When Charlie Hopkins thinks about the three years he has spent in one of the most famous prisons in America, he remembers the most “deadly”.
In 1955, Hopkins was sent to Alcatraz, a prison on an isolated island off the coast of San Francisco – after creating problems in other prisons to serve a 17 -year sentence for abduction and robbery.
Sleeping into his cell at the remote island at night, he said, the only sound was the whistle of passing ships.
“It’s a lonely sound,” Hopkins said. “It reminds you of Hank Williams, who sings this song:” I’m so lonely that I could cry. “
Now, at the age of 93 and living in Florida, Hopkins said the San Francisco National Archive informed him that the last surviving former prisoner in Alcatraz was probably the last surviving. The BBC could not independently check this.
In an interview with the BBC this week, Hopkins described life in Alcatraz, where he became friends with gangsters and once helped to plan an unsuccessful escape. Although closed decades ago, President Donald Trump has recently claimed that he wants to reopen it as a federal prison.
When Hopkins was transferred to a high security prison in 1955 by a facility in Atlanta, he remembers that he was clean but barren. And there were a little distraction – there were no radio and several books at the time, he said.
“There was nothing to do,” he said. “You can walk back and forth in your cage or make push-ups.”
Hopkins was involved in the time of cleaning his work in Alcatraz, sweeping the floors and arranging them “until they shine,” he said.
He was sent to prison in 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida because of his role in a series of robberies and abductions. He was part of a group that took hostages to go through obstacles and steal cars, he said.
Charlie Hopkins spent three years in prison in Alcatraz after creating trouble in other facilities [National Archives]
There were some scandalous neighbors in Alcatzrazhins. The facility housed many violent criminals for 30 years – Al Capone; Robert Stroyd, a killer known as the “Alcatraz Burter”; And the chief of crime James “Witti” Bulger – which makes him the subject of numerous films and television shows.
An island of 22 acres, 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) near San Francisco and surrounded by freezing waters with strong currents, alkatraz was originally naval forces. It was restored in the early 20th century as a military prison. The Ministry of Justice took it in the 1930s, turning the facility into a federal prison to turn to the rapid organized crime at that time.
Even in the high security prison, Hopkins said he still managed to get into trouble and spent many days in the “D block” of the facility – a privacy where prisoners who behave incorrectly are kept and rarely release from their cells.
His longest stay there – six months – he came after he tried to help several other prisoners, including the notorious robber of the bank Forest Tucker, Escape Alcatraz, Hopkins said. He helped steal the knives from the prison electric shop to cut off prisons in the basement kitchen.
The plan does not work – the prison guards found the blades in the cells of other prisoners, Hopkins said. “A few days after they were locked, they locked me,” he said.
But that did not stop one of the prisoners.
In 1956, when Tucker was taken to a kidney surgery hospital, he stabbed his ankle with a pencil, so the prison guard would have to take his feet to his feet, Tucker told New York. Then, when he was taken to receive an X -ray, he prevailed in hospital orders and escaped, he said.
He is captured in a hospital dress in a corn field hours later.
While more prisoners have been trying to escape from Alcatraz over the years, employees have raised security, Hopkins said.
“When I left there in 1958, the security was so tight that you couldn’t breathe,” he said.
All that has been said, that over the years there have been 14 separate attempts, including 36 prisoners, according to the National Park Service. One of the most famous participating Frank Morris and the Clarence brothers and John Angen, who fled in June 1962, placing heads of Papier-mache in their beds and erupting through ventilation ducts. They have never been found, but the Federal Investigation Bureau has come to the conclusion that they have drowned in the cold waters around the island.
A year later, the prison closed after the government had determined that it would be more cost-effective to build new prisons than to preserve the facility for a remote island in operation.
It is now a publicly managed museum visited by millions every year, which generates about $ 60 million in revenue for Park Partners.
The building is terrible, with peeling paint, rusty pipes and crumbling toilets in any narrow cage. The construction of the main prison facility began in 1907 and more than a century of exposure to the elements made the place, but not uninhabited.
However, Trump said this week that he wants his government to open and expand the island prison for “the most ruthless and abusers of the country.”
A tourist group visits Alcatraz [BBC]
Alcatraz “is something very strong, very powerful” – law and order, Trump said.
But experts and historians said Trump’s proposal for prison recovery was away, as this would cost billions to repair and update with other federal facilities.
Hopkins agrees. “It would be so expensive,” he said.
“Then the sewer system entered the ocean,” he added. “They will have to come up with another way to deal with this.”
Hopkins left Alcatraz five years before closing his doors forever. He was transferred to Springfield in prison, Missouri and was given psychiatric drugs that improved his behavior and helped him cure psychological problems, he said.
But Trump’s avid supporter said he did not believe the president’s proposal was serious.
“He doesn’t really want to open this place,” Hopkins said, adding that Trump is trying to “overcome the public” for punishment for criminals and those who enter the United States illegally.
Hopkins was released in 1963, first working at a truck stop before taking on other jobs. He returned to his home state Florida, where he now has a daughter and a grandson.
After several decades, thinking about his crimes and life in Alcatraz, he wrote a 1000 -page memoir, almost half of the book in detail describing his problematic behavior, he said.
“You wouldn’t believe the troubles I caused them when I was there,” he said. “Now I see, looking back that I had problems.”