The last-known living inmate to serve time in Alcatraz has revealed what haunted him most about being locked up on the notorious island prison that President Trump plans to reopen.
Charlie Hopkins, 93, was shipped off to the 22-acre island prison in 1955 for causing a problem at another facility while serving 17 years for kidnapping and robbery, he told the BBC.
What he remembers most is the “deathly quiet” on the island that is surrounded by the freezing, treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay — with the only sound the whistle of passing ships.
“That’s a lonely sound,” Hopkins recalled. “It reminds you of Hank Williams singing that song, ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry.’”
Hopkins, now 93, said his three years in Alcatraz were excruciatingly mundane — leaving him so bored he would clean to pass the time, buffing the floors “until they shined.”
“There was nothing to do,” he said. “You could walk back and forth in your cell or do push-ups.”
Despite being locked up in the notoriously strict high-security prison, Hopkins said he still found a way to get himself into trouble.
“You wouldn’t believe the trouble I caused them when I was there,” he told the outlet. “I can see now, looking back, that I had problems.”
Hopkins spent most of his days at Alcatraz locked in “D Block” — the solitary confinement section that housed troubled inmates who were rarely allowed to leave their cells.
His longest time on “D Block” was six months for being part of a failed escape attempt with several other inmates — including career criminal and notorious prison escapee Forrest Tucker.
Hopkins said he stole a hacksaw from the prison’s electric shop for the men to use to cut the prison bars in the basement kitchen to escape.
However, the plan was spoiled when guards found the blades in one of his accomplices’ cells.
“A few days after they locked them up, they locked me up,” he recalled.
Following Hopkins’ failed attempt, more and more inmates attempted to escape Alcatraz over the years, causing prison officials to increase security.
“When I left there in 1958, the security was so tight you couldn’t breathe,” he said.
Hopkins served out the remainder of his sentence in a prison in Missouri and was released in 1963 — the same year Alcatraz was shut down.
During its 29 years of operation, there were 14 documented escape attempts from Alcatraz prison, according to the FBI.
Of the 36 men who tried, only three are suspected of possibly escaping the Island: Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin.
In the early morning hours of June 12, 1962, using the dummy heads they crafted to make it appear as if they were sleeping in their cells, the men escaped through a hole in their cell walls, accessing a utility corridor, and climbing to the roof through a ventilation duct.
Despite none of their bodies ever turning up in the bay, they were declared legally dead in 1979 after the FBI concluded they most likely drowned. Their story was made infamous in the movie “Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clint Eastwood, the same year they were declared dead.
Hopkins, who now lives in Florida, said the San Francisco National Archives informed him it’s likely he’s the last surviving former Alcatraz inmate.
President Trump announced last week that he was directing the Bureau of Prisons and other federal agencies to get the massive island facility off the San Francisco Bay back up and running again to lock away homegrown, repeat criminals.
Trump, 78, said the “substantially enlarged and rebuilt” prison would “serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE.”
However, Hopkins — a Trump supporter — believes the commander-in-chief’s idea to revive a prison he calls “deader than the convicts it held” won’t work.
“It would be so expensive,” he told the BBC. “Back then, the sewage system went into the ocean. They’d have to come up with another way of handling that.”
Hopkins believes Alcatraz is best left in the past.
“You can’t go back in time,” Hopkins said. “That place belongs to the past.”
Read the full article here
