# The "Bird Man of Alcatraz"-What Was He Really Like? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 26, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330 "2009-07-26T17:01:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/21 "2009-07-27T12:11:20Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > I think that until the movie came out, Stroud was called “Birdman of Leavenworth.” Hollywood thought “Alcatraz” would be better, since it is better known. Please read the Wikipedia article cited above. The book “The Birdman of Alcatraz” came out in 1955, seven years before the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/22 "2009-07-27T12:28:28Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > **Gatopescado** - Well, he went into prison when he was 19, after his 36-year-old girlfriend was beaten and he killed the assailant. He died in prison. I think if he was a pedophile, he certainly never had an opportunity to engage in that practice. > > StG He apparently wrote rather graphic stories. Which, in my mind, is not necessarily the same thing, but its still disturbing, and when combined with some of his other tendancies, doesn’t make me regret him spending his life locked up. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/23 "2009-07-27T14:02:36Z")
Thanks for the replies. Yeah-this Stroud was clearly an unlikeable guy-yet he did have some positive qualities. The Burt Lancaster movie made it seem like Stroud was some kind of hero-he clearly wasn’t . Just an aside-Alcatraz was a pretty lousy place to do time-but waht is the rationale for keeping an old man in solitary? By the time he was 65 or so, he probably wasn’t a threat to anybody. Anybody catch Telly Savalas as the prison steward? What a ugly mug that guy had! ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/24 "2009-07-27T15:05:59Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > He was a nasty and dangerous murderer. [Cite](http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/stroud/6.html). > > Regards, > Shodan Fascinating story, but I gotta say, that’s one of the worst pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time. Painful to read. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/25 "2009-07-27T16:01:17Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Just an aside-Alcatraz was a pretty lousy place to do time-but waht is the rationale for keeping an old man in solitary? By the time he was 65 or so, he probably wasn’t a threat to anybody. Except to one’s sense of smell. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Slade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@Slade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slade)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/26 "2009-07-27T16:19:26Z")
I read somewhere that he was a compulsive masturbator, and that the guards outside his cell installed an additional door so they wouldn’t have to see and/or hear him repeatedly choking the chicken, spanking the sparrow, wringing the wren, punishing the pelican, tugging the toucan and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Haunted\_Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/94ad74/32.png) [@Haunted\_Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haunted_Pasta)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/27 "2009-07-27T18:17:52Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Fascinating story, but I gotta say, that’s one of the worst pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time. Painful to read. I hadn’t followed the link, but just from this comment and the nature of this thread, I knew it would lead to Crime Library. Well, whaddya know, it does. That site seems to select its authors from the bottom half of a middle school English class somewhere. To contribute to the thread: Uhhhh… I like birds. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2009, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/28 "2009-07-28T14:59:11Z")
The most thoroughly researched book about Stroud is _Birdman: The Many Faces of Robert Stroud_ by Jolene Babyak, who grew up on Alcatraz and (at least during the 1990’s) would often sign her books there for tourists. She writes, > [@](#): > > Stroud’s anti-social traits could be checked off on a list. He was almost pathologically self-centered, impulsive, hypochondriacal, manipulative, violent, and expressed feeling no remorse for his killings. He tended to blame everyone else and went straight to the top with his problems. He had little insight into his behavior, and by his repeated threats and callous comments, warned that his behavior had not changed. When he wasn’t raising birds, he enjoyed writing lurid pornographic fantasies about molesting children. He came within a hair’s breadth of the death penalty for murdering a prison guard in 1916 but was saved by his mother’s pleas that insanity ran in the family. As for his avian research, Stroud was a dedicated and useful hobbyist but not a scientist. Per Babyak, > [@](#): > > Very few people were actually able to judge (Stroud’s) scientific merit in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Veterinarians–whom Stroud derided for knowing nothing–were simply not specializing in pet birds. . . . His _Digest_ not only didn’t break any new ground, but it perpetuated diagnostic and treatment myths for several decades. . . . (S)pecialists today consider most of his recommendations to be lethal. Yet despite Stroud’s obviously questionable research, current avian veterinarians are far more magnanimous toward him than he was toward his predecessors. Stroud knew that birds, as Speer put it, were “people with feathers”, who needed a higher quality of care than was available at the time. This was perhaps the prisoner’s most valuable contribution. Experts giving papers at professional meetings have often cited Stroud–not for his research–but for some of his observations on bird behavior and care. Stroud was not an avian pathologist as he claimed in 1962. He was an aviculturist . . . but his medical research was seriously flawed, his treatments were bogus and his cures overblown. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2009, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/29 "2009-07-28T15:05:25Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Please read the Wikipedia article cited above. The book “The Birdman of Alcatraz” came out in 1955, seven years before the movie. OK, but it’s the same principle in effect: Alcatraz would have been better for marketing the book, too. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2009, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/30 "2009-07-28T21:14:42Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > My wife says he was also a notorious pedophile, after she did a little digging around on him for some such reason (she is into birds). Find your own cite, I ain’t putting that term in \*my \*Google-Fu! In routine searches of his cell he was in possession of child pornography. It doesn’t necessarily mean he was a pedophile, but when you’re in solitary porn is probably porn. By all accounts of those who knew him he was brilliant and he was a psychopath, and as those would imply he was autodidactically as well educated as you could become in prison and he was completely lacking in remorse. I am trying to remember whose memoir mentions being trapped by the guy briefly while on a visit to a prison. I initially thought Timothy Leary but the dates don’t work; does anybody know? ---
**Author:** ![FREEDOSIS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e0b2c6/32.png) [@FREEDOSIS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FREEDOSIS)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2022, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330/31 "2022-06-13T15:13:38Z")
He was in possession of child pornography and wrote lurid pornographic fantasies about molesting children. I believe that had something to do with it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-bird-man-of-alcatraz-what-was-he-really-like/504330.md?page=1)