Alcatraz Inmate #666

[Music] i'm the sole survivor of the first group to center alcatraz i'm from kansas city kansas my name is willie rantke william radke so let's take a break let's take a walk back into my history i was born in 1911 and my first offense was when i was 19 years old i went to the reformatory kansas city in hutchinson kansas where i met alvin karfus who became public enemy in later years and i got out and i went to missouri prison where i met some some fellows in there they were going to go meet again in alcatraz when i came in alcatraz i didn't come among strangers it there's about nine of my newest i knew kelly outside he was a bootleg out in wichita kansas he's a whole whiskey to kansas city and i also knew harvey bailey [Music] kelly's partner he was from joplin missouri kansas city is a kind of a hub center for all the criminals pretty boy floyd machine gun kelly johnny says baby face nelson's part and all of them passed through it we were living we were living in hammond indiana when my dad died in 1915 so my mother took us to kansas city kansas and had a place in norfolk because she's a young widow with four children so she placed in an orphanage and i was sent to one in xavier kansas next to the saint mary's academy which is five miles south of leavenworth leavenworth where the is the main pearl united states prison is where i spent 15 years in later years and then i was taken out of the office adopted by a pair of immigrants from yugoslavia they didn't want a child to great they want somebody to going to work for them my name is william ratke i came in 1945 and left her 1952. and i was here with the original group the cream of the criminal crap but i knew fellas out here so i didn't come among strangers there was about nine of my new out here first one i saw when they came around the corner sell us with the carpet i knew him in kansas creepy i know why they call him creepy they named him right and then then i saw him i got in a yard we didn't get newspapers out here so when i came here and they had me on the yard i'm getting all the big news from kansas city chicago who's locked up who tells me who they're looking for i was if you get there for two years before they brought me out here so they could they caged me up here six six six that was the number i got and i walked through the door but salt water jonathan ward he was standing there he looked everybody all over in there and he looked on this what are you what are you in there for you you were here for security in 11 weeks you got rule books make up your bed hear nobody come and make your bed tell they're gonna make it up yourself in the morning after eleven were down someone's your bed nothing made up right but over here they didn't bother you were here for security period good morning my name is jerry wheeler i came to alcatraz in 1947 uh as a challenge i enjoyed it very much my wife and son and i we lived on the island together and uh it was it was just a great experience it was great experience now i never had any confrontation with any of the inmates i always figured if you treat them right they'll treat you right i've taught the guys i've tried to get i talked to uh clyde johnson he was out in that water bird at burdette was with him he drowned and then without the tree guys nobody got away from here and guys are always all these guys talking about i'm going to beat these joints 15 years later they're still talk i'm gonna beat this joint i heard one guy one day up to walk in my yard he says if you'll get me this the blueprint c i'll show you how to get out of here about a year later i told him i heard this guy again if you're getting that blueprint see i'll show you how to get out of here so he did 12 years and got out my name is george de vincinzi uh i came here in 1950 as a young man and i left at the end of 1957 i put about eight years here where i'm sitting now specifically is a cell in the hospital that was not here when i was here when i first got here in 1950 this whole area was a large ward that housed about 15 inmates and it was a custodial problem because we were not allowed into the area with inmates it required two officers or more before you can enter this area so because of the custodial problem they built walls on each side of this large ward and made these individual cells and that more or less eliminated the custodial problem that we had here my name is philip richard bergen i was formerly captain of the guards at the united states penitentiary alcatraz i served at alcatraz for some 16 years entered as a correctional officer and left here as an associate warden well we had one person here that was a particularly obnoxious troublesome and dangerous all wrapped up in one and that was robert stroud the so-called birdman of alcatraz now first off i've got to say that that was not an appropriate title because mr stroud did not have any birds at alcatraz he had an aviary of birds canaries while he was at the federal prison at leavenworth kansas but when he was transferred to alcatraz the prison authorities took all the birds stolen put the money in his trust account and send him out here here he was simply robert stroud alcatraz california to take over 1946 we knew something was going wrong but they went to work down there the lecturing was full of guys we're gonna stay in ourselves i told kelly and george we're gonna be here by ourselves tonight so we're done the laundry we didn't hear the sirens when they went off the first thing we knew was when the coast guard come around there start circling the buildings and then when a phone rang they made us line up down to take a count and when the united states marines came on the island that's all she wrote nobody said anything was gone we knew something happened up here to got to get the guns yeah they did all that see they see how their bars are in between they put rails because they went right up this way flying down there i thought that was built that way that way hey that's fascinating information they climbed all the way see way up on top you couldn't see it upon it right and up there you can't see it because right here now they got the rails in between yeah they put those in afterwards yeah because of that shooting i come out i saw herbert standing over there and he asked who's going to say stewart and know the stackers down there i don't know what was going on hubbard's standalone he there he's jigging for these guys like spreading the bars so i got out of there so the guards come up like this is open see that's all sealed now so they see the bars so that so the day that that happened discolored i'm just english this uh this young guy come up he saw that she saw hubbard come around with the gun though they got in there he went down there so stuck her down edge tucker saw why did he run down he looked up and he summoned he's the one to put the alarm in oh my god and then anyway then they let us here in the cell house i couldn't understand that and i settled down here and these three guys are going to lose in here before they went to see block because coy come down his gallery he said we just killed nine bulls he thought he killed nine golden shooting going over there but then they got into sea block that's where he got killed over there but none over in here and then you still have marines all came in with machine guns all around down in here there was a ricocheting they drilled some holes here in the ceiling on this cut off they were dropping grenades down in there shrapnel was flying all over in here and i had to put a blanket in this pull the tear gas loaded with tear gas when we went out next morning two more later empty shells out you fall on the floor you had to watch by walking on so they fed us a gallery at a time until they got everything calling it down then the fbi called everybody out one at a time they called five guys and that was the end and they got called got cussed out here and now they don't talk nobody no more nobody saw any heard and he didn't want to hear anything about it in there a lot of guys had grievances so they don't want to hear that they figure by by putting alcatraz on the trial on a trial they're going to win they nobody they drag their body right along too and here you can see the water and whatever this blood all streak of blood and they laid them that's why they took their pictures back here behind this building over here and i could see that i could see the legs sticking out with laying down three guys in there they dragged them out on the blank because they had them out of seaside in there but the guards carrying them and all sort of marines marines in her too they were they were here those guys don't they don't play they didn't play with nobody because when these marines first come in here down in there and they formed needle down and forum stood up with a rifle it's opened fire and it started shooting went right on through here cleared eyelash that's how they got everything out everything but everything had to hide in there but those guys were hidden out in the sea black side in the corridor that's where they got them in there [Music] hi my name is jeannie cummerford and i was a resident of alcatraz island i was born in 1944 my family was living here on the island my mother and my father and my two sisters and i was born at children's hospital in san francisco so i lived here from the time i was born until i was nine years old so this was my home i grew up here took the boat to school every day and loved being here it was a wonderful place and lived in sea building on the third floor we had a beautiful apartment and our kitchen and dining room and bedroom looked out over the east bay richmond and our living room and my parents bedroom and our bathroom looked out over the golden gate bridge and san francisco marin it was just a beautiful beautiful place to be i know willie radke from these reunions i didn't didn't know obviously know much about prisoners when i was a child but my father was willie's boss and willie explained to me and drew me a picture of their office in fact we walked there he showed me where his desk was and he worked with machine gun kelly and they were they both worked under my dad my dad was their boss and their desks were right opposite each other he told me they worked together for at least five years in industry so it was quite significant to meet willie here on alcatraz island and my father began working here as a correctional officer instructor and in the 1946 riot he was in the dock tower so when the the prisoners first broke out they shot at him and he went down and they told my mother he was shot so i was two years old at that time and i was in my crib so that was a big big event i have very some very fond recollections of prisoners sometimes i hear other kids who lived on the island say they never had contact with prisoners but i did i knew two specifically flattop was one that i recall and pat was another and i have no idea where they are today or what they're doing but i used to ask my father about them and he told me that he thought they got out that they moved on i think they were bank robbers but they must have liked kids because i was a kid and i just remembered them being nice to me and friendly and i just i knew them well enough to know their names so obviously i had some contact with prisoners they used to do maintenance work pick up our garbage but i guess they enjoyed uh talking to young to the kids so after the the incident in 46 was everyone more tender it was a little it was a little different uh the guards they look like they act a little aggressive because before that they're all on first name bases don't get in other words they used to be friendly get rid of curious they probably didn't want later on they brought god from mcneil island here i remember when he got they they came down to reinforce the alcatraz guards and walk around there so some guy down here bob says hey what time we we didn't have any clocks and watch dinner he said what the hell you want to know what time where you going you have to take pills and so he got cussed out what what do you remember most in your days at alcatraz what stands out well that taken over with the guns in there you know and after after seeing them seeing the film the documentary when they're shooting themselves i was in that cell in there and like like i say the best friends i met was out here guys in here you could trust them like we're down we're gonna have strikes nobody say anything about it and nobody's gonna snitch on you but we had snitches in here to this cutoff that was the one that snitches dropped notes down in there and that was that was locked in the guard had to go in and turn off the lights and he's not finding the node in there do you like do you uh have fond memories of your days at alcatraz one that particular kind of monotonous center warden johnson would let us over he let me order the brooklyn state library and didn't pay for them i wanted some books on missionaries how they how to civilize the california coming in from mexico and there and he had a center of san francisco i mean a sacramento state library to get them and they paid for whatever it was and they allowed us getting a correspondence course from university of uh california berkeley and you could order any book we had a best book we had the best library anywhere else we'd buy books and donate to the library anytime a new book of money come out with order there's three four guys that order the same book gonna put in the library over here at any time during the whole shootout and and the taking of the guns in 46 did you feel that your life was ever a danger i know i didn't stick with anybody you know i was i was surprised i asked phil berg about this one guy was snitched i always kept him there and bro never went out of his cell he ate it by himself and i i couldn't remember his last phil bergen told me who his name was that's the guy never letting him he was a high but he would never eat with a main line never and i'm surprised that they didn't try to get a ham when they got the gun but they couldn't do it because the marines were in the night wearing the gallery up and their broadway was wide open you'd get get killed in there anything in there do you do you feel like you share a special bond with phil bergen since he was i deal with him and whitey thompson you know whitey came in after we didn't seem like white he's in a wheelchair he's worse off than him physically and look at phil bergen he's about 93 years of age he's got all his marbles what's it going to mean to see phil bergen well seeing him in a language sitting like this at laundry he knows what's going on leave him alone he's going to be an argument being fight going to tear up my laundry or something like that hands off policy was the best thing and leave him alone willie was smart he was smart enough to size up a situation and to know that sugar attracts more flies than vinegar he behaved himself and he uh he knew that in order to earn a remission of sentence you had to accumulate the good time the reduction of sentence and so he applied himself to all the work that he was assigned to and did exceptionally well and he behaved himself exceptionally well not a goody goody not an angel but well behaved and as a result of that he went out of here on minimum time and in good shape and had these esteem of the officers and the captain to the point where when we meet we're friends now when i got through my extensive training for two months i was assigned to the barbershop i was told to take the saturday and sunday off and report nine o'clock monday morning to be the barber shop officer i reported monday morning i went into the barber shop and in about 30 to 40 minutes i was in a murder we had inmate barbershop going and i had six inmates in there and the barber was given a haircut to his customer and all of a sudden they started to discuss something very intensely and i got a little suspicious and the customer got up out of the chair and of course the barber started attack them with a pair of scissors about 12 inch length scissors he repeatedly hit him in the neck the throat the lungs and a heart and i jumped in like a damn fool blowing the whistle uh trying to separate him and we knocked the bar and knocked the table over an additional barber chair and the three of us fell down on the ground together in so doing i got my leg and my uniform pants cut open and my new shoes uh not intentionally he wasn't trying to cut me but in so trying to separate the two that's how i we landed on top of each other well he was dead in less than a minute and a very peculiar thing happened as he was dying every time i guess his heart beat a large gush of blood would come out of the side of his neck and in a moment he was sitting in a large pool of blood well a strange thing happened then the barber went down and said i love you i love you and kissed him i pulled off of him and he gave me back the scissors i didn't take him away from he volunteered gave him to me and by that time i got help finally arrived into the barber shop but it's kind of a peculiar thing in half hour i was in the murder in the first day in a job about five years later i had gotten promoted i was now a senior officer and i came in one morning i was told i was the acting lieutenant lieutenant called in sick so i inquired as to what the functions were and they said go to the treatment unit and we treat the certain inmate that's been confined here for two years for his own protection we got him out of the treatment unit brought him down into the clothing room to get him ready to shower outfitted with some clothes and turned back into the population well the inmate that was he was feuding with two years prior unfortunately was working in the barbershop in the clothing room he was waiting for him one after him stabbed him to death he was dead in less than 20 minutes after he was released from the treatment unit those were the two murders i was directly involved in [Music] and well what else could i say that was my introduction to the prison service he's asking if you were involved in the 1946 escape attempt i was involved and what was your position during that attempt i was a correctional officer who had been promoted to lieutenancy shortly before the 46th thing on the day of the disturbance they call it a battle they call it a riot it wasn't even a good skirmish but it was bloody and it lasted three days now i was over san francisco on my day off if i'd had good sense i'd have stayed over there but not having the necessary good sense i got back to the islands now the first thing i did was call the island and i found out that here on the island they knew they had an emergency and they didn't know what it was that's with the exact facts they did not know what was happening they wanted me to come over right away i had a pretty good life with shot and they thought they'd come in handy as a matter of fact i was a firearms instructor for the island and probably if not the best i was one of the best so i got over here they put me to work finally the warden decided to go in and try to rescue the officers who had been taken captive but the first we had to take command of the west gun gallery which had been taken over by the inmates that was the place from which we suspected that they had captured the guns they had a rifle and a 45 caliber cold automatic pistol so the party went out to the entrance of the west gallery three of us went in and assaulted one of us immediately got shot about two two steps inside the entrance the other two of us went on upstairs to the second level of the gallery three other officers followed us i put them in the positions that i thought they should remain in and i went into the other main section the sell house section of the gallery looking for the gallery officer because we didn't know what happened to him i found him laying in the floor of the gallery stripped naked cold his ice and very much scared i dragged him back out to where the yellow officers were he was still alive i put him on the telephone with the warden and then i went back to reckon ordering the gallery but before i started i again spoke to each one of these officers that was in that particular section of the gallery telling them what i wanted them to do and the hazards that they could probably face and i wanted them to stay right where they were until i came back from the wrecking ordering and i took another man with me and we had just about started to go into the main sell house section of the gallery when an officer i won't say disobeying his orders but actually got a little over anxious and started towards us and then coming towards us he came past one of the exterior windows and some officer mistakenly fired a shot thinking he was shooting in an inmate and he killed his brother officer now we have to get him down out of the gallery and while we're trying to do that the person on the hillside fired another shot they called his friendly fire he hit another officer broke his arm with a rifle bullet had to get him out of there after that is concluded then we went ahead with our search of the gallery found there was no inmate senate reported back to the warden that we had control of the gallery now the warden had promised me because i was one of the best shops in the institution that as soon as we had captured the west gun gallery he was going to relieve me and bring me out front and we were going to assault the cell house going to go in there with a party of three and rescue the captains but at that point the warden had changed his mind he decided that since one man had been killed and another seriously wounded he'd have to make some other decision about taking over the sell house he left me up there in a gallery where i was more in test totally useless and that's where i stayed until midnight the following night the next day saturday morning bright and cheerful and having had a good sleep put on a nice clean uniform came on upstairs here to the shell house and it looked as though the battle was over they've been a lot of shooting both by officers and by the escapees but there was no further killing or wounding in the meantime at 10 o'clock on the second night that was friday night the warden had finally sent in a party to rescue the captives and did and he found one of them dead and four or five of them were pretty badly shot up one of whom was the captain and another was the executive officer the two top men on the correctional force when i came up there saturday about six o'clock in the morning i was a junior lieutenant and uh when we straightened out the institution that morning but the inmates where they belong found the dead rioters in the in the gun gallery i walked out to the associate warden's office and explained to him what had happened and he told me that i was the acting captain i had a battlefield promotion and as far as i was concerned all i could see that i had done usefully was sit up there in that gallery plug was i knew how to be captain how to handle the paper and that's how i became captain of the guards on alcatraz did you have any contact with al capone al capone left here in 38 i got here in 39 all i have on al capone is what they told me my name is john hernan i was here from 1955 until 1958 as a prison guard i left here in 1958 to go into private industry captain virgin was a very strict individual he was ran a very tight ship as they said took no nonsense from either prisoner or from us i enjoy coming back here for old times sake to meeting with my old buddies and and the old prisoners and the old residents very enjoyable for me ratkee was gone before i got here the amazing thing to me about radke is his number he was number six six six how could you forget a number like that like i talked name one day you could see that in there they talk about the laundry and everything else what they were gonna do once they got out of the building and went down the hill and grabbed these guards and their families were hostage there's been more bloodshed then when they got a hold of captain don't lock them up and the white window says hey that man had a lot of moxie he told me you're away from fest we ever be at 20. he got shot and when he came back after he got healed up he's coming down broadway and this stool pigeon that never went out there he said he said don't you hire me he said son of a you've been sitting five years let us walk in the death trap but that guy i could say he was protected never ate never ate with a mainline he by himself so what was this right here willie this is my cell this this is my domicile how does it feel to be backing yourself i'm gonna go back out i had a i found a ping-pong ball down laundry and i hung it up for my full moon lasted one day a lifetime i wanted to take it away from me you're not allowed to have me you were allowed to have when i was your level only had one shelf we had one waters i see they got two men we had one water cold how you want your water cool no as a prisoner what were you like it got a long easy and it was it it was easy to do time on here you were here for security reasons anything you didn't even ruined it that probably boiled you out anything that was it but you went to leavenworth you had a rule books you had to follow in there down here nobody we would like we had all we were have we had per cali sheets we still got a laundry and i put in the laundry you could you get the water we had least clean seating one every day but we were particular who's going to sound up next to you because we just nobody's going to move in here so me and kelly johnny say babyface nelson's partner jim clark and uh frank delmar we sit on the old timers i'm new at clark and delmar not kansas city so the seven is down here selling the rest of the cell was all vacant in fact it's vacant sales and then we had something then eddie bentz he said on the corner he was a grandpa bank robbers he saw up in the corner so when i came out here i'm the prison director can you watch and i went down and asked him why he's just sending me out he gave me a look like are you for real i had detainers on them i was one of them i was one in michigan and also in ohio so he asked for keepsake out so i'd be ready for detaining authorities so my time was short they sent me 11 words was gonna be picked up but then i got out without being taken anywhere because the case is very old it couldn't prove anything and i was 13 months out and i was back in again but by that time they closed alcatraz i just stayed in leavenworth for 15 years why did you want to come back well either i'm going to stay in little town where i live as i just want to come out and see this old face i can come back on uh i don't know this might be i'm 89 years of age i've been hitting 90 before long and then i knew it and i asked phil berg and i said okay i want to come in whitey thompson beyond somebody that you know say from the back ear but like i say i'm the sole survivor the first group was here and i tell my niece patty i said boy kelly would love this he would love this how did you feel about the decision to close alcatraz well nationally i was disturbed but i wasn't working at alcatraz at the time and i had known for two or three years that the closing was imminent [Music] and you'll never guess what the real reason was that they they actually had to close it there's no question about it they had to and so since you'll never guess i'll get it prior to 1960 everybody almost around the bay area just dumped their raw sewage into the bay and depended upon the tides carried out to sea it was a nasty mess and a nasty habit we were one of the worst offenders all these prisoners all these people on the island great big laundry operating and using up about 150 to 200 000 gallons of water every month all that stuff one of the worst offenders you couldn't do it anymore what are you gonna do with the sewage well some people said let's put it in the barge take it off the sea and dump it you can't do that anymore so what do you do you close the sewage maker then there's no more sewage to worry about and so we did we closed the sewage maker simple as that a lot of other good reasons but that was a reason [Music] so [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Videoguy4u

Views: 39,244

Keywords: Alcatraz Island, Alcatraz, Willie Radkay, alcatraz Inmate, san francisco, alcatraz history, willie radkay alcatraz, Alcatraz History, Alumni Gathering, Alumni Garthering

Id: GVsH42Dibjg

Length: 35min 43sec (2143 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021