Fleeta Drumgo Fleeta Drumgo (1945 – November 26, 1979) was born to Inez Williams in
Shreveport, Louisiana. According to the
Daily Review (
Hayward, California), Drumgo moved to
Los Angeles with his mother at the age of three. His childhood was difficult, and he had been in and out of
juvenile detention homes since the age of 13. According to Fania Davis Jordan, sister of activist
Angela Davis, Drumgo moved to Los Angeles at the age of 14 and got crosswise with the justice system. He was placed in the
Preston School of Industry. After his release, he was arrested in a new incident, for attempted murder. He was convicted and sentenced to the
Deuel Vocational Institution near
Tracy, California. According to court documents, Drumgo initially admitted his involvement in the break-in after officers found him at the address of the registration of the getaway car used by his accomplice. In early 1967, he was convicted of first degree burglary after waiving a
jury trial. He was referred to the
California Youth Authority, but they ruled that he was "not capable of reformation under their discipline". Jackson, Drumgo, and Clutchette were among the
Soledad Brothers indicted for the 1970 killing of a correctional officer at
Soledad State Prison. The trio gained national notoriety about this case after Jackson published his memoir
Soledad Brother (1970). They were acquitted at trial in 1972. Twice charged and acquitted for the murder of prison guards, Drumgo was released from prison in August 1976. He had served nine years for the burglary charge. Collier and Horowitz wrote: "[Drumgo] was a member of the Black Guerrilla Family, that he had known of the BGF's plans to shoot Fay two weeks before the event and that he was willing to sell information. He reappeared on several occasions, sometimes wearing a gun in his belt, and named a former prisonmate of Brooks as head of the BGF and the man who had ordered the shooting." At his funeral, Drumgo was
eulogized by Angela Davis as a "communist martyr".
David Johnson David Johnson (born circa 1947) was serving a sentence for burglary of five years to life when the escape attempt occurred.
Hugo Pinell Hugo Pinell was born March 10, 1945, in
Nicaragua. His family immigrated to the US. He died in prison at age 70, after being stabbed on August 12, 2015, by two other inmates (members of the
Aryan Brotherhood) at
New Folsom Prison. In 1965, Pinell was convicted of rape in San Francisco, sentenced to life imprisonment, and assigned to San Quentin State Prison. In 1968, he was convicted of attacking a guard and transferred to
Folsom State Prison. Pinell was reported by a San Quentin spokesman to have been subdued by guards on March 26, 1975, after he stabbed his defense attorney, Lynn Carman, during a conference at the prison. Carman denied having been stabbed or wounded, and declined additional comment on the matter. One witness to the incident reported that Carman was left bleeding from the mouth. Because of his repeated assaults on officers, he had been kept in
solitary confinement for almost 45 years. He was returned to the general population two weeks before he was killed.
Johnny Spain Johnny Larry Spain was born July 30, 1949, in
Jackson, Mississippi, to Ann Armstrong, a white woman, and Arthur Cummings, a black man, from their
extra-marital affair. He was originally named
Larry Michael Armstrong, using the surname of his mother's husband, Fred Armstrong, a beer truck driver. While making a delivery to a nightclub in
Utica, Mississippi, Fred Armstrong asked the black owner if she would adopt his six-year-old mixed-race boy. The woman said she could not, but contacted her husband's cousin in California, who agreed to do so. At the age of six, Spain was adopted by Johnny and Helen Spain in Los Angeles, and was renamed Johnny Larry Spain. At the time of the escape attempt at San Quentin, Spain was serving a life sentence for robbery homicide. At 17, he had killed a robbery victim who resisted. On August 12, 1976, Spain was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of guards Frank DeLeon and Jere P. Graham. He was the only one of the Six convicted of murder. The conviction was overturned on appeal by federal judge
Thelton Henderson, because Spain had been shackled with 25-pound chains throughout the proceedings, which could have biased the jury against him. After his conviction was overturned for murdering the two San Quentin guards, Spain continued to serve time at
Vacaville for his prior robbery-homicide conviction. He was paroled in 1988 after serving a total of 21 years.
Luis Talamantez Luis Talamantez was born circa 1943. In February 1966, he was convicted of
armed robbery in Los Angeles. According to the
San Francisco Bay Guardian, Tate was picked up as a runaway at the age of 14 and served 10 years in prison for "minor offenses". On April 26, 1977, Tate was critically wounded after being shot by Earl Satcher, the leader of a group of ex-convicts called Tribal Thumb. In 1985, Tate was reported to be a "fugitive on a Fresno drug warrant". ==References==