Fugitive Had Help in Escape, Agents Believe

Law enforcement agents searching for the fugitive who swept his girlfriend out of a federal prison in a daring helicopter escape believe that at least one other person helped in the escape.

“There had to be a third party. If we knew who, we’d be a lot further than we are,” said Chief Deputy Marshal Richard Bippus, heading the search for Ronald J. McIntosh, 45, who escaped while serving a four-year term for fraud and parole violation, and Samantha D. Lopez, 37, who was serving a 50-year term for bank robbery.

By Thursday night, there were some leads: the helicopter used in the Wednesday morning escape had been found and tire tracks leading away from it suggested that McIntosh was driving a four-wheel drive vehicle.

But as seven more deputy marshals were called into the hunt, bringing the total to about 30 deputies and FBI agents, authorities were mainly confounded.

“This one is really frustrating. Apparently this guy had it very well planned,” Bippus said. “ . . . The longer it goes on the colder the trail gets. That’s the hard truth.”

“We don’t have an area of concentration,” said FBI spokesman John Holford here. “We’re just doing a lot of street work.”

Agents along the Mexican and Canadian borders were notified to keep a watch for McIntosh and Lopez. FBI agents were in the Seattle area questioning McIntosh’s family members.

Authorities on Wednesday night found the green-and-white Hughes helicopter that McIntosh had hijacked earlier in the day to carry out the bold escape of Lopez from the Federal Correctional Institute at Pleasanton. The craft was 15 miles from the prison and outside of the East Bay community of Fremont.

Spotted by a railroad worker who telephoned federal authorities, the helicopter had been set down near railroad tracks amid an oak grove and near a gravel road off Interstate 580.

FBI agents and deputy federal marshals noticed the tracks of 10- to 12-inch-wide tires, the type used on four-wheel drive pick-up trucks, leading toward the freeway.

“He had to have someone drive a car there,” Bippus said. “The aircraft was found 15 miles away from the prison, 30 to 35 miles from San Jose (where a man believed to be McIntosh rented the aircraft while posing as a land developer.) How would he (McIntosh) get from the landing site to San Jose to get on the helicopter (without help)?”

Nearly $2 million is still missing from the unrelated crimes of McIntosh and Lopez. Some officials speculated that the bulk of the missing money that McIntosh stole from investors in a California-based precious-metals fraud may be tucked away in a foreign bank, perhaps in Panama. Other officials, however, think that the loot from McIntosh’s First International Trading Corp. may simply have been buried.

None of the money from Lopez’s 1981 bank robberies--$63,000 from a robbery in Mobile, Ala., and more than $50,000 from a bank in Unadilla, Ga.--has been recovered, said William P. Adams, a former federal prosecutor who prosecuted her.

McIntosh, a twice-convicted con artist, most recently was convicted of parole violations and fraud for helping to bilk 2,500 investors in FITC out of $18 million.

Several documents seized during the investigation showed that FITC officers planned to ship money overseas but did not.

“There is nothing I’m aware of that indicates that (the money) is in secret off-shore accounts,” said a law enforcement source involved in the McIntosh prosecution.

McIntosh disappeared Oct. 28 when Pleasanton prison authorities, complying with his request for a transfer, gave him a one-way bus ticket to the Federal Prison Camp at Lompoc and allowed him to travel without supervision.

He had not been seen until Wednesday, when a man fitting his description chartered the helicopter, saying that he was a developer who wanted to inspect land near Danville, which is close to the prison.

Once aloft, he pulled a gun on the pilot, ordered him to land, and then flew to the prison, where Lopez was waiting to be picked up. She stepped aboard and McIntosh flew off, completing the feat in no more than 10 seconds.

A warrant officer in the Army, McIntosh flew helicopters in combat in Vietnam and “was such a good pilot that he was made a test pilot for helicopters,” his criminal defense lawyer, Stephen Grohs, said Thursday.

McIntosh attended the University of Washington in Seattle after his tour in Vietnam ended and first ran into trouble with the law while selling commodities for a firm in Seattle. Sentenced to prison in the late 1970s, he was released on parole in 1982 from the Lompoc prison and founded the precious metals firm.

Law enforcement officials expressed surprise that the prison at Pleasanton permitted McIntosh to ride unsupervised to Lompoc. Federal prosecutors insisted that he be held without bail prior to his 1985 trial because he was viewed as a flight risk.

“He was looking at a substantial period of time in prison, and there was the concern about assets from FITC. If he did go on the lam, there was this money available to him,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert L. Dondero.

But even authorities involved in the prosecution say they were shocked by McIntosh’s Rambo-like exploit.

“He never struck me as that kind of person,” one official said.

“He was the strategic planner,” another prosecutor said. “The others were the implementers of his plans.”

“He certainly lived a very sedate life,” said Leonard Goldstein, who lived across the street from him in Sebastapol and was the McIntosh family lawyer.

“Some of his friends were flamboyant, but Ron was not. There were no loud parties, he kept his house up, he drove less than distinguished cars. . . . Ron was too smart to think south of the border.

“I can’t see him busting out of jail, then busting out his girlfriend for love. That’s a lot of love. He is surrendering all interest in his family. I find that very hard to believe. He was very devoted father. I just can’t imagine him putting himself in a position of never seeing them again.”

McIntosh and his wife, April, have a 20-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son. He and his wife were estranged, however, after FITC collapsed and McIntosh was arrested.