Robbery Squad Tackles Ex-Ram With Glory Offer

Using the fictitious offer of a semi-nude modeling job as bait, sheriff’s deputies found and arrested a former Los Angeles Rams running back on suspicion of robbing 18 hotels and motels, authorities said Saturday.

Members of a robbery task force posed as officials of a sports promotional company to lure Alonzo Fitzgerald Williams, 28, into the open, telling his relatives they were interested in having him pose for a calendar and participate in tours in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, Deputy George Ducoulombier said.

Williams, who played briefly for the Rams in 1987, then called back and said he “couldn’t wait to get started,” the deputy added.

Williams was arrested Friday night in Hawthorne and was being held in lieu of $430,000 bail on suspicion of committing the string of holdups attributed to a man dubbed the “Motel Changer Robber” because he would ask clerks for change of a $1 bill before demanding the money in their cash registers.

The robber first struck last March in Lawndale, then victimized 16 other hotels and motels--including Days Inns, Holiday Inns and Ramada Inns--throughout Los Angeles County, and another in Orange County.

The robber, who always claimed to have a gun in his jacket pocket, never got more than $500, Ducoulombier said.

A task force that included police officers from Hawthorne and El Segundo was assigned to investigate the crimes and “got a tip that (the robber) was a former Los Angeles-based football player,” the sheriff’s spokesman said.

That information, Ducoulombier said, eventually pointed them to Williams, a 12th-round draft choice in 1987 out of Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colo., where he rushed for 2,258 yards and scored 26 touchdowns over two seasons, earning First-team All-American status in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics.

Williams was cut by the Rams after training camp, but rejoined the team for three games in the fall when a players’ strike sidelined most of the regulars in the National Football League. Team records document his participation in at least one of the games, at New Orleans on Oct. 4, when he gained nine yards on two rushes.

When the burglary task force identified him as a suspect, but was unable to find him, members posed as officials and scouts of a fictitious sports promotional company and contacted Williams’ friends and relatives to explain “opportunities available to Williams, including a semi-nude photo calendar,” according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.

“On Friday, Williams called the fictitious company and was very interested,” the statement said.

Claiming they were conducting a “pre-employment interview,” the detectives then obtained a detailed personal history from Williams that enabled them to find him that night at his estranged wife’s home in Hawthorne, Ducoulombier said.

With the house surrounded by a Hawthorne Police SWAT team, Williams surrendered without incident at 11:30 p.m., the deputy said.

Seven of the robberies were in areas under Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction, five in areas covered by the Los Angeles Police Department, three in Inglewood, and one each in Downey, Pasadena and La Palma, Ducoulombier said.