Alcatraz warden's notebook page for Frank Epplesheimer, No. 309
Bureau of Prisons notebook page for a defendant in the Staunton mail-robbery case, received at Alcatraz on 30 May 1936 and transferred back to Leavenworth on 10 July 1938. Its codefendants box names the other men convicted with him and gives the place of sentence as Quincy, Illinois. A copy is stored here.
- Date
- 1936-05-30/1938-07-10
- Kind
- photograph
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- NAID
- 236735187
- Rights
- A Bureau of Prisons record, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Series "Warden's Notebook Pages" (NAID 296686), Records of the Bureau of Prisons (Record Group 129), National Archives at San Francisco. The National Archives catalog marks the item "Use Restriction: Unrestricted." The copy stored here is a downsample of the digitized page.
A Bureau of Prisons notebook form with an identification photograph at the upper right; the placard in the photograph reads “U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz 309.” The page spells the name “Frank Epplesheimer”; the indictment and the Seventh Circuit spell it Eppelsheimer. A line typed in red across the top reads “Transferred to USP Leavenworth, July 10, 1938.”
The typed entries, as printed: No. 309, received 5/30/36 from Kooskia, Idaho; date of birth 8/23/04; offense “Assaulting & Robbing Mail Custo.” (the word is cut off at the box edge); date Nov. 15, 1924; sentence “25 years & $4000 fine”; sentence began Nov. 16, 1924; district sentenced “S/Ill.- Quincy.” The box headed “Partners or co-defendants” reads: “William Colbeck, Oliver Daugherty, Frank Hackethal, Charles Lanham, Stephen Ryan, David Robinson And Charles Smith. ( All sentenced to a term of 25 years at USP Leavenworth; Gustiv B. Dietmeyer was also sentenced to 25 years at Leavenworth; (Thomas Seatkamp, sentenced to 7 months in McLean County Jail). Leo Turner, nolled & James Hennessey, deceased.” The page records that he was sent to Alcatraz from a federal institution in Idaho and returned to Leavenworth in 1938.
This is the one record filed here that names all the convicted defendants together with the place and date of sentence, and it is the basis on which the Leavenworth photographs are matched to the case. Its spellings differ from the indictment’s in places (“Gustiv,” “Seatkamp,” “Leo Turner” for the indictment’s Lee Turner). The right half of the page holds the staff’s reasons for the transfer and a list of prison rule violations; those are staff remarks about conduct in custody and are not repeated here. The page does not mention a gang. The National Archives catalog note, not the page, gives a death date of 3 August 1948 in St. Louis.
