Forty years ago today, at about 3:40 in the afternoon Pacific time, five losers tried to hold up the Security Pacific Bank branch in Norco, California.
The five guys involved in the robbery were pretty much a loose collection of friends and relatives. There were two sets of brothers involved. The ostensible leader of the group had converted to a form of fundamentalist Christianity in the 70s, and had also become obsessed with a lot of the global catastrophe thinking going on at the time (Jupiter Effect, earthquakes, etc.) The main purpose of the robbery was to get funds so they could build and stock a compound. When the s–t hit the fan, they planned to retreat there with their families and ride out the apocalypse.
It didn’t go as planned. The robbers had planned to set off a large explosion as a diversion, but that failed, and the robbery was pretty much blown right away. Riverside County Sheriff’s Department responded, with the first officer on scene within seconds. The five robbers had managed to accumulate what even I would call a truly impressive stash of guns, ammo, and improvised explosive devices, and a firefight broke out between the RCSD and the five robbers. The responding deputies were outgunned, but continued to engage.
The robbers tried to flee in their (stolen) getaway van, but a lucky shot from one of the RCSD officers killed their getaway driver and the van crashed. The remaining four robbers hijacked a work truck from a passing driver (still shooting it out with RCSD) and fled.
The robbery team then proceeded to lead law enforcement (RCSD, the California Highway Patrol, and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department) on a merry chase of approximately 25 miles (possibly 35 miles: sources differ) through the Inland Empire, into the San Gabriel Mountains, and up a dirt road. They were firing at the officers and throwing IEDs the whole way: according to Wikipedia, 33 police cars and a helicopter were damaged by gunfire.
Once they got into the mountains, the robbery team repeatedly pulled ahead on the dirt road, then stopped in an attempt to ambush the responding officers. At the time, the radio systems they used did not inter-operate: officers from one department, who could communicate with their department’s helicopter, were relaying messages on the one available “mutual aid” frequency to the other departments warning of ambushes.
The robbery team was finally stopped by a washed out area of the dirt road, exited the truck and ambushed the officers chasing them. Deputy James Evans of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was shot and killed. Two deputies behind Evans (D. J. McCarty and James McPheron of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department) brought into play the SBCSD’s only rifle: a stolen M-16 that had been dumped from a moving car, recovered by the department, and kept when the military said “We don’t want it back”. Supposedly, it didn’t look like much, but it fired.
(At one point, responding law enforcement officers pulled over and commandeered a lever-action rifle from a target shooter who was walking along the road. This particular area was in common use as an informal range, and the robbery team had practiced shooting there. Unfortunately, the lever-action rifle the deputies commandeered was a .22.)
When SBCSD started firing back on full-auto, the robbery team decided it was time to make like the trees and get out of there. They fled into the forest. Three of them surrendered or were captured the following day. The fourth one was tracked down by a law enforcement team, was shot multiple times when he refused to surrender, and apparently killed himself with a shot to the chest from his .38.
There was, of course, a trial. From the account I’ve read, it may have been the closest thing to a courtroom circus California ever saw before OJ. The trial lasted 14 months: at the end of it, the three surviving bank robbers were sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. All three remain in the California penal system today.
The definitive, and (to the best of my knowledge, only) account of this story is Peter Houlahan’s Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History. I’m embarrassed to admit: I’d never heard of the Norco robbery until I saw a reference to Houlahan’s book somewhere. I was in high school at the time, and I thought I was fairly aware of current events and the world around me. So finding out there was a major bank robbery and shootout in California that wasn’t North Hollywood and that I’d never heard of kind of blew my mind.
I have mixed feelings about the book, though. The early chapters about the background of the robbery team and especially the leader kind of bugged me. Houlahan seemed to be kind of condescending about the more mainstream aspects of the leader’s Christian beliefs. And he didn’t answer the one question I have: where did these five losers, who were either under-employed on unemployed, get the money to accumulate all those guns and ammo? (He doesn’t say anything about them stealing weapons: all of their purchases were apparently legit over the counter sales at gun shops. Stealing guns: bad. Bank robbery: A-OK?)
Once he settles down and actually gets into the robbery, though, Houlahan’s book became much more interesting to me. I think he did an excellent job of profiling many of the law enforcement people involved, especially several members of the RCSD and their struggles (both before and after the robbery). Andy Delgado’s story is especially compelling to me. I think he was also pretty strong on the lack of preparation by RCSD and the other agencies involved for an event like this. The departments were still armed with mostly revolvers and shotguns, and almost no rifles (officially). They also did a sorry job of managing PTSD for the responding officers. Several of them (including Glyn Bolasky) left law enforcement afterwards. (Deputy Bolasky recovered from his injuries, and, after leaving law enforcement, joined the Air Force and became a Lieutenant Colonel.)
Houlahan’s also pretty good about the trial, which I haven’t gone into a lot of detail about. I’ll refer you to his book if you want that part of the story. And, to his credit, he tried really hard to be precise about firearms and firearms terminology. There are a couple of places where he slipped up (repeated references to the robbers having a “.357 rifle” in their intended getaway car: I’m pretty sure he meant “.375 H&H”).
Someone has posted a documentary/training film, apparently made by the Irvine Police Department in 1982, on YouTube. (Officer Rolf Parkes, who is credited in the first video, was with RCSD at the time and was injured in the shootout.) It is longish (close to an hour) but broken up into three chunks for your viewing pleasure, and well worth watching. (The transfer quality is also better than some of those vintage Motorola videos.)
I’ll be honest: I’ve never liked Nine Inch Nails, or Trent Reznor’s music, very much. However, the part of the Rolling Stone interview quoted in the Wikipedia entry is actually kind of thought provoking, and softens my attitude towards the man a bit:
Reznor moved out in December of 1993, and the house was demolished in 1994. The owner built a new house on the property, and had the address changed to 10066 Cielo Drive.
Hattip on this one to Morlock Publishing, who is finally out of Twitter jail. I believe this link will let you bypass the LAT paywall and read the story, but I’m not 100% sure. (As I’ve noted in the past, the paper is really obnoxious about paywalls, ad blockers, and incognito mode.)
This does not seem like a well thought out plan. “Let me just get that gun for you…hey, why is this box empty?” (This may be a faulty assumption on my part, but given that they say he was the manager, I’m assuming there were people other than him working there.)
LAPRAAC is the “Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club”:
Fifty years ago today, just before midnight on April 5, 1970, two California Highway Patrol officers, Walt Frago and Roger Gore, stopped a car with two men in it. There had been reports that a similar vehicle had been involved in a road rage incident a short time before.
The two men in the car, Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis, were heavily armed criminals. They had been planning the theft of explosives from a construction site near where they were stopped. Davis had dropped Twinning off earlier in the evening to scope out the construction site (other sources say that they were testing walkie-talkies they planned to use in the robbery, and that Twinning was taking some target practice), made an illegal U-turn across a highway median, and brandished a firearm at a driver he nearly hit. The display of the firearm was what prompted the call to CHP: the responding officers had no knowledge of Twinning and Davis’s criminal past, their plan to steal explosives, or of the weapons they had in the car. As a matter of fact, the initial report stated that there was only one occupant in the car.
When they were stopped, the two men initially refused to exit the vehicle. Gore managed to clear Davis from the car and started to frisk him. But before they could get Twinning out of the car, he shot and killed Officer Frago. Officer Gore shot back at Twinning, but was shot by Davis at close range.
Two other officers, James Pence and George Alleyn, were nearby and responded as backup for Gore and Frago. They got to the scene just after Office Gore was killed and immediately came under fire from Twinning and Davis. Alleyn fired on Davis with his issue shotgun, but was unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of rounds. He then drew his issue sidearm and continued to fire on Davis, but was hit with multiple rounds of 00 buckshot from Davis’s sawed-off shotgun and killed.
A nearby citizen, Gary Kness, tried to help the officers, returning fire with Alleyn’s service revolver, but was also unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of ammo.
Officer Pence emptied his revolver at Twinning and had to reload. CHP did not issue speed loaders at the time. He loaded six rounds and was closing the cylinder on his revolver when Twinning snuck up behind him and killed him.
Twinning and Davis fled as a third CHP unit arrived. Davis broke into a camper, pistol-whipped the occupant, and stole the vehicle. CHP was informed, stopped the camper, and Davis (who at this point had no loaded guns) surrendered. He was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison. He apparently committed suicide in his cell in August of 2009.
Twinning broke into a house and took an occupant hostage. The house was surrounded by police, and after a several hour standoff, they deployed tear gas and stormed the house. Twinning killed himself with a shotgun he had taken from Officer Frago.
None of the officers had been with CHP for more than two years. Three out of the four probably would have survived if they had been wearing soft body armor, but this was 1970: bulletproof vests at the time were heavy and bulky, and Richard Davis didn’t design the first Second Chance vest until 1976.
This is one of those moments in history that justifies the use of the phrase “agonizing reappraisal”. After the incident, CHP authorized, and then started issuing, speed loaders. CHP also reevaluated their training, and shared their investigative findings widely. Ultimately, the Newhall incident was one of the events that kicked off the “officer survival” movement in the US.
Mr. Ayoob’s followup, “New Info On Newhall“, is available online at the AH website, as is a third article focusing on Gary Kness and Daniel Schwartz (the camper owner): “The Armed Citizens Of Newhall”.
I’ve been looking at California newspapers thinking there would be a retrospective, but I haven’t found one. If I do, I’ll add it here.
As best as I’ve been able to determine, Gary Kness is still alive (he’d be around 82 today). He was honored by CHP for his efforts to save the officers, and is regarded as a hero by the California Highway Patrol to this day.
If anybody has anything to add about this incident (hi, Karl!) please feel welcome to leave a comment. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, but some of the information out there is contradictory, incomplete, or inaccurate.
A couple of quick things from the weekend that I’m just now getting around to:
Catherine Pugh’s sentencing hearing in the “Healthy Holly” scandal was last week. The government is asking for five years. Her lawyers are asking for a year and a day.
But she claims this isn’t “a gift that she had to report under the city’s ethics laws”, even though accepting gifts from your underlings is questionable in any environment, and possibly illegal under ethics laws.
Also, and I say this without snark, having been in this position myself recently: Mayor Breed, if your 18 year old car is going to cost $5,000 to fix, maybe you need to be looking at another car instead.
In other news, I missed this story until Popehat tweeted part of it. Ken White’s take on this was more “look at the stupid things clients do”, which surprised me: I’ll touch on the reason why shortly.
Summary: the Los Angeles Dodgers (and other baseball teams) may be in trouble. Legal trouble.
Did the Dodgers do the RICO? I am not a lawyer. But the person who wrote the FanGraphs article is: I think she presents a good argument that, if the Dodgers are found guilty of human trafficking, that’s a “predicate offense” for RICO purposes.
Admit it: wouldn’t you love to see the Department of Justice seize the Dodgers in asset forfeiture and try to run a baseball team? I know I would: a government run baseball team would make the 1899 Cleveland Spiders look like a model of competence and sanity.
More seriously, there seems to be a long recent string of judges deciding that they can just disregard the Supreme Court and order newspapers to do whatever the judge wants. Just once before I die, I would love to see an editor or publisher say to one of those judges:
“Your order is illegal and unconstitutional, and we believe that you are fully aware of these facts. We will not obey your order. We will also not initiate violence. But if this court attempts to enforce its illegal order, we will treat that as the initiation of violence against our staff, and we will defend ourselves with whatever level of force is necessary to stop said violent acts.”
David Toschi passed away a week ago Saturday. FotB RoadRich mentioned this to me in the middle of the week – he saw it on a low-rent cable channel – but I had a lot of trouble finding a good obit. I couldn’t find the actual obit on SFGate: I was only able to get at an arthive.org version.
Anyway, “David who”? He was a famous San Francisco PD detective. He was one of the lead investigators on the Zodiac killings.
I don’t remember where I picked up this detail (maybe in the archive.org version), but that “newspaper writer” the NYT doesn’t name? Armistead Maupin, who was working as a reporter for the SF Chron at the time.
But that wasn’t the only reason he was semi-famous, at least among us common sewers connoisseurs:
(I wonder what that holster was: and if it’s out of production, how much do vintage ones go for? There’s a discussion on defensivecarry.com, but I can’t judge how accurate it is.)
(Damn shame. He missed out. And I still haven’t seen “Zodiac”.)
Edited to add: this might lead to a longer post later, but: there are certainly worse hobbies in the world than engaging in Steve McQueen cosplay. Though I will concede that could get expensive quick, especially if you go full “Bullitt” and start looking for a Mustang.