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On Nov. 10 1936, San Mateo County police made a public announcement that seemed too audacious to be true: A former Alcatraz inmate had simply walked out the front door of the county jail — and vanished.
The escapee, 30-year-old Ray Lagomarsino, was no ordinary prisoner. Earlier that year, he had made national headlines as the first man ever to win his release from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary by court order. After serving 10 years of a 20-year sentence for a Colma post office burglary, Lagomarsino had studied law in his cell and discovered he’d been wrongfully sentenced to four consecutive terms for a single crime. His petition for a writ of habeas corpus succeeded, and he walked free in February 1936, marking a rare victory.
His freedom, however, didn’t last long. Within months, Lagomarsino was back in custody, accused of a Daly City burglary and held in the Redwood City jail. On the afternoon of Nov. 8 during a supervised visit with friends, he waited until a jailer briefly stepped away to escort other inmates and then slipped through an open door and disappeared. His visitors vanished with him, the Peninsula Times Tribune reported.
Authorities kept the escape secret for two days, hoping Lagomarsino’s attorney could persuade him to surrender. By then, newspapers reported that “Colma’s bad boy” was probably long gone.
Born and raised in the Colma area, Lagomarsino was first convicted in 1925 for stealing mail from the local post office. After being placed on probation, he reportedly struck and injured a newsboy while driving drunk in a stolen car in San Francisco. That incident got him sent to Leavenworth Prison, and later Alcatraz, following an attempted escape.
Once freed from Alcatraz, Lagomarsino was again linked to robberies and a tavern holdup on the Peninsula. After his 1936 jailbreak in Redwood City, he was eventually captured and sentenced to Folsom Prison, where he allegedly warned authorities he would “shoot it out” if he ever escaped again.
During his sentencing, Lagomarsino told the judge that he walked out of the Redwood City jail on “impulse.”
” It was not to beat the charge I was held on, but I did have a fear of being returned to Alcatraz Prison,” he said. At the time of his arrest, an appellate court was set to render a decision regarding Lagomarsino’s release from Alcatraz. (The court decision was later given in favor of Lagomarsino, again).
With only 10 months left on his sentence at Folsom, Lagomarsino, along with two other inmates, did escape from a Folsom prison camp in the Tehachapi Mountains near the Mojave Desert in California’s Central Valley in October 1937.
Worried he would make good on his threat, Peninsula police were on high lookout for Lagomarsino, who eventually returned to his hometown and reportedly broke into the home of San Mateo County Dep. Sheriff George Krehl to steal guns, clothes and food.
Days later, Lagomarsino’s story ended violently on the coast near Thornton Beach, where he and one of the other fugitives were discovered shot multiple times wearing clothes taken from Krehl’s house. Police later determined that the third escapee had turned on Lagomarsino and the other inmate.
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Great article very interesting