The Battle of Alcatraz endures as one the most significant events in the entire history of criminal imprisonment. Of all the inmates who participated in escapes over the years at Alcatraz, Bernie Coy was the only one who successfully devised a workable plan to secure weapons, and then managed to use them in his break for freedom. After the escape attempt, the correctional staff would look differently upon some of the more trusted convicts. Even the men who held the roles of “passmen” were restricted from work until stricter measures were implemented. The question of why the three inmates chose death over life in their final hours will forever remain as one of the true mysteries of Alcatraz.
Fifty years after the Battle of Alcatraz, former inmate Jim Quillen, who was barricaded inside D Block during the incident and officer Phil Bergen, who led the assault teams into the West Gun Gallery, met with the author in 1997 to recount the 1946 events from the inside perspective. They are seen here looking up at the West Gallery where Phil Bergen was positioned during the events. At the time, it would have been unthinkable that fifty years later they would become friends and reflect on the events together. Both men have since passed away.
ESCAPE ATTEMPT #11
Date:
July 23, 1956
Inmates:
Floyd P. Wilson
Location:
Prison Dock
Floyd P. Wilson
Born in Chilhowie, Virginia on March 22, 1915, Floyd P. Wilson’s life would begin with a hard luck story which would eventually lead to murder. In the cold winter of 1947, Wilson was a jobless carpenter when he set out to steal seventeen dollars for a ton of coal to heat his near-freezing home in Maryland. He was allegedly trying to support his wife and five young children, and as he would later testify, he was “trying to keep them from freezing to death.” Distraught and cold, he decided to prey upon a young food market messenger who was driving to a local bank with a cash deposit of $10,162 from the store where he worked. The messenger apparently resisted, and Wilson would later testify that everything seemed to move in slow motion as he opened fire on the innocent man. Floyd stated that watched in horror as his victim dropped to the ground in a pool of blood. He was quickly identified as the perpetrator of the crime and soon found himself in a Washington, D.C. jail cell awaiting trial for the slaying.
Wilson ultimately received a conviction for first-degree murder and as a result of the brutal nature of the crime; he was sentenced to death by electrocution on June 27, 1947. His attorneys appealed the verdict, stating that Wilson was only a desperate man trying to support his ailing family. He was presented to the court as an honorable family man who had been reduced to crime because of his inability to find work. On August 3, 1948 President Harry Truman proved sympathetic to Wilson’s case, and in consideration of the mitigating circumstances, he commuted the death sentence to life in prison. Wilson was transferred to the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta in April of 1949. Shortly thereafter, he was found in possession of a rope and some pipe segments, which officials speculated were likely intended for use in an escape attempt. Based on the length of his sentence and his high risk of escape, he was recommended for transfer to Alcatraz.
President Harry Truman was sympathetic to Wilson’s case and commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in 1948.
Floyd P. Wilson arrived at Alcatraz on January 6, 1952, and was registered as inmate AZ-956. His conduct report reflects a man completely in conflict with his environment. While it was common knowledge that a significant percentage of inmates never fully adjusted to the rigid regimen of the penitentiary, this was especially evident with Floyd. Within his first year at Alcatraz, he received multiple disciplinary reports for insubordination and poor job performance. These reports reveal that Wilson rarely interacted with fellow inmates, and generally limited his conversation to correctional staff and older inmates.
Even in later years, Wilson minimized his interactions with prisoners as much as possible and insisted that he be fed separately, claiming that other inmates had threatened to kill him. It was also documented that over the course of his imprisonment at Alcatraz, Floyd rarely visited the recreation yard. When he did, he kept to himself. He preferred to spend his leisure time reading in his cell.
On July 23, 1956, Wilson was assigned to the dock crew and after a routine count in the late afternoon, he disappeared without a trace. His only hope for an escape to the mainland was a length of rope that he planned to use to tie logs together. Once he reached the water’s edge, he would try to collect wood and construct a makeshift raft. Warden Madigan best described the details of Wilson’s escape in a memo written to the Bureau of Prisons Director on July 27, 1956:
July 27, 1956
DIRECTOR, Bureau of Prisons
Warden Madigan – Alcatraz
Attempted Escape – Floyd P. Wilson, Reg. No 956-AZ
The following is an account of the events occurring on the afternoon of July 23 rdwhen inmate Floyd P. Wilson, Reg. No. 956-AZ ran from the dock crew and was able to hide out on the island for a period of several hours.
Four inmates were assigned to the dock crew that day, plus one inmate assigned to the garbage pick up detail. At 3:25 P.M. when the launch was due to leave on a scheduled trip, the water barge was also about to leave, and the inmates were called on the line for counting purposes which is customary procedure. The four dock inmates were on the line and the garbage truck, with Officer Jones and one inmate, had arrived at a position under #1 Dock Tower at that exact time. Mr. Jones stopped his truck until the boat and barge had cleared the docks. He then drove to the dock proper, let the inmate out of his truck and went about his duties, but told us later that he saw inmate Wilson take a rubber automobile tire and throw it on bonfire that was burning at the end of the dock. This created some black smoke that belched up, but not too much thought was given to this fact because Wilson had spent most of the day in burning excess refuse that had been around the dock.
At 3:40 a routine count was made by Mr. Black Dock, Officer in Charge, and all inmates were present. At 3:50 P.M. just as the launch “McDowell” was returning from the mainland, the inmates were called to the line where they could be easily counted, and Wilson was missing. A hasty search was made but he was not found so a call was put into the control center advising that Wilson was not present. The alarm was sounded on the island and in the matter of a few minutes the Evening Watch Officers and several officers on their day off arrived on the launch. These men were all pressed into service and started searching around the East end of the Island since it was felt that Wilson had gotten through the fence surrounding the end of the dock. Searchers immediately found an area near the bonfire Wilson had been attending where the fence was pried up which would permit him to crawl through and follow the sea-wall around until he was out of eyesight of #1 Tower Officer.
The FBI, plus the San Francisco Police Department, Coast Guard, Fort Mason and Presidio Military Police were immediately notified and our escape plan put into operation. All posts were covered and ten searching parties from two to three men each were sent out to several predetermined areas. The Coast Guard immediately sent two patrol boats which surrounded the island regularly, and the FBI sent a large number of officers to Fort Mason and the Fort Mason Dock, as well as Dock #4 where our launch lands. San Francisco Police covered the waterfront and the piers opposite Alcatraz, and they in turn notified the various Sheriffs and Highway Patrol. By all estimates Wilson had about a ten-minute start before searchers were out on his trail. He certainly did not have much time to secrete himself in that period, but was able to avoid detection until 2:55 A.M. the next morning.