Last Live Prisoner Alcatrace in Trump Plan Open the jail again

If Charlie Hopkins thinks in three years he spent in one of the most famous America Post, he remembers the “deadly quiet”.

In 1955, Hopkins was sent to Alcratras – a prison on an isolated island off the San Francisco coast – after 17 -year -old term for kidnapping and robbery took place in other prisons.

Falling asleep at night in his chamber on a distant island, he said that the only sound was the whistle of the ships.

“It’s a lonely sound,” Hopkins said. “It reminds you that Hank Williams sings this song: ‘I’m so lonely that I could cry.”

Now 93 and living in Florida, Hopkins said that the National Archives of San Francisco told him that the former former prisoner Alcratras probably survived. BBC can’t check this yourself.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Hopkins described life in Alcatrace, where he made friends with gangsters and once helped plan unsuccessful escape. Despite the fact that it closed decades ago, President Donald Trump recently claimed he wanted to reopen him as a federal prison.

When Hopkins was transferred to the high security prison in 1955 from Atlanta, he remembers how he was pure but barren. And there were several distractions – at the time, and several books, and several books.

“There was nothing to do,” he said. “You can walk back and forth in your camera or push.”

Hopkins continued to engage in part of the time when he worked in the cleansing of Alcatrax, sweeping the floors and fixing them until they shone, “he said.

He was sent to jail in 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida, for the role in a series of robberies and abductions. He was part of the group that took the hostage to go through the checkpoints and steal the cars, he said.

In Alcatrace Hopkins had several shameful neighbors. For 30 years, there were many violent criminals in the facility – al Capone; Robert Stride, a killer known as “Alcatra”; And Bulger’s criminal boss James “White” – making it the subject of many films and television shows.

Alcratras initially was an island of 22 acres, 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) from San Francisco and surrounded by freezing waters with strong currents. It was restored in the early 20th century as a military prison. The Justice Department assumed it in the 1930s, turning this facility into a federal prison to resolve a bewildered organized crime at the time.

Even in the Hopkins’ high security prison, he said he was still able to get into trouble and spent many days in the “D block” D ” – single content, where they were wrongly behaved and rarely released from their cells.

His longest stay there – six months – came after he tried to help several other prisoners, including the notorious Bank Forrest Takar, Alcatra’s escape, Hopkins said. He helped steal the blade Hacksaw from the prison shop to cut the prison bars in the cellar kitchen.

The plan did not work – the prison guards found blades in the cells of other prisoners, Hopkins said. “A few days after they closed them, they closed me,” he said.

But this did not stop one of the prisoners.

In 1956, when the Tucker was taken to the hospital for kidney surgery, he had ankle ankle in pencil so that the prison guards had to take off his leg on his feet, said Tsire New Yorker. Then, when he was taken to get an X -ray, he overcame the hospital orders and escaped, he said.

A few hours later he was captured in a hospital dress.

Because more and more prisoners tried to avoid Alcatrace over the years, officials have increased safe, Hopkins said.

“When I left there in 1958, security was so dense that you couldn’t breathe,” he said.

Overall, there were 14 separate attempts over the years with the participation of 36 prisoners, the National Park service reports. One of the most famous was Frank Morris and brothers Clarences and John Anglin, who fled in June 1962, placing the heads of the Papier-Macure into his beds and pulling the ventilation ducts. They were never found, but the Federal Investigation Bureau concluded that they had drowned in the cold waters surrounding the island.

A year later, the prison stopped after the government determined that building new prisons would be more economical than keeping the residued island.

Now it is a common museum that visits millions annually, which brings about $ 60 million in profit for Park Partners.

The building is an ice -like, with a peel of paint, rusty pipes and destroyed toilets in each tight camera. Construction at the main prison institution began in 1907, and more than a century of impact of elements made this place except the non -life.

However, this week, Trump said he wants his government to open and expand the island prison for the “most ruthless and violent violators” of the country.

Alcratras “represents something very strong, very powerful” – law and order, Trump said.

But experts and historians have stated that Trump’s proposal to restore the prison prison, as it would cost billions to repair and bring other federal facilities.

Hopkins agrees. “It would be so expensive,” he said.

“Then the sewer system went into the ocean,” he added. “They had to come up with another way of handling.”

Hopkins left Alcratras in five years before he forever closed his doors. He was transferred to the Springfield jail, Missouri and received psychiatric medicines that improved his behavior and helped him to cure psychological problems, he said.

But an avid Trump supporter said he did not believe that the president’s proposal is serious.

“He really does not want to open this place,” Hopkins said, adding that Trump tried to “get a public point” about the punishment of criminals and those illegally in the United States.

Hopkins was released in 1963, working first at a truck stop before taking other jobs. He returned to his native Florida, where he now has a daughter and a grandson.

After a few decades, reflecting on his crimes and life in Alcatrax, he wrote a memoirs per 1000 pages, and almost half of the book in detail told about his restless behavior, he said.

“You wouldn’t believe I called them when I was there,” he said. “Now I see, looking back that I had problems.”