Convicted Ex-Marine Tells of Bank Robbery Ordeal

A deal with a loan shark started his brief life of crime, William Rapp, a convicted bank robber and retired Marine Corps sergeant, 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.

“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, who was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for three bank robberies. “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 surrendered and promptly admitted committing five other bank robberies, although Tuesday he pleaded not guilty in federal court in San Diego to three of those.

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. “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 was released without bail Tuesday pending a pretrial hearing, according to a spokesman for the San Diego County public defender’s office. The court also appointed an attorney 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.

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.