December 16, 1962
Inmates:
John Paul Scott
Daryl Lee Parker
Location:
Kitchen Basement
By December of 1962, plans had already been set in motion to close the prison due to crippling costs and structural deterioration of the main cellhouse. Decades of exposure to the harsh salt ocean air had taken its toll on the prison. The last attempted escape at Alcatraz may have been facilitated by the dilapidated state of the prison facilities. In any case, it finally demonstrated that with properly constructed floats and a favorable current, it was technically possible for an inmate to enter the icy Bay waters and paddle to the mainland. John Paul Scott and Daryl Parker were two of the tough incorrigibles that Alcatraz was designed to cage, but they proved that even The Rock was not invulnerable to a well-planned prison break.
John Paul Scott was a university educated bank robber of the modern era. His inmate file details a multitude of bank heists, dramatic prison breaks, and spectacular shootouts with police. Like Scott, Daryl Lee Parker’s attempted escape at Alcatraz would be merely a brief episode in a lifelong diary of crime. In this chapter, the stories of John Paul Scott and Daryl Lee Parker are illustrated through firsthand reports and inmate records that chronicle their lives in prison as well as their various escape attempts.
Daryl Lee Parker
Daryl Lee Parker
Parker’s transfer order to Alcatraz.
An entry in a 1967 classification study report recounts the early life of Daryl Parker, and it includes a letter from his mother describing his childhood:
Daryl’s childhood was normal. He was number five of a family of eight children. No bad habits like drinking or smoking early in life. At age of twelve to fourteen he began taking bottles and cashing them in for spending money. The habit of thievery grew rapidly with it ending in your institution. Daryl was a beautiful baby and much loved by his brothers and sisters. Therefore, might have been spoiled somewhat. He was sent to the Boys Industrial School at the end of eighth grade. He also entered Timkin Vocational and finished all but two credits in high school. He lost out in Industrial School there being a war on and a shortage of math teachers. He took printing in Timkin Vocational School. After this he worked at Isaly’s Dairy store and he married Margaret Davis, also of Tinkin Vocational School, in a church here in Canton. There were no children. His father, Howard, is a foreman at the Timkin Roller Bearing Company. He also fixes TVs in his spare time as a hobby. He was born in Morgan County, Ohio. Georgia (Walker) Parker, his grandmother, was also born in Morgan County, Ohio, and was a schoolteacher prior to her marriage.
All I can say in conclusion was Daryl was high-strung, quick-tempered, and very nervous. At age 6 he developed a stammer. It was not bad, but irritated him a lot. He changed schools three times by our moving, and he resented the last school bringing home all F’s in every department. He has been in the Boys Industrial School, Mansfield Reformatory, Lorton and the prison in Maryland. He came nearer adjusting himself after leaving Mansfield, staying out of trouble three years. He returned from Lorton Prison in very bad shape having made friends with an elder criminal, which he ended where he is now, with you. Each time Daryl has been in trouble we hope and pray it will be his last. That hasn’t happened yet and we hope that he will come out of your prison a better boy for our faith in prisons is very low at the moment.
The inmate is married but has no children. He married Margaret Davis January 19, 1952, at Canton, Ohio, and stated there had been no discord with his wife, who is self supporting as a secretary, and he stated that in view of his long sentence, he had advised her to obtain a divorce.
By 1957 Daryl’s criminal record was already full of entries, ranging from juvenile stints as a runaway beginning in 1944, to armed robbery charges in 1957. A bank robbery that he committed in that year with his friend John Bartholomew is detailed in his criminal summary:
Attached to the form 792, U.S. Attorney’s Report, accounting for the sentence of 20 years on count 1 and 25 years concurrently on count 2 for Bank Robbery and assault with a deadly weapon was the statement, Defendant, Daryl Lee Parker, which John T. Bartholomew, robbed the Clinton and Rudisill Branch of the Lincoln National Bank and Trust Company, Fort Wayne, Indiana of the sum of $50,104.00 on Friday, October 18, 1957.
The men became acquainted while both were doing time in the Federal Reformatory at Lorton, Virginia. Daryl Lee Parker, though the younger of the two men, carefully laid all of the plans and made all of the arrangements for the bank robbery. He furnished the weapons used and stole two automobiles used as getaway cars. Both Parker and Bartholomew wore grotesque Halloween masks during the actual robbery. The defendant Daryl Lee Parker disguised his appearance by the use of black hair dye and of suntan theatrical grease paint. Both men entered the bank together. Bartholomew carried a .45 automatic pistol, while Daryl Lee Parker carried a .357 caliber magnum revolver, which, we are informed, is the most powerful handgun made, so powerful that it will drive a shell through the motor block of an automobile engine.
Bartholomew took up a position near the front of the of the bank, menacing the branch manager and the assistant branch manager with his gun, and directing them to fill a laundry bag with the bank’s money from the teller’s cages. Daryl Lee Parker proceeded to the rear of the bank menacing tellers behind the teller’s cages with his magnum revolver, and compelling a youthful vault casher to take money from the drive-in windows of the bank and put it in one of the bank’s money bags. During the time of the robbery there were 15 to 20 customers in the bank. Daryl Lee Parker vaulted over the gate in the area behind the teller’s cages, held the magnum revolver to a young girl cashier and on the youthful vault cashier whom he ordered not to take another step or he would “blow your head off.” Daryl Lee Parker ordered all of the clerks away from their teller’s cages and said that if the police should come during the robbery he and his fellow robber would take 3 hostages and that they would kill the hostages without hesitation.
Defendant Daryl Lee Parker planned this bank robbery with such meticulous attention to detail that it required months of intensive investigation to assemble the evidence required before his arrest on March 19, 1958. Daryl Lee Parker said to a fellow prisoner at the Allen County Jail at Fort Wayne, Indiana, that he was sure to be convicted of the Fort Wayne bank robbery charge on which he was held and that escape was the only way out.
Daryl Lee Parker on June 11, 1958, stated to Donald Byington, Warden, United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, that he would try to escape at the first opportunity he had and stated: “I am in too much trouble, having robbed four banks and I couldn’t do all that time”; the defendant’s brother, Robert Parker, who probably has more than just simple guilty knowledge of Daryl’s activities, has admitted that they have a total of $226,000,00 hidden away. Both Daryl Lee Parker and his brother Robert Parker are known to have made flights to Cuba soon after the Fort Wayne bank robbery.
Parker was charged with two counts of robbery, and was committed to the Allen County Jail in Fort Wayne. The following report describes his escape, which would prefigure his eventual break from Alcatraz:
Parker was at first confined in Cell Block “A” on the first floor of the County Jail. There he approached a fellow prisoner, who was a trustee, showed him a hundred dollar bill concealed in a package of cigarettes, and solicited his aid for escape. Parker told the trusty that a large negro man would place some hacksaw blades near a flag pole in the front yard of the jail. Parker suggested that this trusty, who had freedom to go in and out of the jail, might pick these hack saw blades up, conceal them in a magazine and deliver the magazine to Parker. Parker offered $1,000.00 to this trusty if he would smuggle these hacksaw blades into the jail. The trusty immediately reported Parker’s offer to the jail officials.