ALCATRAZ HISTORY - Prisoners: Henry Young (AZ #244)

©2002 RJ Best

ALCATRAZ HISTORY

Henry Young (AZ #244)

The film "Murder in the First" purports to tell the story of non-violent Alcatraz inmate Henry Young. Hollywood is famous for its fiction and this film is a shining example of pure fabrication.

The real Henry Young (who also used "Henri" Young as an alias) was a murderous person with a long history of violence. Though the movie depicts him as a teenage orphan who ends up on Alcatraz as a result of a petty theft, life shows us that he began his life of crime as a bank robber with a penchant for taking and brutalizing hostages. He committed murder in 1933 and served time in state prisons in Montana and Washington before being sent to the U.S. Penitentiary on McNeil Island in Washington state in 1935. He was shipped to Alcatraz that same year, which indicates that his disciplinary problems were apparent to the officials at McNeil very soon.

Young's conduct report while at Alcatraz is a lengthy list of behavioral problems – it includes taking part in the prison's 1937 strike, refusing to work, creating disturbances, fighting, possessing contraband, and even wasting food. Young was not at all the model prisoner that the movie attempts to present.

"Murder in the First" also leads the audience to believe that his murder of fellow inmate Rufus McCain resulted from the madness of being confined, naked, in a dark dungeon for three years. The facts are quite different. Young participated in an escape attempt in 1939 and was held in the disciplinary segregation unit in the main cellhouse for several months only. He had plumbing, an electric light, a cot and other standard cell furnishings. His Achilles tendon was never slit by the associate warden in an attempt to prevent future escapes.

Young killed McCain in 1940, approximately more than a year after being released from his cell in segregation. His homicidal act had nothing to do with his punishment for the escape attempt and was certainly not related to spending time in a dungeon (which never happened). Young stated at his trial that the animosity between him and McCain had stemmed from the failed escape attempt.

The movie also tells us that Young committed suicide on Alcatraz in 1942. In reality, Young was an Alcatraz inmate until 1948, when he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri.

In fact, there may be some reason to believe that Henry Young is still alive today. When his Federal sentence expired in 1954, he was turned over to the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla to begin a life sentence for an earlier murder conviction. In 1972, he was released from Washington State Penitentiary, but he jumped parole and, according to Washington State authorities, his whereabouts are unknown.

Link to Young's conduct report:
http://www.notfrisco2.com/alcatraz/bios/hyoung/244cond.html

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