To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back

Memories of an East LA Outlaw

Ernie López, Rafael Pérez-Torres

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780292778191
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

This prison memoir vividly recounts a life of abuse, crime, and incarceration, and reveals the harrowing reality inside America's broken prison system. When Ernie López was a boy selling newspapers in Depression-era Los Angeles, he would face beatings from his father for not bringing home enough money. When the beatings became unbearable, López took to petty stealing to make up the difference. By thirteen, he was stealing cars, a practice that landed him in California's harshest juvenile reformatory. So began his cycle of crime and incarceration. López spent decades in some of America's most notorious prisons, including four and a half years on death row for a murder he insists he did not commit. To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back is the story of a man who refused to be broken by his abusive father, or by America's abusive criminal justice system. While López admits "I've been no angel, " his insider's account of life in Alcatraz and San Quentin graphically reveals the violence, arbitrary punishment, and unending monotony that give rise to gang cultures within the prisons and practically insure that parolees will commit far worse crimes when they return to the streets.

PART ONE EDUCATION

1

THE JUDGMENT AGAINST ME

I suppose my childhood was very much the same as that of any other kid who was born and raised in East LA, particularly during the Depression years before World War II. I was born April 5, 1922, the fourth boy and seventh child. Everyone I came to know in East LA had the same things in common: we were all poor, from large families, and doing everything we could to survive. By the time my two younger sisters came along, I had five sisters and three brothers as well as my mother, Dolores, and father, Jesús. Eleven of us had to be fed and clothed. Store-bought children’s toys were an unheard of luxury and—starting at the age of seven—my after school hours were spent on a street corner selling newspapers. This was the beginning of the Great Depression, and often people just didn’t have enough change to buy a paper, and many times I would walk along and coax or badger pedestrians to buy a paper so I could sell out my stack. This was one step away from outright begging, which I couldn’t bring myself to do.

Often I would start selling newspapers at 2 in the afternoon and wouldn’t come home until 8 or 9 p.m. because sales on my corner went so slowly. Saturday and Sunday were even longer days. There were times when I just couldn’t sell papers to anybody, and on days like that I felt I had to do something to come home with some money. My father would accuse me of sloughing off if I didn’t sell out the entire stack, which meant on a very good day bringing home eighty or ninety cents. Usually I brought home less, on average fifty or sixty cents, and my father would accuse me of having gambled the money away. The reality was I simply had had a slow day selling papers. I couldn’t explain to him that people just didn’t want to buy papers. So when I had bad days I would make up for it by stealing whatever I could get my hands on.

I really wanted to please my father, but I found I rarely moved him, no matter what I did. He never knew how many times I stole money to make him think that I had sold all my papers. I hated selling papers. On those occasions that I was able to steal enough, I relished tearing up my stack and stuffing them in the sewer gutters.

Whenever I failed to live up to his expectations, my father was quick to give me the strap. So I found it easy to steal when I had to because I had such a strong desire to please him and avoid his punishment. By contrast, my mother was as loving and tender as my father was strict and unfeeling. She could see how hard I was trying and would attempt to make my father understand, but though she tried to defend me, she never argued with him. He was sole master of the castle.

I spent hour after hour standing on my street corner selling newspapers. There were times I would leave my corner to deliver a paper to a regular customer. One was an old man who had a little store a short way down the block from where I peddled my papers. He sold cigarettes, cigars, gum, all sorts of little things. The store was so small that the man didn’t even have a cash register, just a little drawer where he kept his money, which was usually just change anyway. He had a little bell attached to the inside of the door that rang when a customer came in.

Every once in a while, the old man would come shuffling out of his little store holding his hands behind his back, looking at the window displays of other stores. When he did shuffle out, he would slowly make his way to my corner to buy a newspaper from me. He usually came around noon when the intersection at the street corner was busy with traffic and people walking to go home or to some small diner for lunch. But there were other times that I would walk down to his store to sell him a newspaper, which is why I knew about the little bell inside his door. When I would take him the paper, he would pull open the drawer of change and pay me.

Another one of my regular customers worked at a hardware store about a block away from my corner. Every afternoon I would deliver a newspaper to him at the hardware store. When I went to go make my delivery, I would stack all my newspapers against the side of the corner drugstore building next to where I sold papers. Sometimes while I was gone people getting off from the yellow streetcar would take a paper and drop their money on top of the stack.

One early afternoon I had gone on a delivery and left some money on top of the stack as usual so people would know to leave their change when they took a paper. Returning from the delivery I found all the money on the stack and almost all my newspapers gone! Right away I suspected that some of the kids who used to hang around the corner shining shoes were the culprits. Everyday I would see them come and go with their shoeshine boxes strapped to their backs, calling out to passersby if they wanted a shine. They used to charge five cents to shine a customer’s shoes. Like me, these were poor kids from the neighborhood, hustling for what little money they could earn. But now they had gone and taken all the money I had earned that day.

Though it was still early, I had nothing to show for all my hard work, and I even owed the newspaper boss money for the papers that had been stolen. Since I didn’t have enough money to pay off the boss, let alone have any left over to take home, I figured I was going to be beaten but good.

In desperation, I decided to steal some money from the old man’s store down the block. I waited until he came out from his little store, tottering very slowly as he always did toward the corner. With my newspaper apron on and a couple of papers tucked under my arm, I crossed the street very quickly, trying my best not to act suspicious. I walked across the street from the old man heading in the opposite direction, passed the man’s storefront, crossed the street as casually as possible and made my way back to his little store.

Very slowly I pulled the door open, making certain that the little bell didn’t make any sound. I went directly to his money drawer and quickly stuffed as much money as I could into my apron pockets. My heart pounding, I rushed back to the door and peeked out to see how far the old man had walked. He was just halfway to the corner. Mindful that the old man couldn’t see me, I came out of the store with my newspapers under my arm, looking around to make sure that nobody else was eyeing me. I crossed the street again, scurried back to the end of the street, and casually crossed to my own corner. With his slow shuffle, the old man hadn’t even reached my corner yet. As I tried to look as nonchalant as possible, the man finally came up to me, bought a paper and turned back to his store just like normal.

As soon as I could, I counted out the change I had scooped from the drawer. It was the most money I had ever seen. There might have been about $35 or $40, which was a good amount of money for those days, especially for a little boy. I felt pretty clever for just having grabbed the money, sneaking out, and getting back to selling my papers before the old man even turned around.

Well, now I had a new problem: I didn’t know what to do with all that money! My best friend at the time was Alberto Silva, whose father owned a butcher shop on the corner of First and Rowan where I sold papers. His father was just like my father when it came to using the strap freely, so he understood the kind of torment I went through at home. I told Alberto about stealing the money, even offering him some of it, though he wouldn’t take it. We put our heads together to figure out what was best to do next.

“I want to give my father some of it,” I told him.

“Oh, no, Ernie,” he said. “Don’t do that. Hide it somewhere where nobody knows about it. Everyday, give him a little of the money and that way you won’t get in trouble.”

This seemed like a smart plan, so every day I’d take a bit of money from my stash and bring home eighty or ninety cents.

On these days, my father would look down at me and say, “Hmm, ahora se portó bien”—today you behaved well. I would just nod, and accept the compliment I was so hungry to hear.

“Vaya a comer. Tu mamá tiene algo pa’ ti.” So off I would go to my mother and get something to eat, happy that my father was treating me so much better.

The next day I would do the same thing, and the day after again. Between using the money to fool my father and buying small treats for myself, the day finally came when I ran out of money. I had little by little used up everything I had hidden. Then the same old pattern started up again when I brought home less than the full amount he wanted. He accused me of keeping the money for myself or gambling it away, and he took to whipping me every night.

Given the circumstances, I had to come up with another plan.

Down the block from First and Rowan, about halfway down from my corner and only two doors away from the old man’s store, was a little restaurant called Joe’s Hot Dog Joint. Behind the counter there was a wall with an open window for clean dishes to be passed through once they were washed. In that window, Joe kept a big tip jar full of quarters and nickels. The bathroom for Joe’s was out behind the restaurant in a little driveway that came to a dead end. It was always locked up tight with a padlock, and anybody who wanted to use the toilet had to ask Joe for the key.

The bathroom had an old fashioned toilet, the kind with the box above the toilet. You had to pull a long chain that hung from the box whenever you wanted to flush. Above the water box was a rusted screen that was so old it was corroded and disintegrating. The screen connected the bathroom to the back storage of Joe’s restaurant, a small dusty room that was practically empty and always dark.

Joe’s stayed opened until late at night, and one evening I made my way to his restaurant. With the little money I had, I ordered myself a hot dog. I asked Joe for the key to the bathroom, as I had done many times. But instead of relocking the door, I left the padlock open, went back to the counter, and returned the key to Joe.

Later that evening when it was good and dark I returned to the unlocked bathroom. Once in, I climbed on top of the toilet and started to work the decomposing wire screen back and forth. I could hear the late-night crowd ordering their food and chattering noisily just on the other side of the storage room. I managed to push a hole in the screen large enough for me to climb through, and I carefully lowered myself into Joe’s back storage room.

My plan was to make my way slowly from the storage room to the front where the clean dishes were piled in stacks next to the tip jar. With any luck, the dishwasher would be out collecting dirty dishes and Joe would be busy with the bustling crowd. It was dark in the back, and with all the people eating in front, the little restaurant was pretty noisy. I was going to reach around through the window and grab the large jar, slowly creep out through the storage room, pull myself up with my loot into the bathroom, and snap the padlock shut as I left. Unfortunately, things didn’t exactly work out as I had planned.

Just as I was about to jump down into the storage room, I unintentionally made a loud noise. Joe started hollering, “Who’s back there? Who’s back there?”

I got scared and leaped back into the bathroom. As I was doing that, the money I held in my newspaper apron fell out and scattered on the floor. I stumbled and hit my head on the wall, cutting myself just above my eye.

I managed to hightail it out of the bathroom before Joe came running down the alley, but now I had less money than when I started! It was already 7:30 at night and I would have to go home empty-handed. I was tired, bleeding, and dispirited. Instead of walking directly home down First to Indiana, the way I always went, I turned left on Townsend Street toward Third. As soon as I made the turn on Townsend where it was dark, I started crying.

Just then I noticed an old lady walking toward me—well, at least I thought she was old. She must have been about twenty years old, and she was actually very pretty. I wish now I had been about ten years older. In any case, she was walking along with her husband and stopped when she heard me crying.

“What’s the matter kid? Is something wrong?”

I don’t know why, but I said, “I got robbed. They robbed me right over there by the house on the corner with the hedges.”

The lady knew me from sight and told her husband, “This is the kid that sells papers over by First and Rowan.” She bent down to comfort me and told her husband over her shoulder, “Call the police.”

The poor guy had to go house to house until he could find somebody who had a phone, a utility not so common in East LA back then. I think he went to about three houses before he found one with a phone. The whole time, the woman held on to me, hugging me, trying to console me.

Pretty soon a squad car came around with its spotlight shining on all the yards of the houses. They finally got to where we were standing, and two cops with uniforms and badges and flashlights got out of the squad car. I had never seen a policeman like that in my life. One came over and the woman started explaining that I was walking home from selling papers when some kids behind the hedges jumped me, hit me, and took my money. That explained the cut I had over my eye.

The cop said, “Sounds like they were waiting for him.” Then he turned to me, “Do you come this way every day?”

“Well, not often. But I do come through here sometimes.”

“Yeah, they were waiting for you,” the cop said with finality. “Don’t worry, we’ll catch ’em!”

He offered to take me home, and the lady insisted that she accompany me. We got into the back seat of the patrol car and were driven to my house. My father answered the door with my mother standing behind him. The police explained how I was robbed and hit over the eye, how the thugs were waiting to ambush me, but not to worry, they would catch the guys. My poor mother started crying and hollering. “If he doesn’t get beaten up here at home, he gets beaten up in the street. He can’t win. My poor boy can’t win! I don’t want him selling any more papers!”

She was going on like that for some time when the next thing I knew the truck from the Herald Express, which was the paper I sold on the corner, pulled up to my house. These men with cameras and notepads came out and knocked on the door.

“Who’s little Ernie? Ernie, I wanna see you. You little Ernie?”

I said yeah.

“Aw, they robbed you, huh, kid? C’mon over here, I wanna take your picture.”

They took me to the front lawn and were taking pictures of me, asking me to put on the Herald Express apron, to hold a paper up like I was hustling it on the street, taking one shot after another. It came out in the paper the next day that the newspaper boy from First and Rowan got robbed the night before, and the story got picked up by La Opinión and other papers. My mother collected all the clippings and kept them for years.

I thought to myself, “Jesus, what did I get myself into?” I swore I would never tell anyone about what had happened. In fact I never did say one word about it until years later when I got to Alcatraz. I told the story to one of my best friends, who was celled next to me.

He laughed when I finished and said, “Ernie, you’re just a born criminal.”

When you’re little, you think that the fact your father whips you and ties you up is a normal part of life. You don’t know why he’s doing it; in fact, you don’t even wonder why he’s doing it. To you, it’s just the way things are. Only later, when you’re older and start thinking about these things, do you start to question what was going on. All I knew was that I hated my father with a passion.

He was a well-educated man from Mexico and had been married there with many children, though I never knew any of them. He used to read all the time and was able to talk about almost any subject. I remember people would come over and talk to him about all sorts of topics.

He was especially interested in talking about religion, because he was strongly anticlerical. He had gone to Catholic school as a child, and one of the priests had molested him. This drove him to read all about religion. He learned about the Inquisition and the garrote and other tortures, and read about the popes and all the power they had. He knew the history of seemingly anything you wan...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Part 1: Education
• Part 2: Training
• Part 3: Survival
• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Works Cited