The Chino Escape Case of 1972

Reporting from UC Riverside—

The Chino Escape Case is a particularly odd case to have graced the 1970s in that there is little documentation in the archives of the cities involved and only a few articles to help a young duo surmise what actually happened. The case involved four defendants, Andrea Holman-Burt, Jean Hobson, Bob Seabock, and Benton Douglas Burt who had allegedly helped in the escape of a Chino Penitentiary prisoner, Ronald Wayne Beaty on October 6th, 1972. These people were from the Palo Alto/ Hayward, Ca area and were part of the radical Maoist organization Venceremos, which was headed by Stanford Professor H. Bruce Franklin. The ambush and subsequent escape occurred at night when Beaty was being transported to a hearing in San Bernardino County that, oddly enough, had been canceled the day before. The two guards transporting Beaty were unarmed and one, Jesus Sanchez, was killed in the ambush while the other, George Fitzgerald, was critically injured. Authorities claimed that Beaty had four accomplices and subsequently went into hiding for roughly two months.

In December, the San Francisco police were tipped with two calls which detailed Beaty’s route for the day. Beaty and Jean Hobson were stopped on the Bay Bridge on the 11th and in the car trunk the police found grenades, rifles, semi-automatics, and handguns. When Beaty was alone with the FBI, he gave a detailed report of the engineers of the escape plan, naming Professor Franklin as the mastermind. He also mentioned that he had been planning his escape with members of the Venceremos group since 1971 when he met Benton Douglas Burt, a fellow jailhouse lawyer, in Chino penitentiary.

Beaty’s testimony had left the group members in disarray, since he had given around eleven names to the FBI. The months that followed involved heavy attacks on the homes of Venceremos members many of whom were arrested but later released on bail due to lack of evidence of their involvement. By January, the charges had been dropped for Franklin and a few others, but not for the main four. The four main defendants were charged by the Grand Jury with murder, lynching, and assault on an officer in late December.

To get a better understanding of the case we searched in two directions: toward the radical media and toward the mainstream media. Through our university’s inter-loan resources, we found zines and newspapers published by the Venceremos members and defendant support teams within UC Davis’ archives. The zines called the arrests a “government frame up” and claimed that Ronald Beaty had contacted the group after his escape from Chino. They acknowledged that members of the organization had personally written letters to Beaty while he was in prison, but that they had not met him until he arrived in San Francisco. The zines also mentioned that Beaty also did his fair share of slanging in and out of prison, and that he more than likely had paid accomplices to help with the escape. The physical evidence that helped Beaty’s testimony were two letters written to Beaty by Jean Hobson that had been left in the prison guard van. The support committee claimed that these letters were plotted by Beaty to later help him in shortening his prison term by complying with the FBI and naming his accomplices.

To try and get the story straight, we contacted Professor H. Bruce Franklin, the professor who organized radical groups into Venceremos while teaching at Stanford University. We asked Professor Franklin, who now teaches at Rutgers in Newark, to help us make sense of the case and the holes that we were now considering. Through our correspondence, we learned of his trials and that there was no credible evidence for his conviction except Beaty’s word. He also told us that Beaty admitted to lying about Franklin’s involvement in February, 1974. The bulk of his email, however, was about COINTELPRO. Sure, we had heard about the clandestine project that was created alongside the FBI and worked against political activism in the 60s and 70s. Yes, we knew how it dismantled organizations like the Black Panthers via silencing their key leaders, but the reality was that we did not get too heavy of a history lesson in regards to the coercive tactics used by the government to wreak havoc on the progressive movement of our elders. Franklin referred to the FBI’s recent placement of Assata Shakur on the Most Wanted List, relating their charges and the links between them. We understood what he was trying to bring us toward, but in no way was he receptive to the idea of “re-hashing” the case for us and instead offered that he would prefer discussing the effects that COINTELPRO had on his life.

Although talking more with Franklin would give us better insight on COINTELPRO, our real issue was still the defendants. Franklin did not want to discuss their lives considering it inappropriate to do so. We understood where he was coming from and dropped the subject looking instead for case records and more articles. As it turns out, neither the Riverside Superior Court or San Bernardino Court carry record information for cases older than ten years. However, we did find information through newspaper articles in different university archives. One from the San Francisco Examiner dated December 24th, 1972 stated that a man going by a few names, the one most likely to be his own: Roberto Solis, was an accomplice of Beaty’s that was identified by the San Bernardino County authorities as the “third man” involved in the ambush of the prison van, matching the description right up to his steel-rimmed oval eyeglasses. Fitzgerald, the surviving guard, as well as Beaty told the FBI that the third man went by the name “Dom” which was coincidentally Solis’ fake name at the time, Dominguez. The article states that the authorities connected Solis to Beaty through the weapons found in his room at a commune that matched weapons burglarized from a home in Portola Valley of which a member of Venceremos had allegedly been house-sitting. In his room, authorities found engineered drawings of the Soledad prison from which Solis had escaped from on July 5th, 1972. The San Francisco Examiner reported that Fitzgerald could not identify any of the main four defendants once they were shown to him under custody. Now, it seemed plausible that the two acted without the defendants help.

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article titled, “Venceremos: Role in Escape Denied,” of which different spokespersons denied that they had anything to do with the ambush. The author wrote that prior to the escape, the Venceremos had praised Beaty in their newspaper as a “revolutionary for the people through his jailhouse activism.” Then the article suggested that Jean Hobson and Beaty were romantically involved and that in his two months of hiding the pair was in Arizona. Hobson had quit the organization “at least two months ago” stated a member of the group, which linked in the time frame of Beaty’s escape. Hobson and Beaty returned to the Bay to work things out with Venceremos only to be caught on the Bay Bridge.

Another article published on December 28th by the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Beaty pled guilty to his role in the prison van ambush and killing of Sanchez. The article states that a spokesperson from Venceremos said that Beaty was an “enemy of the people,” that he should “fear for his life,” and that the police were using him to crack down on their militant organization. Beaty was sentenced to life in prison and was granted his request for the location of his sentence to remain secret for fear that the group that had once applauded him could now hurt him.

We were growing more confused, and had to take a step back to truly consider the time period—the radical 60s—as an era of both retaliation and repression. So many community-based groups had developed as militant organizations, with the prime example residing only a few miles above Venceremos headquarters; The Black Panthers. Therefore, it would seem that a key component to why the government arrested several young, white, activists from Palo Alto, Ca, all with similar political consciousness (ie: part of the Anti-Vietnam War Movement and Prison Movement), is not because they were an inherent threat to the state, but in actuality, a devised warning to all other political activists of the time, such as Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and all other Black Panthers to stop or be jailed. Also, the authorities’ objective may have very well been to dissuade young people from joining organizations like Venceremos. Whether or not members of the Venceremos organization worked with Beaty to help him escape, it seems that they were effectively used as examples of the types of repercussions radicals would face if they followed in their footsteps.

In January, the four defendants were charged with murder, lynching, assault on an officer and then convicted at the end of the month. Professor Franklin’s charges were dropped for lack of concrete evidence on January 5th. Most of the other activists arrested were let out on bail and three others who refused to testify were subpoenaed before the Grand Jury on the 30th. Andrea Holman was only eighteen at the time and in February she and Benton Doug Burt, who was 30 at the time, were married while in custody. The Venceremos zine reported that within five months in jail their charges had been dropped and then re-indicting four times. Defense lawyers were not allowed into any of the Grand Jury proceedings and the four were put under “ultra-high security,” meaning no private communication of any sort, even with their lawyers.

Our search did not lead us toward any specific findings about what happened to the four defendants. How long were they jailed? Where are they now? We have no clue. Still, we do not know what side to believe. Was this all a COINTELPRO devised frame-up? Or were the actors in a militant group escape plan caught and effectively jailed as threats to the state and had to be reprimanded? When we consider our own time, we wonder if history is repeating itself. We see leaked reports of the efforts of COINTELPRO and we see the dystopian reality of NSA monitoring as well. We all can see the efforts of the 99% and how they too have faded into a quiet nostalgia. We all can see that there are injustices going on in our country but nothing is done about it. Instead, this quiet nostalgia is where our eyes should be for that hopefulness that could’ve built a better world. It makes us wonder if history has to be doomed to repeat itself, if we, just by acknowledging the failures of political organizations like Venceremos, will also fail against the powers that control and dissuade us from equality. It makes us wonder if we can break the cycle, but then we silently lean back into our chairs and move on with the rest of our day.

And we are scared.