Alcatraz's most famous prisoners amid Trump's orders notorious prison to re-open
Donald Trump has announced his intention to re-open a famous US prison, which has an impressive roster of infamous criminals to its name.
On May 4, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to announce that he wanted to 'rebuild and open' Alcatraz.
He said: “REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering.”
He went on to explain that he would only send serious criminals to Alcatraz, adding: “When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
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“No longer will we tolerate these Serial Offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets.”
While he didn’t explain when this could happen, he did say that he is ‘directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders’ in a bid to ‘no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally’.
Alcatraz is an island prison located off the coast of San Francisco, and it has housed some of the most notorious criminals until its closure in 1963.
And here are some of the most famous inmates to walk the halls of Alcatraz.
Al Capone
Alphone Gabriel Capone, who's nickname was Scarface, was a New York gangster who had very strong political connections which meant that his criminal business was ignored for quite some time.
However, that would all change when his gang killed seven members of a rival gang during his St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, though Capone was in Florida at the time of the killings.
However, it wasn't his apparent connection to this case that landed him in jail, but a tax evasion case that had been built up by the US Treasury Department, and on June 16, 1931, he initially pled guilty to tax evasion and prohibition charges, however, after he found out there wasn't a deal for a two-and-a-half year sentence, he changed his plea to not guilty.
He was sent to Alcatraz in 1934, and served his time there and in Atlanta.
Capone passed away at the age of 48 in Palm Island, Florida due to a stroke and pneumonia.
Robert Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz
Robert Stroud was jailed for the murder of a bartender after he claimed that he owed him money for a prostitute he was pimping out.
As a prisoner in Leavenworth Prison, Kansas, he was violent and would go on to stab a guard, leading him to be thrown into solitary confinement.
He also studied the breeding of canaries after finding an injured bird in the prison recreation yard, and even wrote a few books on the subject.
However, things would turn after he was found to have been using ornithological equipment to cook up alcohol and he was subsequently sent to Alcatraz in 1942, where he spent 17 years there before dying in 1963.
George 'Machine Gun Kelly' Barnes
George Kelly Barnes, also known as 'Machine Gun Kelly', was one of the US' most notorious gangsters. Hailing from a wealthy family in Tennessee, Kelly began to take up bootlegging after separating from his wife, with whom he had two children, after a period of unemployment.
He then fell in love with criminal Kathryn Thorne, and the two committed a few bank robberies in Texas and Mississippi.
After attempting to kidnap a business tycoon, Charles Urschel, both Barnes and Thorne were arrested and Barnes insisted that he would break free from prison - which officials took very seriously, so they sent him to Alcatraz in 1934.
Barnes died in 1954.
Frank Lee Morris, Clarence Anglin and John Anglin
Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin brothers are renowned.
After being sent to the prison for a number of crimes, they managed to escape from it after stealing tools to dig tunnels, built a raft and created life-size paper dummies to use as body doubles in their beds so that they could escape undetected.
It was on June 11, 1962, that they escaped, but it is believed that they had drowned as no bodies were ever found and they were not heard from again.
Bumpy Johnson
Ellsworth Raymond ‘Bumpy’ Johnson was the most trusted soldier of Madame Stephanie St. Clair, in the 1930s, but during a fight with the mob boss Dutch Schultz, over Harlem's rackets, 40 people were murdered and some were also kidnapped.
With that, St. Clair was arrested, and Johnson struck a deal with the Mafia and built his own criminal empire.
But that didn’t last and in 1952, Johnson's crimes were reported in the celebrity people section of Jet publication, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a drug conspiracy conviction.
He spent most of his time at Alcatraz before being released on parole in 63.
Alcatraz, which was originally a naval defense fort, was used by the Department of Justice to house convicts from the federal prison system.
The Battle of Alcatraz is something that many people may know about as it was an actual battle which lasted from May 2 to 4, on 1946, after two Federal Bureau of Prisons officers were killed and three inmates were also killed during a large-scale attempt to escape.
Nearly twenty years later, the prison was eventually closed as it was too expensive to run, as per the Federal Bureau of Prison website.
Britt Jones