Darl Parker and the Lincoln National robbery · the road to Alcatraz

OCTOBER 18, 1957 – DECEMBER 16, 1962

The robbery: on Friday, October 18, 1957, Darl Lee Parker — the name is spelled Darl Dee Parker in the caption of his federal appeal, and Daryl Lee Parker in the Alcatraz literature — and John T. Bartholomew robbed the Clinton and Rudisill branch of the Lincoln National Bank and Trust Company of Fort Wayne of $50,104. The United States Attorney's report in Parker's federal file, quoted in the standard history of the Alcatraz penitentiary, records that Parker, though the younger man, "carefully laid all of the plans and made all of the arrangements," and that he worked the rear of the bank with a .357 magnum revolver, compelling a vault cashier to fill one of the bank's own money bags from the drive-in windows. Parker was born February 9, 1931, at Canton, Ohio, and his record before Fort Wayne already ran from juvenile runaway entries in 1944 to armed-robbery charges; he and Bartholomew had become acquainted doing time at the federal reformatory at Lorton, Virginia.

The investigation and the flight: the planning was meticulous enough, the federal report says, that it took months of investigation to assemble the evidence. Parker was arrested on March 19, 1958. Indicted at Fort Wayne on May 9, 1958 — robbery under the federal bank robbery statute, and assault in its course — he was held in the Allen County jail, and on June 10, 1958 he broke out: the prison record describes two men scaling the jail wall with an extension ladder on a stormy night, and the second indictment charges that Parker forced one Fred L. Bolten to accompany him in his flight. He was recaptured in Ohio after a gun battle — the prison report says an Ohio state patrolman shot him in the hip, ending about five hours of freedom. At the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute the next day, June 11, 1958, he told Warden Donald Byington, in the report's quotation, "I am in too much trouble, having robbed four banks and I couldn't do all that time." The same file records his brother Robert's admission that the brothers had $226,000 hidden away, and that both had flown to Cuba soon after the Fort Wayne robbery; those figures stand here as the federal file states them.

Sentence and the Rock: Parker changed his plea to guilty, the trial date of May 25, 1959 falling away. The United States Attorney's report records twenty years on the robbery count and twenty-five years, concurrent, on the assault count; the county genealogical society's summary and the Alcatraz history both give the sentence he carried as fifty years in all, the escape indictment's term standing behind the difference. He arrived at Alcatraz on May 29, 1959, as inmate AZ-1413. There the Fort Wayne robbery finished writing its place in a larger record: on December 16, 1962, Parker and John Paul Scott made the fourteenth and last escape attempt in Alcatraz's history, cutting through a kitchen-basement window and going into the bay. Parker was found on the rock called Little Alcatraz, eighty-one yards out. Scott swam three miles to Fort Point and lived — the only Alcatraz escapee proven to have reached the shore. When the Rock closed in 1963 Parker was transferred; he was paroled from Atlanta in 1967, was still litigating his Fort Wayne conviction in the Seventh Circuit in 1970, and died in 1974 at Akron, Ohio.

Sources:

1. Michael Esslinger, Alcatraz: A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years — Parker's inmate record as published: the U.S. Attorney's Report (Form 792) on the October 18, 1957 robbery of the Clinton and Rudisill Branch, Lincoln National Bank and Trust Company, $50,104, with John T. Bartholomew; the jail escape and recapture reports; the June 11, 1958 statement to Warden Byington; arrival at Alcatraz May 29, 1959, AZ-1413.
2. Parker v. United States, 433 F.2d 15 (7th Cir. 1970) — Indictment No. 1701 (May 9, 1958), robbery and assault counts under 18 U.S.C. § 2113; the June 10, 1958 jail break; Indictment No. 1714 (the Bolten count); the guilty plea; the 1969–70 collateral attack, denied.
3. ACGSI, "P Surnames of Allen County, Indiana" — Parker, Darl Lee: born Feb. 9, 1931, Canton, Ohio; the 1957 robbery of $50,104; the 1958 jail escape; the 50-year sentence; Alcatraz 1959; the 1962 attempt; parole 1967; died 1974, Akron.
4. "List of Alcatraz escape attempts" — attempt no. 14, December 16, 1962, John Paul Scott and Darl Lee Parker; Parker recovered at Little Alcatraz, Scott ashore at Fort Point.