SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS SECTION: WATCHING CRIME HAPPEN : A Robbery Victim’s Lament: ‘I Could Have Been Killed . . . ‘

Waiting for criminals to commit crime is nothing new for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Investigations Section. Georgette Miller found that out 17 years ago.

There were two burglars waiting for her when she drove up the 300-foot driveway of her secluded Malibu home and parked in the garage shortly before midnight on July 9, 1971.

As she stepped out of her car, one of the men split open her forehead with a pistol butt. The other forced a pillow case over her head, cinching it around her throat. “Kill her! Kill her!” Miller remembers one of them screaming as they dragged her into her house.

With her husband away on business, there was no one to come to her aid. Or so she thought.

Fourteen SIS detectives had been following the burglars and had been outside for more than three hours while the suspects ransacked Miller’s house.

But when Miller came home that night, the detectives made no move to warn her.

Police records show that the officers had been tipped off that a burglary was being planned by three suspects, convicted felons who had been arrested before for armed robbery.

The day before the burglary, SIS detectives had watched two of them, Ralph T. Coffee, 30, and John W. Sampson, 24, spend nearly an hour behind Miller’s house, casing it, while the third suspect, Frank H. Levine, 51, studied it from the street.

Detectives Outside House

On the night of the burglary, reports show, some detectives already were waiting near the house and watched Levine drop off Coffee and Sampson, who then walked up Miller’s driveway toward the house. The time was 8:30 p.m.

At 11:45 p.m., according to police records, the detectives watched Miller’s blue Jaguar turn up the driveway and head for the garage. The detectives did not try to stop her.

A confidential LAPD report later sent to the city attorney’s office stated that SIS detectives “were unaware of the exact whereabouts” of the burglars before Miller returned home and were keeping “the entire area under surveillance.” There were two houses, including Miller’s, in the area at that time.

But a since-retired SIS detective who was present told The Times recently that the surveillance squad knew the suspects were inside Miller’s house before she returned.

Robbie A. Lee said he and other surveillance detectives did not go in because “we didn’t know if they were armed or not.” The burglars, he said, were getting ready to leave and the squad was “kind of pulling back,” preparing to arrest them, when Miller drove up unexpectedly.

Lee said Miller turned up the driveway so fast that the detectives could not stop her. “And we couldn’t go in at that point,” Lee said, “because we probably would have gotten her killed.”

Miller, however, said she was not speeding and, in any case, saw no police officers before driving in.

‘I Had to Stay Calm’

“I never understood why they didn’t go in before and check if they thought somebody was in there,” Miller said recently. “I could have been killed.” The suspects forced her into the house, demanding jewels and cash.

“They put the gun to my temple and one guy was saying, ‘Kill her! Kill her!”’ said Miller, now 64. “They would have shot me if I had become angry. I had to stay calm.”

They bound her hands and feet and began loading valuables into her car. As they did, Miller freed herself and ran outside.

Police later found her hiding behind some shrubs, bleeding heavily and in shock. She received stitches for her head wound and spent the night in a hospital.

As the burglars drove away in Miller’s car, Coffee fired a shot from a derringer at the detectives, according to police reports. They fired 16 revolver and shotgun rounds in response. Both suspects were hit in the head and crashed.

“We killed the Jaguar,” Lee quipped. None of the officers was injured.

Levine, the third suspect, was arrested without incident while driving nearby. He fled after posting bail and charges against him eventually were dropped. Sampson and Coffee recovered from their wounds, pleaded guilty to robbery and went to prison.

The Millers, meanwhile, bought a guard dog and a security system and later moved.

“The question I asked (the police) was, ‘Why the hell didn’t you catch them on the way in?’ ” Russell Miller said.

“They said there was no crime and that if they stopped them on the way in, what good would that have done?”