Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary prisoners would frequently report acts of brutality and inhumane conditions which severely tested their sanity. Ed Wutke was the first prisoner to commit suicide in Alcatraz. Rufe Persful chopped off his fingers after grabbing an axe from the firetruck, begging another inmate to do the same to his other hand. One writer described Alcatraz as "the great garbage can of San Francisco Bay, into which every federal prison dumped its most rotten apples." In 1939, the new U.S. Attorney General Frank Murphy attacked the penitentiary, saying "The whole institution is conductive to psychology that builds up a sinister ambitious attitude
Alcatraz Island in popular culture E. Gaddis and then adapted into a film in 1962, with Burt Lancaster playing the lead role. The 1995 film "Murder in the First" depicts a man who spends three years in solitary confinement at the prison. One of the prisoners, Kyle Oberholzer, was charged with rape, murder and fornicating. Many films and television series have exploited Alcatraz Island's reputation as a prison from which it was almost impossible to escape. Don Siegel's 1979 thriller "Escape from Alcatraz" chronicles the story of Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962, although it is not