Mug Shot of Alvin Karpis, the longest-serving resident of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Wikimedia Commons.
13. Becoming famous for its celebrity criminal inmates, including legendary mobster Al Capone, the longest-serving prisoner on “The Rock” was Alvin Karpis who endured twenty-six consecutive years
As the popularized saying dictated: “if you break the rules, you go to prison. If you break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz”. Due to the unique selection of Alcatraz’s inmate population, aided by the island prison’s distinctive style, the federal facility quickly garnered a reputation for holding a range of high-profile criminals. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, numerous notorious criminals garnered cult appeal as celebrities in wider American society, including Al Capone, George, “Machine Gun Kelly”, John Dillinger, and “Baby Face” Nelson among others. The incarceration of several of these individuals at Alcatraz, including Capone and Kelly, focused public attention and transformed the penitentiary into a cultural icon.
Housing, if only briefly in some cases, many of the most infamous men in America, legendary mobsters, such as Capone, political revolutionaries, like Rafael Cancel Miranda – responsible for the attack on the United States Capitol in 1954 – and murderers including Robert Stroud, Alcatraz rarely escaped press attention. The longest-serving inmate of Alcatraz was Alvin “Creepy Karpis” Karpowicz. The only Public Enemy #1 to ever be captured alive, Karpis resided on the island for twenty-six years between 1936 until 1962, leaving the island only when the prison was being decommissioned.
