Man Pleads Guilty to Role in Murder at ATM : Crime: Wesley Dale Harper agrees to testify against the alleged gunman in exchange for a sentence that includes the possibility of parole.

A 23-year-old Lancaster man charged with killing an ATM customer outside a local bank pleaded guilty Monday under an agreement that will require him to testify against his alleged partner in the crime, authorities said.

Under the agreement, Wesley Dale Harper pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and will be sentenced to 26 years to life in prison with possibility of parole, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela R. Rogers said.

If he had been convicted in the Lancaster Superior Court trial that began last week, Harper could have been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, Rogers said.

Harper was accused of driving a pickup truck in Lancaster on March 5, 1993, looking for someone to rob at an automated teller machine. At a Bank of America branch on Lancaster Boulevard, investigators allege, Harper’s passenger, Christopher Arthur Mann, 20, fatally shot ATM customer Hans Christian Herzog, 44, of Lancaster, then stole Herzog’s car.

Harper provided Mann with the sawed-off rifle used to kill Herzog, the prosecutor said.

The crime, which was recorded in part by a bank security camera, received wide attention because random killings are rare in the Antelope Valley, authorities said.

As a result of Monday’s plea bargain, Harper will be a witness for the prosecution when Mann stands trial separately next month, the prosecutor said. “Defendant Harper’s sentence is contingent upon his ongoing cooperation in the prosecution of defendant Christopher Mann, who was the shooter,” Rogers said.

She said Harper’s testimony will be important because the district attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty against Mann. “Only these two people were present (at the slaying),” she said.

“Harper maintains that he did not know that Mann was going to shoot (Herzog),” said Harper’s attorney, Edward Consiglio.

The defense attorney said Harper accepted the plea bargain “because he did not want to gamble on the chance that he would get life without possibility of parole.”