Come over here! "

"Put down your hands!"

A rifle is stuck in my back. I can feel the barrelshaking against my backbone. One of the agents, holding a machine gun with afifty-shot drum on it, steps in front of me. He is the only cool head in theentire circus of cops. He looks me up and down and asks calmly, "Karpis,have you got a gun on you?"

"NO."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure!"

"Alright then, I'd better pdt the safety on thismachine gun before it goes off by accident," he says with a side glance atthe gathering crowd of citizens.

"Who's the boss of this outfit?" I respond.

"He'll be here soon. Why?"

"Well somebody better tell this guy behind me totake it easy-the way he's shaking he's liable to shoot right through me and hityou."

I feel the barrel grind into my back. "1'11 showyou who's the boss when we get you downtown, you son of a bitch." Thethreat bounces off the back of my head.

I staTt to turn my head to the right and have just gotout a "Go fuck yourself!" when I notice someone peeping around thecorner of a building. My hesitation causes the others to follow my stare and weare all gazing at the half- hidden form. Several agents begin shouting at it.

"It's O.K.! Come on Chief! We got him! You cancome out now!" With this encouragement, the figure moves from its secureposition and starts toward us-in his left hand is a .45 automatic. Itscompanion is in the hand of a second man who hurries along only a step behind thefirst, walking in his shadow. I "make" the first man immediately.I've seen many newspaper photos of him: it is J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI.

Thesecond man, slight and blond, is Clyde Tolson; he is never too far from J. Edgar Hoover.The pair are often referred to as "The Goldust Twins" after a pair ofcolored kids who are pictured on a cleaning powder. Tolson and Hoover livetogether, eat together, are always seen together. There are many rumours inWashington circles that they're homosexuals, supported by stories of Hooverappearing at parties in "drag". I don't know if such stories are truebut I dothink it's strange that the only woman Hoover has ever been seen with in publicis Ginger Rogers's mother who, when questioned by an inquisitive press, deniedemphatically any romantic attachment between them.

Hoover brags to the press and the government that he,at great personal danger, "put the cuffs on Karpis". What bullshit!

We climb the broad stone steps ofthe old post office which now houses the FBI field offices in New Orleans. Onceinside the office, Hoover sits down at a desk and looks darkly at me. He pausesdramatically and then asks, "Well Karpis, do you feel better now that it'sall over?"

"I'mjust sorry to be caught,". I reply honestly and think to myself, I wish I could haveanother five-year run.

Buchanan,the ex-chief of police of Waco, Texas, stand- ing beside me, interrupts mythoughts: "It could have been a lot worse! We were going to shoot thatgoddamn place apart when you surprised us by walking out the front door ontoCanal Street. Lucky for you we had to change our plans rapidly. There weretwenty-six of us armed with every weapon from machine guns to those new gas shellsthat burn your hands with phosporous if you try to throw them back out.''

As hespeaks, Buchanan slips off his suit jacket to reveal what looks like a heavysandwich board around his neck. "We had our execution squad out"-heunbuckles the bulletproof vest as he continues-"rough, tough veterans whoknow their business. Them two hobos standing in front of the apartment when youcame out was Gus Haman and Doc White, two of the Texas Rangers who gunned downBonnie and Clyde. Clarence Hurt, the ex-chief of police of Oklahoma City, wasthere too. They're all men recruited 'cause of their reputations in shoot-outs.