7-Year Job Hunt May Have Led to Rampage

Chronic unemployment was the apparent reason Alan Winterbourne went on Ventura County’s bloodiest shooting rampage, killing four people before dying himself at the hands of police, investigators said Friday.

Oxnard police said Friday marked the seven-year anniversary of the date that the state rejected a claim by Winterbourne for unemployment benefits.

His shooting spree Thursday began at the Oxnard unemployment office.

Authorities said, however, that they cannot be sure that the seven-year anniversary was what caused Winterbourne to erupt. “We don’t know what the motive will be because our suspect is dead,” Oxnard police Cmdr. Joseph Munoz said. “We will never know what it will be.”

Police do know that Winterbourne, 33, had looked long and hard for a job since leaving his position as a Northrop Corp. computer systems engineer in February, 1986--applying to almost 300 companies without success.

They say he apparently just got tired of looking for employment and decided it was time to turn to violence.

He somehow gathered four high-powered guns and planned the rampage, said Cmdr. Tom Cady.

About 20 minutes before the shooting, he calmly walked into a local newspaper office and handed over a file of material documenting his battle with unemployment.

“Here’s some documents,” he told an editor of the Ventura County Star Free Press. “Please take a look at them.”

On his way out of the door, he said, “You don’t have to do it now.”

Inside were 288 job rejection letters and other files relating to his lack of work.

He apparently drove from there

to the Employment Development Department office in Oxnard.

At 11:41 a.m., he walked into the building, went behind the counter and shot seven people using a .44-caliber revolver and a 12-gauge shotgun, Cady said.

Three of the victims-- including two employees--died.

The gunman went outside, where he was met by officers.

After a short foot chase and gunfight with the officers, he drove off in his vehicle before being stopped in traffic. Cady said oncoming traffic prevented Winterbourne from making a left turn, so he stopped in the middle of the street and pulled a .300-magnum rifle, peered through a scope and shot Officer James E. O’Brien in the head about 200 feet away.

O’Brien, an eight-year veteran was crouched behind his car door, Cady said.

“The position of safety is in that doorjamb, where you have the hinges to give you protection,” Cady said. “But the guy with a scoped rifle was able to shoot him.”

From that intersection, Winterbourne drove to the Ventura unemployment office several blocks away, and was pursued by officers who shot and killed him.

Oxnard Chief Harold Hurtt said investigators are not sure whether Winterbourne intended to injure more workers at the Ventura unemployment office.

“We don’t know whether he intended to go there or just ended up at that location,” Hurtt said.

Since graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a computer science degree in 1985, Winterbourne had been living in a middle-class Ventura neighborhood with his mother.

A year before graduation, his father--a Ventura College ceramics teacher--committed suicide by swallowing a poisonous compound used to glaze pottery.

Investigators said that some of the documents Winterbourne dropped off at the newspaper showed that after Winterbourne resigned from his job as a systems engineer with Northrop Corp.’s Ventura Division in 1986, he applied for state unemployment benefits.

His request was rejected after Northrop challenged it on the basis that Winterbourne left the company on his own accord.

He appealed the denial, but that too was rejected following a hearing on Dec. 3, 1986.

Even some state unemployment officials said they could see how not having a job since 1986 would anger Winterbourne.

“1986 was boom times,” said Sharrel Wyatt, chief administrative law judge for the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which denied Winterbourne’s appeal.

“If he was having a hard time with the job market in those days, it had to be worse for him with the job market of late.”

Wyatt said no information on the Winterbourne appeal exists in the agency’s files, which are purged every three years.

More recently, Winterbourne had re-established his relationship with the jobs office.

He was seeking its services through a job-referral program.

Oxnard police Cmdr. Cady said state unemployment officials are cooperating with the investigation.

He said that detectives plan to interview employees, for possible clues, about services they provided Winterbourne,

“We don’t know if there was any one person, or if there were several people who dealt with him,” Cady said.

EDD officials, who kept their offices in Oxnard and Ventura closed on Friday, were not releasing any information on the Winterbourne case with the agency.

“We have some information, but not necessarily thorough information,” said Anita Gore, an agency spokeswoman.

Cady said he did not know whether Winterbourne’s weapons were legally bought and registered.

The owners of gun shops in Ventura and Oxnard said they had no records of purchases by Winterbourne.

In a job resume, Winterbourne described his hobbies as including traveling, chess, golfing, flying, bicycling and long-distance running.

Ventura City Councilman Gary Tuttle, who owns a running shop, said Winterbourne jogged by his business earlier this week.

Winterbourne “wasn’t a regular customer and ran in pretty old, ancient stuff,” Tuttle said. “He often ran by the store and asked me to run with him to check out stop signs.”

Winterbourne was obsessed with having some stop signs in his neighborhood removed, according to Ventura city officials.

In a series of letters to the city and to The Times, he linked the unemployment issue to city traffic fines, saying the jobless could not afford to pay them.

He also tied his own joblessness to an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1990, saying he was attracted to congressional salaries.

“I’m unemployed,” he said. “I think it would be a good job.”

Times staff writer Jeff Meyers and correspondent Kay Saillant contributed to this story.