Gunmen Take 13 Hostages but Bungle ‘Well-Planned’ Bank Job : 3 Suspects Were After Receipts From County Fair, Police Allege

Bandits held 13 bank employees hostage at a Bank of America branch in Costa Mesa Friday in what police called a “well-planned, but bungled” attempt to rob the bank of “an unusually large amount” of money, including proceeds from the nearby Orange County Fair.

Three men were arrested without incident after a two-hour standoff at the bank at 2701A Harbor Blvd.

One of the suspects, Stanley Grant Lake, 36, of Norwalk, was on parole for a bank robbery in September, 1973, and was responsible for 15 bank robberies in the San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento and Orange County the same year, according to the FBI.

The other two suspects were identified as Alan Lawrence Alexander, 27, and Roger Lee Frazier, 23, both of Westminster. Frazier was arrested outside the bank near a van that was apparently intended as a getaway vehicle. Police said the vehicle was stolen.

Costa Mesa Police Investigator Tom Lazar said Lake and Alexander gained entry to the bank about 1:30 a.m. Friday. FBI investigators said they posed as sheriff’s deputies wearing what appeared to be sheriff’s caps, and apparently persuaded two custodial workers in the bank to let them in.

They took the two custodians hostage, then, as bank employees began arriving before 9:30 a.m., the bandits “grabbed” them, FBI investigators said.

The suspects had apparently planned the robbery carefully and “knew exactly what they wanted--everything in the bank,” FBI Investigator James Nelson said.

The attempt was foiled when a bank auditor arrived at the bank sometime between 8 and 9 a.m., Bank of America officials said. No one responded when he knocked on a back door, and the auditor notified his superior that something was amiss.

Bank officials called Costa Mesa police at 9:23, and police surrounded the bank minutes afterward, Lazar said.

A bank employee came out at about 9:40 to “inform” police that an attempted robbery was under way. “They probably did that so we wouldn’t storm in,” Lazar said.

Throughout the morning, nine employees were released and four others retained inside the bank.

Finally, about 11:30 a.m., a bank employee held a sign to the window that read “FBI come to the stairs--they have laid down their weapons,” police said.

An FBI agent then instructed the bandits via a bullhorn to come out, and the four remaining hostages--including the two custodians--were released soon afterward. Police said one carried a bag containing the bandits’ two automatic pistols and a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

Lake and Alexander followed, their hands behind their heads. Police earlier had arrested Frazier, who had been waiting in a van outside. A witness said he attempted to crawl away to a phone booth at a nearby Mobil gas station. But he encountered a Costa Mesa traffic policeman, who arrested him, police said.

An unidentified bank hostage told Don Roberts, manager of the Albertson’s supermarket next door to the bank, that she and her co-workers were not physically threatened by bandits during the holdup attempt.

However, he said one of the hostages was “crying, and they all looked terrified as they left the bank.”

All three suspects were being held at the Costa Mesa Police Department, charged with bank robbery, Lazar said. FBI officials said they will be arraigned before a U.S. magistrate on Monday.

According to Department of Corrections records, Stanley Grant Lake began serving a 12-year term on a bank robbery conviction in September, 1973. He was released in 1980 to a federal halfway house in Garden Grove and placed on a federal work-furlough program. On July 21, 1980--just 10 days short of his Aug. 1 parole date--he and a man identified as James Cope, 20, of Norwalk were arrested while robbing a branch of the Bank of America in Covina, FBI investigators said. Lake was returned to prison and released on parole in March of this year.

In the 1980 robbery, FBI investigators said, the two men arrived at the scene on a big-engine Kawasaki motorcycle wearing jump suits in 90-degree weather. Lane had a Seagram Crown Royale bottle pouch with 50 rounds of ammunition and “body armor,” according to the FBI.

Police said the two men were arrested after they walked out of the bank with a bag containing $102,000.

Staff writers Michael Bunch and Dave Palermo contributed to this story.