Earl received his first letter at a Leavenworth mail call in late 1949.
#Go hard or go home mr capone e full#
On each of 21 Christmases, a guard gave him a paper sack full of hard candy, just like the sisters used to at the St. During those two decades, Earl Johnson was known by 12 different names. All told, with good time taken into account, Earl spent better than 21 of the last 36 years in prisons. Some of the sentences ran on top of each other and others ran end to end. At this point in history, without his full knowledge and none of his consent, Earl Johnson’s life began in earnest.īetween 19, Earl Johnson has been convicted of nine felonies and sentenced to 30 years in the penitentiary. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in the custody of the Attorney General. In August, Earl Johnson was charged with two counts of stolen government property. His business made it as far as 1937 before the bottom dropped out. He hauled the weapons to an alley behind a Chicago flower shop and unloaded them in rose boxes. Starting in Illinois and running as far south as Georgia, Earl bought US Government sub-machine guns from needy supply sergeants. Once in civies, Earl had a career all staked out. He was dishonorably discharged with the rank of private from the 28th Infantry in 1936. To Earl, it was a way to beat the Depression … but Private Johnson never turned into much of a soldier.
In 1929, the doctor signed a note saying Earl was of age and he joined the Army. Earl milked the doctor’s cows and got a room in exchange. He ran from Memphis to Lascassus, Tennessee, and lived with a doctor’s family for seven years. After 12 years, Earl decided to take a look at the world and went over the fence. If you were six or seven, you watched the twos and threes. If you were ten or 11 years old, you spent the day cutting bad spots out of vegetables. The home lived on what the sisters could beg from the produce houses downtown. They shit in buckets and the older boys cleaned the drippings. The orphans slept ten to a double bed, a hundred to a room. Peter Home for Children in Memphis, Tennessee. He’d started low and didn’t have a long way to fall when it came time to touch bottom. Stanley’s cold blue face convinced him that life on Alcatraz was a one-way proposition. Watching the body made Earl Johnson want very badly to move. Stanley died with his knees drawn up to his chest, trying to keep what was left of his stomach from falling out. Earl Johnson worked the day shift as a nurse and he saw Stanley while the police carried him in. When Stanley reached the hospital, his guts were leaking all over his pants. The knife was a foot-long piece of steel, sharpened on one end. The two crime partners reached the hallway at the same time and Jimmy Dee stuck a homemade shank into his best friend’s belly and out the other side. When the hack opened the doors for work call, the bank robber revenged his mouse. Stanley figured Jimmy Dee was talking jive, but he should have paid attention. “Come morning Stanley, you got no more nights coming at all.” “You better have a good night,” Jimmy Dee answered. When the cop turned the lights out, Stanley apologized and said good night. The crime partners didn’t talk the rest of the day. He loaned it to Stanley one afternoon and Stanley accidentally flushed the rodent down the shitter. Jimmy Dee caught a mouse and trained it as a pet. The two of them lived on the bottom tier. They were still youngsters when they ran into 50 years apiece, head on, right after Jimmy Dee told the teller to push the money across the counter.
It was between two crime partners and best friends named Stanley and Jimmy Dee. The strangest Earl Johnson ever saw happened right after he got there in 1939. After awhile, life on Alcatraz did strange things to anyone who tried to live it. Six rifles watched them shuffle back and forth. For two hours a day, residents of the 200 cells got to hang around in the walled courtyard between buildings. All mail was read by the police and retyped on Alcatraz stationery before it was delivered. Every Wednesday and Saturday there was hot water for a bath. And then there was the same thing all over again. There was fog in the morning and two cell blocks, one man to a cell, 200 cells’ worth, standing by their bunks to be counted every second hour. There weren’t a lot of leaks and all the lives inside just rattled against each other and made echoes, year after year. Living on Alcatraz was like living in a 50-gallon drum.
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