2 Ex-Officers in Murder Plot, Robbery Get Maximum Terms

Unswayed by tearful, anguished pleas for mercy from two former Los Angeles police officers, a judge sentenced both to maximum terms Friday for attempting to murder an exotic dancer and robbing a Northridge jewelry store.

Detective Richard Herman Ford, 47, and Officer Robert Anthony Von Villas, 43, were sentenced to 11 years and 10 years, respectively, plus 25 years to life, for the 1982 robbery and the 1983 murder plot. The sentences will be served consecutively.

The two men, who have been held in County Jail since their arrest nearly five years ago, are awaiting trial in Van Nuys Superior Court in the 1983 murder of a Northridge businessman. If convicted, they could receive the death penalty.

In imposing the maximum term possible, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alexander Williams III said he was guided by one “overwhelming factor . . . and that is they were in fact police officers.”

“There is another victim here,” Williams said. “That victim is represented by the 7,000 men and women who protect the city wearing badges that these men sullied.”

The judge said this factor outweighed others in the defendants’ favor, such as their combat service in Vietnam, their “exemplary” police records and the “enormous personal tragedy” suffered by Ford, who became suicidal and dependent on drugs and alcohol after his wife was raped in 1979.

In asking for leniency, both Ford and Von Villas denied committing the crimes for which they were convicted and cited the punishment they have already received by being locked up since July, 1983.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. O’Neill told Williams that the two men were motivated by “greed” and the “pure pleasure of violence.”

“The public, our society, should never be subjected to the freedom of either of these men,” O’Neill declared.

In addressing the court, Ford, the more emotional of the two defendants, described jail as a “virtual hell,” saying he has been spit on, kicked, punched and had urine poured on him “because of my prior occupation.” He said he has been deprived of sunshine and prohibited from attending Mass.

Both men apologized for disgracing the Police Department.

Tarnished Badge

“I tarnished the badge, and I let down the community,” Ford said amid sobs. “. . . It’s wrong to blame them for what I did.”

He also said he regretted his behavior after his wife was attacked, when he “took the law into my own hands” by trying to ferret out her assailant in the Hollywood community. Instead, he said, he wound up “becoming part of it” by getting hooked on drugs and drinking.

“I lost my morality,” Ford said. “I got out there and acted like a fool.”

Ford and Von Villas, who joined the police department in 1969 and 1970, respectively, were convicted Jan. 7 of the armed robbery of more than $140,000 worth of diamonds and rings from Schaffer & Sons jewelry store in Northridge and an unrelated plot to torture and murder dancer Joan Loguercio of Granada Hills.

The evidence showed that Von Villas had befriended Loguercio and purchased a $100,000 insurance policy on her life, ostensibly to cover a loan he was making her. Loguercio died of cancer in 1986.

At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Ford said he had “no excuse” for the “asinine” discussions of the murder plot that he held with informant Bruce Adams. Tapes of the obscenity-laden conversations served as a key piece of evidence during the nine-month trial.

Ford testified at the trial that he was only calling Adams’ bluff in those conversations and never intended to commit a murder.

Pretrial proceedings are scheduled Monday in Ford and Von Villas’ death penalty case, in which they are accused of killing Thomas Weed, 52, of Northridge.

Weed’s former wife, Janie E. Ogilvie of Canoga Park, who has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy charges, has said she paid Von Villas $20,000 to have her husband killed.