Clarence Carnes

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Clarence Victor "The Choctaw Kid" Carnes (January 14, 1927 – October 3, 1988) was a Choctaw Indian famous as the youngest inmate sentenced to Alcatraz and for his participation in the bloody escape attempt known as the "Battle of Alcatraz".

Clarence Carnes was born in Daisy, Oklahoma the oldest of five children. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 16 for the murder of a garage attendant during an attempted hold-up. In early 1945 he escaped Granite Reformatory with a number of others but was recaptured and sentenced to an additional 99 years for a kidnapping carried out on the run. He was recaptured in April and sent to Leavenworth but made another attempt to escape while in the custody of the United States Marshals Service and was transferred to Alcatraz along with an additional 5-year sentence.

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[edit] Alcatraz

Carnes arrived on Alcatraz on July 8, 1945. On May 2, 1946, Carnes and five other inmates participated in a failed attempt to escape from Alcatraz which turned into the bloody "Battle of Alcatraz" which left three inmates and two prison officers dead. After the escape failed he was tried for murder with the two other survivors, Sam Shockley and Miran Edgar Thompson and found guilty of participating in the plot. Shockley and Thompson were sentenced to death, while Carnes was given a 99-year sentence instead of death, because he had not directly participated in the murder of the guards.

Carnes remained on Alcatraz until its closure in 1963, spending most of the time there in the segregation unit.

[edit] Parole, Re-incarceration, Death

Despite having been given a life sentence in Oklahoma for murder as well as a sentence of 203 years on federal charges, Carnes was paroled in 1973 at the age of 46. However, his parole was revoked twice due to parole violations and he was sent back to prison. He died on October 3, 1988 at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri and was buried in a paupers grave. In early 1989, James J. "Whitey" Bulger who had befriended Carnes while on Alcatraz paid for his body to be exhumed and reburied on Indian land in Oklahoma. Bulger reportedly bought a lavish $4,000 bronze casket and hired a car to transport Carnes' remains from Missouri to Oklahoma.

Carnes' life was the subject of a docudrama, Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story released in 1980.

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