Robert Stroud, the 'Birdman of Alcatraz,' Cared for and Wrote About Birds While in Prison for Murder

Robert Stroud, better known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” might be one of the most well-known inmates at America’s most infamous prisons. He was transferred to “The Rock” in 1942 where he served 17 years, six of those segregated in 24-hour solitary confinement in D Block. 

But despite his nickname, the Birdman of Alcatraz spent most of his time behind bars at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, where he stabbed and killed a prison guard. And it was at Leavenworth in Kansas where he bred, researched and wrote scholarly works about birds.

Born in 1890, Stroud grew up with an abusive father who threatened to kill the entire family. His dad’s affair tore the family apart, and as a result, Stroud left home at 13. Stroud’s time in the federal prison system began seven years later on Washington’s McNeil Island after he was convicted of manslaughter at age 20. Stroud shot and killed a man in Alaska in 1909 after the man had beaten Stroud’s former lover, Kitty O’Brien.

The judge in his case gave Stroud a 12-year sentence and sent him to McNeil Island Penitentiary. Stroud learned prison rules fast, knowing that if he went against the guards, he’d be beaten—or worse. But after a few years, according to the book Birdman of Alcatraz by author and prison reform advocate Thomas Gaddis, Stroud began breaking the rules.

After another prisoner told on him for stealing food from the kitchen where he worked, Stroud stabbed him for being a "snitch." He lost his privileges and was slapped with six more months on his 12-year sentence. Soon after, Stroud was transferred to the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, then a maximum-security prison (it was downgraded to medium-security housing in 2005).

When Stroud arrived in 1912, Leavenworth was known as a "hard joint" where prisoners couldn’t even have pencils. But reform came fast when the prison bureau appointed a new warden in 1913. The warden, looking to make Leavenworth a place that rehabilitated prisoners, expanded the library, started a prison paper and encouraged inmates like Stroud to finish their studies.

And Stroud did just that. He immersed himself in philosophy, science and religion. He studied engineering, math and music. But his propensity for violence never diminished. In 1916, Stroud was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by hanging for killing a prison guard. 

Despite being his death sentence, Stroud served out a life sentence at Leavenworth in solitary confinement only after President Woodrow Wilson commuted his sentence to life in 1920 thanks to an appeal by Stroud’s mother.

In solitary, Stroud nursed a nest of baby birds he found while in the prison yard. Soon he began checking out every book the prison library had on birds, learning how to feed and care for them, and even how to train them. 

Eventually Stroud began raising canaries in his cell and selling them outside the prison with the help of his mother. He kept meticulous records about his research and was allowed to raise and study other birds and their diseases, breeding and care. 

His prison research led to several writing opportunities, including articles for The Roller Canary Journal where he published a piece on hemorrhagic septicemia in canaries. Through writing that piece, Stroud met Della Mae Jones, who he secretly married in 1933.  

Stroud went on to publish two books on ornithology, including Diseases of Canaries and Stroud’s Digest on the Diseases of Birds. He also made important contributions to bird pathology, including a cure for the hemorrhagic septicemia family of diseases.

In 1942, after the Leavenworth warden suspected his birding instruments could be used to make alcohol, Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz where he spent 17 years in solitary in D Block. He was no longer permitted to have or study birds, but that didn’t stop him from writing. 

While at Alcatraz, he penned an eight-volume autobiography titled Bobbie. He also wrote Looking Outward: An Historical and Analytical Story of the Federal Prison System from the Inside. Stroud tried to have both manuscripts published, but he was stopped because officials claimed the writing was “obscene” and it “glorified criminals.” 

In 1962, Stroud sued for the right to publish, but he died in the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., before a ruling could be made. He did, however, live to see the release of Birdman of Alcatraz, a 1962 film inspired by Stroud that helped elevate the criminal to star status before his death in November 1963.

Dudley Martin, Stroud’s attorney and administrator of his estate, was given Stroud's manuscripts following his death. Martin spent decades before his 2020 death working with Birdman of Alcatraz author Thomas Gaddis to get Stroud’s manuscripts published, only to be turned down by every major publishing house—until 2013 when Looking Outward finally became available. Today the manuscripts are held in the Stroud Collection at the Missouri State Archives.