Car Possibly Used by Two Jail Escapees Found in L.A.

Orange County Jail escapees Ivan Von Staich and Robert J. Clark remained at large Tuesday, but a stolen car they may have used in their getaway was found in Los Angeles earlier in the day, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

Los Angeles police found the car, a blue 1972 Toyota Corolla, license plate 1FEJ406, abandoned Tuesday morning on West 2nd Street. A more precise location was not disclosed.

Investigators were not saying whether the car played a role in Sunday’s escape. It was stolen Sunday from the federal building parking lot in Santa Ana near the jail about the time of the escape.

‘Like Any Other Junk Car’

However, a Los Angeles police spokesman, who refused to give his name, said after the car was impounded that at first “nobody knew it was the car. It was just picked up (by police) like any other junk car that was sitting around. Then someone made the connection.”

Authorities initially believed that when the two inmates escaped, they had stolen a car and sped away. Then, unable to locate the car, sheriff’s deputies theorized that the escapees were in the immediate area.

Deputies on Tuesday were not ruling out either possibility, said Lt. Richard Olson, but were coordinating an intense and widening search across Southern California.

Sightings Reported

Meanwhile, a number of sightings were reported Tuesday, including several at Orange County shopping malls and one Tuesday night on Ortega Highway of a motorist matching the description of one of the fugitives driving from Lake Elsinore in Riverside County to Orange County. So far, however, none has produced any concrete leads, authorities said.

Staich, a convicted killer, had lived in Lake Elsinore, and his parents still live there.

In Los Angeles, sheriff’s investigators checked the abandoned car for fingerprints and any evidence that might link the vehicle to the escapees.

Olson confirmed that the Sheriff’s Department had received numerous telephone tips.

“There’s nothing to indicate that we should narrow this (search) down at this time,” Olson said. “We want to keep as wide and broad an investigation as we can.”

Staich, 29, who once escaped from jail in Riverside County, was convicted last month of second-degree murder and attempted murder in a 1983 attack with a claw hammer on his former girlfriend, Cynthia Topper, and her husband, Robert Topper. The girlfriend survived the attack but Topper died after Staich wrestled a gun from Topper and shot him three times.

Clark, 23, who is from the Palm Springs area, was awaiting trial on murder and robbery charges stemming from the January, 1984, slaying of David Martinez, whose body was found dumped in an unincorporated area near Irvine.

The two inmates overpowered a guard about 6:30 a.m. Sunday, climbed through a hole they had pried open in a wire screen and escaped by using an electrical cord to descend 80 feet to a first-floor roof.

The screen was repaired Tuesday in time to resume legally mandated recreation privileges after the rooftop recreation area was closed Monday.

The last escape from Orange County Jail took place in September, 1983, when rape suspect Michael Eric Gonzalez cut a hole in the roof near where Staich and Clark lowered the electrical cord. He was arrested in El Monte a few weeks after his escape and later convicted in the rape case.

Sheriff’s deputies had reinforced the screening in that area to make it more difficult for anyone to cut through it.

Olson said he did not know if additional reinforcements were made to the wire screen Tuesday. Capt. Wyatt Hart, who is in charge of the jail, could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Deployment of sheriff’s deputies remained the same as it was on Monday, with 10 extra units in the field searching for the two escapees in addition to the 33 cars on regular patrol.

However, Olson was tight-lipped on the exact number of deputies involved in the search.

“We don’t want to tip these guys as to what’s going on,” he said. “We can tell you that we feel we have adequate teams working (so that) if something comes up, we can get them in no time at all.”