Man Denies His Girfriend Had Role in Holdup

Two accomplished college atheletes--a championship wrestler and his blond soccer star girlfriend--were brought before a federal magistrate Thursday on charges that he robbed a Westlake Village bank on Dec. 14 and she drove the getaway car, a Corvette.

Facing federal charges that could put them in prison for 20 years or more, Todd Hoult and Tabetha Garibay arrived at the hearing in handcuffs--she in a short pinstripe skirt and white sweater, he in jailhouse blues--escorted by FBI agents.

While Garibay, 20, hurried sullenly into the building, 23-year-old Hoult sauntered between his FBI escorts, making faces at a news photographer.

Tabloid TV shows are clamoring for interviews, said Shawn Perez, a Dana Point attorney representing Hoult and the Garibay family.

The frosted-blond Garibay was a soccer-playing sophomore at Pepperdine University who had previously helped win many games for the Newbury Park High School soccer team. Hoult wrestled for Moorpark College after graduating from Agoura High School in 1991, where he once won the Division 1 wrestling championship for the school in the California Interscholastic Federation.

As streets teemed with Christmas shoppers on Dec. 14, prosecutors say, Garibay and Hoult arrived at the Coast Federal Bank in Westlake Village in a gold 1984 Corvette.

Hoult, carrying a semiautomatic pistol and wearing a black ski mask, sunglasses and hooded sweatshirt, forced employees and customers to the floor, vaulted the counter and robbed two tellers of $8,925 in cash, Assistant U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr. said.

He then jumped back into the Corvette and Garibay drove off, according to Birotte.

Less than 90 minutes later, police and FBI agents later found the car abandoned in a shopping center in Thousand Oaks. In it were two air tickets to North Carolina, where Hoult’s family lives, Birotte said.

Authorities said a friend apparently wired some of the holdup money on Dec. 18 to Las Vegas, where Hoult picked it up using the name Todd Preston. But Birotte said the friend will not be charged because he did not know the money was stolen.

Hoult was arrested Jan. 10 and held on a charge of violating his probation terms for a 1992 burglary conviction. He is being held in Ventura County Jail without bond but will probably be transferred to the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles, officials said.

FBI agents closed in on Garibay Wednesday night, arresting her at her workplace, a telemarketing firm in Newbury Park.

Steve Smith, his former wrestling coach at Agoura High, described the tall, 190-pound Hoult as an aggressive athlete. “You had to be, to do as well as he did,” Smith said. “He was a good, tough competitor.”

On the other hand, he was known to have “behavior problems,” Agoura High Assistant Principal Fred Williams said.

Garibay’s arrest mystified her former high school coach, who said the crime was totally out of character. “It sounds like she got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, because Tabetha’s not the type of person who’d be involved in such activities,” said Donna Doman, girls’ soccer coach at Newbury Park High.

“She was a very strong player . . . a leader on the team,” Doman said. “I think it’s very unfortunate that somebody led her astray.”

That’s just what Hoult denies doing, according to Perez, who said the wrestler is particularly bothered that his girlfriend of four years faces trial for a crime he says she did not commit.

“Todd has expressed a lot of concern for Tabetha rather than himself,” Perez said. “He was frantic when I spoke to him this morning. Here’s a kid who really cares about this girl. . . . He said, ‘There’s no way she was involved in a bank robbery . . . I just don’t want anything to happen to her.’ ”

“I won’t say he’s denying he did it, I won’t say he’s admitting he did it, but he’s not going to let her take the fall for something she didn’t do.”

“On the other hand,” Perez added: “If the accusations are not false, I feel sorry for her and for him both . . . they’re going a very different direction from the way they had planned their lives.”

For Garibay’s part, she did not even want to be bailed out of the Ventura County Jail where both were being held Thursday, Perez said. She will, however, very likely be freed today once her family completes arrangements to pay her $25,000 bail, he said.

Arraignment for the pair in U.S. District Court in L.A. has not been scheduled.