Beyond the bars

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

John Paul Chase was a loyal associate of criminals Baby Face Nelson and John Dillinger before transitioning to longtime guest of the federal prison system at

Alcatraz and Leavenworth.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once

referred to Chase as “a rat with

a patriotic sounding name.”

Tom Craig, on the other hand, remembered Chase as “a great guy with a lot of interesting stories about Dillinger, but I could tell he was a hardened criminal.”

Craig, who recently retired at 73 as chief deputy at Johnson County Law Enforcement Center, and Chase crossed paths in 1963 when Alcatraz, the infamous San Francisco Bay prison, was being mothballed because of its spiraling maintenance costs and decrepit condition.

Chase also served time at Leavenworth.

“Chase didn’t share a lot of information with me,” Craig said. “It was one of those deals where you wanted to sit down and spend time with him because he was interesting. He didn’t cause us any problems when he was incarcerated. He was anxious for the move [from Alcatraz to Leavenworth]. All the inmates were.”

Craig also had contact at Alcatraz with hoodlum Lefty Egan, another inmate with a heavily checkered past that included an association with Al Capone.

“They called him Lefty because he was paralyzed on his right side,” Craig said.

In his book, “Escape from Alcatraz,” author J. Campbell Bruce indicated Egan must have been on fairly good terms with the Alcatraz hierarchy.

Egan fell from a scaffold one day while painting and was saved by an assistant warden named Miller after a guard was unable to assist.

“He grabs at the rope with his crippled right hand,” according to Bruce’s account, “but it’s no good. The guard’s an older fellow with a bad heart. He can’t help. Just then [assistant warden] Miller comes by. He runs up and catches Lefty. It knocks the wind out of him, and he staggers and goes down, Lefty on top of him. Lefty told me later if Miller hadn’t risked my own neck, he’d have been a goner, sure as hell.”

Alcatraz had little in common with your neighborhood Sheraton, Hilton or multicell clink.

“I was one of a group of five people chosen to help in the closing,” Craig said. “I was there four and a half months. It was scary. You’re riding in that boat across the water to get to the facility, and you think, ‘What if something goes wrong once I get there.’ It had deteriorated badly. The walls were saturated with rust. Just the upkeep was unbelievable. It really was time to move the prisoners out of there.”

Besides Alcatraz and Leavenworth, Craig worked at federal prisons at La Tuna, near El Paso; Chicago, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

His job partly entailed finding adequate housing for paroled inmates and helping set up drug treatment centers. He turned down a prison job in New York.

Prison work was challenging, he said. Occasional contact with celebrity inmates broke any monotony.

“The fertilizer guy, Billie Sol Estes, was my clerk at Leavenworth,” Craig said.

Estes, long released and now a resident of Granbury, is known to pass out business cards that say, “Let’s Make A Deal. Billie Sol Estes. King of the Wheeler Dealers.”

“If I saw him on the street today, I’d say, ‘Hey, Billie, how is it going?’ It would be an affable conversation on my part,” Craig said. “He should remember me. He sat at my desk, and we talked many times. He never denied what he did to get sent to prison.”

Along with the colorful Estes, Mafia don Vito Genovese did time at Leavenworth.

“I knew Genovese was there,” Craig said, “but I never had any contact with him.”

Craig became a certified peace officer in 1973 while serving as warden of the Dallas County jail under Sheriff Clarence Jones.

“I was detention supervisor from 1973-76,” Craig said. “Then Clarence lost an election, and I was told by the new sheriff that there wasn’t room for me. The new guy had been fired by Clarence. He had told Clarence, ‘I’m going to come back and haunt you.’ He did.

“I did consulting work after that in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. I worked for Concept Incorporated and became their director at the facility in Bridgeport. I did a short stint with the parole board. Then I was contacted by [former Johnson County Sheriff] Eddy Boggs to see if I’d be interested in helping him write policy and procedures. I came on board at the old county jail. I helped with the jail operation.”

Through his association with Boggs Craig met Sheriff Bob Alford, who was then head of the Johnson County TASK force. Craig and Alford were not close at the time.

They were brought together by Darrell McCravey, a former sheriff’s deputy Craig had hired at the jail.

When Alford was elected in 1997 and began looking for someone to run the jail, McCravey told him, “I know the man for the job.”

Alford contacted Craig, and a long partnership and friendship was born.

“I felt he was very sincere about wanting to get the jail straightened out,” Craig said. “He had me sold. I thought, ‘This guy is going to be solid.’ There were ups and downs. At the same time, he was gung ho and wanted to get things squared away. He’s done a magnificent job.”

Renovating the facility wasn’t a snap, Craig learned.

“The first thing we had to do was fix the intercom system,” Craig said. “That was a life-safety issue. An inmate has to be able to press a button if he has a problem or sees a problem. The inmates had torn up the system. It took three weeks to repair. The next thing we had to do was clean the place. Then we had to get the showers and toilets all working. There was human waste in some of the toilets. We had to change out 80 percent of the lights. The officers didn’t have enough light to check cells.”

Alford retained Ann Brown as Craig’s assistant, Craig said.

“We had good staff and inmate labor,” he added. “We found inmates who had plumbing and electrical experience and put them to work. They were supervised, of course. We found painters. I got the female inmates paint rollers and showed them how to paint.”

Jails are never happy, but this one was happier, Craig said.

“The facility had been decertified by the state in 1996. During the recertification tour in early ’97, I walked the jail with [state inspector] Traci Dollar. She said, ‘This is not the same jail.’ The inmates were voicing their opinions that living conditions were much better. A lot of work had to be done, but it was very rewarding. I enjoyed my job.”

Now he will enjoy private life.

“One of the first things I want to do is get my left knee replaced,” Craig said. “I had the right one done two years ago. After that, I’ll probably do some traveling.”

Don’t be surprised if he visits San Francisco. On a clear day at the wharf, you can see Alcatraz.

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