I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but in fact I learned of his death from reading an excerpt of a book about prison guards, about 12 years after I knew him, which was only for a few weeks. Interestingly, I think I found the article online, but I read it in the San Francisco Chronicle... Exact same term, "lifer Tony Lara" is used, same description of being found dead...

But IIRC, the article I read was describing a book. The theme of the book was how prison guards are "just on the other side of the bars", and I have heard mention of it a few other times.

Anyway, Tony was an interesting guy. He said he'd been in and out most of his life. He was a Yaqui Indian, and one of my roommates at the time was also a native American warrior, who spotted him on the street, and invited him to stay.

If Tony liked you, he'd probably lay down his life for you. If you insulted him, or anyone he liked, you were dead. I remember one guy, kind of an unintentionally annoying wimp, that Tony just boxed into a corner and kinda poked around. "An appropriate response". We laughed about it, because Tony didn't hurt the guy. Another incident was when Sharkey and he were sitting at a table, drinking beer, and Sharkey, in passing, asked if Tony had made arrangements for his wife to come over... Tony calmly picked up his beer bottle as if to smash Sharkey with it, and sorta hisses from some deep point within, "what about my wife?"... Sharkey doesn't even blink, and just says, "Put that fucking bottle down, I just like red meat" OMG, I thought.... here it comes. Tony just puts the bottle down and ... "oh, OK".

Not that he was a faithful husband. He was a very good looking guy (think 20 year old Charles Bronson) and could be very charming. He didn't look like a criminal. No tattoos, none of that ducking body language, no scars IIRC... neat, well groomed. He could pick up girls effortlessly. He was the best bird dog we had when he stayed with us.