The Birdman of Alcatraz Buried in Superman's Illinois Hometown

Robert Stroud (1890-1963), the Birdman of Alcatraz, is buried in Metropolis, Illinois, a town on the Ohio River, in the southernmost tip of Illinois. Metropolis is also the hometown of Superman, the only town in the entire country with that name.

Stroud's Early Years

In 1909, Robert Stroud was sentenced to prison at age 19 for murdering a man who failed to pay the prostitute he was pimping for in Alaska. He would wind up spending the next 54 years in prison. In 1916, he killed a prison guard in the Leavenworth prison mess hall and barely escaped the death penalty through the efforts of his mother who got President Woodrow Wilson to commute the sentence. Following that, he spent 43 years in solitary confinement.

He was initially held at McNeil Island in Puget Sound, then was transferred to Leavenworth, Kansas, and wound up in Alcatraz. Ironically, although dubbed the Birdman of Alcatraz, his birds were taken from him when he moved to Alcatraz.

The Birdman of Alcatraz

Stroud took up painting and although his mother was able to sell some of his work, it was not a successful line for him. Later he turned to studying the law.

Then one day during a storm, three young sparrows were dropped into the Leavenworth exercise yard.

He nursed the three sparrows. Two were able to recover fully, but one was crippled and remained in Stroud's cell. From there he went on to keeping canaries, eventually keeping, and later breeding and selling canaries, partially to help support his mother who continued her own campaign of appeals on his behalf.

An epidemic struck and decimated his flock. He was unable to appeal for any help so he was allowed to receive literature and books which he pored over. He dissected canaries struck down by the disease, using a razor blade as a scalpel. With no microscope, no laboratory, Stroud supplemented his third grade education to become an expert on canaries.