Intruder Terrorizes Family for 3 1/2 Hours but Is Caught Napping

Things might have worked out better if he hadn’t stopped for a snack. Or a bath. Or a nap.

But after robbing and tying up a family in their Bellflower home, Antonio Ricky Leathem, took time out for all three, sheriff’s deputies said.

As a result, Mark Rule, 32, and his wife, Jaime, 28, were able to work themselves free, grab their daughters, Stephanie, 6, and Danielle, 4, climb out a window, run to a neighbor’s house and call for help, investigators said.

Asleep on Floor

Deputies said they arrived at the modest home behind the Christian Faith Assembly church in the 9600 block of Cedar Street a few minutes later to find Leathem asleep on the kitchen floor. He was booked at the Lakewood Sheriff’s Station on suspicion of attempted murder and robbery.

The deputies said Leathem, a 35-year-old transient, had cut a porch screen to break into the home about 1:45 a.m. Friday. Arming himself with a steak knife from the kitchen, the intruder made his way to the bedroom where Mark Rule--the custodian of the church--and his wife were sleeping.

“Jaime said she woke up to find Mark on the floor with the guy on top of him,” the neighbor, Norma Hauser, said Friday afternoon after talking with the couple about their 3 1/2-hour ordeal. “The guy had stabbed Mark in the neck and cut him on the chin.”

Hauser said the couple told her that the intruder took about $200 in cash that they had in the house and had Jaime Rule tie up her husband and their daughters with neckties.

While doing this the intruder bragged that he’d been “wanted for 10 years,” demanded that they call him “Running Bear” and told the whimpering children that “Indian girls don’t cry . . .,” Hauser said the couple told her.

“He told them he hadn’t slept for three days,” Hauser said. “He said he just wanted to rest.”

The intruder tied Jaime Rule up, but then untied her, demanding that she cook him a meal, Hauser said.

“When she told him all the meat was in the freezer, it upset him,” Hauser said. “But she gave him a Pepsi, and he made himself a couple of sandwiches.”

The neighbor said the intruder then tied up Jaime Rule, put her in a bedroom with her bound and gagged husband and daughters, filled up the tub and proceeded to take a bath, “a long bath. . . .”

“They said they thought he might kill them, so they decided they had to get free,” Hauser said. “They said they prayed a lot, and somehow, they got their hands free.”

The couple grabbed their daughters--still bound hand and foot--climbed out of the bedroom window and ran to Hauser’s next-door home.

Abrupt Awakening

“I was sort of dozing--it was between 5:00 and 5:15--when I heard them banging on the window,” Hauser said. “They told me the man was still in there. They told me to call the police.”

Hauser said she made the call, and a few minutes laters, dozens of sheriff’s units surrounded the Rules’ house. Deputies said they kicked down the front door to find Leathem under the kitchen table.

Mark Rule was later treated for cuts on his neck and chin. None of the other members of the family required medical treatment, officers said.