Biography

After the sympathetic portrayal by Burt Lancaster in the motion picture Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), members of the public wrote letters asking that Stroud be released. The real Robert Stroud was not a model prisoner. Although highly intelligent, he was regarded as a difficult, scheming, violent sociopath. He killed two additional people while in prison. It is believed that he may have actually been a psychopath. He was transfered to the federal prison at Alcatraz where he spent the first year in isolation.

Discovered three then-unknown forms of septic fever that were killing his canaries, and developed an antidote which was sold as "Stroud's Specific Bird Cures."

Sentenced to death in 1916 for killing Leavenworth prison guard Andrew Turner in a dining hall with a homemade knife after Turner had reported him for breach of silence. President Woodrow Wilson commuted the sentence to life after Stroud's mother pleaded with him to spare her son's life.

Burt Lancaster, who portrayed Robert Stroud in the movie Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), actually met him in February 1963.

Initially spent 30 years at Leavenworth. Then he was transferred to Alcatraz where he spent 17 years (1942-1959) of which the first 6 years were in the "D" Block (isolation).