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
Legends of Alcatraz Karpis is said to haunt the prison bakery and kitchen. One visitor and his wife have claimed to have heard canaries singing in what was the cell of Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", and to have seen him on the bed reading a book, yet Stroud was never permitted to keep birds in his cell as he'd done at former prisons. Numerous investigators and psychics such as Annette Martin and Jeanne Borgen and paranormal teams have sought to "contact spirits" at Alcatraz. KGO Radio Morning News anchor Ted Wygant, a skeptic of the paranormal, visited Alcatraz in 1982 with