Robert Stroud (AKA-The Birdman of Alcatraz)
Robert Stroud known to the public as the "Birdman of Alcatraz," was likely the most famous inmate to claim residence on Alcatraz. In 1909 Stroud brutally murdered a bartender who had allegedly failed to pay off a prostitute for whom he was pimping in Alaska. After Stroud shot the bartender to death, he took the man's wallet to ensure his prostitute received appropriate compensation for her services. In 1911, Stroud was convicted of manslaughter and sent to serve-out his sentence at McNeil Island, A Federal Penitentiary in Washington State. His records at McNeil indicate he was violent and difficult to manage. On one occasion, Stroud viciously assaulted a hospital orderly that he insisted reported him to the administration for attempting to procure narcotics through intimidation and threats. On another occasion he stabbed an inmate.
Shortly after receiving an additional six-month sentence for his hostile actions, Stroud was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas for ceaseless complaints of threats towards other inmates and overcrowding. In 1916 after Stroud was refused a visit by his brother, he stabbed a guard to death in front of eleven hundred inmates inside the mess hall. Stroud was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by hanging. Stroud was ordered to wait out his death sentence in solitary confinement. His mother desperately pleaded for his life and finally in 1920, President Woodrow Wilson commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment without parole. As a result of Stroud's unpredictable and fatally violent outbursts, Warden T.W. Morgan directed that Stroud be permanently placed in the segregation unit to live out his sentence.
Over the duration of Stroud's 30 years of imprisonment at Leavenworth, he developed a keen interest in Canaries after finding a small-injured bird in the recreation yard. Stroud was initially allowed to breed and maintain a lab inside two adjoined segregation cells since it was felt that this would serve as a productive use of his time. As a result of this privilege, Stoud was able to author two books on Canaries and their diseases having raised nearly 300 birds within his cells. Although it is widely debated whether his remedies were effective, he was able to make scientific observations that would later lead to benefiting research for the Canary species. After several years of Stroud's informalized research, Prison officials discovered that equipment he requested was actually being used to construct a still for an alcoholic brew.
In 1942, Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz where he spent the next 17 years (6 years in segregation in "D Block," and 11 years in the prison hospital). In 1959, he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he was found dead from natural causes by then convicted spy and close friend Morton Sobell on November 21, 1963. Stroud was never permitted to see the movie where Burt Lancaster portrayed him as a mild mannered and humane individual.
