Ex-Con Has a Captive Audience on ‘The Rock’

On a Sunday morning early in 1962, an aging former prizefighter serving time for armed robbery was stricken in his cell at Alcatraz, the infamous prison in San Francisco Bay. Within hours, he was pronounced dead.

That evening, as inmates gathered for chow, guards carried the old con through the dining hall on a stretcher, headed for the morgue. Inmates noted that the corpse’s hands were cuffed and his legs were chained.

“Guards didn’t take any chances at Alcatraz--not even with dead men,” said Leon (Whitey) Thompson, a soft-spoken retiree with bay-blue eyes, a beard the color of unbleached cotton and a criminal record stretching back a quarter-century.

But on this balmy summer day, Thompson is giving tourists a con’s eye tour of “The Rock,” where he once was confined along with some of the nation’s most dangerous and disruptive prisoners.

He spun tales of some of those men and their years at Alcatraz--men like mobster Al Capone; Robert Stroud, the brilliant but sadistic “Birdman of Alcatraz,” and George (Machine Gun) Kelly, a lifer who sometimes ran the movie projector so that well-behaved prisoners could watch Shirley Temple films.

Thompson, outfitted in denims and a T-shirt that proclaims “Retired Bank Robber,” plays the congenial host by showing visitors his own cell and describing nearly 25 years in confinement at Alcatraz and other maximum-security prisons.

Men and women crowd around to get his signature on copies of his autobiography, “Last Train to Alcatraz.”

Although he still wears an electric chair tattooed on his back, the man signing autographs bears little resemblance to prisoner No. AZ1464--a solidly built tough with a convict’s crew cut and narrowed eyes--who is pictured on the book’s cover.

Now living in a trailer in California’s gold country with his wife, two dogs and a parakeet, Thompson has added a wry sense of humor at the age of 66 that he lacked during his years as a young rebel.

“The feds claimed I robbed a few banks,” he told a group of visiting Rotarians as he directed them down “Broadway,” the Big House’s central corridor. “And, well, yeah, I guess I did hold up a few.”

Touring the dining room, he pointed to “Them pretty little lanterns” on the ceiling beams--tear gas canisters that guards could trigger to squelch a riot.

“We had a special name for the dining room,” he said. “We called it ‘the gas chamber.’ ”

Such tales captivate Thompson’s listeners, some wearing T-shirts with whimsical messages such as “Alcatraz Swim Team”--alluding to the 36 prisoners who tried to escape from the island.

(There is no evidence that any of the prisoners actually made it to shore, although three participants in the famed “Escape from Alcatraz” incident have never been found.)

Not even Alcatraz could rehabilitate the volcanic young Whitey Thompson, he says. “Alcatraz didn’t break me, and it didn’t straighten me out. This guy (pointing to himself) and that guy (pointing heavenward) straightened me out.”

Thompson returns to Alcatraz frequently to share his experiences with visitors.

The National Park Service, part of a federal establishment that once treated him as a menace to society, welcomes him as a link to the island’s notorious past. His personal experiences supplement the rangers’ own animated tours of the island.

“I’m not crazy about this place,” Thompson said of the cellhouse that still evokes bitter memories. Still, he can appreciate the irony of being lionized by visitors at the prison where he once was confined, conceding:

“I never thought, not in a million years, that I’d be sitting here autographing books for tourists.”

Of course, San Franciscans never expected to see Alcatraz Island transformed into a tourist attraction, either. During its 30 years as a federal penitentiary, San Franciscans deplored and even feared the grim complex.

But since the government closed “Hellcatraz” in 1963, and later made it a centerpiece of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area--114 square miles of scenic and historic land around San Francisco--it has become a popular tourist destination, attracting nearly 1 million visitors every year.

Alcatraz’s forbidding towers and fortress-like cellblock offer a panoramic view of the San Francisco skyline and sailboats tossing on the restless bay. Sea gulls wheel and cry in the brisk wind, and the surf crashes along the rocky shoreline.

That scenic location made incarceration even more painful, says Thompson. Inmates could see the good life just beyond their reach. They were closeted in Eden, with a deadbolt lock on the door.

Thompson tells visitors that he tried to ignore the view during the 4 1/2 years he was imprisoned on the island. “It was another world,” he said. “The only thing that existed for me was prison.”

It took cons such as Thompson just 12 minutes to be transported by ferry from San Francisco to Alcatraz, but it could take them a lifetime to get back.

For today’s visitors, the 10-minute ride to Alcatraz is a painless one--and a round trip at that--from Pier 41 on Fisherman’s Wharf.

Red & White Fleet ferry boats depart year-round from Pier 41, beginning at about 9:30 a.m. daily. The last ferry leaves Alcatraz at 4:35 p.m. Frequency increases during the summer months. Prices: adults $5, seniors 55 and over $4.50, children 5 through 11, $3. There is no charge for touring the island. Audio tours are available for $2.50. For more information, call toll-free (800) 455-8880. To reserve tickets, call (415) 392-7469.

On the island, where the Park Service is planning long-range improvements, visitors can view a film, tour the cellhouse and enjoy the view from a recreation yard where cons could sometimes play softball on weekends.

“It was the only ballfield in the world,” said Whitey Thompson, “where hitting the ball over the fence was an out.”