waley people

Harmon Waley At Alcatraz

©by Dean Isaacson and TIME magazine

These items of interest are excerpts and articles from early TIME magazine reports. Some notations, comments and headlines are mine.

Early Time-Line for Alcatraz:

• 1933: Attorney General Homer Cummings decides to look into the possible use of Alcatraz Island as a location for the super prison he has designed.
• The Secretary of War gives the Federal Bureau of Prisons permission to use Alcatraz for five years.
• San Francisco citizens protest the use of Alcatraz as a federal Prison.
• 1934: James A. Johnston chosen as warden of Alcatraz after being a bank official.
• Thirty-two army prisoners stay on the Island.
• The first civilians get there from McNeil Island Prison, Washington.
• Al Capone and Thomas Wareagle arrive from Atlanta.
• Two private boats are forced to land on Alcatraz and passengers are questioned for many hours before being assisted to mainland.
• A mat shop opens, recycling tires into naval mats.
• 1935: FBI warns Island staff of breakout attempts by underworld "Big-shots"
• Joe Bowers tries to kill himself.
• Vigil Rapp tells Washington State press that Alcatraz is driving the inmates mad.
• Henri Young arrives at Alcatraz and begins to gather a huge misconduct record.
• Weyerhaeuser kidnapper Harmon Waley arrives from McNeil Island.
• Smuggled letters to San Francisco Newspaper names prisoners driven to insanity by Alcatraz authorities.
• Correspondence courses through University of California Extension begin. Eighty-one prisoners enroll.
• Installation of clothing factory begins.
• 1938: Warden Johnston receives another warning about potential breakout of Arthur Barker.
• Bryan Conway's "20 months in Alcatraz" is published in the Saturday Evening Post.
• Tool proof window bars along seaward side of Model Industries Building installed.
• U.S. Supreme court rules that prisoners in federal felony trials are entitled to a court appointed lawyer if they cannot afford one.
• Whitney Franklin leads an escape attempt over the roof of the Model Industry building. Officer Cline and convict Limmerick are killed in attempt.
• Al Capone develops paresis of the brain due to untreated syphilis.
• Sam Shockley arrives.
• P. W. Reed's "Murder on Alcatraz" is published
• Al Capone is sent to Terminal Island to finish the last year of his sentence.

Prisoner number 85: CAPONE, ALPHONSE 1934-1938

Prisoner number 248: WALEY, HARMON METZ 1935-1963 (longest prisoner)

Alcatraz is Hard Time for Al Capone

Capone eventually conceded and one day made the comment to Johnston, "It looks like Alcatraz has got me licked." Capone spent 4.5 years on Alcatraz and held a variety of jobs. Capone's time on Alcatraz was not easy time. Capone got into a fight with another inmate in the recreation yard and was placed in isolation for eight days. While working in the prison basement, an inmate who was standing in line waiting for a haircut, exchanged words with Capone and stabbed him with a pair of shears. Capone was admitted into the prison hospital and released a few days later with a minor wound. Capone eventually became symptomatic from syphilis, a disease he had evidently been carrying for years. In 1938, he was transferred to Terminal Island Prison in Southern California to serve out the remainder of his sentence, and was released in November of 1939. Capone died on January 25, 1947, in his Palm Beach Mansion from complications of syphilis.

The Murder of Rufus McCain and Articles Relating to Waley's Testimony of the Events

The Model Industries Building was also the scene of the Rock's most celebrated murder. Rufus McCain was working in the tailor shop in December 1940 when he was stabbed by Henri Young, his former confederate in the 1939 escape attempt at Barker Beach. Young used a sharpened planer knife which he claimed he had found hidden at his station in the furniture or "Model" shop. A sensational trial followed. Many famous Alcatraz prisoners including Harmon Waley testified in Young's defense, insisting that they'd been beaten by the guards. Others reported that McCain had been out to get Young. Officials were disappointed when a jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against Young. Paul Vederier, President of the City of Paris department store and foreman, sent a telegram on the jury's behalf, asking that the Bureau of Prisons investigate conditions at Alcatraz. Bureau Director James V. Bennett issued a statement defending Warden Johnston immediately after the verdict. Young, who was on Alcatraz for robbing a Washington state bank, received a three year sentence and spent the rest of his time at Alcatraz housing in the D-Block Special Treatment Unit. In 1943, he confessed to the murder of an Everett, Washington baker. In 1948, he was judged insane and sent to Springfield.

The following was taken from the S.F. Examiner (4/24/41):

TWO KIDNAPERS WITNESSES AT 'ROCK' SLAYING HEARING

Waley, Mahan, Weyerhaeuser Abductors, in U. S. Court; Alcatraz Beating of Young Charged

By ALVIN D. HYMAN

The Weyerhaeuser kidnapers, Harmon Waley and William Dainard, alias Mahan, headlined a troupe of Alcatraz convicts who paraded through the murder trial of Henri Young yesterday and caused attendants in the court of Federal Judge Michael J. Roche to post the "No Standing Room" sign. While a long queue of disappointed would-be spectators waited hopefully outside the barred door, the crowded court room listened, wide eyed, to the first sizeable chunks of Alcatraz local color testimony which defense counsel has been able to spread on the record.

KIDNAPER WITNESSES.

Through the kidnapping team and three of their fellow convicts, the jury of six men and six women heard that Henri Young's fatal stabbing of Rufus McCain in the prison tailor shop had been preceded by these events: Young had been dragged from his cell, beaten by guards, thrown down a flight of steps and jumped on "with both feet" by Associate Warden Edward J. Miller.

McCain had openly threatened to kill Young.

McCain had spread prison gossip concerning an asserted relationship between him and Young. In every way the star of the day's courtroom performance was Waley, tall and not unhandsome 30 year old convict who is "doing" 45 years. For some reason not discernible to lay observers, he was permitted to testify on matters which other witnesses have touched upon only through the "bootleg" method of answering above objections of Frank Hennessy, United States Attorney.

WALEY TESTIFIES.

Waley made the most of his chance. From the very outset, when he announced he has been in isolation for the last nine months, to the finish, when he sneaked over a response indicating he expected to be punished for his testimony, he was of obvious comfort to defense counsel.

At some length and with considerable enjoyment, he related that he has been confined to the Alcatraz dungeon twice. Once, he related he "made" the dungeon because he was sick, and applied for medical treatment, and was told he would receive medicine later; he insisted on aspirin at once; he was told he'd get his medicine later. "So," he recounted, grinning in retrospect, "I told the doctor what to do with his aspirin and was thrown in the dungeon."

CONVICT WITNESS.

Then his mood changed abruptly. He became grave and obviously bitter as he was asked if he was ever beaten; words rushed out in a torrent over the objection of Hennessy, and everybody heard his answer: "Yes, I was beaten and taken to the hospital and put in a straight jacket and was half crazy." The court ordered that answer out.

He was grinning again, however, as Sol A. Abrams of defense counsel inquired if he had ever heard McCain discuss Young. He shot a quick glance at the jury with its six women, and asked in some embarrassment if he should repeat McCain's conversation verbatim. Abrams suggested he be "as nice as possible - use nice language," and with that injunction, Waley went ahead. He said he saw McCain one day shortly after McCain was released from isolation, and congratulated him, and hoped Young too would soon be out.

"McCain called Young a cat...," the witness testified. "He said Young had snitched on their escape attempt.

He was very angry and said he intended to kill Young just as soon as Young got out of isolation, and he said

Young had better not get out of isolation."

With language admittedly supplied by Abrams, Waley also testified that McCain had spread word about the prison concerning alleged depravity involving him and Young.

THREATS DECLARED.

More specific testimony concerning McCain's asserted threats against Young came from George Miller, soft-spoken narcotics violator from Dallas, Texas. Miller said he talked to McCain on the day before Young slid a knife into McCain abdomen, and that McCain was talking about the escape which he and Young and Doe Barker and others had tried.

"McCain and I were talking in the yards." the witness drawled, "and McCain had just got a slip telling him he had lost between thirty and thirty- five years of good time credit. He was plenty mad. He said. that if it hadn't been for that yellow punk - , Young, he would have been out of there by that time. He said he had waited for along time to get Young and he said 'I'll get him now and it won't be long."'

KNIFE REPORTED.

Dainard, doing sixty years for the Weyerhaeuser kidnapping, also offered testimony concerning McCain's threats against Young. Dainard said that once, when he was on janitor duty, McCain borrowed his dustpan, secretly ripped a strong piece of metal from it, fashioned it into a crude knife and admitted he intended to kill Young with it. Dainard, pleading any such act with any such weapon would involve him, got the metal back from McCain, he said-- and at the request of defense counsel, informed Warden James A. Johnston where he hid it and where it ought to be now.

BRUTALITY CHARGED.

Sizzling testimony concerning alleged acts of brutality inflicted upon Young came from James Groves, colored, military prisoner serving forty years for attempted rape and attempted murder. Groves, testified, too, that McCain had threatened to kill Young "because he was a rat." And then he related:

"In July, 1939, we was on a hunger strike here. We wanted yard privileges and more smoking. Four men - guards - went into Young's cell and pulled him out. l didn't recognize any of the guards but l recognized Deputy Warden Miller.

"Young was thrown down the steps and landed down at the bottom and the deputy jumped on his face with both feet - that's the reason he hasn't any teeth now.

"At the door of the cell l saw the guards with their saps - their clubs - hitting him - hitting him on all parts of his body."

Attempts to draw similar testimony from Joseph Vigorous, kidnaper from Alabama, were stifled by Government objections.

BEATING DENIED.

Following Groves' testimony, Associate Warden Miller was recalled to the stand and confronted directly with Groves' assertions. He denied them all and insisted he never struck a prisoner, saw a prisoner struck or ordered a prisoner struck.

Earlier in the day, in one of frequent "offer of proof," Abrams had charged directly that Miller was lying in earlier testimony.

"I don't believe we have obtained the truth from Associate Warden Miller in 2 per cent of our questions," said Abrams to the court. "I would rather believe any of these convicts than believe Miller." Objections of Hennessy to defense tactics strengthened to charges of "prejudicial misconduct" during the day and at one stage caused Judge Roche to observe that counsel had been permitted to argue admissibility of certain evidence, had heard the court's adverse ruling, had nevertheless insisted on asking questions along the forbidden line, had ignored all portents and was dangerously close to the verge of contempt.

More News Articles:

TIME 15 Jun 1936: In San Francisco's grim Alcatraz Prison paunchy Convict Al Capone called lean Convict Harmon Waley, kidnapper of little George Weyerhaeuser, a "baby-snatcher." Offended, Convict Waley hit the first U. S. Public Enemy No. 1 on the jaw, knocked him down.

On February 8, 1936, the United Press Association also ran a story picked up by papers nationally concerning the ringleaders of the "riots" that had taken place at Alcatraz the month before. Whitaker would later attempt to sue the United Press, and in doing so helped save for his future biographers an account of the matter, including a story that appeared in that date's Philadelphia Daily News under the headline "Name Leaders in Pen Mutiny at Alcatraz." The Daily News' piece noted that "a gang gunman, a kidnaper, a figure in the Lindbergh baby abduction and the men who rode with George (Baby Face) Nelson in his last battle today were said to be the leaders of the Alcatraz island federal prison mutiny January 20." The paper also claimed that the "inside story" published by the San Francisco Examiner had listed some of the ringleaders by name: "John Paul Chase, former Sausalito, California, bootlegger and lieutenant in Nelson's Midwest gang of desperadoes; Harmon Waley, kidnaper of little George Weyerhaeuser, of Tacoma, Washington; and Norman T. Whitaker, "The Fox," convicted with Gaston B. Means in the Lindbergh ransom hoax. But in fact the Examiner's "inside story" regarding the Alcatraz uprising gave much more detail than merely naming the leaders. The story noted that trouble had been growing on The Rock since the previous year, but that it had not reached its breaking point until after the death of Jack Allen, the prisoner who rumor had it had been done in by negligent medical care, or worse. What had not been known earlier was that Allen had at least initially been refused medical treatment just prior to his death. The handling of the matter appears to have been the culmination of an unfortunate series of events, including Allen's known history as a malingerer and the fact that prison officials simply could not trust his reports of illness.

While the strike had started in the laundry, it quickly spread to "the carpentry, tailor, blacksmith shops, the mat factory and the kitchen." One guard was reportedly hit, and prisoners attempted to flood their cells by opening "plumbing outlets."

The strike persisted longer than authorities had indicated, according to the story in the Examiner. Indeed, five inmates went on a hunger strike, but after the first threat of forced feeding, three capitulated. The two main ringleaders of the revolt were force fed liquid food through tubes inserted through the nose. One of the ringleaders was a man named James C. Lucas, known as "a Texas bandit." The other was Norman T. Whitaker.

EVENTS LEADING TO THE CAPTURE OF WALEY AND DAINARD (MAHAN)

TIME magazine, Monday, Jun 17, 1935

Not from the West, where his family's lumber kingdom lies, but from Washington, D. C. last week went news that one of 9-year-old George Weyerhaeuser's kidnappers had been caught, another identified. Few were the facts which Chief J. Edgar Hoover of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation chose to reveal, but they were enough to make the nation cheer for its police, blush for its prisons.

Promptly on George Weyerhaeuser's release after payment of $200,000 ransom (TIME, June 10), Chief Hoover had issued a serial number list of the ransom bills, put 100 of his agents on the kidnappers' trail. Within a few days 30 of the bills had turned up in Utah banks, been traced to Salt Lake City stores. A local detective was waiting when, one week to a day after the kidnapped boy's release, a short, brown-haired woman walked into a Salt Lake City 5-&-10 cent store, made a small purchase. At the cashier's cage her $5 bill was quickly checked with the ransom list. The detective made his arrest. Other officers were waiting at the woman's home when her husband appeared a few hours later, with two ransom bills in his pocket. The man, Harmon Waley, promptly confessed his part in the kidnapping. Suspended sentences or paroles after five convictions for burglary had given 24-year-old Harmon Waley a proper contempt for U. S. courts and prisons. It was soon discovered that the Waleys had spent a penniless year in Camden, N. J., boasted that they were "going to do something that would fix us for life," moved to Salt Lake on relief funds last January.

Next morning in Butte, Mont, a policeman strolling his beat spied a man named William Mahan whom he had once arrested for bank robbery. As he approached, the man began to run. The policeman lost his quarry over a back fence and roof top. But in the Ford sedan which the man had deserted were found $15,155 worth of Weyerhaeuser ransom bills. All roads leading from Butte were promptly bottled up.

William Mahan, 32, known as a dangerous bank robber, had been paroled after a conviction in 1924, later escaped after serving seven years of a 20-year prison sentence in Boise, Idaho.

ANOTHER ACCOUNT OF THE EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CAPTURE OF WALEY

TIME magazine, date unknown

John Weyerhaeuser, in the meantime, was desperately trying to raise the$200,000 ransom. Most of his wealth was in his vast holdings, and his family had suffered enormous financial losses in recent years, mainly because of the ravages of the Great Depression. Therefore, his friends chipped in with cash to help meet the ransom demand.

Under a thick veil of secrecy, F. Rodman Titcomb, uncle of the kidnapped boy and an executive in the Weyerhaeuser timber empire, drove in his Cadillac sedan to a specified locale and turned the $200,000 over to the kidnappers. At gunpoint, the abductors confiscated Titcomb's automobile and he had to walk several miles to reach a telephone.

The boy set out on foot and trudged six miles to the home of chicken farmer John Bonifas, who had ten children of his own.

"I'm the little boy who was kidnapped," George said. Bonifas didn't have a telephone, so he put the disheveled and wet boy in his decrepit automobile and drove toward Tacoma. He was nearly out of gas, and George gave him the kidnapper's one-dollar bill to make a purchase.

Arriving at Benton, the farmer sought entrance to the telephone company building to call the Weyerhaeuser home or Tacoma police. However, the on-duty operator wouldn't admit him, saying that it was against company rules to open its doors for business until 8:00 A.M.

Bonifas stopped next at a roadside gasoline station and telephoned the Tacoma police department after learning that the Weyerhaeuser phone had been disconnected. An hour later, little George leaped into the outstretched arms of his tearful and joyous mother and father at their big white residence.

With George safely back, the FBI joined in what would be the largest man-hunt ever in the Northwest. From the boy, G-Men learned many details of his ordeal. After being chained in pits for two nights, he said he spent four days and three nights in a house. His captors blindfolded him when they took him outside, George said.

When he was inside and not blindfolded, the boy related, his captors wore masks. "They looked so funny, walking around like that. I laughed at them and it made them mad," the chipper lad said.

George told the FBI that he thought he had been held in a two-story house, because he heard furniture being shifted around above his first-floor room. Once, when his blindfold was off for a few moments, he saw that the house had two gables, and he recalled that in his room was a large cupboard, where the kidnappers locked him on occasion.

A small army of searchers thrashing across the heavily timbered and hilly regions around Issaquah and others scanning the region from airplanes could not locate a house matching the boy's description of his prison.

Despite intensive endeavor, the FBI and other lawmen had hit a dead end. No trace of the kidnappers was found, and agents hoped for a break in the case. Perhaps the abductors would get careless and pass some of the $200,000 ransom.

Earlier, as the stacks of bills had been put together, their serial numbers were recorded by the FBI--a time-consuming and tedious task. The list had been forwarded to headquarters in Washington, D.C. by airplane. Under normal circumstances, the printing of many thousands of serial numbers would require three weeks. However, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover personally contacted the manager of the Bureau's printing plant with orders to go all out on the big job.

Thirty-six hours after the list had reached headquarters it had been printed and bound into thousands of copies. These were sent by air to each newspaper, bank, department store, post office, and law enforcement agency west of the Mississippi River.

Waley, tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome, had been in trouble with the law since the age of 15. After having been arrested several times for robbery and theft (for which he had spent time in the reformatory), Waley joined the army and soon received a dishonorable discharge. Back in the crime business, he was sentenced to the Idaho state prison for a term of one to 15 years for a burglary in which a shot was fired at a policeman.

In less than one year the articulate Waley persuaded the parole board to pardon him, pleading that he wanted to go home to support his widowed mother. Three weeks after being released from prison Waley was arrested for armed robbery and later convicted. However, he coerced the judge into giving him a suspended sentence. A short time later he was caught in a stolen car and sent to the Washington State Penitentiary for two to five years. In spite of a record as an unruly prisoner, Waley got out from behind bars once more, in September1933.

Margaret Waley, one of 14 children in a devout family, had married Harmon when she was 16 years old, and spent most of her marital union waiting for her husband to be sprung from jail or prison. Now, in the Salt Lake City police station and under persistent questioning by the FBI, she broke first, tearfully confessing to her role in the Weyerhaeuser abduction and implicating her husband.