Birdman alcatraz biography
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His death was due to natural causes (according to Biography).
Death
Despite the increased attention, Stroud was unsuccessful in his attempts to attain parole.
Stroud's father was against his birth from the very beginning. The hatred toward the child was evident, and this brought little Robert and his mother closer together, only making his father's resentment grow.
His father began to abuse him at a young age.
Stroud had never been permitted to see the movie in which Burt Lancaster portrayed him as a mild-mannered and humane individual, but "Birdman of Alcatraz" later earned Lancaster an Academy Award nomination for best actor. He was tried and sentenced to death by hanging.
However, Stroud’s mother appealed to President Woodrow Wilson to spare her son’s life.
Early Years and Incarceration
Robert Franklin Stroud, who earned fame as the "Birdman of Alcatraz," was born on January 28, 1890, in Seattle, Washington. Among other details, the book reveals Stroud's homosexuality and the corruption rife among prison guards and wardens.
The reason he gave for the stabbing was that the other prisoner snitched on him for taking food to his cell.
Stroud's punishment was six months of solitary confinement. With the movie rights sold and the promise of additional volumes on the way, it seemed likely the Birdman's story would remain popular in the public's imagination.
The 'Birdman' Is Hatched
During a break in the prison yard in 1920, Stroud came upon a fallen nest with baby sparrows. However, President Woodrow Wilson in 1920 commuted the sentence to life imprisonment without parole, and Leavenworth's warden determined that Stroud would serve his sentence in solitary confinement. He was granted permission to raise and breed canaries, and reached a point where he had 300 of them living in cigar boxes in an adjoining cell.
However, he was denied the right to publish it.
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He took them through the mail from a number of schools and he was known for being a genius. Stroud began reading every book he could acquire on the subject, and recorded his own observations on behavior and illness that the books failed to cover.
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Some say Stroud and O'Brien were in love; others say that he was her pimp and he didn't love her at all.
On the fateful night that initially landed Stroud behind bars, no one knows exactly what happened. In 1959 he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, and there on November 21, 1963, he was found dead from natural causes by convicted spy, close friend, and fellow inmate Morton Sobell.
He basically read everything he could and learned whatever was allowed, including law.
Stroud Becomes the Birdman
While incarcerated at Leavenworth, Robert Stroud became interested in birds. In 1943, still a prisoner of Alcatraz, Stroud published his second book, Stroud's Digeston the Diseases of Birds.
Even as Stroud was focusing a lot of his time on his research, he still couldn't stay out of trouble.