Biography
Robert P. Stover, better known to friends and fellow workers as "Ed" Stover, was an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) member and Bay Area anarchist organizer arrested in 1970 along with co-defendant Mike Lamm in a wave of anti-leftist police raids targeting Bay Area anarchists. The arrests featured large spreads in the local press with photographs of literature and weapons seized from anarchist homes and a heavily publicized high-speed police chase. Stover and Lamm faced a battery of charges including arson, robbery, receiving stolen weapons, and attempted murder. At the time of his arrest Stover was active in the anti-war and anti-draft movements on both the East and West coasts and was working to build organizing contacts between union militants and the student movement. Stover spent sixteen months in pretrial detention, unable to meet what supporters described as excessively high bail. Mike Lamm raised his own bail but, as the Chicago Anarchist Black Cross Bulletin reported in 1972, "depression over constant harassment of state and federal authorities drove him to jump into San Francisco Bay, where he died." A national Stover-Lamm Defence Fund was organized, and the General Defence Committee of the IWW raised additional money, but Stover was ultimately convicted and sentenced to a very lengthy prison term. He was held at San Quentin State Prison, initially incommunicado and moved frequently. While incarcerated he wrote essays published in the IWW's "Industrial Worker," studied labor law and National Labor Relations Board procedures, prepared his own appellate briefs, and worked on a book titled "Anarchist in Exile."
Death in custody: documented month and day limitation
Black Flag, volume III number 11 (1974), printed page 8 (PDF page 5), publishes an obituary headed “Robert P. Stover B-38341 San Quentin Prison” and identifies him as Ed Stover. Its exact sequence is: “was murdered ... on April 24th,” followed by a report that he was stabbed and “died in hospital a few hours later.” This supports death in April 1974, but does not independently exclude a death after midnight on April 25. The profile therefore records month precision only; April 1 is storage for the month, not a claimed death day. The existing case endpoint of April 24 is not independent corroboration and remains flagged for primary-record verification. The assailant was unknown according to the article; speculation about responsibility is not treated as an established finding. The reproduced earlier letter is dated June 12 without a year, not evidence of June 1974 survival.
In a letter published in Freedom on May 6, 1972, Robert P. Stover described being transferred after sentencing from Alameda County Jail to San Quentin, then to the maximum-time unit at Vacaville and back to San Quentin. He reported that his prepared legal defense was transferred away from him, that he was still working on appeals, and that he sought correspondence and labor support. These are his attributed descriptions of prison conditions and transfer history. The letter does not date individual transfers, establish his final release, or support the misleading 1973 date in the local filename.
Black Flag, volume III, number 11 (1974), identifies Robert P. Stover as San Quentin prisoner B-38341 and explicitly reports that he was serving a life sentence. A reproduced letter also describes the parole board leaving his term at life. The letter is dated June 12 without a year; it does not establish a later survival date or a precise custody endpoint.
Black Flag, volume III, number 11 (1974), PDF page 5, printed page 8.
The bulletin identifies Robert P. Stover as Ed, an IWW member active in antiwar and antidraft movements, arrested with Mike Lamm in 1970. It reports sixteen months of pretrial imprisonment because he could not afford bail, followed by a lengthy sentence, without stating that sentence’s numerical length. It describes early incommunicado confinement and transfers, six months before the IWW defense committee located him, and later censorship at San Quentin. Sixteen months measures the pretrial phase, not his entire incarceration; six months before contact is another overlapping phase. His pending appeal is not an accomplished reversal or release.
Chicago Anarchist Black Cross Bulletin No. 1, July–August 1972, PDF page 16.
