Perhaps this wasn't the first escape attempt from the U.S. Penitentiary. A guard spied Bowers climbing over a fence and shot him. The question is what was Bowers doing? Prisoner accounts claim that Bowers was a "bug", a nutcase, who'd ended up in the prison for stealing $16.00 from a Marin County post office. Bowers worked down in the incinerator. He enjoyed feeding the sea gulls. Convict Henry Larry claims to have watched Bowers stack some empty barrels and climb up next to the fence so he could retrieve a bit of food which had fallen on the barbed wire. He stood there feeding the birds for several minutes until a tower guard turned, saw him atop the fence, and fired on the convict. Bowers fell seventy feet to his death.