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Show MOTHER AT GATE FOR SON'S BODY Free J fcy DeaiA After rurfy lear in Prison. Sun Francisco. Calif. Old mil Son got out of Sun Quentln the other day. liil I hud spent 30 of the lust I! 7 yours behind the walls of the "big house" across the bay. lie whs freed by the only pardon they could give him death. He died in the prison hospltul, a broken old nuin of fifty-five yeurs. That may not be old to those who ran live with friends, sunshine and flowers, but it Is very, very old for a man who has hnd only seven years of freedom since his eighteenth birthday. And when they took Rill out the big gate, where he had seen so many thousands enter Hnd lenve, there whs only one person there to meet him. It was Ills mother. "Bill never was a bad boy Just a little wild," she told Warden James Holohan. She plans to bury him In Oakland, where she now lives. The warden did not give her name. William D. Son first went to San Quentln In 1800. He hnd been sentenced sen-tenced for assault, and after serving a year and a half they let him go back to Mendocino county, from whence he came. In 1808 he went hack from Butte county to serve a term for the murder of bis mining partner. They let him out In 1909, but a year later he was back as a parole violator. In his younger days Son was known as the "strong man of San Quentln," and tales of his strength are told by the old-timers. He was proud of his strength, too, and showed It to his mates In the Jute mill,' where he worked many years, by lifting huse bundles of hemp and cord. But prison routine supped his strength. His 30-year prison record was without with-out a blemish. A "model prisoner" tliey called hlra, but that's all the good It did him. He hnd no friends on the "outside" pulling for him and no one to believe In him except his mother, moth-er, and she, unaided, couldn't do anything any-thing to sway prison boards to clemency clem-ency for a "three time loser." "He was In here so long I guess the world Just forgot him," said the warden. war-den. "All the world, that Is, except his mother." |
