John Stadig on McNeil Island

( the facts in this story are drawn from Darrel McBreairty's "Alcatraz Eel: the John Stadig Files")

John Stadig was serving six years in the federal prison on McNeil Island, Washington for counterfeiting United States currency. It was a month into his sentence, and since he’d so far been a model prisoner he’d earned the privilege of shoveling gravel in the pit of the north yard. A one-and-a-half-ton green Fargo dump-truck driven by prison trustee Charlie Powell, was just backing up to be re-loaded, and until it was in position the other prisoners had nothing to do, so Stadig was there with the rest of the cons, just leaning on his shovel in the pacific-northwest drizzle of mid-April. As the truck lurched to a stop John turned to the convict next to him and whispered “It’s now or never Mack.” They both dropped their shovels. Mack Smith, who was in for robbing a post office in Cheyenne, opened the driver’s side door of the Fargo, grabbed Powell by the arm and yanked him down from the cab and onto the ground where his body splayed into a cloud of dust. Smith climbed inside and slid over to the passenger side while Stadig quickly jumped behind the wheel and closed the door as he shifted it into gear and stepped hard on the gas. The truck thundered towards the locked gate of tower number six and smashed through as bullets rained down on the roof of the cab from above. The vehicle charged the second gate and managed to break through but the second impact caused it to stall just outside of the fence. This gave the guards a chance to steady their rifles before the inmates made their desperate dash from the cab to the nearby forest. Stadig, with his longer legs, was ahead of Smith, but when he heard one of the guards’ rifle shots followed by Mack’s high pitched grunt and the sound of him thumping to the ground behind him, he knew he hadn’t just tripped. He couldn’t turn around but just had to run faster, while Mack’s pained voice behind him shouted “Run John! Run!” He began sprinting from side to side to make himself a harder target. The woods seemed miles away and he felt like he was running in slow motion, though he’d probably never run so fast in his twenty-six years. He was surprised to find himself reminded at that moment, even as bullets were making small dust explosions around his feet, of all the times he’d run away from school whenever the teacher’s back was turned back in St. Francis, Maine. He remembered dashing each of those days toward a line of trees, much like the ones he saw now, but those trees lined the St. John River, and he was running then to cross over to Canada where he could visit his mother who lived there. That was freedom in those days, but that was more than a thousand cigarettes ago and John felt like he could taste his lungs now as they gasped a barking protest at how far away those bushes still were; his teeth that ached from sucking air, and his chest that felt like it was being dented from inside by a hammer, both agreed with that complaint. But as another bullet zinged and then ricocheted off of a rock behind him, he was surprised to discover that he’d made it to the trees, and was safe, for the moment.

Now that John had a moment to clear his mind he could ask himself, “What the hell were you thinking?” The plan had been to race the truck to the ocean, find a boat, and make it into Puget Sound before the guards knew what hit them. If they could have reached the open water they would have been harder to find, since the prison only had five vessels for searching right off the bat. After dark they could have made their way to some remote and unlit stretch of the Washington coastline. They’d even agreed that if they couldn’t locate a craft they would’ve been willing to attempt the swim to the mainland.

But to say the least, things didn’t go smoothly. They not only didn’t achieve the shore, but now there was no longer any “they” at all. Mack was either dead or back in custody and John Stadig was alone as he ran deeper into the woods. It was going to be very difficult to make it from trees to ocean on foot because he’d have to expose himself to possible gunfire again. The prison probably had at least fifty armed guards headed for the forest, and suddenly he knew what it felt like to be one of the deer he and his friends used to hunt back home in northern Maine and New Brunswick. He’d just have to find a place to hide and hope they didn’t find him. Maybe after dark he could get to the beach, though probably not. With the original plan flubbed his chances were very slim.

He was deep in the grove now but could still hear filtering through the trees behind him the chaos his escape had caused. The emergency lock-down siren was screaming continuously, the muffled shouts of guards and the noise from the engines of vehicles leaving the gate caught his ear as the search began. His ears picked up the ragged snore of handsaws to the beat of clanging hammers, and he guessed they were making desperate repairs on the fence he’d smashed.

On the edge of a clearing he found a thick patch of blackberry bushes and plunged into their midst. As he ducked and crawled to get to their thickest growth he was wishing they were in season, because one way or the other he was going to be missing dinner tonight. He saw nothing there to eat and if they did catch him he’d be in the “hole” without food for quite a while.

Once he’d found a hiding place and settled in, there was nothing to do but to think about what had led him to this point. Why would a man in his mid-twenties who could have gotten parole in less than four years try to escape from prison? He should have been able to put up with fourty months or so of incarceration, but he didn’t think he could. He thought about how his brother Emerson or his half-brother Jonsie could have probably handled a sentence like his on their heads. They’d worked every day in the machine shop, fixing cars from morning till night since they were teenagers. They were used to routine, but John had always seen their life as a caged one, so for him penitentiary time was something worse. For John Stadig, the big house was hell and he was sure he couldn’t make it even two years, let alone four.

John could now hear the roar of boats as they slapped the choppy waters around the island in search of him. Listening to those vessels reminded him of the river-craft he’d motorized a few years back in Maine. He’d done it on his own time in his cousin’s shop, hoisted the engines out of old cars, adapted them with propellers and installed them in rowboats for the purpose of pushing rafts of lumber to shore against the strong currents of the St. John River. Even at that very moment as he crouched in the bushes on the west coast, those two boats might still be ramming logs back east.

From a very early age John Stadig had shown a raw talent for working with machinery and electronics of every kind. He felt that he’d learned more as a boy from tinkering in Raymond’s shop after school than he’d ever learned in his eight years of yawning at the blackboard. He also had a genius for invention which he’d first discovered it when he noticed that Model “T” Fords couldn’t go frontward up a steep hill because the incline put the gas tank below the engine. That’s why in the old days people would have to back the cars up, turn them around at the top of the hill and then go down. John came up with a simple pump and hose system that corrected the problem. Not that it mattered though to anyone who owned anything but an old Model “T”, because by the time he’d come up with a solution, the Model “A” was in circulation and the design flaw had been corrected.

He’d arrived at plenty of other inventions and improvements for tire pumps, radios, generators and wind turbines, but once he’d reached his twenties he thought he was really onto something when he started getting the inspiration for a better airplane engine. His dream was to enroll at the Tri State College of Engineering in Indiana to learn how to draft his ideas, but money was a problem. The Great Depression was in full swing and he could never get work as a mechanic for long enough to save the tuition. In 1931 he spent several months traveling to Montreal, New York and finally Wichita, trying to get a bite on his designs from various airplane builders. But it was not a time for financing new ideas, it was more a time to hold on for dear life and ride out the storm.

It seemed the only thing that paid in the 1930s was crime, but John Stadig couldn’t bring himself to threaten someone with a gun in order to rob a bank. He’d discovered though, a few years before, that besides his mechanical and electronic skills he also had a talent for chemistry and photography. During these hard times counterfeiting didn’t even seem like a crime. The government and the banks had thrown millions of people into poverty and desperation. Those who’d been rich were throwing themselves out of skyscrapers, while folk who’d been poor but independent were now starving and lining up for hand-outs. But according to lawmakers, the bankers who'd lost the poor people's money in the first place weren't the criminals, but rather the poor people who tried to make some of their money back by bucking the system just a little. Yes, John had copied a few bank notes, but he wasn’t trying to get rich. He’d just wanted to help his mother with the mortgage and pay for his education.

While John was reflecting on his past, Finch Archer, the warden of McNeil Island was thinking about where John Stadig was at that moment. He was fairly certain his men had him surrounded. Every available guard, with rifles, machine guns and pistols at the ready, had been sent to beat through the heavy brush in search of the convict. Given Stadig’s history of escaping custody, the powers that be would say he shouldn’t have been allowed near a truck. If he managed to avoid capture it would have been embarrassing for both Archer and his prison, so as an extra incentive a reward of fifty dollars was offered to whoever found him first. That same prize was dangled by radio to the police on the mainland. This was big money in hard times for a cop or a guard.

Stadig managed to shiver in hiding through the cold, damp night while flashlights darted all around him. He held his breath when boots crunched down on twigs close to his hiding place. His stomach was empty throughout the next day, and his body was stiff from curling himself up as tight and small and still as he could. As the second afternoon came to a close he was starting to hope that he’d be captured again just so he could move and eat, even if only in a dark cell with a piece of stale bread once a day. That crust was beginning to seem more and more delicious the longer he lay there listening to his stomach on the rough ground.

About thirty hours after his escape, at around 7:45 in the evening, a guard found John Stadig crouching in the bushes on the north-east corner of the island. He sighed with relief, surrendered, and was immediately led to a dark cell for the next sixteen days as punishment. During that time he ate mostly bread and water, though Christian charity compelled the prison to give him a full meal on each of his two Sundays in the hole.

Two years were added to his sentence.