Former California prison inmate Wayne Benner is listed as a co-author of Timothy Leary's Terra II (which I will read soon) and was interviewed in the last Hilaritas Press podcast.
Back in 2013, I reviewed his memoir Seven Shadows, and I expressed some skepticism about one of the incidents in the book. Here is part of what I wrote:
"The centerpiece of the book is an account of how he escaped from Folson Prison when he was being driven from the prison to a court date. In Benner's account, he overpowered the guard, took the guard's gun and drove the car away despite being in chains. He then evaded a police chase despite having to drive the car while still in chains and took a family hostage. The next day, he forced the family to drive him to an airport, where he planned to hijack an airplane but was surrounded and captured by police. He doesn't give a date for any of this, but the book says he was sentenced to an isolation cell as punishment in spring 1971, so it would have to be early 1971 or sometime in 1970.
"I could not find any articles about this when I searched Google News. The Wikipedia article on Folsom prison mentions several escapes, but not Benner's. Did it really happen? Maybe."
Via an anonymous comment posted this week at that original blog post, I now have a link to a newspaper article that confirms Benner's account. I have updated the original blog post, but I thought a follow-up here would be a good idea, too.
1 comment:
I just completed another call with Wayne where he expanded on his RICH Economy/Cornucopia thesis. Hilaritas will *probably* be releasing that as a special edition podcast in the coming weeks/months.
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