Coy quickly lowered a Colt .45 pistol with twenty-one rounds of ammunition and several riot clubs to Cretzer, who was standing on the officers’ work desk. Coy then pitched down a large key ring that he was confident would hold the yard door access key, #107. After dropping these items down to Cretzer and now armed with a Springfield rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition, Coy entered the D Block Gallery, taking aim at the unarmed Officer Corwin. Coy directed Corwin to follow his orders carefully, and to stay away from the phone. He instructed him to walk slowly over and open the steel door that divided the segregation unit from the main prison. As soon as Corwin had rotated the key and the door swung open, he was met by Cretzer, who aimed the .45 directly at his forehead. As the barrel of the .45 was pressed against Corwin’s forehead, the cold metal felt as though it was biting into his flesh. Louis Fleish had opted not to get involved, but he encouraged Corwin to follow Cretzer’s demands so that he wouldn’t get hurt.
Coy headed back to Officer Burch and stripped him of all his clothing, then tied him to electrical piping that ran near the floor. After ensuring that Burch would be unable to trip an alarm if he regained consciousness, Coy retraced his steps to the top of the gallery, carefully squeezed through the bars, and climbed back down to the cellhouse floor. Meanwhile Cretzer demanded that Corwin rack open #D-14, the cell of Rufus “Whitey” Franklin, an inmate who was notorious as a guard killer and a master escape artist. Franklin was serving time in isolation for the vicious murder of Alcatraz Officer Royal C. Cline in 1938. Corwin pleaded that he couldn’t open the cell because the locking mechanism for all of the isolation cells was controlled from the gallery. Since Coy had already made his way back down, and would thus be able to open the cell doors himself, Corwin was stripped of his jacket, hat, and keys, and placed into cell #404 along with Captain Bill Miller, who was still unconscious. Coy then racked open the cells in the top two tiers of D Block, and Shockley and the other inmates started to emerge, attempting to size up the situation.
Though Franklin was left behind because they had been unable to access the lock mechanism to release him from his cell, Cretzer ordered an inmate to open the outer steel doors to all of the isolation cells on the bottom row. It is suspected that Floyd Hamilton, former outlaw and driver for Bonnie & Clyde, had also been in on the plot, though he did not take part in the attempt. In Hamilton’s inmate file there was a notation that reads:
Although Hamilton received but one misconduct report, the testimony of Mr. E. Lageson, cellhouse officer, who was one of the hostages in the prison escape plot of May 2 ndto 4 th, 1946, was to the effect that Coy, #415-AZ, ringleader to the rioters, was trying to get Hamilton unlocked from his cell so that he could join in the plot. This, with the fact that Hamilton had secured a lay-in for that day indicates he knew something about the plot and may have been involved to a certain extent.
As Cretzer passed through the steel D Block access door, he observed Burch straining against his restraints and looking over the steel shield of the gun gallery. Cretzer yelled to Burch in the gallery while pointing the .45: “I’ll kill you if you try to reach that phone!” Coy and Cretzer then started shuffling through the keys on the gallery ring, trying to find Key #107, which would grant them access to the recreation yard. After several minutes of fruitless attempts, both became frustrated and tried to force the lock with any key that would fit, as their plan was starting to fall behind schedule. They had hoped to get into the recreation yard, snipe off the tower guards and then escape through the yard access door. They planned to get down to the dock area by using hostages, so the next item on the agenda was to secure captives, probably family members of the correctional staff. They would then hijack the prison launch to take them over to the mainland, where they would make their final escape. Everything had run smoothly, up until now...
The desperate inmates searched feverishly for key #107, but a brave correctional officer had concealed the key inside the hostage cell.
Standing at the recreation yard door, Coy and Cretzer methodically debated where the right key could be found. Cretzer seemed certain that it had to be one of the keys in their possession. Carnes called over to Cretzer and Coy from his lookout post, warning them that he had heard a gate inside the sallyport open and then close. About a minute later the main cell door swung open and Chief Steward Bristow emerged, walking briskly down Broadway towards the Dining Hall. Bristow was in charge of the prison’s culinary division and he was completely unaware that armed convicts were roaming the cellhouse. He approached the Dining Hall door realizing that something was amiss, as the gate was not secure and Bill Miller wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Attempting not to make any suspicious gestures, he turned quickly as if he had forgotten something, and headed back to the main gate, hoping Officer Phillips would be there to greet him. Carnes positioned himself in the cutoff corridor after quietly running up from Park Avenue, and he watched Bristow to see if he would enter the kitchen. Carnes was now armed with what an officer would later describe as a pair of sharp “artist’s dividers,” and he intercepted Bristow at the cutoff and led him to Cell #404 without any struggle.
Coy and Cretzer were now becoming very frustrated, as they had not anticipated being unable to locate the yard key. The two inmates walked up to cell #404 where Bill Miller was now fully conscious and sternly demanded to know where key #107 was hidden. Miller denied having any knowledge of the key’s location, since it was strict protocol to return it to the gun gallery officer after using it. He insisted that the key must be in the gallery, adding that the inmates had witnessed the procedure numerous times themselves, and therefore must know that this regulation was stringently followed by all correctional officers. Coy and Cretzer walked a short distance to the officer’s desk in D Block, and laid out all of the keys, searching for #107. What they didn’t know was that Miller had failed to follow protocol and for convenience sake, had slipped key #107 into his shirt pocket. It was a stroke of luck, but Miller’s act of mild nonconformity was in fact upsetting the entire escape effort.
Suddenly, one of the inmates signaled that someone was coming through the main gate. At about 1:45 p.m., the gate opened and an unsuspecting Ernie Lageson strolled into the main cellhouse. While making his way down Broadway, he quickly noticed that something was wrong. Turning to look back, he recognized Bernie Coy wearing a pair of officer’s pants and no shirt. But before he could act, Coy aimed a rifle at him, leaving him no chance of escape. Coy forced Lageson to walk through the cutoff and onto Seedy Street, where he was searched and stripped of his keys and other valuables. With few words exchanged, he was shoved into the now crowded cell #404.
Sam Shockley then turned up at the cell front, yelling that Lageson had assaulted him previously when shoving him into the strip cell. Shockley insisted that his comrades let him at the officer, but Hubbard and Cretzer only pointed their weapons, discouraging this foolish behavior. Still Sam was fixated on injuring Lageson, and he stood at the cell front making threatening slurs. Finally Cretzer aimed the pistol at Shockley’s head, warning him to back off and calm himself.
As Lageson entered and moved to the middle of the crowded cell, Corwin quickly briefed him as to what had happened. It baffled them as to how Coy had managed to penetrate the gun gallery and access the weapons. Their initial assumption was that Coy had perched himself on something, then grabbed Burch by his clothing from outside, repeatedly smashing him against the tool-proof steel bars. Another hypothesis was that a guard had been held hostage until Burch surrendered the weapons. The gun gallery had once been thought to be one of the most secure positions in the prison, and it was hard to imagine how its security had been breached.