Prison Fugitives Got Careless : Daring Copter Escapees Brought Down by Love

After staging a daring helicopter raid to rescue his bank-robbing sweetheart from a Bay Area prison, it was simple carelessness that led to the recapture of con man Ronald J. McIntosh, authorities said Sunday.

Buying custom wedding rings after their escape, McIntosh and his girlfriend, Samantha D. Lopez, went to the same jewelry store three times in less than a week. Federal marshals, who were waiting for the couple on the third visit, blamed their lack of caution on love.

“It just wasn’t too swift for a con man,” U.S. Marshal Arthur F. Van Court said here Sunday. “He was just blind in love. Women have been the downfall of a lot of great men--and even some not so great.”

The couple, on the run together since the chopper escape Nov. 5, were arrested without a struggle Saturday at a shopping mall in Citrus Heights, a Sacramento suburb.

Inmates at the co-ed Federal Corrections Institute in Pleasanton, who had let out cheers during the bold escape, absorbed news of the arrests with quiet resignation.

“People were sad. People were shocked. We didn’t know what to say,” said Joyce Mattox, an inmate at the minimum-security facility in Alameda County. Mattox, who was a friend of Lopez, herself had been involved in a remarkably similar prison breakout with her lover less than a year ago.

“We thought that because of the money, they would be gone--out of the country,” Mattox added during a telephone interview Sunday.

McIntosh was thought to have access to some or all of $1.7 million in cash and gold that is unaccounted for in an $18-million swindle of people who invested in his precious-metals investment firm, the now-defunct First International Trading Corp.

Lopez also may have had money stashed away. None of the roughly $110,000 stolen by her and her gang in two bank robberies in Alabama and Georgia in 1981 has been recovered.

McIntosh, 42, was serving a four-year federal term for fraud and parole violation when he met Lopez, 37, who was serving a 50-year sentence for her part in the bank robberies.

Their story of love reached a bittersweet anticlimax in the mall parking lot Saturday. Before authorities led them off in separate cars, McIntosh reportedly called out to Lopez, “I love you!”

Van Court said McIntosh seemed to change his style under Lopez’s influence. Of the two, he noted, Lopez had committed the far more serious crimes, including a kidnaping and robbery that ended in murder.

As he was arrested, McIntosh was fumbling to open a briefcase, causing marshals to wonder if he was planning to use the handguns found inside--a 9-mm Browning and a .357-Magnum.

“It was a big change for McIntosh to go from a bunko con man to a gun-toting desperado,” Van Court said.

The marshal said the couple, held without bail, may be arraigned today in Sacramento federal court on escape charges.

McIntosh, who had flown helicopters in Vietnam, had been considered a model prisoner before he escaped on Oct. 28, during an unescorted transfer by Greyhound bus to the federal prison at Lompoc, where he was to serve out the remaining 15 months of his sentence. Pleasanton prison officials dropped him off at a bus station in Livermore and gave him a ticket.

After brushing up on his flight skills in a helicopter rented under the alias of Lyle Thompson, McIntosh on Nov. 5 chartered another chopper. When airborne he pointed a gun at the pilot and ordered him to land in a remote location. Abandoning the pilot and taking his shoes, McIntosh flew off for his rendezvous with Lopez at the Pleasanton prison.

Within hours of the escape, an international manhunt was under way.

The helicopter was later found abandoned about 15 miles from Pleasanton, but thereafter, authorities repeatedly said, they had no clues to the couple’s whereabouts.

Then, last Monday and Tuesday, the fugitives visited Merksamer Jewelers in the mall and purchased $5,500 in jewelry, including engagement and wedding rings. Store personnel, suspicious of the couple and afraid that a check written by McIntosh would bounce, notified authorities. The check was signed Lyle Thompson.

Reinforcements Called In

When McIntosh and Lopez returned to the store on Saturday to see if the rings were ready, federal marshals, posing as clerks, called in reinforcements and arrested them.

An obstacle to their wedding plans was the fact that both were already married. Lopez’s husband, Carl, is serving time in Oklahoma for robberies they committed together. McIntosh has been estranged from his wife, April, since his arrest last year on fraud charges.

Deputy marshals were continuing to search Sunday for people who may have aided the couple. But no details were released.

While the escapees were free, authorities received leads from San Diego to Bellingham, Wash., and many points in between. The check used to buy the jewelry was drawn on an Oregon bank.

On the day of the helicopter breakout, officials at Pleasanton quizzed Mattox about the pair. McIntosh and Lopez had worked together in the business office at the country-club style prison and often were seen walking together and holding hands.

Mattox maintained that she knew nothing of the escape plan.

First of Its Kind

Mattox had used a helicopter to help Jesse Smith escape from a South Carolina prison less than a year ago. It was the first helicopter escape ever in this country.

Mattox, who worked in a textile mill and sang in country and western saloons in the evenings, met and fell in love with Smith when a friend took her along on a visit to Perry Correctional Institution, where Smith was serving 40 years for armed robbery.

“I really loved the guy. I just wanted to be with him,” explained Mattox, who had no prior criminal record. “You have someone call you five or six times a day telling you you can do it (pull off an escape), you get to believe it. . . . That was the only way we could be together.”

Following Smith’s instructions, Mattox rented a helicopter and then pulled a gun on the pilot, directing him to fly to the state prison, where Smith and two of his friends were waiting.

“I knew sooner or later we’d be caught,” Mattox said Sunday. “You always make a mistake.”

Lorimar Telepictures is producing a movie about Mattox and Smith. And producers already have expressed interest in the tale of McIntosh and Lopez.

Richard C. Paddock reported from Sacramento and Dan Morain reported from San Francisco. Times staff writer Scott Harris in Los Angeles contributed to this article.