Two Held in String of Robberies, Carjackings : Crime: Police say man-woman team from Long Beach was responsible for a three-week countywide spree. Luxury cars and property are recovered.

A man and woman police likened to Depression-era desperadoes Bonnie and Clyde were in custody in Long Beach on Friday in connection with a three-week spree of carjackings and robberies from the San Fernando Valley to the South Bay.

The couple, identified as Keal Roman Ruiz, 23, and Sylvia Lavern Sanders, 28, both of Long Beach, told police they were involved in 11 incidents, said Sgt. Terry Walton of the Long Beach Police Department.

In those that can be verified, he said, investigators have recovered three luxury cars and another vehicle--all of which had been commandeered from motorists at gunpoint--and a cache of property taken from victims.

The spree ended Thursday with the arrest of Ruiz, who Walton said was apprehended after he crashed a new stolen Lexus into a telephone pole in Long Beach. At the time, undercover police officers had Ruiz under surveillance and were following him in an unmarked car.

Earlier that day, Ruiz had robbed a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Long Beach and a children’s clothing store about a mile away, where he pistol-whipped a clerk, Walton said.

Not long after his arrest, investigators took Sanders into custody outside her and Ruiz’s apartment building in the 300 block of Cherry Avenue after she drove up in a stolen white Mercedes-Benz, carrying a purse taken from a woman in Encino.

The couple’s habit of driving around in stolen cars that bore no license plates and the oddity of a woman-man holdup team led to their capture, Walton said.

“Usually there are two guys, or three guys or five or six guys, but you don’t usually see a woman with a man,” Walton said.

A car with no license plates was spotted early Wednesday in Long Beach, and its driver fit Ruiz’s description. But an officer lost the vehicle in traffic. The next day the officer staked out the same area, spotted Ruiz and followed him, Walton said.

Ruiz, Walton said, is a cocaine addict who may have embarked on the crime spree to feed his habit.

Police believe the first crime occurred Aug. 20 in Encino. In that incident, the victim’s Mercedes-Benz was taken at gunpoint outside a clothing store. The next day, the Lexus was taken from a woman at a mini-mall in Southwest Los Angeles. That woman was also pistol-whipped, Walton said.

Between then and the day of the couple’s arrests, the pair is alleged to have robbed a Jack in the Box and a liquor store in Long Beach and to have abducted a woman who was getting into her car at 37th Street and Atlantic Boulevard, also in Long Beach.

That woman was driven around, robbed of her purse, jewelry and ATM cards before she was forced from the car.

On the day of Ruiz’s arrest, a neighbor was arrested driving a stolen car that he and Sanders had lent her, Walton said. She has not been charged, he said.