Roy Gardner's great McNeil Island escape

By Casey McNerthney, Seattlepi.com, February 9, 2012

As the state officially ends McNeil Island prison operations Thursday, it closes not just a detention center but the final chapter on a penitentiary that since 1875 has housed some of Washington's most notorious criminals.

It was a federal prison before becoming state-run in 1976. It's now the nation's last working prison only accessible by ferry or helicopter, and the Special Commitment Center for sexually violent predators -- run by another state agency -- will remain.

A handful of McNeil inmates will stay until June to help operate the ferries, though they're nothing like the famed convicts who came before them.

Charles Manson stayed there in the 1960s after trying to cash a bogus check. Robert Stroud, better known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, stayed at McNeil from 1909 to 1912. Roy Olmstead, a Seattle police lieutenant busted for a massive bootlegging operation, also served time there.

Dozens tried to escape, though none were as brazen as Roy Gardner.

While recent news stories turned "Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore into a folk legend, banner 1920s headlines across the West Coast made Gardner a household name. The notorious train and mail robber had the catch-me-if-you-can adventure of Frank Abagnale decades before that escape artist was born.

Gardner was first sentenced to McNeil in 1920, but escaped from a train while en route. Busted the following year, he was sent back to McNeil with a decades-long sentence.

"I'll escape again," Gardner told the judge, and did a week later.

He finally arrived at McNeil in June 1921, surrounded by heavy guard.

Less than three months later, a massive manhunt was launched when Gardner made good on his promise to flee McNeil.

A posse of 50 riflemen were among the searchers and 20 riflemen trolled the shore. Authorities across the Northwest were put on alert.

But, of course, Gardener slipped through. When he arrived at McNeil, his wife, Dolly, sent him a telegram telling him to be a good boy, but knew he might not be.

"I love you," she wrote from California, "and still hope to see you soon."

Trail of trouble led to Centralia

Born in Trenton, Mo., in 1884, Gardner was the son of wealthy miner who lost his fortune and later moved to Colorado Springs. Gardner's said to have joined the Army in 1906, but drifted to Mexico where he smuggled drugs and was later sentenced to death. Some accounts say an injury there left him unbalanced.

In the first of his major escapes, Gardner broke out of a Mexican jail and later became a prizefighter under the name Young Fitzsimmons. A failed San Francisco jewelry store robbery got him a five-year sentence at San Quentin. But he was stabbed trying to help guards during a prison riot and was paroled after two.

Gardner seemed to settle down briefly, marring and having a daughter. But his old pattern started after he sent his sister a registered letter with $200. The letter arrived without the cash, and Gardner responded by stealing a registered mail pouch with an estimated $80,000 in securities -- roughly equivalent to $1.7 million today.

Gardner was caught burying the stolen goods and sentenced to McNeil Island. But on June 5, 1920, while being transported by U.S. Marshals, Gardner distracted them, grabbed one of the marshal's guns from his holster and handcuffed the guards together.

He stayed on the run until May 1921 when he was captured in Roseville, Calif., following another train robbery where he stole $175,000 in securities, according to a 1921 P-I account. Authorities never found the money, and Gardner was held with a heavy iron boot during another trip to McNeil.

On the train, Gardner asked to wash his hands and when a deputy marshal's back was turned, Gardner pointed a revolver he'd been hiding and disarmed the guards. Gardner and another prisoner were let out of their handcuffs and iron boots.

The guards were bound to a rail car standpipe and robbed of $115, according to Gardner's account. The bandit ran into the woods near Castle Rock, launching what then was the largest manhunt on the Pacific Coast.

"That evening I cut through the east edge of the town and hid near the water tank on the railroad," Gardner later recalled. "Pretty soon a freight train came along and it was going so slow I didn't have much of a job jumping on the cowcatcher. I rode that all the way to Centralia."

He watched a movie there and hung around poolhalls. Fearing he'd be recognized, Gardner bandaged all but one eye and claimed he'd been burned with gasoline and recently released from a Tacoma hospital.

At what's now the Olympic Club hotel, a woman employee found his story suspicious and called police. About 11 a.m., Gardner spotted Officer Louis Sonney and fled upstairs.

"You got me all wrong," he answered after the officer knocked. "I ain't never been to Castle Rock in my life. I'm in pretty bad shape from my burns."

Sonney still handcuffed him, but later said he thought of letting him go and apologizing because Gardner faked his injuries so well.

News of his capture was splashed across the front of the P-I the following day. At the Olympic Club, now operated by McMenamins, a framed copy of the newspaper hangs in an upstairs hallway. Quotes from Gardner adorn walls, as does a painting of him fleeing the train in Castle Rock, and a wanted flier with mug shots.

A top attraction is the Roy Gardner Great Train Escape package, which comes with dinner, wine and a lodging where the notorious train robber was captured.

Escape from McNeil Island

It was the fifth inning of a prison baseball game when the guards were distracted by a hit to center field. Gardner and two inmates bolted for the barbed-wire fence. Half a dozen guards fired on the men, and one newspaper estimate said at least 75 rounds were fired.

Gardner ran between Everett Impyn and Lawardus Bogart, both imprisoned for an attack on a Camp Lewis nurse. They ran toward the guard's dorm and tried to use it as a shield between towers.

Impyn was hit in the back; Gardner turned and tried to carry him. But when a bullet snagged Bogart, Gardner fled alone. The guard believed to have fired the fatal shots said he'd seen the men earlier but couldn't fire without hitting others watching the ballgame.

Gardner dodged bullets in a heard of cattle, and after a 12-hour search guards found no trace of him. It didn't help that when the bandit arrived at McNeil months earlier the prison physician declared him one of the finest physical specimens he'd seen.

Gardner convinced Impyn and Bogart that the guards were fixed and wouldn't try to hit them.

"Gardner told us those fellows couldn't hit the broad side of a barn," Impyn told prison staff.

Those were his last words.

Gardner's escape captivated readers nationwide, and about two dozen volunteer searchers came to the island the day of the escape. Seattle police were alerted, and a man told an officer the following day he was sure he'd dropped Gardner off at First Avenue South and Main Street.

On Day 4 of the search, antsy guards nearly shot a cow thinking it was their fugitive. Railroad officials who had previously searched for Gardner in other towns offered advice to the warden at McNeil.

Five days after Gardner fled, guards were sure they saw him on the east end of the island darting into brush from the road. P-I reporters chartered a plane and bragged it was the first one to used to hunt a Northwest fugitive. But the aerial search found nothing.

On Sept. 12 -- a week after Gardner started running -- guards found a strip of blood-soaked prison cloth. Warden Thomas Maloney believed he was still hiding on the island. The guard's instructions: shoot to kill.

McNeil guards finally gave up the search on Sept. 16 -- save for a rowboat patrol around the island -- though the warden only admitted Gardner "might" have escaped. Newsmen believed he'd be the eighth to flee without being recaptured.

For three days after the ballgame escape, Gardner hid in the hayloft of a prison barn and twice heard footsteps of nearby guards. He said he later slipped out into the brush and stayed for two more days, despite bullet wounds in both legs.

Gardner claimed he kept on his clothes for a two-mile swim off McNeil. The cold water was bracing "because I was pretty weak from loss of blood and the cold did not bother me once I got into the water."

Federal officials said he was bluffing to cover for an accomplice.

Gardner fled to Raymond where he bleached his dark hair with a bottle of peroxide, giving it a reddish tinge. He got tinted glasses and fled to Portland, then ditched a motorcycle he'd ridden in California. While there, he authored an appeal to President Warren G. Harding for a pardon, which was published in a San Francisco newspaper. Gardner also caught a freight train to San Diego, and after two days went south to Mexico.

"I could have existed down there," he said when asked why he didn't stay and avoid prosecution, "but then you can exist in the penitentiary."

His trail continued through Arizona and ended in Phoenix, where he donned a mask and handgun and held up a mail car clerk. The clerk fought back and eventually overpowered Gardner, pinning him until authorities arrived.

The clerk admitted Gardner had multiple chances to shoot him, but didn't. In his escapes, Gardner repeatedly said he never hurt an unarmed man.

"I always get caught like this," he told a U.S. Commissioner who visited his cell. "But I'd just as soon be caught in a one-horse town as in San Francisco."

Gardner's story ends in San Francisco

Gardner was sentenced to another 25 years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, but, true to form, claimed the prison wouldn't hold him.

It did, despite prison break attempts in Atlanta and a planned escape from Alcatraz, where he was transferred in 1934.

He later went back to Leavenworth and when released in 1938, Gardner was met by Louis Sonney -- the Centralia policeman who arrested him. He'd become a Los Angeles promoter and offered Gardner a position lecturing on how crime didn't pay.

The job seemed a natural fit for Gardner, who in the 1920s detailed his life story hoping it would be turned into a movie.

Gardner later became a film salesman, but his relationship with Sonney soured. In October 1939, the promoter won a $726 judgment on a promissory note. Gardner filed a suit asking for $2,900 saying Sonney didn't pay him a promised $50 weekly.

Less than three months later, a maid at a small San Francisco hotel decided to enter Gardner's room after the do-not-disturb sign stayed up for days. On the bathroom entrance was another sign: "Do not open this door. Poison gas. Call the police."

Officers found Gardner crumpled on the floor in his shirtsleeves. He'd dropped pellets in a water bowl, creating deadly fumes sometimes used to execute condemned criminals.

"Please let me down as light as possible, boys," Gardner wrote in a letter to newsmen. "I have played ball with you all the way, and now you should pitch me a slow one and let me hit it."

Gardner said he was old and tired and had no malice against anyone. Had he known what the future held, Gardner said he would have "checked out in 1920 and saved my loved ones the disgrace and shame." His longtime wife had filed for divorce when he was in Alcatraz and remarried in 1936.

"All men who have to serve more than five years in prison are doomed, but they don't believe it," Gardner wrote. "They kid themselves into the belief that they can 'come back,' but they can't. There is a barrier between the ex-convict and society that can not be levied."

A sealed note was left for his former brother-in-law. Gardner's two suitcases were addressed to relatives. Atop each was a 50-cent piece to pay baggage charges.

His last request was that newsmen not mention his daughter's married name because her in-laws didn't know she was Gardner's daughter. A separate sealed note was addressed to her.

"Goodbye and good luck, boys, and please grant my last request. Thanks.

"Sincerely yours, Roy Gardner."