by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Albert M. Stewart, known commonly as Zephie Saunders after his July 1921 escape from the jail ward at Los Angeles County Hospital, proved to particularly adept at slipping away from law enforcement officers over the next few years as the burglar and forger managed to slip away from officials on a Folsom Prison road gang in Oregon and on a Southern Pacific train in northern California.
Another audacious attempt in December 1923 to break free on an SP train in New Mexico led to his being shot several times, but even as he convalesced in the same hospital in Los Angeles from which he vanished a few years prior, he tried the same trick again, in February 1924, but was foiled. He was then returned to Folsom and spent another three years in the lock-up before he managed an escape of another kind.
On Thanksgiving Day 1927, when rules were relaxed for the holiday and during the showing of a film called Ankles Preferred at the prison education building, a riot involving more than 1,000 prisoners took place with the evident hope that there would be a mass escape, as planned by a half-dozen ringleaders, including Stewart. While prisoners were said to have gained control of most of the facility, a huge law enforcement response, including the calling out of the National Guard by Governor C.C. Young, quelled the violence, but not before two guards and eleven convicts were dead.
The other five prisoners arrested for fomenting the riot were especially “hard cases,” these being Anthony Brown, Walter Burke, James Gleason, James Gregg and Roy Stokes, all of which were serving life sentences, in addition to Stewart, who, however, was not a lifer, having been sent up from 1-14 years. The Sacramento Bee of the 26th accounted Gregg and Stewart the worse because the former was a multiple murderer, while the latter “has made four successful escapes . . . during his checkered career.” The paper added that “since his incarceration in Folsom Prison, three years ago, [he] has tried to escape three times” although “all attempts were frustrated.”
The Bee of 7 December reported that the six men were arraigned and indicted for first degree murder in the death of guard Ray Singleton and trial was set for mid-January 1928. While it appeared that all of them maintained a united front when it came to their testimony, Stewart, the last to take the stand, shocked the court by immediately asking the judge if he could make a statement, especially after there were witnesses who claimed he killed Singleton.
Turning state’s evidence, or, in prison parlance, snitching and squealing, Stewart, despite protests from the attorneys for the other five men, claimed that Brown approached him while they labored in the prison quarry and asked if he was interested in making a break for it. Adding that Brown told him he’d obtained a gun to use in kidnapping the warden, Stewart stated that he answered he would help, so long as no violence was used, and that the other men agreed.
The Alameda Star-News of 15 February observed that “Stewart’s face appeared haggard and worn with the strain he has been under since the trial started.” After the judge approved his making the statement, the paper continued, “he acted as though he wanted to relieve his conscience and finish the trial as rapidly as possible.” Naturally, once he began his testimony, Stewart was kept separate from his fellow convicts.
A week later, the San Francisco Bulletin reported that the six men were found guilty of the charge, but the jury recommended life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. The paper added that the defendants were under heavy guard while in the courtroom and “another guard was kept in the corridors to forestall possible attempt[s] at a break for liberty or a rescue attempt staged by pals of the prisoners.” Stewart, no doubt concerned about his safety, petitioned to be transferred to San Quentin, but this was denied.
Obviously shocked that the jury did not want the death penalty for the defendants, prosecutors rushed to file a new charge, this time for the death of one of the convicts killed in the riot, specifically a trusty, and a grand jury indictment was handed down on the last day of February. The second trial began at the end of March and, on 20 April, a Folsom prisoner brought in as a defense witness was reported to have notes in his shoes pertaining to a plan to liberate the defendants. After a juror was dismissed because of an illness (he soon died), the jury was dismissed and a new trial began early in May. Stewart again testified against his former compatriots, identifying Brown as the killer of the trusty
On 28 May, the jury returned a verdict of guilt for all six men, with the next day’s Bee commenting that this “was the culmination of more than six months of almost incessant legal procedure” regarding the defendants “responsible for what has been characterized as one of the most sensational and bloodiest attempted breaks in the prison annals of the United States.” The proceedings, however, were far from over.
The 22 June edition of the Los Angeles Record, which was more liberal than the other main papers in town like the Times, Express and Herald took a decidedly sarcastic tone when it pronounced that,
California is going in for bigger and better hangings.
A wholesale killing bee is slated for Folsom for a day during the week of August 17. Unless it is halted by court appeal, on this day California will choke out the lives of six men, the greatest gallows harvest in this state’s history.
When the day of judgment came, however, and will all preparations complete for execution, filings with the state appeals court were filed and the sentences stayed pending hearings. It took two months for the condemned men to get their appeals certified with the Supreme Court, with it expected that a ruling would come down in November.
An extraordinary article in the Bee of 1 September concerned a letter that Stewart wrote to the judge who conducted the trials and which was entered into the official records, this considered “extremely unusual in court procedure.” It turned out that, unlike the other five convicts who had legal representation, Stewart represented himself and, while the missive was to acknowledge receipt of trial transcripts for use in his appeal to the high court, but he added,
I want to take the opportunity at this time to express gratification for all the consideration and courtesies extended me in your court through a most arduous and saturnine trial. I realize it is much more inconvenient to the court when a defendant counsels his own case; but I feel that my rights were protected at all times and in a most affable manner. If there was anything lacking in my defense it surely was through no fault of the court’s, but on my side, through lack of experience. Please accept my sincere appreciation.
The appeals process to the Supreme Court took time, as usual, and the Bee of 30 April 1929 reported that “five of six convicts, ringleaders in the Thanksgiving Day Folsom Prison riots of 1927, must hang,” but, it was added, “hope only remains for Albert M. Stewart, the man who ‘squealed’ on his fellows and whose appeal is ending separately.”
The 6 June issue of the Los Angeles Times reported from a Sacramento wire that “five convicts found guilty of the slaying of George Baker, a fellow convict, during the 1927 Thanksgiving Day murder riot were resentenced by the Superior Court here today to hang in August.” Three men were to be executed on the 9th and the others a week later, but “Albert M. Stewart . . . still has his appeal pending in the State Supreme Court,” even as the high court promptly denied those of the others.
In its 25 September edition, the Oakland Post-Enquirer wrote of how “tortured by fading hopes of immunity and a haunting fear of the gallows,” Stewart “has repudiated damning evidence” against the other the riot convicts. Reportedly, he told a former district attorney and counsel for the other five defendants that it was a stray police bullet, not from Brown’s gun, that killed the trusty, while Stewart felt that he’d been “double crossed.” Moreover, the lawyer stated that he’d held this statement in case there was a new trial in which he could expose Stewart’s false statements at trial, but this depended, apparently, on any possible action by the United States Supreme Court if an appeal was to be taken there.
The San Francisco Examiner of 12 November reported that, while the attorney, who was considering seeking clemency for his clients from the governor, was continuing to assert that Stewart committed perjury, the warden at Folsom replied that “Stewart told me recently that he was standing squarely on the testimony he gave at the trial.”
A couple of weeks before there was a Los Angeles Express article that remarked that Brown and Burke “today made a last desperate break for freedom and revenge” at the prison hospital which led to the former having his leg badly cut and the latter left with a broken arm. The warden believed that their attempt to break free of guards was to get back at Stewart, whose cell was close to the hospital.
As 1930 dawned, the surprising news was broadcast in the Bee of 4 January that,
Albert Stewart . . . has enjoyed life, such as it is in prison . . . apparently without legal reason.
Stewart gave separate notice of appeal . . . and the presumption was that he perfected his appeal in the state supreme court.
It developed to-day, however, that neither Stewart, who acted as his own attorney, nor anyone else, ever has filed any papers, briefs or motions of any kind in Stewart’s behalf in the supreme court.
While it took so long for this to be realized is certainly strange, but two weeks later, the Los Angeles Times, under the headline of “Convict Pleads For Noose,” sought to join the five other condemned men to the gallows. This was because, “on three consecutive Fridays, today being the third, Stewart has heard cell doors open and the measured step of fives strapped men made into memory” as those condemned prisoners were taken to be executed.
On the 3rd, Brown and Stokes were the first to be hung, with Burke and Gregg following on the 10th and Gleason being the last as he was executed on the 17th. With this macabre situation evidently on his mind, Stewart penned a missive to the trial judge and displayed some of the vocabulary befitting an intelligence that once led him to declare that the other five men were not capable of planning the actions that led to the 1927 riot.
Stating that it was his wish to die and sooner than a 60-90 day period that usually came from a judge’s sentencing order as he wrote “[I] humbly request that the court extend me the courtesy of having matters enacted with the least possible delay.” The judge, who’d entered the letter mentioned above which thanked him for his treatment of Stewart, found this correspondence “the most remarkable document” he’d been given while on the bench.
Small wonder, given this excerpt from Stewart’s request:
It is the hell that [John] Milton described [in the epic poem, Paradise Lost] with such horrible accuracy, in its hot and cold regions. The anxious soul is alternately tossed from ardors of home to the petrifying rigors of doubt and dread. Such is my position, and any wish to prolong it would be the height of folly.
The Record of 30 January dramatically recounted the executions of the five men and when it came to the hanging of Gleason, whose real name evidently was Eugene Crosby, it noted that he was something of a versifier and left behind a four-line stanza about the sole survivor of the sextet convicted in those trials:
Judas betrayed Christ the Master,
Then hanged himself in abject shame.
If Stewart had an ounce of courage
He would, in honor, do the same.
As time passed, however, those feelings of torture that he apparently felt as he heard the others walk to their deaths dissipated, as the 27 November edition of the Record noted that the Supreme Court finally acted and, while affirming the death sentence meted out to him, “announced that consideration would be given to an appeal for commutation of sentence if the matter is taken before the governor in proper form.”
In its ruling, the high court commented that “there were extenuating circumstances in that Stewart had been coerced into aiding the other rioters, possessed less malicious tendencies and that he gave valuable evidence for the state against the others and damning to himself.” Recall that Stewart’s statement in the first trial made it sounds as if he volunteered to join the group after Brown approached him in the quarry. As to tendencies, it was true that he was not a convicted murderer and he did claim that he would be party to the riot and escape if no violence was involved.
Still, at the start of 1931, the Times reported that the trial judge, in the absence of any further action in the case, resentenced Stewart to death, with his hanging set, whether out of malice or pure accident, for Friday, 13 March. Accordingly, on 16 February 1931, Stewart requested the Supreme Court commute his death sentence and the Times of the following day noted that this followed the fact that the high court refused him a new trial, while noting that the above statement was in his favor in terms of sparing his life.
In its issue of 20 February 1931, the Pasadena Star-News reported that “four of the seven justices of the California Supreme Court recommended that Governor [James] Rolph commute the death penalty to life imprisonment” and the chief executive duly signed the order on 11 March. This may have been Stewart’s greatest escape to date, though he was transferred to San Quentin and spent a good deal of time in solitary confinement, seemingly for his protection. This led him to appear again in the news early the next year as he complained, “I’m no rat. Maybe some of the convicts still think so and will stick a knife in me. But anything is better than this awful solitude. Put me out there [with the general population].”
Stewart’s mental state seems obvious when, in September 1933 he made another attempt to break free of San Quentin by threatening to blow up the prison with dynamite, said to be concealed in his coat and attached to a battery, unless he was allowed to leave in a truck. All that was found, however, once he was subdued were broom handle pieces in oil-paper wrapping. Later, though, he was returned to Folsom.
In the latter part of 1940, Stewart filed for a pardon and then for clemency, with both of these rejected. Four years later, however, he pulled off another impressive escape, when the 50-year old convinced the Supreme Court to issue a writ of habeus corpus, in which the prisoner argued that his right to parole was violated by the Attorney General’s opinion that he could not be paroled because of the commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment. Later in 1944, Stewart walked out of Folsom on parole.
In his column, “Judging the News,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stanley Mosk, later the state attorney general and a Supreme Court justice for 36 years, the longest tenure in state history, wrote in the 29 June issue of the Van Nuys News that Stewart won his case that week and that he noted that Rolph’s 1931 commutation order did not specify that it was “without parole.”
Moreover, the high court remarked that “the parole law is humanitarian in character and its purpose and object is to mitigate the rigor of the old penitentiary system” and, because Rolph’s order was vague, “uncertainties must be resolved in favor of the defendant.” This led Mosk to conclude that “all of which indicates that no matter how humble or handicapped the individual, he may depend upon justice in our American courts.”
Stewart then decamped for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and it comes as no shock to find in that city’s Sun of 23 January 1947 that, under the name of Zephie Morton Saunders, he was arrested for trying to forge checks totaling nearly $2,000. The Bee of 17 February reported on “the echo” of the Folsom riot of two decades prior by noting that Stewart was sentenced to four years in prison.
It added that, aware of the convict’s past, British Columbia officials “said Stewart will be guarded carefully against vengeance from any convicts” who would recall his “squealing” from 1927, but the also commented that he “may be serving his last prison sentence” as “they suspect he has tuberculosis.”
He was released early, however, and a Sun report from 26 October 1950 included the statement that a counterfeiter, seeing Stewart discussed in a Saturday Evening Post article and knew him from the British Columbia prison as “Dick Saunders,” one of those 22 aliases from the past, threw him out a house they shared. The piece added that Stewart died in June in a nursing home, perhaps of the suspected lung ailment.
The story of Albert M. Stewart/Zephie Saunders is certainly a remarkable and strange one and the wanted poster in the Homestead’s collection is a significant visual artifact illustrating that tale.