Gunmen’s Ties to More Robberies Investigated

Federal agents Monday sought to link the gunmen who died in the North Hollywood bank robbery to a murder and two armored car heists, as court records revealed that the robbers had been allowed to recover large amounts of weapons paraphernalia confiscated after a 1993 arrest.

A number of similarities between Friday’s bloody robbery attempt and the two armored car assaults in the San Fernando Valley, including the use of automatic weapons, make investigators suspect that Larry Eugene Phillips Jr., 26, and Emil Dechebal Matasareanu, 30, may have been responsible for the additional crimes, sources said.

“If I were in Vegas, I’d bet on it,” said one source closed to the investigation.

Investigators already suspect that the pair carried out two other takeover-style bank robberies last May, which netted them $1.3 million to $1.7 million. Investigators are also trying to determine whether the two gunmen belonged to a larger criminal organization.

Detectives for the Orange Police Department said that one of the men was arrested there in 1991 on a weapons charge and may have been involved in a real estate scam, but no criminal fraud charges were filed.

Meanwhile, there were new developments Monday related to last weeks’s brazen bank robbery and gun battle:

* Court documents show that Phillips and Matasareanu were allowed to reclaim much of what had been described as a “bank robbery kit” after Glendale Police caught them with carload of weapons and commando-assault gear. They were allowed to recover bulletproof vests, hollow-point bullets, two .45-caliber handguns, a MAC-90 rifle, police scanners, gas mask, wigs, fake mustaches, gloves and sunglasses--even though they had just been convicted on weapons charges. Some of that gear, authorities speculate, may have been used during a later series of bank robberies.

* Although both robbers originally were thought to have been killed by police gunfire outside the bank, authorities said they now are investigating the possibility that Phillips shot and killed himself with a handgun after his automatic weapon jammed.

* State Sens. Richard Polanco and Tom Hayden, both Los Angeles Democrats, called for legislation that would “close loopholes” in the federal assault-weapons ban and allow individual cities to pass stricter gun control laws governing sales and possession.

* A top LAPD official said the department would ask the Police Commission during a closed session today to place semiautomatic rifles in every supervisor’s car and to launch a pilot program giving patrol officers .45-caliber handguns instead of the current-issue 9-millimeter weapons.

The robbers injured 11 officers and six civilians, but killed no one during the gun battle Friday.

But now, FBI agents are attempting to link the pair to the murder of Herman Cook, a Brink’s truck guard who was shot and killed in an ambush attack at a Bank of America branch in Winnetka on June 14, 1995.

Authorities also are attempting to link the pair to the attempted robbery of another Brink’s guard in March 1996. In that attempt, gunmen shot at the truck while it was between bank stops, using a high-powered weapon that shattered the windshield. No one was injured.

“These are the two incidents are looking into,” said William Rehder, who leads bank robbery investigations for the FBI’s Los Angeles-area office. “Because of the type of people we’re dealing with and their physical descriptions and their weapons, it’s certainly prudent to investigate those cases.”

*

Meanwhile, new details emerged about Phillips and Matasareanu and the world they lived in. According to court records and interviews, the two had been friends since 1989. They shared an interest in high-powered weapons and apparently liked to go shooting together.

They claimed to have been headed to a shooting range when they were caught by Glendale police in 1993 with an arsenal of weapons and military gear in their car. The collection of paraphernalia was likened to a “bank robbery kit” by some authorities.

Police arrested them on suspicion of conspiracy to commit robbery, but prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to convict them of that charge and settled for less serious convictions on weapons violations. They both served less than four months in jail.

After their convictions, the pair received court approval to recover nearly all of their gear.

In an interview Monday afternoon in his chambers, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas W. Stoever said the request to release the ammunition, clips, vests and other items came from defense attorneys.

But, the judge said, he signed release orders--on Jan. 28, 1994--only “after I had the concurrence and agreement” of the district attorney’s office as well as “assurance” from prosecutors that Glendale police had “no objection.”

The judge released to Phillips’ mother a rifle described in court papers as a MAC-90 as well as a .45-caliber handgun, but with this note: “Firearms to be sold only through licensed dealer pursuant to California law.”

Stoever said Monday his recollection was that the guns were being released on the condition that they would be sold.

A police detective, meanwhile, is quoted in a court transcript as saying that the MAC-90 is “California legal and not classified as an assault rifle.”

Stoever did not, however, release to Phillips a 9-millimeter Glock semiautomatic pistol.

Matasareanu wanted back both his own Glock and a weapon described in court papers as an “AK-47 [style] rifle.”

Stoever did not release either. He released to Matasareanu’s attorney a .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic pistol, again with the notation that the gun was to be sold through a licensed dealer.

Asked if he had any qualms about signing such orders, Stoever replied: “As long as I had the concurrence from the district attorney’s office and the Glendale Police Department, they were in a better position to pass on the dangerous nature of the equipment than I was.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Nixon, who handled the case, said he could not remember giving his permission on the matter. Nonetheless, he said he did not think it was inappropriate.

When asked whether he thought Nixon should have opposed giving them back their gear, Nixon’s supervisor, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Grodin, refused to comment.

“He was there, I wasn’t the one handling it. I’m not going to get into it,” he said.

A source familiar with the case against the pair said their defense included the assertion that their rented 1993 Ford Thunderbird was packed with guns and ammunition because they were on their way to a shooting range in the Angeles National Forest known as “Kentucky.”

That shooting range, closed in May 1993, was popular among gun buffs who would go there to shoot illegal ammunition, particularly so-called armor-piercing bullets, a Forest Service official said. Those bullets, which can tear through bulletproof vests, are also a fire hazard, causing sparks when they strike trees.

With the exception of the Glendale arrest, Matasareanu apparently had no previous criminal record. Phillips, however, was portrayed in court document and interviews as an itinerant petty criminal and real estate swindler.

Having come with his mother to the Los Angeles area after his parents’ divorce in Denver when he was 10, Phillips was first arrested at age 19. He served three days in jail and a year’s probation for stealing $400 in merchandise from a Sears store in Alhambra.

At the time of his 1993 arrest in Glendale on weapons charges, Phillips was wanted in Denver on a burglary conviction. He had pleaded guilty to that charge in 1992, but failed to show up for sentencing, records show.

Phillips told his probation officer he was making $2,000 to $4,000 per transaction as a real estate agent, but records show that he had been refused a real estate license.

Although he passed the license examination in 1990, Phillips failed to disclose his 1989 theft conviction on his application. Discovering his record through a fingerprint check, officials of the Department of Real Estate denied the application.

While investigating Phillips’ 1991 arrest on a weapons charge, detectives for the Orange Police Department concluded that he was also involved in a scam involving title document forgeries.

Though no criminal charges were filed, in 1995 Phillips and two other men were ordered to pay a judgment of nearly $140,000 in principal and interest to reimburse two title companies for deeds of trust that were determined to be forged.

Phillips briefly owned a small house in Altadena in the early 1990s, and Orange detectives believed he used it as a base for his illegal activities, stealing mail from neighbors to obtain information to forge deeds.

Phillips had a son out of wedlock, and after his release on the Glendale weapons charge, he and the baby’s mother, April Coleman, lived briefly with his mother in Glendale. But in June of 1995, she obtained a court order requiring him to pay $152 per month in child support.

*

A manager at the apartment where Phillips’ mother lived said she spoke fondly of him, but that he stayed with her only intermittently between trips to another state, and that she eventually ran out of money and moved into a nursing home.

Orange Police Det. Jim Carson, who arrested Phillips in 1991, said he felt sick when he learned Phillips was the gunman in North Hollywood.

“I was lucky,” said Carson, a 27-year veteran approaching retirement. “Watching him walk down the street [after the North Hollywood robbery]. . . . He really had a death wish. When I met up with him, he didn’t have the inclination or need to do anything more than give up. If he had been in a different mood, who knows what might have happened.”

Carson said Phillips was a “clean-shaven, clean-cut bodybuilder type” when he arrested him.

Autopsies have been completed on both gunmen, but the cause of death has not been determined. A source said the Los Angeles Police department is investigating whether Phillips died from his own gun.

Meanwhile, police officials said Friday’s shootout with Phillips and Matasareanu was an example of how officers are overwhelmed by superior firepower on the streets of Los Angeles.

LAPD Assistant Chief Bayan Lewis said Monday he would ask the Police Commission during closed session today to place semiautomatic rifles in every supervisor’s car and to launch a pilot program giving patrol officers .45-caliber handguns.

“We’ve got to reassure police officers in the field that we are providing them with something to protect them,” Lewis said. “I would be remiss in my job if I said to all those officers, ‘Don’t worry, this will never happen again.’ Did anyone think it would happen this time? I’ve got to do something.”

Some legislators in Sacramento said they felt the same way and used Friday’s bloody episode to draw new attention to a host of bills targeting assault weapons and the high-capacity ammunition clips that make them so deadly.

Although the guns used by the bank robbers are illegal, lawmakers are pushing new legislation that, among other things, would impose an additional 25-year sentence for any crime committed with an assault weapon; outlaw advertising of illegal weapons, including the armor-piercing bullets used by the robbers, as well as hand grenades, silencers and exploding bullets; and, give cities the power to enact stronger gun-control laws, efforts now thwarted by the state’s preemptive powers.

Assemblyman Don Perata (D-Alameda), the author of several of the bills, said he hoped the violence in North Hollywood would help gun control advocates overcome the powerful gun lobby and make progress in Sacramento this year.

“It’s tempting to say, ‘The cops are outgunned, give them better weapons,’ ” said Perata. “But that’s putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Let’s punish the bad guys, not arm the good guys with weapons that have no place in society.”

As the work week began Monday at the Bank of America in North Hollywood, it was not easy to forget there had been a war there. Extra security guards were brought in to reassure the public and to stave off reporters. There remained bullet-riddled mailboxes, trees and signs--stark evidence of one of the bloodiest shootouts in city history. But employees and customers seemed determined to put the ordeal aside and return to their workaday life.

“If you are afraid for your life,” said Gurbax Pannu, who was in the bank Friday at the time of the robbery, “you cannot enjoy life.”

Pannu returned to the bank Monday morning to get cash for his two 7-Eleven stores and to prove to himself that he was undaunted by his ordeal.

“My wife told me this morning: ‘Why must you go there this morning?’--I said to her: ‘This is what I do everyday.’ ”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Louis Sahagun in Denver, Lee Romney and Geoff Boucher in Orange County, Jenifer Warren in Sacramento and Douglas P. Shuit, Nicholas Riccardi, Abigail Goldman, Henry Weinstein Doug Smith, Ann W. O’Neill, Martha L. Willman and Solomon Moore in Los Angeles. Research librarian Peter Johnson and correspondents John Cox and Mayrav Saar also contributed.