SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—The Bay Area’s large Pinoy population may feel a strange, yet closer connection to the former island prison today, knowing that some of their compatriots were incarcerated there.
According to the National Archives, of the Rock’s more than 1500 inmates, four were of Filipino heritage.
Alcatraz operated as a maximum security prison, housing incorrigibles from 1934 to 1963. It’s now one of the nation’s most visited park sites, attracting more than 1.5 million visitors annually.
“The island is a major tourist destination, and most Filipino’s see it that way,” said Raymond Castillo, an MC with the hip-hop group Tha Kasamas. “People are unaware, through no fault of their own, that some of their countrymen served time there. It’s something we just don’t hear about.”
On March 6, 1950, convicted killer Josefino Guzman (851-AZ) arrived as the prisons first Filipino convict.
Serving life for shooting to death a co-worker in Alaska, he assaulted two cons at McNeil, and was sent to the Rock for closer custody.
The 5’3, 120lbs, Abra-native, was known to be aggressive, violent, and extremely paranoid. At work at work in the laundry one day, he chased around another con while wielding scissors.
Classified as psychotic, his condition relegated him to the hospital observation cell where he broke the looking glass, and later tried to hit guard George DeVincenzi with a food tray.“He attacked me with the tray, so I cold cocked him,” DeVincenzi said in 2009. “I felt bad about it because he was such a small guy.”
Guzman wrote to his family in the Philippines, and sent them money when he could.
In 1953, he was sent to Springfield for better care, but his problems continued throughout the rest of his time.
Shortly after Guzman’s transfer, Joseph Alfred Wagstaff Jr. was processed into Alcatraz as inmate 1072-AZ, on a six to twenty-one year stretch for robbing a cabbie and engaging the D.C. police in a gun battle.
The product of a failed marriage between actor Joe Wagstaff and a Filipino woman, he sought refuge by serving in the Navy and Coast Guard during WWII.
Unable to adjust in the civilian world, he compiled a huge rap sheet with petty and serious crimes.
He proved to be one of the biggest headaches on Alcatraz. “The toughest convict on the island,” said Pat Mahoney, a guard from 1957 to 1963.
During his seven years, Wagstaff received disciplinary reports for fighting, inciting riots, attacking guards, weapons possession, participating in hunger strikes, cutting his Achilles tendon, and stabbing another convict.
In 1960, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Springfield where he was certified as psychotic. Years later he’d be shot on two occasions, but recovered in both instances.
Wagstaff was sent to the asylum in Ionia, Michigan in 1970, and it appears that the drug thorazine helped quell his psychotic condition.
While Guzman and Wagstaff represent the incorrigible type of inmate that Alcatraz was designed to hold, Eufemio Quilop, was the polar opposite. A military contract worker, he received a life sentence for stabbing to death two cooks and attempting to kill a third on Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, saying that they were constantly bullying him.
Arriving in 1954, Quilop (1093-AZ), was a model prisoner who also attended all Catholic services.
Originally from Ilocos Sur, P.I., he had no prior criminal history. His good conduct and the concern over potential of sexual advances by “wolves,” mitigated the administration to move him to McNeil in 1956.
He was deported to the Philippines eight years later.
Alcatraz’s last Filipino convict was Henry Lanosa (1411-AZ), born in Santa Clara in 1930, the son of a Filipino immigrant and a Portuguese mother.
The Bay Area-native was sent to the island in 1959, doing eight years for an attempted post office robbery.
He fit in with the other misfits on the island, and continued his criminal ways upon his release.
In 1972, he was convicted of selling narcotics and sentenced to ten years.
Lanosa escaped from Springfield in 1975 and is still a wanted man at age 81.
Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Henry “Chico” Lanosa should contact their local law enforcement agency or the U.S. Marshall’s office.
E-mail Drew Morita at drew_morita@yahoo.com
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