Stole to Help Family, Accused Robber Says

The Harvard University sophomore suspected of committing a string of armed robberies in Los Angeles and Orange counties over the last two years described himself in a Friday interview as “very confused” and torn between a rarefied academic life and the streets of his lower-middle-class neighborhood in La Habra.

“I needed the money, man, and that was a way to get it,” said Jose Luis Razo Jr. at the Orange County Jail. “I did 15 robberies, averaged $2,000 each, and I gave most of the money away.”

He said he stole to help his parents pay bills, to finance trips home and to help needy friends.

“Whatever my family wanted, it got--food, bills paid, furniture,” he said. “I needed money for school and plane flights back and forth from Harvard.”

Appearing calm in his jail-issue jump suit, the 20-year-old Latino with a glossy crew cut spoke through a telephone behind a plate glass window in the Santa Ana jail’s visiting area. He was arrested Monday.

Razo is to be arraigned next week on eight counts of armed robbery in La Habra and one count of attempted escape. The day after his arrest, Razo was being taken back to his home by police who wanted to search his room. When the search was completed, Razo bolted. He was tackled by officers 2 1/2 blocks away.

During the one-hour interview, he displayed no remorse and seemed almost cavalier about his admitted crime foray.

Although Razo said he kept his criminal activities from his family, he said his mother was often “worried as hell that I was getting more money than the job I was working at was paying.” He said he has worked at fast-food restaurants in the area.

Based on Razo’s statement to police, authorities believe that he committed the armed robberies--mainly of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, but also of at least one supermarket--in La Habra, Costa Mesa, Whittier and one in Miami, Fla.

“At Harvard, I didn’t fit,” said the 6-foot, 200-pound Razo. “I was confused. . . . No one understood me. I am a ‘homeboy’ now,” he said, referring to the Latino term for a neighborhood chum.

Then the former high school football star added in Spanish, “I don’t sell out my own ethnic identity.”

He denied being a “Barrio Robin Hood,” but said the ready cash stolen from merchants enabled him to help relatives and friends.

Members of his family declined Friday to be interviewed, on the advice of Razo’s attorney, Michael McDonell.

Razo said the series of ski-mask holdups started with a local dairy while he was still a senior at Servite High School in Anaheim, a Catholic school. Razo said he committed his first robbery on the day after Christmas in 1985.

They continued over the next two years with guns borrowed from other “homeboys.”

Razo was arrested after being interviewed by police after he claimed to have information about the unsolved killing of a 9-year-old Santa Ana girl last month. Razo said he planned to “help them as much as I could” with information obtained from his “contacts in the street.”

But unknown to Razo, he already had become a suspect in some of the robberies. During the police interview, he seemed to know details about some of these robberies that could only be known by the perpetrator, police said.

Police in Cambridge, Mass., and Boston said they have no evidence linking Razo to any holdups there.

Describing his method, Razo said, “I’d start searching at about 10 p.m. for a place with a good getaway. Then I would go inside and hide. After it closed and the customers left, I’d put on the mask, pull out the gun and take the money. I’d leave out the back door.”

Two victims of robberies Razo said he committed told The Times on Friday that the bandit was jumpy and threatening, and warned that he would shoot anyone who did not immediately and explicitly follow his orders. They also said the robber was meticulous about not touching anything, apparently so that he would not leave fingerprints.

Razo was a member of the La Habra Boys Club and was active in the community and had regularly visited convalescent homes and children’s hospital wards.

“Sometimes I’d sneer and laugh, ‘If they only knew,’ ” said Razo, referring to his teachers, coaches, family and friends.

“I was feeling confused, misunderstood at school. . . . A friend said I should go to Florida for spring break, that it was the thing to do,” Razo recalled. “But there was nothing there for me, just fast cars and fast women. But that wasn’t me.”

In retrospect, Razo said he feels no remorse for the crimes he committed.

“I don’t regret them,” he said with a smug smile. “No one ever got hurt. . . . Besides, I helped a lot of people. . . . Whenever people came to me in need, I could help them out.”

Times staff writers Lonn Johnston, Doug Brown and Nancy Wride contributed to this story.