You see him sitting there sometimes at the gift shop on the island. A thin, older man with a sharp memory and a pen ready to sign a book called Alcatraz #1259. He looks like a friendly grandpa. He isn't. Or, at least, he wasn't always. William "Bill" Baker is one of the very few voices left from the most notorious prison in American history, and people usually assume he was some kind of high-level hitman or a bank-robbing mastermind to land a cell on "The Rock."
Actually, the truth is way more bureaucratic and, honestly, kinda frustrating if you were his lawyer.
William Baker didn't get sent to Alcatraz because he was the "worst of the worst" in terms of violence. He got sent there because he wouldn't stay put. Most people think Alcatraz was for the Al Capones and the Machine Gun Kellys of the world—and it was—but it was also a "holding pen" for the guys who made other prison wardens look bad.
The William Baker Alcatraz Crime That Started It All
So, what did he do?
If you look at his initial rap sheet, it's not exactly the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. He was a car thief. Specifically, he stole a car and drove it across state lines. In the eyes of the feds in the 1950s, that was a big deal, but it didn't usually earn you a ticket to a rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
Baker’s real "crime" was being an escape artist.
He was serving time in an Oregon state prison when he decided he’d had enough. He escaped. Then he escaped again. At one point, he even managed to cut his own handcuffs off while being transferred between facilities. He was a massive headache for the Bureau of Prisons. He was labeled an "escape risk," and in the mid-century penal system, that was the ultimate sin.
They sent him to Alcatraz in 1957, not to reform him, but to make sure he couldn't leave. He was 23 years old.
Think about that for a second. Most 23-year-olds today are finishing college or trying to figure out how to pay rent. Baker was being rowed across a freezing bay to a place where the guards outnumbered the inmates and the "silent system" was still a very real, very haunting memory.
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Life as Inmate #1259
Baker has been incredibly open about his time there, and his stories usually surprise people. He doesn’t talk about it like it was a horror movie. To him, it was just a job. He worked in the glove shop, sewing white cotton gloves for the military.
- He met the Anglin brothers (the guys who eventually "escaped" in 1962).
- He chatted with Robert Stroud, the famous "Birdman of Alcatraz."
- He even brewed "home brew" beer in his cell using smuggled scraps from the kitchen.
He has often said that "a human being can adjust to just about anything." For him, happiness was a dry cell and a decent meal, which Alcatraz actually provided. The food there was famously some of the best in the federal system because the wardens knew that hungry prisoners were rioting prisoners.
Why the "Crime" Didn't End at Alcatraz
Here is the part of the William Baker Alcatraz crime story that most "true crime" fans miss: Alcatraz didn't rehabilitate him. It actually made him a much more effective criminal.
While he was sitting on the island, he wasn't just sewing gloves. He was networking. He met a man named Courtney Taylor, who was arguably one of the best counterfeiters in the world at the time. Taylor didn't teach Baker how to be a better person; he taught him how to forge payroll checks.
He learned about routing numbers.
He learned about magnetic ink.
He learned how to make a piece of paper look like a million bucks.
When Baker finally got off the island after three years, he didn't go get a job at a grocery store. He went straight into the counterfeiting business. That "trade" kept him in and out of various prisons for the next fifty years. He spent the vast majority of his adult life behind bars, only truly "retiring" from crime in 2011 when he was in his late 70s.
The Last of a Dying Breed
Today, Baker is a bit of a celebrity. It's a weird paradox. The state spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to keep him away from society, and now society pays $40 a head to take a ferry and hear him talk.
He doesn't apologize much. He doesn't glamorize it, either. He just tells it like it was. He acknowledges that he was a "bad boy" who made a lot of poor choices, but he also points out the absurdity of the system.
When you visit Alcatraz today, you aren't just looking at a crumbling building. You’re looking at a place that shaped people like Baker—men who weren't necessarily monsters, but who were too stubborn for their own good.
How to Explore This History Further
If you're heading to San Francisco, don't just do the audio tour.
- Check the Author Schedule: Baker used to be there Wednesday through Friday. Check the National Park Service or the Alcatraz City Cruises site to see if a former inmate is scheduled for a book signing.
- Read the Memoir: Get a copy of Alcatraz #1259. It’s written in a very "un-AI" way—it's raw, conversational, and feels like you're sitting in a bar listening to an old-timer recount his glory days (and his miserable ones).
- Look Past the Cells: When you're in the cellblock, look for the glove shop area. Think about the fact that a world-class education in counterfeiting happened right there under the noses of the guards.
The story of William Baker isn't just about a crime; it's about what happens when you put a bunch of smart, stubborn people in a cage together. They don't just sit there. They learn.