Robert Stroud

Robert Stroud aka The Birdman Of Alcatraz or The Birdman Of Leavenworth (1819-1963) was an American sentenced for killing a man, resulting in several instances of violence in prison and another killing.

Biography
Stroud was born in Seattle on the 28th of January, 1819. He ran away from his abusive father when he was 13, and showed up as a pimp in Alaska when he was 18. In 1909, a bartender named F. K. von Dahmer attacked one of Stroud's prostitutes, prompting Stroud to go after von Dahmer, knock him unconscious and shoot him, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Serving his sentence on McNeil island, Stroud would regularly get into fights with other inmates and guards, once stabbing a fellow inmate who caught him stealing. He also formed a morphine smuggling ring in the prison, which was discovered by a hospital orderly who Stroud seriously assaulted to silence him. Another prisoner involved in the smuggling got into an argument with Stroud, who stabbed him. The three attacks resulted in Stroud's sentence being extended by six months and Stroud being transferred to Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas.

On the 26th March, 1916, Leavenworth guard Andrew F. Turner reprimanded Stroud, who responded by stabbing Turner in the heart. He was sentenced to hang, however his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after a retrial. The judge then submitted a "confessed error", resulting in a third trial which saw Stroud sentenced to death again. The Stroud family appealed to president Woodrow Wilson, who officially commuted Stroud's sentence to life imprisonment again, although his history of violence resulted in Stroud being placed in solitary confinement.

While in Leavenworth, Stroud discovered three canaries and nursed them to adulthood. Soon after, William Biddle became warden of Leavenworth, and allowed Stroud to keep birds because it would improve Leavenworth's image as a "Positive centre for rehabilitation". Stroud ended up with about 300 canaries and wrote 2 books on the subject, earning him the nickname "The Birdman Of Leavenworth".

In 1931, Leavenworth officials tried to force Stroud to give up his birds, but Della Mae Jones, a bird expert Stroud was in correspondence with, brought the issue to light, resulting in a petition to stop the attempt. The petition was sent to president Herbert Hoover, who ruled that Stroud could keep his birds and granted him a second cell to keep them in. The officials then tried to transfer Stroud, who took advantage of an old Kansas law to avoid transfer by marrying Jones by proxy. The officials retaliated by blocking Stroud from corresponding with his wife. Stroud's mother disapproved, and stopped making contact with him, moving away from Leavenworth.

Stroud became incensed when he discovered that none of the money from one of his books, Diseases of Canaries, had gone to him, complaining to the publisher in 1933. The publisher complained to the governor, who initiated proceedings to transfer Stroud to Alcatraz, where he wouldn't be able to keep his birds. The proceedings were blocked, but in 1942 he was discovered to be using equipment from an alcohol distillery to treat diseased birds, resulting in concerns being raised about the conditions of Stroud's cell and Stroud was sent to Alcatraz on the 19th of December.

Due to various skin ailments, Stroud only spent six of his Alcatraz years in the solitary confinement that the terms of his imprisonment mandated, with the rest spent in the hospital wing. In 1943, Alcatraz psychiatrist Romney M. Ritchey assessed Stroud and diagnosed him as a psychopath with an IQ of 112 or 116. He wrote 2 more books while in Alcatraz, and was rumoured to be gay by other inmates. He died in November 1963, having been imprisoned for 54 years since he killed von Dahmer. His death was overshadowed by the fact that he died on the 21st of November, the same day that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK.