Criminal, Author. He authored the 351-page 1969 book "Freedom from Florida Chains, Illustrated." One critic states that the self-published book is "full of typos and dubious truths" and greatly "in need of an editor," but gives much insight of the State of Florida's prison system in the early 20th century. Between his book, newspaper articles, and public records, his life of crime is revealed. On March 29, 1924, the weekly payroll of $24,000 of the Hav-A-Tampa Cigar Factory was stolen at gunpoint from the facility by three masked men. Seven days later, Fred Thomas, a private detective, identified one of the men as Albert Ross House, who was wanted in Indiana in connection to the robbery of the paymaster of the Carpenter Construction Company. Though court evidence proved his crimes, House's book chronicled his 40-year fight against "his unjust imprisonment from 1925 to 1965." Born to teenaged parents, Hallie Maude Leach at 16, and Charles Dammeran Brown at 19, who only were married a short time, he assumed his stepfather's surname of House after 1903. His stepfather died two years later and his mother married again in 1909. With his mother not being able to pay the rent, they moved from one place to another, thus he had little to no formal education, leaving school at age eleven to work fulltime. According to his biography, he joined the United States Navy in 1912, serving on the battleship "U.S.S. Kansas." At the end of 1912, he was listed as A.W.O.L. thus denied any veteran's benefits years later. Since he was never officially discharged by the Navy until 1957, House would claim that he was owed 45 years of back pay from the Navy and his mother spent years attempting to get it. This ordeal was documented in "The Indianapolis Star." On April 21, 1917, he married the divorcee, Fern James Gregg, and the couple ran a bakery until 1920 with the start of Prohibition. At that point, House immediately began bootlegging alcohol from Indiana to Florida for a better profit than baking. He was never found guilty of bootlegging. He also became part of an Indiana gang that were robbing various facilities. In 1923, he was charged with robbing the payroll office of the Carpenter Construction Company in Youngstown. House confessed that he regretted ever making the fateful trip down to Tampa but yes, he "pulled" the Hav-a-Tampa job along with two other robberies. He was arrested for this crime and incarcerated in Florida, but on the morning of the 23rd of March, the jailkeeper of the Hillsborough County Jail woke to find that House had escaped. He was eventually captured tried and sentenced to 70 years in the Florida State Prison at Raiford on November 15, 1925. For misbehaving, bribing guards, and attempting to escape several times, he was placed in a 3-foot by 3-foot solitude confinement box, and according to a source, House spent a cumulative eleven years in solitary confinement while serving his sentences. He was often housed in the Flat Top, a group of cells for the most dangerous inmates. According to the "Terre Haute Tribune," his wife received during a barroom brawl a gunshot wound in her spine, dying about a couple of weeks later in December of 1925. On January 7, 1927, he and two other inmates escaped, reaching the Florida-Georgia state line near the Okeefenokee Swamp before being captured. He and prison Warden J.S. Blitch were both shot during this escape. There are three versions of this ordeal: his, the prison's, and the newspaper articles. He would spend the next 25 years plotting to escape or using the law to gain his freedom without the advice of an attorney. After seriously studying the law, he was charged with the crime of receiving funds from other prisoners for his legal advice. In August of 1943, he filed his case to the Federal Supreme Court but with his original plea of guilty, his conviction remained, but his sentence was shortened to 50 years. Over the years, he saw prison reforms. In 1946, the use of leg-irons was done away with, effectively ending the chain gang and the sweatbox was enlarged enough for a mattress. After being released from Florida State Prison, he was sent to Georgia to serve five months in the United States Penitentiary at Atlanta for the remaining time of his 1951 mail theft sentence. Besides Atlanta, House's federal prison records indicate that between 1951 and 1958, he spent time at Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay and Ft. Leavensworth, Kansas. In 1970, he was arrested in Opp, Alabama, trying to cash stolen money orders and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1973, Al House was released from prison one last time. After his release, playing the innocent-little-old man act, he forged cashier's checks and got a light sentence. After he, in 1979 at the age of 85, was escaping the Illinois state police on a high-speed chase that ended with him slamming into the back of a semi-truck, it was revealed during his hospitalization that he was receiving numerous Social Security checks under false names. He was arrested and sentenced to a nursing home because of his age and health declining, yet escaped out of a window. At his death, one source calculated that House served nearly 50 years of his life behind bars.