On location in chilling Alcatraz

NEW TV show Alcatraz brings a chilling twist to the history of the notorious San Francisco prison, writes Jenny Stevens. 

alcatraz

ON March 21, 1963, Alcatraz officially closed. All the prisoners were transferred off the island. Only that's not what happened. Not at all.

The world loves a conspiracy theory, and actor Sam Neill  in his role as FBI agent Emerson Hauser in the new miniseries Alcatraz  delivers his with chilling foreboding.

Murderers, rapists, kidnappers, psychopaths America's version of Devil's Island housed the worst of the worst until closed down by US Attorney-General Robert Kennedy.

But have the 1 million people a year who visit the island in San Francisco Bay been told a lie for the past 49 years?

That's the premise of the new TV series beginning on the Nine Network. It has been screening in the US since mid-January and is causing headaches for the National Parks Service, which looks after the former penitentiary.

While many inmates spent years trying to break out of the fortress, delusional fans of the mystery thriller have been trying to break in to restricted areas while on official Alcatraz tours.

Of special fascination to them is the show's so-called "bat cave", or nerve centre, underneath Alcatraz. The NPS has been forced to erect warning signs: "The TV show Alcatraz is fictional, many areas it depicts are not real. Closed areas protect you, historic structures and nesting birds."

What is real on Alcatraz is the decaying hulk of the empty cellblocks; the burnt-out shell of the warden's house with its empty windows looking over the bay; the old machine shops and hospital wing; rickety watchtowers swaying slightly in the salty wind; and the memories each evokes of a time in America when punishment was meted out with brutal efficiency.

Closed areas of fascination to sleuths include a series of cells deep beneath the penitentiary dating back to the island's use as a fortress in the 19th century.

Not that the majority of visitors to the Rock, as it's called, care that there's a few areas closed to the public. Tours depart San Francisco's Pier 33 at the foot of Bay St on the Embarcadero, with its colourful clanging trams, buzzy restaurants and bars and tacky souvenirs, and arrive 15 minutes later at the penitentiary wharf under the sightless eyes of the watch tower.

First impressions are of a time warp: drab government buildings and a concreted road leading up the hill to the cell blocks, the end of the line.

The only colour in prisoners' lives, apart from the green and cream walls of their cells and the brown and cream walls of the corridors, was a fleeting glimpse of cascading flower gardens near the staff housing.

Even sound was muted, with a strict no-talking rule in cells for many years, and the only constant the sound of wind, waves and seabirds.

The NPS wardens have not sanitised the Alcatraz experience, and welcome everyone to Alcatraz with a run-down of life on the Rock, from escape attempts and punishments to how inmates spent their lives in their tiny cells.

 Prisoners were entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention and known by their number, not their name. Everything else had to be earned by good behaviour.

The NPS staff delight in debunking the myths that have built up about infamous inmates such as Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz" who spent six of his 17 years on Alcatraz in solitary confinement and became one of its best-known inmates, thanks to Hollywood.

In reality Stroud was a Hannibal Lecter type, a psychopath who solved problems by killing the problem, and whose bird-raising days were at Leavenworth prison in Kansas. In such company, other well-known inmates Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Doc Barker and "Creepy" Karpis get less than 15 minutes of fame.

The 36 men who attempted escape are what fascinates most visitors: the inmate starving himself to slip between the bars; the desperate shoot-outs when guards were overpowered and murdered; the clever escape through enlarged air vents ("the spoon is mightier than the bars", noted the ranger); and the suicidal attempts to swim frigid waters.

All are detailed in a pamphlet available at the prison for $1.

Between 1934 and 1963, most escapees were shot or recaptured immediately; five were never seen again, presumed drowned; and one made it to the rocks underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and was recaptured, near death from exposure.

The TV series begs to differ.

GO2GUIDE ALCATRAZ

Seeing there:

Cost: $US26 adult; $US79 family of four. Book ahead at alcatrazcruises.com in peak season or buy at the pier.

Tours: There are ranger-led tours but most visitors do the self-guided tours with headsets (included in the ticket price) and buy maps for $1 showing where each escape attempt was made.

Tours begin at the dock, enter the prison by the shower block and clothing issue area and pass through the main cell blocks before reaching service and work areas. Some cells show how prisoners personalised their lives on the Rock.

An orientation video with historical footage is shown every half-hour.

Alcatraz screens on the Nine Network, Sundays at 8.30pm.