A Double Life

Overview

On August 21, 1971, guards at San Quentin found a gun on George Jackson—the famed activist, author of *Soledad Brother*, and inmate. A firefight erupted, leaving Jackson, two other prisoners, and three guards dead, with three more officers wounded. Authorities claimed only attorney Stephen Bingham could have smuggled in the weapon. Fearing a conviction for the guards’ deaths would get him killed, Bingham fled, beginning a bizarre, long exile under false identities. Strange for a Yale-educated heir to a powerful New England political family.