Father of Youth Held in S&L; Holdup Was a Bank Robber

The father of one of two Tarzana youths who are charged with robbing an Encino savings and loan office himself served four years in federal prison for a 1963 Michigan bank robbery, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

Allan Eugene Morrison, 50--whose son, Michael Scott Morrison, faces bank robbery charges--was sentenced on Jan. 8, 1964, to 15 years in federal prison for bank robbery, according to Joel Shere, the U.S. attorney in Detroit.

The sophistication of the methods used in the Encino robbery led police to suspect that the two 16-year-olds were taught by an experienced criminal. However, two detectives working the case, Ed Pikor and Larry De Losh, said that there is no evidence of any involvement by the elder Morrison.

A Los Angeles area probation officer, who asked not to be named, said Allan Morrison “made a lot of money in pornography,” but was a firm disciplinarian who wanted his children to have a middle-class upbringing and “do right.”

The elder Morrison, owner of Wildcat Enterprises, a pornographic bookstore in Lennox, was arrested by Los Angeles County district attorney’s investigators last Friday on suspicion of attempted extortion. District attorney’s spokesman Al Albergate said Allan Morrison allegedly threatened in a May 31 telephone conversation to kill an unnamed businessman who refused to pay him $1,750 on a $3,500 loan. The victim claimed that he already had paid Morrison $7,200 on the loan, the spokesman said.

A decision has not yet been made on whether to charge Allan Morrison, who is free on $2,000 bail, Albergate said.

Michael Morrison, a Taft High School student, and a classmate, Mark Daniel Berman, were arrested May 30 on charges of holding up an Encino Savings & Loan Assn. office at 17507 Ventura Blvd.

Caught in Stolen Car

On May 23, police allege, the two youths, dressed in masks and police-style uniforms, used a 38-caliber hand gun and an electric stun device to rob two tellers of $4,436. They were arrested in a stolen car after a police chase, and linked by evidence in the car to the bank robbery, Pikor said.

Because the bank robbery case involving the elder Morrison occured more than 20 years ago, it would take several weeks to obtain details from federal archives in Detroit, Shere said.

However, Detroit Free Press clippings from that era say that the senior Morrison confessed to robbing four suburban Detroit banks of a total of $7,000 between January and March, 1963, to pay for gambling lessons.

A Los Angeles area law enforcement official, who asked not to be named, said Morrison served his sentence at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

Ernest Harris, deputy chief U.S. probation officer in Detroit, said Morrison was paroled in September, 1966, and came under the supervision of probation officials in Los Angeles the next year.

Report of Robbery

Detroit Free Press files also report a 1954 arrest of Allan Morrison for the 1953 armed robbery of a Detroit theater. According to the newspaper, Morrison told police he stole the $450 taken in the robbery to buy new clothes to “impress a girl.” He pleaded innocent to the charges, but the disposition of the case is not known.

According to several of Michael Morrison’s classmates, the youth bragged that his father was “in the Mafia” and had a lot of money. Young Morrison’s claims of wealth were bolstered by his car, a Datsun 280ZX, the students said.

Allan Morrison could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Both youths face multiple counts, including four felony bank robbery charges and two of stealing cars at gunpoint, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jerry Bowes said.

Michael Morrison pleaded innocent Tuesday before San Fernando Juvenile Court Judge Burton S. Katz. Berman was allowed to postpone entering a plea until June 24, when two separate fitness hearings will be conducted to decide whether to try the teen-agers as adults.

The youths remain at Sylmar Juvenile Hall.