Alcatraz Ghost Story : Interview w/ Author Brian Stannard

In this episode I get to talk to Brian Stannard, author of the book 'Alcatraz Ghost Story', based on the life of Roy Gardner. Roy was an American criminal active during the 1920s. He stole a total of more than $350,000 in cash and securities and several times escaped from custody. He is said to have been the most hunted man in Pacific Coast history, having had a $5,000 reward for his head three times in less than a year. The newspapers in the West referred to him as the "Smiling Bandit", the "Mail Train Bandit", and the "King of the Escape Artists." He was one of the first inmates transfered to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

For more info on Roy's crazy life. you can pick up Brian's book here..... Alcatraz Ghost Story: Roy Gardner's Amazing Train Robberies, Escapes, and Lifelong Love

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mysterious-circumstances--5479817/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances, everybody. We have a great interview
for you today. I am talking with Brian Stannard and
he is the author of Alcatrazit Ghost Story. All the
links and everything in the description or will be in
the episode description, so you can go check it out there.
It's got great reviews. You can find it pretty much.

(00:42):
I mean, I think I'll have the Amazon link in there,
but it's not hard to find. Just google it. Brian,
Welcome to the podcast. Man.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
All right, thank you again for having me. I'm looking
forward to it.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Let's tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and
what you do and what led you to writing this story.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, of course. So I am from the San Francisco
Bay area. That's where I grew up, and when I
was a kid, the movie Escape from Alcatraz came out
with Clint Eastwood, and I have two older brothers, and
they used to scare the crap out of me when
I was a little kid because in that story, which
is based on a real escape from Alcatraz, the three

(01:23):
guys they were never found, so they're on the land
even to this day. It's an open case. They never
found them. Dead. They never found them alive. So of course,
the way that my older brothers spun the story to
me is that they're hiding in our backyard. Man, I
can't blame them for that. So it's kind of ironic
that here I am as an adult working at Alcatraz,

(01:44):
and I love it because that was one of for
me of the first stories that just scared the crap
out of me, courtesy of my two older brothers and
the actual movie Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood. And
so again, I'm a Bay Area guy. I love all
Bay Area history. I also do a lot of visual art,
so a lot of the art that I do pertain

(02:04):
Sabey Area stories. Right back here, there was a super
nutty guy kind of around the time of the Gold
Rush named Emperor Norton. He just arrived to San Francisco
and he was just a super eccentric guy and just
declared himself Emperor of the United States and Mexico. He
made up his own money, and he just found an

(02:25):
old junior Civil War jacket that he wore and strutted
around town and people dug it, people indulged it. And
he had two dogs that followed him and his two
dogs were named Bummer and Lazarus, which might be the
two greatest dog names I've ever heard. Yeah, So I'm
a huge fan of San Francisco and Barria history, and

(02:45):
for much of my adult life I was working as
a social worker in one of San Francisco's neighborhoods called
the Tenderloin. It's got a lot of national news recently.
It's kind of San Francisco's punching bag. It's San Francisco's
skid row. I mean, it's a tough neighborhood, there's no
way around it. Just lots of three level drugs, lots

(03:06):
of urban poverty, a tough place all around, there's no
mistaking it. But I worked there for years and it's
got his problems, absolutely, but it was very fascinating to me.
Within all the struggle, I always witness just that struggle,
a lot of people doing their best to just get
by in these really bad circumstances, elderly people, immigrant groups.

(03:29):
After the Vietnam War, a lot of Vietnamese refugees ended
up in the Tenderline and just trying to make their
best in a really tough neighborhood. So the area always
had a certain fascination to me despite all of its sudliness.
And I would encounter a lot of people briefly, and
I talk about this in the introduction of the book,
where you just see this old guy and I would

(03:51):
just wonder in my mind, like, what is this guy's story?
How did he end up in the tenderline? And a
lot of mental conversations with myself like that, and working
the tender line it took a toll on me too.
It was I was a social worker. It's one of
those jobs where I think I developed a lot of PTSD.
There's just a lot of murders, a lot of crime,
a lot of street level drug use, and at that time,

(04:15):
I was giving my own alcoholism the attention to deserve,
but I can always sort of I tried to play
it off as like, well, at least I'm not shooting heroin,
but it was becoming a mess. It was just becoming
a problem for me. And then I just had to
confront my own addiction issues, which I'm happy to talk
about if you think that would be of any benefit
to anybody. And then I just realized that once I

(04:38):
kind of got a little bit of traction of sobering
up for myself, I realized, like, okay, I got a
hand baton to some young buck. Somebody else has to
try to save the tendril line. I can't do it.
You know. It's like you can't jump out of an
airplane trying to help other people if your parachute's not working.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, So I did kind of a midlife crisis pivot.
You know. Some guys get a fast car and date
their twenty five year old secretary. I just got a
job at Alcatraz totally on a whim. And then once
I started working at Alcatraz, I just it was one
of the best choices I've made. I loved it. There's
so much history there and it's such an interesting place.

(05:17):
And then while working at Alcatraz, I learned about this
inmate Alcatraz. Within our employee work area, we have a
pretty vast library very specific stories about Alcatraz inmates and
Alcatraz history, and to me, it was really really interesting.
But a lot of it is pretty specific, minute stuff,
like only Alcatraz nerds and people who worked that would

(05:40):
love it. And that's where I first started learning about
this Alcatraz inmate named Roy Gardner. He was one of
the first Alcatraz inmates. He was one of the last
train robbers of the twentieth century. His time in the
saddle of committing train robberies was in the early nineteen twenties,
so over one hundred years ago, and he ended up
being one of Alcatraz's first inmates. But then the part
that totally stuck out in my mind is that once

(06:02):
he finished his prison obligations, he ended up in the tenderline.
And so that is what my antenna went up about, like, Oh,
my gosh, I've been working or I had been working
in the tenderline for about twenty years. That area, in
its own weird, demented way, was always a source of
fascination to me. And that was within the context of
the two thousands twenty tens. And now here was this

(06:23):
Alcatraz in mad that I had never heard of before
prior to working at Alcatraz, who lived there and these
exact same kind of skid row rundown hotels, but back
in the nineteen thirties, And so my head kind of
exploded at just a serendipity of like, oh my gosh,
my two adult careers are mixing together and I had

(06:43):
always thought, being a San Francisco Bay Area native, that
I kind of knew everything about the local history. And
when I started learning more about Roy Gardner that every
door that I opened during the research, the story just
got kind of crazier and crazier. And so I kept
doing research, and the research materials that were available within

(07:04):
the Alcatraz Library were really fascinating but kind of incomplete.
I would read one book that would just talk about
maybe a few years of his life, and it ended
kind of abruptly the research material, which is kind of end.
It was like the person writing it just stopped and
didn't complete it. But it got me totally interested. It
was like a tease. And so then I would find
another bit of material in a different area, and that

(07:28):
might talk a little bit, maybe a few paragraphs about
Roy Gardner's life, a different phase of his life, But
then that felt really incomplete too, So I'm like, why
is it? This is just strange to me, this guy's life.
Everything that I'm learning is just elevating my interest in this,
but there's nothing that's really cohesive. And I just kept
opening research stores and research stores, and the story just

(07:48):
kept getting more and more fascinating. So again he so
I ended up and said that at this point, I'm like, well,
if nobody else has done a cohesive book about it,
like I'm going to do it. And so here we
are talking about it. So yeah, So Roy Gardner's wife
in a nutshell, He's a total West Coast story. That's
also what I thought was kind of interesting about it.

(08:09):
Just that's kind of my bias. I'm a West Coast guy.
He was born in Colorado in the eighteen hundreds, drifted around,
he ended up in San Francisco as a soldier. San
Francisco does have a history of being a military history.
There were a lot of military bases up until the
end of the Cold War, and then he ended up
being a soldier training in San Francisco and he got

(08:33):
sent out to the Philippine American War, and so that
was something that I wasn't familiar with, and I realized, Wow,
this is kind of a big gap in American public education.
Because the more I studied this war doing my research
on Roy Gardner, that just seemed like a really crazy,
weird thing. And I'm surprised that it's not really talked

(08:57):
about more the way it was just kind of a
precursor to the Vietnam War, but it was in the
eighteen nineties. It was just Spain picked a fight with
the United States, or the United States picked a fight
with Spain. It was just kind of one of these
It's almost like a metaphorical bar fight where someone spilled
their drink on each other. It wasn't like And then
at that exact moment in time, Spain had a colony

(09:19):
in the Philippines, So the United States decided to just
go into the Philippines to fight Spain there, and then
Spain left, but the United States decided to just stick
around to be the brand new asshole in down And
like I said, it reminded me a lot of the
Iraq War and the Vietnam War, and it just became
very muddied as to what was the United States doing

(09:40):
in this war. And furthermore, I was very shocked that, Like,
again I fancy myself a pretty well educated person. I'm
an adult, Like I had never really even heard about
this before until I started doing this research. So Roy
Gardner was a soldier in the Philippine American War, and
depending on different perspectives, I think in the Philippines they
have a different name for it. History is written the victor,

(10:01):
of course, and so Roy Gardner finishes phase one of
his military obligations in the Philippines. He's transferred back to
a military base in San Francisco, and he's a gambler.
So his main kind of vice, which becomes a theme
throughout his biography, is gambling. So he accruise a lot

(10:21):
of gambling dead in San Francisco. There's around nineteen o
six ish. Nineteen oh six is an important date. And
then through a combination of either his gambling dead or
maybe he was just completely soured on the whole military
experience in the Philippines, he deserts. He skips down. In
his own words, he owed too many different people too

(10:42):
much money due to gambling, and so he just kind
of made himself scarce. And then this part of the
story again, this is one of those parts of the
themes for my research where everything that I every door
that I opened, I couldn't believe things that were happening.
So he deserts, and you know, you can't be a
deserter if you're in the military, like you're gonna go

(11:03):
to the brig But right around the time that he
deserts again nineteen oh six. It's early nineteen oh six.
Then the nineteen oh six San Francisco earthquake and fire happens,
which is just like the biggest bit of national insanity
and catastrophe to hit the United States at that point.
So San Francisco's destroyed, chaos, thousands of people are killed,

(11:24):
the military has this new purpose of just trying to
oversee things. A lot of controversy. I mean, that's a
whole other controversial story. There's police law, people are killed
by accident, buildings are blown up to try to minimize
the fire. So through just dumb luck, Roy Gardner had
deserted right before the nineteen oh six earthquakes. So in
my opinion, that kind of facilitates him being able to

(11:47):
just kind of slip out of town. And he slips
out of town and then his case, he goes to
New Mexico and Arizona and he becomes a copper miner.
So I think just indicative of the times, and I
talk about this in the book. During that time period,
a person could create a bit of shadiness in their
life and then just relocate. And so long as a

(12:07):
person could relocate and kind of keep a low profile,
like you can pull it off. You know, it was
a fingerprinting wasn't around yet, there weren't FBI databases yet.
So and then it also doesn't hurt if a huge
major catastrophe happens that creates a major distraction. So the
nineteen oh six earthquake happens, and he's able to just

(12:28):
skip down it becomes a copper miner. He's a copper
miner in Arizona and are right near the Mexican border.
And then he has he's and it's really really dangerous work.
And I talk about the dangers of it, not just
the actual mining, but as a time and history where
there's all these very violent and very melodramatic labor protests.

(12:50):
And that's actually how the Pinkertons became established. The Pinkerton
Detective Agency were essentially hired goons by their hired by
the companies and the government to just go in and
fuck shit up.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, yeah, So that's the source of the Pinkertons. They're
essentially strike breakers. So during that time period and in
that location of a really dangerous mind work working in
the mines, incredibly dangerous. I don't think we need to elaborate, Well,
what is working in on mind? Dangerous? Yeah, it is.
And so Roy Gardner felt this experiences himself. There was

(13:25):
a major mind cave in that he was a casualty
of He was assumed to have been dead initially, he
was just crushed and buried alive in this mining accident.
He manages to survive, but he has a major head
injury and they have to do operation and operation on him.
And this is within the context of nineteen oh seven.
So he's getting a skull operation in nineteen oh seven.

(13:50):
I wouldn't want to get a skull operation in nineteen
oh seven.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Just put me down.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
And so at this he just kind of says, I
don't know if I want to be a miner anymore,
and it's way too dangerous. And I chuckle at this
development in his life. I think it's indicative of his personality. So,
after dealing with the dangers of being a miner in Arizona,
he decides, well, maybe I'll just go into Mexico and
become a drug or a gun runner. That right then,

(14:20):
in that time period, the Mexican Revolution was kind of
getting it started. That was the Pancho Villa era in
northern Mexico, kind of in that border area. So even
though mining was had established itself as a dangerous occupation,
ry Gardner decides to be a gun runner, a white
American gun runner in Mexico at the dawn of the
Mexican Revolution, and as you can imagine, that didn't go

(14:42):
very well for him. So he ends up in a
Mexican prison and he manages kind of one of his
first significant escapes from prison is that he manages to
escape from a Mexican prison before they were going to
shoot him.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
That dude's life is insane, man.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, Yeah, And that's just kind of the warm up.
And so that from there he pretty much walks near
death back into Arizona. And what facilitated the prison break is,
you know, they busted out he and a few other guys,
a couple of Americans and an Irish guy. I'm always
kind of curious as like what was this Irish guyo?

(15:19):
But like some guy from Ireland was. I got some
Irish guys with them too, And so they all bust
out of prison and in order to get out, like
they are just kind of like punching their way out
very adrenaline fueled. And so when Roy Gardner returns back
to the United States after that debacle, he's trying to

(15:39):
figure out what to do next. I mean, when he
was a minor he almost got killed running guns for
the Mexican Revolution that didn't pan out. But when he's
thinking about it, he's like, well, I managed to like
punch those guys pretty hard, like when we were running
out of the prison. Maybe I'll become a boxer. So
he just makes this pivot toward becoming a boxer amazing,

(16:01):
and he achieves a certain amount of success as a
boxer in these kind of like backwoods you can imagine
being a boxer in the nineteen teens. He's it's almost
sort of like a traveling circus route. He'll be a
boxer in Colorado for a while and then in Oklahoma,
and he's just kind of traveling around on what I
can only imagine is just sort of like this bare

(16:22):
knuckle boxing circuit. But he's achieving some success and then
he kind of decides at that point in time to
maybe go to California. California is you know where a
lot of action is happening in California in the nineteen hundreds,
it still kind of has this allure of like the
Golden State. It's that, you know, the last of the
you know, you're on the edge of the continent, land

(16:44):
of opportunity. So even though Roy Gardner had to pleae
San Francisco as an army deserter, he just kind of decides,
maybe I'll go back there as a boxer. So he
drifts back into San Francisco and at that time period,
at that exact moment in time, one of the biggest
boxing events in early boxing history or early organized boxing
history was about to happen between Jim Jefferies and Jack Johnson,

(17:08):
and so it was just this huge boxing event that
was set to happen in San Francisco. So I think
Roy Gardner might have been thinking, like, well, you know,
there's this huge the equivalent of today's pay per view
in Las Vegas thing is going to be happening in
Las Vegas. I'm sure there's gonna be like a lot
of side bouts and whatnot. I'll just kind of like
go in and get caught up into this momentum. And
then one of the funnier bits of research when I

(17:30):
was doing this is that so they're about to have
this big boxing match in San Francisco. San Francisco even today,
it's a two fisted drinking down. It's rowdy. If you
want to like indulgent advices. San Francisco can empower it.
You know, there's so many different phases of its history
where it's very open minded to freaks and gay liberation

(17:50):
and it was you know, the miners and prostitutes are
a big part of its history. But right after the
nineteen oh six earthquake, there were elements of the civic
hierarchy who are wondering, like, do we want this to
be what San Francisco is? Like we kind of wanted
to be maybe more respectable, Like this is our opportunity.
The nineteen oh six earthquake essentially gave us a clean slate.

(18:14):
Let's clean up, let's be nice, let's be you know,
family friendly, however you want to describe it. And in
their mind, having this big, huge boxing match was not
part of this vision that they had of a more
rated G rated PG version of San Francisco that they
thought could be a possibility from the nineteen teams onward.
But of course there were still all the other entrenched

(18:35):
elements of you know, the sailors and the drinkers and
the prostitutes who are like, no, man, it's San Francisco,
Like we wanted to be rowdy like and so there
are these big fights, these civic fights between the mayor
of San Francisco, who have what I think is probably
the best name of a mayor. He kind of embraced
the nickname of Pinnhead McCarthy. So Pinnhead McCarthy wanted things

(19:00):
instead of remain rowdy and boisterous and alcoholic, but the
governor of California at that time period wanted things to
be kind of ned Flanders style and rated PG for
a few years, the ned Flanders Vision one. So boxing
becomes outlawed in San Francisco and California very briefly before

(19:21):
this big, huge boxing match was supposed to happen, So
the boxing matches quickly relocated to Reno. And then that
just kind of left Ray Gardner wondering, like, well, I
came to California to be to advance my boxing career,
and now they've just outlawed boxing, So now what I'm
going to do. So he's just kind of hanging around
San Francisco and somewhat impulsively, he robs a jewelry store,

(19:42):
just like shoplifting. He gets caught. There's nothing creative or
clever about it at all. He's caught in front of
tons of people, and then he goes to San Quentin.
So we were talking about San Quentin earlier with Johnny
Cash doing his performance at the San Quentin. So San
Quentin's a kind of an interesting place. It is still
a prison, it's in the Bay Area. It is in

(20:05):
what so the Bay area has a bad reputation or
it just has a reputation for having nowadays really expensive
real estate. San Quentin is now in some of the
most expensive real estate in the Bay Area. When it
was built, they built it in the gold Rush time
period where it was considered kind of an outpost, and
just progressively the really really nice areas, the nice real

(20:25):
estate areas just kind of grew around it. So you've
got million dollar mansions right next to San Quentin, and
it's on the San Francisco Bay. It's got beautiful bay views.
So it's kind of this surreal thing. About twenty miles
north of San Francisco. So Roy Gardner is there. There's
a huge prison riot while he's there at San Quentin.

(20:45):
This is in around nineteen twelve, so even going back
to the early nineteen teens prison rights sort of thing.
During the prison riot, Roy Gardner kind of saves the
life of a prison guard. A group of inmates were
really going after one guard in particular. In Roy Gardner's
telling of the story, it was just a manifestation of chaos.

(21:08):
It wasn't so much that this guard deserved it. Of course,
I can only imagine certain individual guards within a prison
environment are singled out as being extra sadistic and probably
have a target on their heads. But in Roy Gardner's
telling of the story, he wrote some autobiography notes, this
particular guard was just like a guard, just kind of
doing his job, not going out of his way to

(21:31):
hassle people. So all that without understanding, Roy Gardner kind
of interceded to help that guard. He was going to
be killed by these inmates in the midst of a
huge prison right who were just out for blood. So
with that, the prison guard advocates on Roy Gardner's behalf
to allow him to be released from prison, so he

(21:52):
gets an early parole from San Quentin, and then he's
just kind of figuring out what to do with his life. Again,
he gets some training as a welder, and he becomes
very very high skilled as a welder, and so he
gets a job in the Mayor Island Shipyard again San Francisco.
Up until the end of the Cold War, the whole
Bay area had a lot of military bases, just being
on the West coast, so a lot of shipbuilding activity,

(22:14):
a lot of military bases. So again, even though Roy
Gardner had deserted from the army, he's now a welder
from the Navy and gaining a really good reputation as
a very high skilled welder. And within this context that's
where he meets his wife or what will become his wife. Yeah,
So his personality, he's charming. He's this guy. He's been
around the world. He's been to Mexico, he's been to

(22:36):
the Philippines. He's a boxer, and it's a theme in
his life where whenever he enters a new situation. By
every account that everything that I've read about him, he's
like a nice guy who makes friends quickly. So of
course even that we don't we can't talk to him
now he's dead, and there's not necessarily like audio recordings
of him. Necessarily just the fact that there's this pattern

(22:58):
in his life where whenever he rolls into town he
makes friends easily. So I can my sense is that
he's always very charming, and so he's in his twenties.
He meets this teenager, her name is Dolly. He sweeps
her her feet. I can imagine from her perspective, a handsome,
charming guy who's traveled around a lot, you know, kind

(23:20):
of like a bad boy. Edge totally sweeps, sweeps rap
her feet. They get married, but he's hiding, he's being
like shady about his past, and that just kind of
launches more parts of the story. So him being charming
and him being a gambler are probably that if there's
two consistent themes to the life of Roy Gardner's being

(23:42):
charming and getting into trouble with gambling. So for a
while he is a legitimate family man. He and his
wife Dolly have a baby daughter. He's continuing to work
as a welder. Everything's going great. He's an absolutely well
respected guy in his welding yard. World War One has happened,
and so there's this huge demand for ships. So during

(24:04):
World War One, things are going well for Roy Gardner
and his wife Dolly, because there's war going on. They
need boats there. He's a really well respected welder. And
then when World War One finishes, and this was also
something that I learned during my research, when World War
One finishes, there's a huge recession, a lot of it
having to do with World War One and just the

(24:25):
devastation that that created. So even within the United States,
a really big recession happens. That some people during my
research say that it was kind of in a way
a precursor to the Great Depression, the concept of the
Roaring twenties that we think of as the Worrying twenties,
that that was actually kind of the interruption to what
was actually this larger depression that came about starting in

(24:48):
the immediate aftermath of World War One, and then of
course continuing with like the heart of the depression in
the nineteen thirties. And then another thing contributing to the recession,
of course, in a oppertain to nowadays, the Spanish Flu happened.
So this huge international pandemic breaks out. We all know
what that's like. So this huge war has just finished,

(25:10):
the European economies are devastated, American soldiers are returning back
to the US looking for work. Everybody's credit is just
all fucked up. Then there's this Spanish flu happening. And
then on top of it, they are these people on
the periphery talking about prohibition. So you get these ned
Flanders coming back into the mix talking about prohibition. And

(25:31):
then so prohibition takes into effect, and independent of what
a person might think about alcohol, it employs a lot
of people. I mean, bottles need to be made, trucks
need to be driven, barrels need to be created, and
so there was this huge industry that was doing okay
just from a financial standpoint.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
I could imagine the shipping yards around that area and
the Bay area, I mean in and out transportation, you know,
inport export. That's added even more jobs, and I could
see people being pretty cool with it, you know.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, yeah exactly. And so kind of around nineteen twenty,
nineteen nineteen, between World War One finishing and just like
this hellscape that no one could have ever imagined. World
War One finishes, there's a Spanish flu, and then this
new prohibition thing, which had been a viable economic industry,
creates to this huge recession. And so now Roy Gardner,

(26:25):
the things aren't going quite so well with his legitimate work.
He and his wife, they had been anchored in the
Bay Area. They'd been living in Oakland in San Francisco.
He's kind of now drifting again throughout California, trying to
pick up legitimate jobs again. And he finds work for
a little while in Los Angeles, but all of a sudden,

(26:45):
the gravy train isn't moving so quick, and so he
goes down to Tijuana one weekend to see if he
can kind of make a little rain happen by going
to the horse track. And yeah, you all can probably
imagine it's like, so he goes to the U. He
has a last weekend in Tijuana, and he accruised an

(27:06):
incredible amount of gambling debt quickly in Tijuana, and so
then he kind of, you know, with his tail between
his legs. He goes back to San Diego and he's
trying to figure out what to do. I mean, things
had already been tough, but whatever savings that they did have,
he totally blew it at the horse track at Tijuana,
and so he's trying to figure out how to make

(27:26):
things right with his wife. He does have it, you know,
like a really good relationship with his wife, and he's
trying to kind of go through this motion of being
a good family man. He's like fucked it up at
the deal. So uh and this kind of like made
me chuckle too, of just sort of this thought process
because you know, I'm married, I got a lot of
problems and what you know, like when I'm having a
problem with my wife, I'm trying to like figure out, again,

(27:49):
how can I solve this.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
It's it's weird, so weird as it sounds, it seems
like he's actively trying though.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he he's
like trying to figure out a way to like like, God,
damn it. If I can just like figure out this problem,
like I can get back on truck. So he decides
to rob a mail truck in San Diego. He's gonna rob,
which is you know, the mail truck is an extension
of the Post office, which is federal. So he robs

(28:18):
a mail truck in San Diego. That doesn't go well.
And so then the other development with this not going
well is that he had hidden from his wife. Dolly
is passed about being at San Quentin and just a
lot of the other shadiness. And so now Dolly, his wife,
is getting confronted loudly and all of a sudden with
this avalanche of information that her husband, who had been

(28:42):
he had a pretty good year, you know, a good
run of being a law abiding, hard working husband, good
family man. Like all of a sudden, her sense of
who or a husband is is totally toppled on his head.
So she has this moral dilemma of just like what's
even real? Like what's up? What's down? I don't know
what the ext going on? My husband's in jail. Like

(29:02):
not only is that surprising in and of itself, but
like I'm learning all this other stuff about his wife
that I had no idea about, like what is going on?
And then again kind of what you were touching upon
Roy Gardner is like trying to think of, like, oh
my god, like a part of his mind. And this
is what I think is so interesting about his character,
And there's no answer to it. I don't have an

(29:23):
answer even today. Is was the center of gravity to
be a good guy and he just had really bad moments?
Or was his center of gravity actually that he was
kind of a scoundrel, but he just could put up
a facade of being like a family man. So that
is what I think is so interesting about this story.
And again there's not a final answer. It's open to interpretation.

(29:44):
So when he's going to be transferred by train, he's
incarcerated at this point, they're going to take him up
for a court hearing to see like what they're going
to do. And he was pretty well caught red handed
robbing that mail truck, so it's not like a case
of mistaken identity. There's not really much he can do
to riggle out of it. I mean, he got caught.

(30:06):
And then furthermore, like once he realized that he was caught,
and then this kind of becomes part of the media
narrative once he is caught, Like, once he is caught
and he knows he can't get out of it, he
will make fool confessions and he will always kind of
give like a bit of congratulations to the people who
arrested him. So he almost kind of becomes a gentleman

(30:26):
in defeat. So and then the media picks up on that,
and that kind of helps him score some brownie points
with the public. You know, he's this conventionally handsome guy.
He robbed the mail truck. He did it. But you know,
once he's caught, he'll always go like, look, this is
why he got caught. I got caught because that the
driver of that truck is a courageous man, you know,

(30:47):
and I'm just some bumm. And so people kind of
gravitate this like kind of a cool story or like
you kind of can't get that mad at Roy Gardner.
So they're transferring him from training to soccerman know, to
eventually take him to McNeil Island Penitentiary, which is near Seattle.
So there's a big federal penitentiary and McNeil Island. At

(31:07):
his court hearing has decided that's where he's going to go.
And then in his mind he's he's still like you're
like you were alluding to a few minutes ago. He's
trying to figure out, like I got to be a
good family man, Like being in prison isn't a way
to be a family man. So I'm just going to
escape from his train, and so he does. He escapes,

(31:27):
and so this becomes like a really big pattern of
him being able to escape from the prison trains that
are trying to take him from California to McNeil Island
near Seattle in Washington, and then he'll be on the
land for a little while, and then he'll be caught again.
And each time this happens, his media need notoriety gets
bigger and bigger because he's he reaches a point where

(31:49):
he's really starting to make fools out of the authorities people.
And I think it's a reflection of the time period,
which again was almost in a depression. People are like,
he wasn't necessarily ab in it. I mean, he was
robbing things for himself, but I mean he's just, you know,
the whole world seemed kind of screwed up and upside
down at that point.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
And he wasn't actively hurting anyone, yes.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, And then that kind of becomes part of his
narrative too, is that when he does and when he's
on the land, he has to continue to do robberies
in order to you know, facilitate his existence. And then
while he has pistols like, he doesn't he's not sadistic,
he doesn't shoot anyone. And then that kind of becomes
part of the the myth of Roy Gardner, and he

(32:32):
gets the nickname the smiling band it. Yeah, it just
kind of becomes a bit of a chain reaction of
him being transported to McNeil Island and him escaping and
then getting caught, and then robbing more trains and getting
caught for that. And that was the other thing in
my research initially is like wait, which wait, which McNeil

(32:54):
Island escape attempt? Is this? That there was just so
many escapes around McNeil Island Penitentiary that I couldn't keep
track of it. So that was like one of my
motivations to try to like set the eyeboards you see,
like a string connected to a post it to like
that because it just began this habitual thing for him.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
How long did it take you to research Roy?

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, so a lot of it was during the COVID shutdown,
So if there was anything that was advantageous to the
COVID shutdown, that was it. I collected a lot of
material right before the COVID shutdown from the San Francisco
Library and then there were a lot of newspaper databases
that I was able to subscribe to and get access to.
And then that was what was so curious about it.

(33:39):
That part of the curiosity to me, and I had
alluded to this before, was that I'm a Bayry guy.
I kind of thought that I knew pretty much everything
about the Bay Area, but I knew nothing about this guy.
But then once I started looking at newspapers from the
nineteen twenties, in nineteen twenty one, So in nineteen twenty one,
that was sort of the peak of his Shenanigans, escaping
and robbing, saping and robbing and escaping and robbing. In

(34:02):
nineteen twenty one, almost every day he's on the front
page of lots of lots of newspapers. And at that point,
the Associated Press was already a thing. So like the
same story about Roy Gardner would appear in Florida, it
would appear in New York. So I was just so
shocked that, like in nineteen twenty one, like everyone kind
of knew about this guy. Uh, but then just something

(34:24):
happened where the door shut in the twentieth century and
he just didn't really become a thing anymore.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, what did his wife think about what sorry to interrupt,
what did his wife think about him being all over
the news all over the country. I mean, she's you know,
had just found out all this stuff about his past. Yes,
and then now he's escaping these you know, prisoner trains,
you know, like what is what is going through her mind?

(34:52):
And then they have a child together too, so is.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
She like so during like I said, nineteen twenty one
was sort of the peak year of his Shenan again
said in nineteen twenty one, his daughter is three. He
makes reference and what was made my research more interesting?
And so during a phase where he's finally at McNeil Island,
McNeil Island Penitentiary in Seattle, they finally catch him, they

(35:18):
get him there for now he's in McNeil Island Penitentiary
for a few months. During that time period he wrote
his autobiography his life up until that point, because he
was concerned that his wife and daughter were not going
to be able to financially be on their feet. So
San Francisco newspapers were paying him to send his story

(35:40):
to be published in the newspapers. So there was a
really rich treasure chest of information and so like what
was going on in his mind when they finally caught him,
because he writes very lovingly about his wife and so
again he comes across as like a very well spoken,
nice guy, very loving towards his wife. And that's where

(36:00):
I got a lot of information as so, like what
was going on up until that point was from Roy
Gardner's own writings from prison and McNeil Island.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
That is awesome.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
But then of course he escaped again. Yeah, so he
escapes from McNeil Island again. They finally catch him. And
then at that point and I laughed at it even
took so many times, the authorities at McNeil Island. It's
almost like a relationship. It's like, man, this relationship's not
working out, Like we just we can't keep seeing each other.

(36:29):
Roy Gardner and McNeil Island were not meant for each other.
So they sent him to Levenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. So
this is by nineteen twenty two, he's now at Levenworth
and then at this point and he doesn't really say
if this is the reason. My sense is at Levenworth
might just be a tougher prison to get out of.

(36:50):
I think my sense is that he was most likely
the wheels were spinning. He was looking for the angles,
he was casing everything out, but I think he just
couldn't find a way out. And then, so speaking to
what you're asking about earlier with his wife Dolly. So
then this is where the story, in my opinion, gets
probably more interesting than everything we've even talked about before.

(37:12):
Dolly decides to go on the vaudeville circuit, saying that
the reason that her husband, Roy Gardner, is committing all
of these crimes is because of that mining injury where
they did that operation on his head. She says that
they screwed that up man, like, my husband's crazy, but
if you can just get a better like with you know,

(37:34):
she didn't use the word of lobotomy, those weren't quite
in vogue yet, but she just says, like he needs
a brain operation, the one that they did back in
Arizona after that mining accident that didn't do the trick.
So she goes on the vaudeville circuit. And this is
just fascinating too, looking at the newspaper clippings of the
time period and just saying that she's at the Pantagious

(37:54):
Theater in Los Angeles, which is still in operation today.
It's just such a wild thing to see the the
reviews of her performances, and so she's kind of becoming
in her own right of media darling. And by every
account of her, Dolly, she's very nice, very kind, She
has a sparkle, you know, she's kind of conventionally attractive

(38:14):
to you. So you've got just like this wacky couple
in the early nineteen twenties kind of captivating the country.
And then said, not only is Dolly going on the
vaudeville circuit, but a police officer who arrested Roy Gardner
during one of his many phases in nineteen twenty one
of being on the lamb, this police officer arrested him,

(38:34):
became friends with him, and again, the crimes that Reg
Gardner committed, there's no it's not something like, oh man,
I was framed, you know, like that guy's actually did it.
This whole thing is a miscarriage of just he always
admitted what he did, so this police officer arrested him
like there was no denying that Roy Gardner committed his crimes.

(38:56):
But the police officer becomes really good friends with them,
like they become lifelong friends. And the police officer also
jumps onto this idea that the only reason why Roy
Gardner is committing these crimes is that he needs a
brain operation. So both Dolly and this police officer are
going on their own respective circuits on the Vaudeville trail,

(39:18):
advocating for Roy Gardner, who's in Elevenworth, saying that you know,
he just really needs to get a brain operation and
then that would be the ticket out of here. And
for me, what was interesting about this is that my
take on it is that it was probably a little
bit of a hustle and bullshit, but I think it
really was.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
There was but taking a head injury like that, like
knowing what we know now, yeah, I mean when you
said that, I was like, I mean.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, no, I know that. That's like one of the
things where there's like not like a lot of like
clearcut conclusions to this whole story. Like you said, like
that probably impacted things, but like a lot of hustle.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
It was a damn good excuse, right right.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
But then when I was doing research, and this is
what crazy, so lobotomies were starting to kind of become
a thing of that time period, so I think they
might have been hearing this, you know, like murmurs and
whisperings of like, hey, there's this new revolutionary medical advancement
that's kind of on the periphery called lobotomy's like this

(40:23):
could really work. And then you know, sitting here in
twenty twenty four, we can say, like, no fucking way,
don't do that. That's crazy. Do not get a lobotomy, Like,
don't do that. But for that time, it was like
kind of considered like a cool, potentially enlightened thing to
explore having. And so they never used the word lobotomy

(40:46):
because it hadn't quite gotten into that vernacular yet. But
they're advocating for what we now know to be a lobotomy,
so that that kind of becomes the crux of their argument.
Roy Gardner from prison he kind of starts to like
lean in on that as well. So now they're all
just saying that, like I'm just a criminal because of
his head injury and I just need to get They

(41:06):
don't say lobotomy, but I just need a brain surgery.
Once I get this brain surgery, like let me out
of prison, I'll be better. Yeah. Yeah. So I think
it's just sort of like their own like he's always
strategizing on how to get out of prison. It's either
just escaping in the conventional sense of it, or just
kind of hustle in the authorities to get this brain surgery.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
I've actually seen his name pop up while doing research
on Dillinger associates as well. Yeah, so when I saw
the name, I was like, man, I know I've seen
that somewhere before.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah. So one of my favorite Leavenworth stories from that
time period. So the one successful escape attempt from Levenworth
before Roy Gardner got there, is this guy who probably
was fossibly accused of a crime he didn't commit. There
was a guy there, he was in Levenworth. The research
that I did suggested he was falsely imprisoned. So he's

(42:01):
pissed off, understandably bitter, resentful. So this other guy not
right guard. There's a different prisoner. I talk about it
in the book. His name is his name is A Grigware.
I think his name is Grigware. I'm going to wear
off memory. So he's in Levenworth for a crime he
most likely didn't commit. So of course he's resentful and
angry at the universe. So he's got a lot of
motivation to escape from prison. So he manages to escape

(42:23):
from Levenworth in the early nineteen teens. Because Levinworth is
such a huge prison's pretty much a city within a city,
it's got an inmate population of three thousand. So within
the prison they actually had a train network, almost like
a Disneyland train, just so that they could get like
supplies from one side to another. So he managed to

(42:44):
turn the train into a battering ram and he just
rammed it through the gate. He had made an axe,
pretend acts out of soap or some you know, decoy
acts that he made, and the arts and crafts wing
and fled. And in this case, you're totally rooting for
the guy because he was falsely in prison and he

(43:05):
managed to escape to Canada where he successfully ran for
mayor of a Canadian town.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
They changed his name to Fahe when he was in
Canada and he successfully became mayor and some small Canadan
So Roy Gardner arrived to Leven Work shortly after that.
So they made a lot of modifications to the prison
to prevent things like that from happen. But so I
think Roy Gardner's overall motivation is like he wants to
get back to California somehow so he can be with

(43:35):
his family. So in the late nineteen twenties, late nineteen thirties,
and this is all perfect for the Dillinger context. Of course,
what's happening in the nineteen thirties, the real Great Depression,
the lingering effects of prohibition, people like al Capone. The
description I use in the book is like people had
to have had a sense that just like the bottom

(43:56):
is falling out of society. There's these high profile kidnappings
for ransom, machine gun Kelly. That was one of his
major times. He kidnapped this wealthy guy and just held
him for ransom. And then of course a Lindberg baby,
which is a terrible story. Absolutely, So there's kind of
this sense in the early nineteen thirties that the criminals

(44:17):
are kind of running the show and the authorities are
just kind of hapless, like can't do anything about it. Meanwhile,
people are out of work, people are starving. Everything just
really fucked up, and the dust bowl is happening.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, and especially during that time period, everybody was against
the banks. Yeah, so you had so many people rooting
for these guys who are Robin Banks, Robin Trains. You know,
it's the whole concept of like, you know, fuck these people,
We are the people who actually run this country, the
people on the ground doing all the work, Fuck the

(44:49):
rich people, fuck the banks. So it's like it that
whole period of time was so tumultuous and like just
super interesting. Actually.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah, so within that context, the authorities and at this point,
the the FBI has recently been created. J Edgar Hoover
is a that's a whole other weird.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
Thumbs down on that one.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Dude.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I have I have, unfortunately had to research hours and
weeks of that guy, and man, he was something else. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
I was, As I mentioned in my email to you,
I was listening to the Jimmy HENDRICKX one and just
all the horrible surveillance of Martin Luther King. Oh yeah, dude, yeah,
oh god.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
It was crazy. And Hoover, I mean he didn't care.
Like just for context for listeners who haven't listened to
any of my Dillinger stuff, Hoover created this group of
guys just to kill John Dillinger in Chicago. They were,
you know, the Dillinger Squads what they were known as
like six dudes, And they would hear about John Dillinger
being in a house. They didn't need proof. They would

(45:57):
go kick in the door and just start shooting people.
There were three or four innocent people shot by this
Dillinger squad. That helps get bad press. And if anything else,
Jay Edgar Hoover did not want bad press. That's why
he hated Dillinger so much. And I when you were
talking about how Roy's in the media and the media

(46:19):
is starting to like him a little bit. He's starting
to get a little bit more famous, and that's drawing
attention away from certain aspects that are probably you know,
law enforcement and stuff like that. It was just not
a Hoover fan.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no sing to. So the larger authorities,
within the context of the early nineteen thirties are trying
to figure out, like, what can we do to just
try to assert that we have control over this crazy situation.
So they start discussing the development. They don't use the
word supermax prison, but that's kind of what how we

(46:56):
currently think of it. So they start talking about creating
a supermax prison. Because also at that time period, al
Capone was also making a mockery of them. Al Capone
was in prison, but even from prison, he was making
a mockery of just the whole Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He had Julie well known photo of his prison cell

(47:18):
that looks like a hotel suite and yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
At Atlanta Penitentiary, the guards nicknamed him Santa Claus because
he would hook up the guards with nice cigars from
the Cuba. So terrible, terrible publicity for the larger Federal
Bureau of Prisons and groups like the FBI. So they're
just trying to think of a way how can we
flex our muscles to reassure the public that we actually
have our hands on the steering wheel. So they're discussing

(47:48):
the development of this new prison that could be a
supermax prison, and then that supermax prison ends up becoming Alcatraz.
So when Roy Gardner, who at this point he's kind
of toggling between Atlanta Penogendary and Levinworth, he kind of
hears about this, and in his mind he just thinks that, well,
my wife and daughter they're in the Bay area. Is

(48:10):
still his wife Dolly? They were always Bay area people.
They lived in Napa near San Francisco. So Roy's thinking, well,
maybe like if I get transferred to a prison that's
in the San Francisco Bay area, this will kind of
help show up my relationship with my wife. At this point,
she's already stayed married to him for I'm just doing

(48:31):
quick arithmetic about fifteen years, which is way beyond the
norm for what a prison wife would usually do. So
when Roy Gardner was first arrested and really locked down
around nineteen twenty two at Levenworth, and finally it's realized
that like, okay, he's not escaping like he had been.

(48:52):
Everyone was making these predictions, kind of these like condescending
predictions toward Dolly, like you'll be divorcing in within a year.
But she set my arm for a really way beyond
the statistical average for a prison wife. And so Roy
feels like, you know, I'm going to maintain this momentum
of having a good relationship with my wife despite all

(49:13):
the hurdles by potentially going to a prison in San Francisco.
So he actually volunteers to go to Alcatraz as one
of the very first inmates. But I think that it
was a case of just selective hearing, where I don't
think he understood what the whole point of alpha.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
I think he just kind of thought it was just
going to be like a prison transfer. And so he
becomes one of the very first inmates at Alcatraz. He's
transferred from Levenworth to Alcatraz on his prison transfers machine
gun Kelly. Also within that first group of inmates is
al Capone. So there's these first group of inmates at
Alcatraz that are to be the examples like this is

(49:51):
what we are as you know, the authorities are saying
Alcatraz is brand new prison in nineteen thirty four. We
want to make this They didn't use the word super max,
but the way they describe it as like a supermax prison.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
The way they built it to But and Roy volunteered
to be there.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Yeah, yeah, because he thought it would you know, like
he and his relationship with Dolly.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
And so then the story goes from there.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
That is out. That is so cool man, Yeah, yeah cool.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
So yeah, and so then I work at Alcatraz and
Alcatraz is absolutely one of the most fascinating places you
can be. One of the most common things I hear
as a staff person at Alcatraz. A lot of people
within the Bay Area kind of think of Alcatraz. They
kind of talk about it in a condescending Thus, then
when they're at Alcatraz talking to me, everyone just their

(50:40):
eyes are like saucers and they're like, oh my god,
we've lived in the barrier our whole lives and we
just didn't realize how cool this is. Like we've learned
so much. I call it the Alcatraz bait and switch.
Most people want to go to Alcatraz and learn about alcohol,
which is legit, like, of course you want to learn
about ALCOHOLM. But then they go there, they learn about
ALCOHOLM playing banjo while out of his mind on. But

(51:00):
then they always have this other stuff like the Native
American occupation of nineteen sixty nine, which is just this
totally other fascinating story about Alcatraz and it's actually beautiful.
And that's what's a really weird paradox about the Alcatraz
experience is that it is actually one of the most
beautiful spots in the San Francisco Bay area. And then

(51:20):
to just think that they had this maximum security federal
penitentiary like right in the middle of it.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Are what are a few myths about Alcatraz that people
that you see people get wrong and you just want
to say, listen, that is not true, you know.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of times, oh gosh, I mean,
that's like a huge funny I mean, it's getting like
my coworkers and I like, we we love it. Like
I had mentioned this earlier, there's no such thing as
a stupid question so long as people are curious, and
I like to just make sure that I give their
curiosity more oxygen. So a lot of times there was
this phase where we're getting a lot of people coming
in asking about where's the electric chair? Where's the electric chair?

(51:58):
Which I thought was kind of a weird kind of
every question to be asking for. But Alcatraz never had
a death row. And then we're trying to figure out,
like why do we get asked this question so much?
And then we realized that there's this kind of silly
and cheesy music video from the early nineteen eighties that
the Scorpions put out where it was filmed at Alcatraz,
and they built this kind of like fake cheesy electric

(52:20):
chair that's in the Alcatraz dining hall that's part of
the music video. Gosh what song is? It's like a
really like cheesy Scorpions early eighties song.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
When you're like, oh, maybe that's why everyone thinks that
there's an electric chair at Alcatraz, But there is still
a death row at San Quentin, which we had talked
about earlier, which is about a half hour drive from Alvatrez.
The reason why Alcatraz never did have a death row
is that it's a federal penitentiary, so executions do not
happen at the federal level. It's always at state prisons.

(52:56):
And then a lot of people other just questions we
get asked at are correct. A lot of people ask
if al Capone died at Alcatraz, and he did not.
So by the time Alcabone got to Alcatraz, he had syphilis,
and it was right around the time period they didn't
quite have antibiotics figured out. So Alcabone had a pretty
checkered run at Alcatraz because he was experiencing the debilitating

(53:17):
side effects of syphilis, mainly dementia, and he was becoming
pretty psychotic towards the end.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
So it was eventually actually what got.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Him exactly exactly, So the Alcatraz authorities determined that they
just couldn't manage his syphlist symptoms at Alcatraz, so he
was transferred to a medical prison near Long Beach, California
called Terminal Island, which is a weird name for a
medical prison. But iron they did about one more year

(53:44):
at Terminal Island, which was specifically a medical prison, but
his situation with the dementia related syphilis was just deteriorating.
But he did one more year there and after that
he had completed his obligations for not paying his tax
and he got to go back to his Florida mansion.
So he did die in Florida. I'm out his Florida mansion.

(54:06):
He was only about forty eight or forty nine.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
That's one of the funniest myths that I always tell people.
They always think Elliott Ness is the one who got
al Capone, and I'm like, no, it was about five
or six nerds who were sitting in a basement going
through paperwork, who like, they didn't have computers back then either.
So these dudes are straight up going to each bank,
getting every single going through every single transaction in a

(54:30):
basement of some building. And it was a bunch of
revenue guys, a bunch of tax guys who were actually busted.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Man. Yes, I always say it was a simphless in
tox evasion where it's two downfalls.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, that's syphilis. That definitely, like the later years of
his life. I don't want to say are sad, because yeah, yeah,
al Capone was not a good good guy by any means.
It's weird as it sounds. He did a lot of
good things for the city of Chicago when the government
was not doing it, but it was for his own
benefit in the future. It wasn't for the benefit of anybody.

(55:03):
But I will say he is the reason we have
like expiration dates on milk, now, you know, because he
had a it was either a niece or a nephew
or cousin or something that got sick on expired milk.
So he started pulling for that and basically that's how
it happened. But which is weird one of the weirdest
trivia things about our Capone. But yeah, and then his

(55:24):
whole experience at Alcatraz. Obviously, I did a big series
on Capone and people are always like, oh, he was
he was seeing you know, the ghosts of the people
that he killed, and it's like, no, his brain was
riding away from cephalos is what happened. But going on
that note, first of all, I just want to state

(55:45):
I love how passionately curious you are, because I'm the
same way about different subjects. And I love that you
like got so involved in this and like wanted to
find out more because I love that kind of stuff.
My listeners love that kind of stuff. Yeah, I just
want to thank you for that, and also thank you
for listening to a couple of my episodes, Like I'm

(56:05):
glad you I'm glad you liked them.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Oh, I totally do to you dive into more of it.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
So yeah, well, yeah, I appreciate that. But so going
on some of those stories you had mentioned in your email,
you're like, man, you know, I've got some stories about
Alcatraz and even the Bay Area eating San Francisco or
whatever the case is. And you had mentioned that it
was originally built on a cemetery.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Oh yeah, yeah. So San Francisco geographically is pretty small.
It's it's a peninsula, so it's just by definition it's
surrounded by saltwater primarily so in the early days, I mean,
people have always died, and so they're creating cemeteries within
San Francisco. But because it's just geographically so hemmed in,

(56:50):
there's only so much space. So then some around nineteen hundred,
some political bureaucract decided, well, we you know, were wasting
the space with these bodies and cemeteries. So let's just
create this whole new suburb down on the peninsula, the
one part of San Francisco not surrounded by water. And
then we're just gonna for to him make like a

(57:10):
totally separate city that's just for the cemeteries. And so
they move thousands of boudy and it's such a weird
like I can't even begin like getting.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Poultry ied vibes right now, dude.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yeah, it's like and it's crazy. It's like, oh my god.
So they moved this entire all these cemeteries to a
town called Coma, which was a relatively new town and
currently Cooma. The motto of Colma it is just like
a suburban town but with tons of cemeteries that it's
great to be alive in Coma.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
It it just should have made me laugh. But but it's like.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Such a weird thing. And so like nowadays in twenty
twenty four, there's like huge neighborhoods in San Francisco that
are dense with housing and shops and everything like that
that are absolutely on former cemeteries that just some bureaucrat
decided we got to move all these dead bodies, and
I'm sure some of them got pissed off, and some
of the dead bodies got pissed off or they missed

(58:09):
a few. And what's really weird too, is in the
Poppers cemetery, like the indigent people who weren't able to
afford like a nice gravestone, for example, during this moving process,
they took all of those tombstones that were just pretty
basic and there weren't any living family members to take

(58:30):
care of them, and they just threw them into the bay,
just as like shore breaks and so periodically, like after
really big storms on the beach, I look close to
the beach out here, tombstones wash up on the beach
during really dramatic shifts and the tides, and it's all
just from like they just throw all these tombstones in
the water. So yeah, yeah, such a weird And occasionally

(58:53):
when they're doing construction projects on houses, remodeling projects, they'll
they'll dig up dead bodies recently, and it's kind of
sad because you just realize, like, oh, yeah, those were
just sort of the poor the living family members. To
advocate for a more civilized process, I'm moving Coma.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
So that is crazy. That's crazy. I mean not out
of the realm of possibility. We've seen it, seen it before,
but the fact that could you imagine how many people
don't know that you know that that live in those areas,
and it's.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Like what, So, yeah, Coma is a totally interesting place.
People often ask me like what's Yeah. I don't drink anymore,
but I feel like I earned my I spot at
Mount Lushmore's. I still feel like I'm very knowledgeable about them.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
You retired, basically, yeah, you hit your peak.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
I feel as me, like, what's your favorite bar in
San Francisco? And I say it's actually in Coma. It's
this place called Malloy's. It's right across the street from
all the cemeteries and that's where all the grave diggers
hang out, and it's where all the Irish wakes are
and it's like one of those places where it's just
as booming and happening at ten am as ten pm
because it's all the people who have like weird job shifts,

(01:00:01):
and it's just as old, like I said, as where
all the Irish West where all my relative uh my
grandparents have their wakes and it's a great spot and
it's like a museum to San Francisco history, all these
old black and white photographs.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
That is cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Yes, Now they don't have food there, but they always
have a Mexican taco truck parked right outside.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
So perfect. Perfect dude, you got a taco truck outside
your bar. You don't need a restaurant in your bar.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah, that's happened primarily by grave diggers.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Honestly, I would probably I would love that because I
would be asking them all kinds of random yoy's. Oh,
I'm if I ever go to the Bay Area, You're
the first person that's gonna know, is that one? I
want you to show me the spots man. Yeah, and
of course, uh, you also mentioned working in Alcatraz. We

(01:00:50):
have to ask this man, have you ever experienced anything
that you could not explain of the ParaNorman.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Is what happens more often than not my coworkers scaring
the shit out of me. Yeah, my group of co workers,
we're the ones that you really got to look out for.
We're always trying to scare each other. One of my coworkers,
her expression is because we get asked about ghost sightings

(01:01:17):
all the time and so one time and I remembered
this quote for my coworker. Some teenagers asked her, have
you ever seen a ghost? And she said, I've never
seen a ghost, So I don't know if I'm doing
something wrong or if I'm doing something right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
It could go both ways, man.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Right, right? And then I always joke, you know, if
I was a former inmate here and I died, and
I had ghostly powers, I'd use my ghostly powers to
get out of here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Oh absolutely, I always say.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
I always joke with people. I think Alcatraze might be
the least haunted place.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Nobody wants to stay there, man, you know, just kind
of common sense wise, you would think a woman of
all people would probably have the most experiences in a
place like that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Yeah. But I mean what cracks me up too, is
that so San Francisco Bay. I mean, it's windy, it's
cold Alcatraz. If you look on a map, it's like
right on the blasting lane of the wind off the Pacific.
The buildings are all falling apart, half the windows are broken,
so there's always just like howling wind. And people are like,
oh my gosh, I thought I felt a chill and
I just said my mind. I'm like, yeah, look at

(01:02:25):
what's just north of us.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Man, you're gonna get some cool breezes outstanding.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
We do have an overnight security guard who spends a
night on the island, and it takes a certain personality
type to be the night security guard at Alcatraz.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
I would love that job.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Yeah, yeah, So usually I arrived to work in the morning,
so the first staff boat arrives in the morning and
the security guard is leaving, and I've tried to talk
to them to get them to tell me some stories.
But like I said, I think it's a very specific
kind of like vaguely autistic personality. They're not super talkative
or gregarious.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
That is fair.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
That is fair.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Oh man, that is awesome. How many tours do you
do through the week, So you work five days, like
forty hours a week.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
So in the summertime it's much much busier. So that
would be my advice to you and your visitors, if
you have flexibility, try to avoid the summertime just because
it gets so crowded. So right now, February is great
out there right now, not super crowded, even though it's
always kind of cold out there. California coastal winters aren't

(01:03:34):
that bad. So yeah, so this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Ism from Indiana, it can't be any worse than here. Yeah,
we have freezing rain and ice storms man like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Yeah. Yeah, so just defends. So in the summertime, it's
a lot busier. A lot of times it's not so
much formal tours what I do. It's just trying to
help the whole thing run smoothly. It's very, very very hilly,
so a lot of times, no offense. People from the
Midwest get kind of freaked out about the hills. Oh yeah,
up and down a lot, a lot of rickety staircases. Uh.

(01:04:05):
So we actually have a lot of people following, and
we have a lot of medical situations where we've got
to do with sprained ankles and fracture for sure. So
a lot of it is just kind of, like I said,
just keeping the piece and helping the whole process move.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
That is awesome. So I guess before you go ahead
and give the listeners information about you know, where to
get your book, what do you expect in it? Tell
them to come to Alcatraz and get use the tour guide.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
Yeah, do you have any.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Yeah, ultimate set of keys do you have any, uh,
any final thoughts or final words for for the audience.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
No, no, again, I love this experience. And again Alcatraz
it's I always say, like, if you go to Alcatraz
and you're not fascinated, you're not doing that right, Like
something's wrong with your head. Yeah. I was talking about
this with my coworkers yesterday about we appreciate working there
because it kind of keeps as young because it's just
I think for me maintaining curiosity, which we were talking
about earlier, like you just got to be as we age.

(01:05:01):
As I age, it's just really important to just be
fascinated by the world because there is so much interesting
stuff to check out, and I think that helps maintain
a youthful vigor. And Alcatraze is just it's a trip.
I mean, like I said before, it's beautiful. It's a
bird sanctuary, so there's millions of birds out there and
it's actually beautiful. And then the Native American occupation is

(01:05:23):
something that a lot of people are familiar with right
off hand, but that's a totally separate, interesting chapter to it.
And then, as I mentioned to you in my email,
the visitor population is super international, so I love it too,
because I feel like I get to travel around a
little bit without leaving my hometown. So yeah, I'm always learning.
Like I told you in the email, bad words in

(01:05:44):
different languages.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
No, I love it, dude, I'll tell you what, man,
this has been great. Like I love this. Like I said,
I'm a curious person like you, and I love learning
new things and talking to people who know stuff that
I don't. I think that's always beneficial for both parties.
You know, it's a good conversation. And yeah, I mean

(01:06:07):
you are welcome back anytime you want, keep in touch.
Feel free too. Yeah, I can probably say I have
like ten million more questions for sure, but.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Whatever. Like we go to a house party, my wife
always kind as to preemptively apologize. It's almost like like
I'm so right, I don't do drugs, but my wife, boys,
that's to tell everyone. Like my husband Brian is like
he's out of his mind on cocaine. Like you might
just corner you all and just not stop talking about Alcatraz.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
It's to me with Dylinger, dude, Like if somebody asked
me one question, I'll go on a twenty minute ramp
with context and story and everything. Oh, man, So why
don't you go ahead and tell people how to get
a hold of you, where to get your book where
you're at.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
So, like you had mentioned it before, it's on Amazon
if you're able to. I always like supporting a mom
and pop bookstores. So if there's a bookstore in your neighborhood,
even if they don't have it on the shelf, you
can just I check in with them and have them
order it for you. That would kind of be my preference,
but you know Amazon works too. It's also available at
a lot of public libraries. I'm a big library nerd,

(01:07:12):
So you can check in at your library and if
it's not already there, you can ask them to order it.
That'd be a good way to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
So yeah, awesome, well good deal man. Like I said again, dude,
I am very happy that you decided to come on
and do this. And I mean for me and you,
that was fairly short notice. That was like I think
a week of kind of going back and forth. Yeah,
I was like, I want to get this, dude on,
like as soon as I can. I don't schedule interviews

(01:07:40):
for two months out, man, Like, I want to talk
to them now. So I was happy that you were
you were able to and you could clear your schedule
on a Sunday for me. Man, I greatly appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
All right, perfect, all right, well thank you, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
All right, well I will talk to you sir, all
right to justin.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you,