Freedom Defeats ‘Onion Field’ Killer Again

The Rev. Rex Burns received a telephone call Monday night telling him to watch the 11 o’clock news: “Onion Field” killer Jimmy Lee Smith had messed up again. He was not surprised.

Burns, who had counseled Smith in and out of prison for more than a decade, figured from recent conversations that Smith again was using drugs and losing his always-minimal enthusiasm for life on the outside.

“My wife and I made a prediction a month ago that he was setting himself up to go home, and ‘home’ to Jimmy is prison,” said the minister, an affable, street-wise man who first met Smith in the late 1970s while serving as a volunteer chaplain at Soledad Prison.

“Jimmy’s an excellent convict. He’s a lousy citizen.”

It was fitting that Smith made news this week for what is an everyday crime in Los Angeles--being under the influence of heroin. For all his notoriety, there really is nothing special about Jimmy Lee Smith, except the fact that Joseph Wambaugh happened to write a chilling book about a cop-killing that Smith and Gregory Powell committed in 1963 in an onion field near Bakersfield.

Now 58, Smith is a typical member of a depressingly large class of paroled felons who fail to go straight. Sixty percent of them are back in state prison within two years of their release, according to a 1987 study of 10,000 prisoners.

Raised by a great-aunt in Ft. Worth, Tex., during the Depression, Smith moved to Los Angeles near Skid Row in the 1940s and quickly became an addict, shoplifter and petty thief, spending time in several state prisons. He and Powell murdered Los Angeles Policeman Ian Campbell the same year that Smith was paroled from Folsom Prison. Wambaugh reported that when an old guard chided Smith about returning to the prison, he remarked, “Sir, I was born for Folsom Prison.”

Smith and Powell both were sentenced to death for Campbell’s murder, but as the result of a state Supreme Court decision outlawing the death penalty, both men had their sentences reduced to life with the possibility for parole after seven years. In 1982, at age 51, Smith was paroled--to great public criticism.

Since then, while Powell remained in prison unsuccessfully applying for parole, Smith has been arrested five times and either convicted of crimes or found to be in violation of his parole. At least four times he has been sent back to prison. In his adult life he has never spent a full year out of custody.

His latest run-in with the law occurred on Monday night when he was arrested by West Covina police. A woman claimed that she had been held captive by Smith over the weekend and that he had attempted to rape her.

On Wednesday, prosecutors declined to file the attempted rape and assault counts, and instead charged Smith only with being under the influence of heroin. At his arraignment, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. He could be returned to state prison for as long as a year for violating parole; a panel of the state Board of Prison terms will hear the matter within a month.

Now Jaded

Even the patient Rev. Burns, who believed that Smith had made a sincere commitment to Christ when he originally was paroled, is now jaded.

“If I were a judge and Jimmy came before me today and the prosecutor asked for prison for life, I probably would go along with him,” Burns said in an interview in his Whittier townhouse.

“He’s had as much and maybe more help than the average convict coming out of prison. There has to be a time when you say it’s enough,” Burns said.

“It’s crazy,” said Karl Hettinger, the former Los Angeles policeman who was riding with Officer Campbell when they made a routine traffic stop of Smith and Powell in Hollywood, and thus became part of the Onion Field legend. “I still get angry. The criminal justice system in California, it really stinks.”

Problem With Heroin

Hettinger escaped by bolting away from the killers and running across the onion field, where the officers had been taken at gunpoint.

Smith’s basic problem has been heroin. Four months after he left Soledad Prison in 1982, he failed a test for drug use--he explained it was because of a pill he had taken for a headache--and left his Los Angeles home in what he described as panic. During that period he heard a newscast report there was a warrant out for his arrest.

“I thought, ‘What the hell, they are probably going to kill me before they arrest me anyway,’ ” and he made a connection with a heroin dealer in San Pedro, Smith testified at a parole revocation hearing.

He was sent back to prison for six months. He came out (“I’m going to try twice as hard this time to stay out,” he promised a reporter) and lived in Long Beach.

Domestic Problems

According to Burns, Smith was having domestic problems. He had married a woman with several children while in prison. As he began his parole, he was working in a cabinet shop, but “she kept the pressure on him to make more money,” Burns said. “The only way he had to do it was selling drugs.” A user like Smith was not capable of selling without using, the minister said.

After his first parole-revocation sentence, Smith stayed straight for eight months before he flunked one of the twice-a-month drug tests required of “high-risk” parolees. Marv Holmes, his parole officer at the time, said he noticed fresh needle marks on Smith’s arms. Another parole violation, another trip back to prison.

Five years ago, shortly after Smith returned from his second parole-violation sentence, Burns set up a breakfast meeting for Smith with a friend of Burns who was looking for a house painter. According to police, Smith brought something else to the appointment: a few grams of heroin that he tried to sell outside the restaurant to an undercover cop.

‘Not the Most Intelligent’

“Jim’s not the most intelligent man in the world,” Burns said sympathetically.

The judge who sentenced Smith to five years in prison for the drug arrest complained, “Every time he’s gotten out, he’s become involved in some illegal activity and been incarcerated again.”

Smith’s wife divorced him while he was in prison, according to Burns. He was released in November, 1986, after serving two years and four months. Four months later his parole was revoked for another six months because he changed his residence without notifying authorities and was caught with a small knife. A few months after he served that sentence, his parole was revoked for a year for driving without a license, being under the influence of a drug, possession of heroin and possession of drug paraphernalia.

‘A Loser’

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, who as Los Angeles County district attorney in 1982 tried unsuccessfully to block Smith’s original parole, was asked Wednesday by a reporter for an assessment of Smith.

“He’s a loser. . . . You could have predicted this. . . . This is a guy who should be just locked up and kept there,” Van de Kamp said, repeating the public pronouncements he has issued each time Smith has gone afoul.

That, Burns said, was part of Smith’s problem--the constant public attention.

“The public’s opinion was that he was a loser, he was always going to be a loser. We tried to talk him out of listening to what people were saying. We tried to talk him out of giving interviews,” Burns said.

The trouble was, media attention seemed to somehow validate Smith’s existence.

“Jimmy was always proud of his notoriety,” Burns said. “He wasn’t pleased with the (“Onion Field”) crime, but this was the only time in his life he was anyone.”

Needed Help

Last October, Burns moved to Whittier from Monterey. In November, he received a phone call from Smith, who had recently been released from prison. For once, Burns said, Smith was acknowledging that he’d weakened himself too drastically on heroin and needed help. Burns arraigned for him to check into a Christian rehabilitation center in South El Monte.

By now Burns had concluded that Smith’s once-professed Christianity was at best “shallow.” But the Rev. Richard Matas of the New Jerusalem Church in East Los Angeles, which sponsors the rehabilitation center, described Smith as a peaceful man with deep respect for the church.

Matas said Smith went from periods of deep depression to times when he eagerly vowed to make a new start.

“He was very emotional,” Matas said. “I would see him up on the altar praying, ‘Lord, take me home.’ I don’t think he was talking about prison; I think he was just tired of his life.”

Matas said he believed that drugs were a haven for Smith during the bad times.

‘Way of Escape’

“It’s just a way of escape for him,” he said. “Some of these guys, they’re not strong enough and this is their escape. These men are scarred up and hurting and there’s no help. The church can only do so much.”

Smith could at times be an inspiration to other parolees, Matas said.

“That man helps people,” he said. “He gives advice and things like that. I heard him tell some guys that prison was no good. . . . He just got turned the wrong way.”

From last fall until early spring, Burns and his wife saw Smith at least every week, often more frequently. Burns believed that Smith was holding his own “as long as he attended the church services” at the rehabilitation home.

About a month and a half ago Burns recommended Smith to an acquaintance named Omar Haddad, who was fixing up and reselling homes. Burns told Haddad that Smith was a convicted felon but did not tell him he was an “Onion Field” killer. Smith painted, replaced glass and fixed doors for several weeks at a home on Cherrywood Street, sleeping there at nights.

Complainant in Jail

On Monday, a woman with whom he was working, Vicki Louise Ashby, 36, complained to police that Smith held her against her will over the weekend and beat her while making sexual advances. However, prosecutors in the district attorney’s sex crimes division said Wednesday that those allegations could not be proven. Authorities also put Ashby in jail, saying she was wanted for arrest on warrants charging her with battery, possession of amphetamines and probation violation in connection with a forgery conviction.

Smith appeared haggard and sullen Wednesday during his arraignment. He answered “yes” when the judge asked if he wanted a court-appointed attorney, then pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor heroin offense.

And then, once again, Jimmy Lee Smith was led away to jail.