Loan Shark to Blame for Troubles, Bank Bandit Says

A deal with a loan shark started his brief life of crime, convicted bank robber and retired Marine Corps sergeant William Rapp said Tuesday, and it took a 4 1/2-hour standoff with police at Security Pacific National Bank in San Clemente to bring him back to what he hopes will someday be a normal life again.

“I had almost four hours to sit in that vault by myself, and I intended to commit suicide that night,” said the 42-year-old Rapp, sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for three bank robberies in Orange County and Duarte. “I did a lot of praying, a little crying, and then I made a pact with my maker that if He’d get me through that night without anybody getting hurt, I’d give myself up and come clean.”

The Oceanside resident then phoned the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, surrendered and promptly admitted committing five other bank robberies, although he has since pleaded not guilty to three of those. “I felt almost intoxicated just from knowing that it was all over,” he said in a telephone interview.

Twenty-three people were held hostage inside the bank during the dramatic San Clemente holdup, but no one was injured. They were freed minutes after Rapp gave himself up.

Rapp said he turned to bank robbery after starting a security business in Pasadena following his retirement from the Marine Corps, where he served 23 years, five of them in Vietnam. Like a lot of people, Rapp said, he was counting on the Russians to participate in the Summer Olympics.

“I was going to put 2,000 ex-Marines into security at the Olympics,” he said. “My biggest mistake was going to a loan shark to get me started. When the Russians didn’t show up, (the athletes) didn’t need as much security.

“Naturally I told (the loan shark), but that’s not the way they do business. He said he’d be there as usual at the end of the month to collect and I’d better have the cash. So I got the money (by robbing banks).”

Rapp appeared in San Diego federal district court on Tuesday, where he entered not guilty pleas and was released without bail pending a pretrial hearing, according to a spokesman for the public defender’s office. The court also appointed San Diego attorney Tom Penfield to represent Rapp, who must begin serving his Los Angeles prison sentence next Tuesday.

The former Marine said he wants to serve his time and that both the Los Angeles and San Diego courts were convinced that he wouldn’t attempt to leave the country, partly on the basis of psychiatric evaluations. “I’ve been out for about three weeks now, and a lot of people have told me I should just run,” he said. “But I only have one country. I’ve served it for almost 25 years, and I’m not going to leave it now.”

Rapp is charged with holdups at the Santa Barbara Savings and Loan in Vista on Aug. 7, Great Western Savings and Loan in Oceanside on Oct. 11 and Valley Federal Savings and Loan in Del Mar on Oct. 25. A total of $21,800 was taken in those three robberies.

On Monday, Los Angeles federal Judge Richard Gadbois sentenced Rapp to 10 years in Terminal Island federal prison after he pleaded guilty to robberies totaling $59,691. In addition to the San Clemente robbery on Dec. 4, he also struck another Security Pacific branch in San Juan Capistrano on Aug. 26 and a Bank of America in Duarte on July 26.

Rapp told Judge Gadbois that he wanted to apologize to the victims.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Duane Deskins said some of the victims wrote letters to the court about the incidents and the aftereffects. “Some of the people involved, including customers, are still extremely upset,” he said. “In a couple of instances, he actually had the gun pointed at somebody.”

Police said Rapp held a handgun to an employee’s head in San Clemente while tellers handed over cash, although he never fired a shot during any of the robberies. He said he merely stood behind the employee with his gun pointed upwards and stressed that he never intended to shoot anyone except himself.

Deskins also said that Rapp always took a sizable amount of money from the banks, the largest take almost $25,000 in San Juan Capistrano. “The FBI’s statistics show an average of about $2,000 (for bank robberies),” he said. “He was very efficient.”

Linda Engel, Rapp’s deputy public defender in Los Angeles, said that Gadbois indicated he would make an effort to have any prison sentence from San Diego run concurrently with the Los Angeles sentence.

Rapp praised Gadbois and said he felt the 10-year sentence was fair. He added his hope that the victims can someday forgive him.