Police Sketch, Battered Chevrolet Lead to Robbery Charges Against 2 : Crime: Police say the pair, now awaiting trial, may have committed up to 80 armed holdups in the Valley.

Twenty-four hours after picking up a Reseda man at his home Aug. 1 during a noisy argument, the arresting officers noticed that the 38-year-old man bore a resemblance to a widely circulated sketch of a robbery suspect.

The patrol officers returned to the man’s neighborhood and found parked on a nearby street a battered 1975 Chevrolet Nova. It looked like a robbery getaway car that police throughout the San Fernando Valley had been seeking for seven months.

As a result of what Lt. William Gaida called “first-class alertness and initiative” by Officers Jerry Fritz and Leticia Yanecho, police believe they have solved up to 80 holdups.

On Friday, Gary A. Abbott, the man who was initially arrested, and his former brother-in-law, Raymond P. Wisecarver, 49, were ordered by Van Nuys Municipal Judge Lloyd M. Nash to stand trial for 23 of the robberies.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carole Chizever described the pair as career criminals who terrorized the San Fernando Valley for seven months.

Although they will be tried for only 23 robberies, Gaida said police remain convinced that the spree consisted of nearly four times that many heists, but investigators do not have enough evidence to file charges in most of the cases.

The search for suspects who police eventually dubbed the “Chevy Nova bandits,” began Dec. 26 when two men used a pistol to rob an Alpha Beta supermarket in Canoga Park. Police said the last robbery in the spree was a July 27 holdup at Bob’s Big Boy in Canoga Park.

Authorities said more than 150 robbery witnesses participated in six police lineups in August involving Abbott and Wisecarver, who Gaida said were very well-known to West Valley Division police because of their long criminal records.

At a three-day preliminary hearing this week in Van Nuys Municipal Court, dozens of employees and patrons of restaurants, supermarkets and stores took the stand to identify the pair as the holdup men.

The rusted brown Nova, which police say the pair borrowed from a friend each time they staged a robbery, figured in much of the testimony.

An employee of Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Market in Northridge said he saw a man desperately trying to get the ailing car to run in the store parking lot shortly after a robbery. Unaware of the crime, he took little note of the incident, Victor Gonzalez said.

A patron of Bob’s Big Boy in Canoga Park testified that a car matching that description ran him down, breaking his leg, when he followed a man to the parking lot after seeing him rob the restaurant.

According to police, the Bob’s patron was the only person hurt in the string of heists--although many employees said they were threatened with death if they did not hand over money.

Chizever said the pair, who always used a pistol and struck during regular business hours, used three different approaches in the robberies.

In a majority of the cases, they simply walked up to a cashier, brandished the pistol, which usually remained half-hidden behind a coat or shirt, and demanded money.

Sometimes, they asked the manager for change, then pulled the weapon and demanded to be taken to the office, the prosecutor said.

And several times, they talked their way into the manager’s office by saying that they had left a ring, a wallet or other valuable at the establishment during a previous visit.

According to testimony, they got between $200 and $2,000 in each holdup.

Chizever said that if convicted on all counts, Abbott, who was paroled in November from state prison after serving four years for voluntary manslaughter, could be sentenced to 47 years. Wisecarver is facing up to 36 years in prison, she said. Both have been in jail in lieu of bail since their arrests.