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Reason First: The Self-Broken Wings of Murderer Robert Franklin Stroud

No one will ever know what could have been in the case of The Bird Man of Alcatraz.

By Skyler SaundersPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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Reason First: The Self-Broken Wings of Murderer Robert Franklin Stroud
Photo by Fausto Marqués on Unsplash

If you’re a murderous criminal locked behind bars and one of your consumers of patent medicines and caged birds was none other than FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, you must’ve made an impact. Now, in the case of Robert Franklin “The Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud, this dastardly waste of human life could have found achievement in the field of ornithology.

After his first murder in Juneau, Alaska in 1916, Stroud found himself locked behind bars. In his second murder case, Stroud had his death sentence commuted to life in prison by President Woodrow Wilson.

Ironically, Stroud never cared for birds at Alcatraz. Before his time at “The Rock,” the United States Penitentiary Leavenworth in Kansas served as the place where Stroud would care for sparrows and other fowl.

His killing of prison guard Andrew Turner would lead him to never experience the outside world again. So he took to those flying creatures with feathers.

But that attention to nature could not quell the raging beast underneath the facade of a monster. In 1942, Alacatraz became Stroud’s new place to live in infamy. His interest in birds continued as he penned journals and submitted for publication books on birds.

In his final years at the prison, Stroud attempted to publish a book on the criminal justice system from the Revolutionary period to modern times.

In the dramatized film, Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Stroud is shown in a much greater light and his menace is replaced by a more appealing character turn by Burt Lancaster. A fellow inmate once remarked that the Birdman “was a jerk. He was a guy that thrived on chaos.”

And that’s what should be said of a disaster like Stroud. Never mind all of the birds and the journals and publication attempts. Remember that he brutally murdered two men. No amount of ornithological study and closeness to Mother Nature can erase away Stroud’s ugly soul.

The literal destruction of people also meant that a destruction took place in Stroud’s spirit. He destroyed any chance to escape from not just the physical cell but his own mental hell.

Stroud used his faith instead of reason in his mind. His explorations into the study of birds only shrouds his disgusting behavior. From the time before he was first incarcerated, he was like a bird himself locked in a cage. He broke his own wings. That disturbed mind could’ve been an advanced professor at university if he had not let his emotions direct his course.

With his ability to seek out something other than murdering people, Stroud may have been a leading professional in the field of ornithology. Without the fetters placed on his wrists and on his soul, he could have devoted his life in the world to birds, squirrels, bats, or narwhals.

It makes sense to point out that Stroud possessed a disease. Of course he suffered from the physical malady of Bright’s disease, he poisoned his mind with the sickness of homicide. Had he not committed those two murders, who knows how many college boards and talk circuits he would have been on during his life?

Stroud stood out as the example of a man of the blues. He had everything going for him. He had the potential but didn’t actualize it because of his emotionalism. Had he possessed and employed reason, Stroud could have developed his intellectual pursuits and lived a life of purpose. The deaths of the two men at his hands barred him from achieving the fullness of a life worth living. He brought it upon himself to throw away his life in such vicious fashion. There is no redemption for that kind of behavior.

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Skyler Saunders

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