Former Harvard Student’s Armed Robbery Trial Is Under Way

When Jose Luis Razo confessed to a series of robberies two years ago, he gave details of the crimes to La Habra police that only the perpetrator or victims could have known, prosecutor Ravi Mehta said Thursday.

“The evidence will show that Razo committed those robberies,” Mehta said in his opening statement in Superior Court in Santa Ana. “No one put a lamp over his head . . . or hit him with a rubber hose.”

The former Harvard University student’s trial got under way Thursday with Razo’s court-appointed attorney, John D. Barnett, declining to give an opening statement. He said he would give the statement at the beginning of defense testimony.

Razo, now 22, emerged from a modest La Habra neighborhood to become a standout football player and student at Servite High School in Anaheim before matriculating at Harvard in 1985.

In July, 1987, he called Santa Ana police and offered to help them solve the disappearance of schoolgirl Patricia Lopez--in exchange for a ride in a police helicopter. While at the La Habra police station waiting for Santa Ana detectives to arrive, Razo allegedly confessed to committing a string of armed robberies in the previous two years during school vacations.

Needed the Money

In interviews at the Orange County Jail, Razo told The Times and other newspapers that he robbed the stores and fast-food restaurants because he and his family needed the money. Razo later recanted his statements to police.

Razo is charged with 10 armed robberies in Orange County and three more robberies in Los Angeles County.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mehta began presenting his case to a jury Thursday by placing Patricia Ann Heslep, a former clerk at a Smart & Final Iris Co. store in La Habra, on the witness stand.

Heslep recounted how she was unloading a delivery at the store about 5 a.m. on July 23, 1986, when she turned to find a masked man holding a German Luger pistol.

“He said, ‘This is for real, honey,’ ” Heslep said. “I was very scared.”

The robber took about $1,300 from the store’s cash registers and safe before putting Heslep and another employee in the back of a delivery truck, and then leaving.

Heslep said she never saw the robber’s face, but she described him as brown-skinned and being of similar build to Razo, who stands about 6 feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds.

Over the objections of defense attorney John D. Barnett, Mehta had Razo repeat the “this is for real, honey” phrase, as well as two other statements Heslep remembers the robber making, and then asked Heslep to compare voices.

Witnesses Not Certain

But Heslep testified that she could not say for sure it was the same voice she heard almost three years ago.

Another Smart & Final employee, Michael John Kolker, was also unable to positively identify Razo’s voice as the one he heard during the robbery.