Roy Gardner (bank Robber) - Recapture and Alcatraz

Recapture and Alcatraz

Roy Gardner was now the "Most Wanted" criminal, and committed several crimes in Arizona before he was captured by a mail clerk during a train robbery in Phoenix in the fall of 1921. Gardner was sentenced to an additional 25 years, this time at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Headlines screamed, "Gangster Gardner brags, 'Leavenworth will never hold me'".

Gardner, now known as the "King of the Escape Artists", raised more hell when he was transferred to Atlanta Federal Prison, the toughest prison in the country in 1925. In 1926, he tried to tunnel under the wall and saw through the bars in the shoe shop. The following year, he led a prison break and attempted an armed escape with two revolvers holding the Captain and two guards hostage, but the escape failed and he was placed in solitary confinement for twenty months for shooting at officers. When he came out of solitary confinement, he was placed in a Mental Hospital in Washington, D. C.

In 1929, the warden described Gardner as the "most dangerous inmate in the history of Atlanta Prison", and that year he began a hunger strike, protesting prison food and threatened suicide. He was then transferred to Leavenworth Annex Prison in 1930, and in 1934 he was transferred to the infamous Alcatraz prison. Gardner was one of the first hardened criminals at Alcatraz during the hardest years.

Roy Gardner was a prisoner at the same time Al Capone was. Al Capone was a very unpopular man in prison. Supposedly, an unidentified inmate threw a lead sash at Capone shortly after work; but Capone only suffered a deep wound to the arm because Roy Gardner pushed him out of the way.

While at Alcatraz, his wife divorced him. He worked and supervised at the Mat Shop with Ralph Roe and they planned an escape, but Gardner was paroled and released in 1938 after his appeal for clemency was approved.