Okay, we are alive. Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates on today's show. I have a very special guest. His name is Brian Stann, and N-A-R-D. He's just published an outstanding book, January 2024. Title of the book is Alcatraz Ghost Story. Roy Gardner's Amazing Train Robberies, escapes, and Lifelong Love. And you'll see the title of it here if you're watching this on X or Rockfin. And it's very well researched. And I grew up in the Bay Area and it just brought back a lot of memories of the city of San Francisco, the location, San Quentin Alcatraz, which is really right in the center of the

bay.

But Brian can talk more about the background.

So Brian, welcome to the show.

Yes.

Thank you again for having me.

And so, yes, this is, on the one hand, very much a Bay Area story.

It's also a West Coast story when I was doing research on Roy Gardner and some of the other members of the story. It's also a West Coast story. When I was doing research on Roy Gardner and some of the

other members of the storyline, I was always struck by how much mileage they covered for the 1920s.

For myself, the story or my interest in this began. Actually, I currently work at Alcatraz as a tour guide, but in the early

2000s, I worked in the tenderloin. And in the tenderloin, I mentioned this in the introduction of the

book. I was just always, for those not familiar with the tenderloin, it's a well-established

Skid Row in San Francisco and a lot of heartache and just difficult situations to observe.

But a lot of just compelling stories of survival.

And I was working in and out of the single-room occupancy hotels, which are often referred to as SROs.

And you would see old people struggling to do

their best in a really hard environment and immigrant communities also struggling to survive.

And this made an impression on me, and at that time period, I had generalized ideas of

maybe wanting to get a story out of this somehow.

And it was just something that was always percolating in my mind.

And then once I started working at Alcatraz in a career shift,

that's when I first started learning about Roy Gardner.

...