Alcatraz Ghost Story
Roy Gardner's Amazing Train Robberies, Escapes, and Lifelong Love
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
The Incredible True Story of the Most Hunted Man in Pacific Coast History––and the Woman He Loved
Before the 1920s found their roar, a charismatic gambling addict named Roy Gardner dominated news headlines with daring train robberies and escapes from incarceration. Nicknamed "the Smiling Bandit," Gardner spilled no blood––except his own––as he cut a felonious path across the western United States, as the country hobbled through a recession in the aftermath of the First World War.
Once imprisoned for the long term in federal prisons, including Alcatraz, the most notorious prison's second-most-notorious inmate won over some unlikely champions. Both Gardner's wife, Dollie, and a police officer who once arrested him launched extensive campaigns for Gardner's release on the vaudeville circuit, claiming a brain operation would cure his lawless ways. Was Gardner a good man who made bad decisions as the victim of injury and circumstance? Or was his charming personality merely the poker face of a scoundrel?
Richly researched, drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts, Alcatraz Ghost Story explores the life of Roy Gardner in the context of his great love story and the larger backdrop of drug addiction, incarceration, and the racial and labor violence of the 1920s and 1930s.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alcatraz tour guide Stannard recounts the exploits of the prison's "second-most-notorious inmate" in his immersive debut. Ray Gardner was a mail train robber who escaped prison three times in the years after WWI, earning himself regular mentions in vaudeville acts of the era and nicknames including the Smiling Bandit and the Human Eel. In reality, Gardner was an Army deserter and amateur boxer with a wife and child, whose thefts up and down the West Coast were never particularly lucrative. After Gardner broke out of Washington State's McNeil Island prison twice in the early 1920s, federal agents mounted a public campaign for information leading to his arrest, and America became enthralled by the letters he wrote to California newspapers and President Warren Harding earnestly pleading for his conviction to be overturned. After he was caught and sent to Leavenworth and then Alcatraz, Gardner begged for a lobotomy, attributing his criminal behavior to an old head injury. Finally paroled in 1938, he published a brief memoir about his time locked up in Alcatraz with the likes of Al Capone and George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and gave several radio interviews. In 1940, Gardner died poor and alone, by suicide, at a hotel in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. Stannard's thorough research and swift pacing satisfy. Historical true crime fans should check this out.
