Slain Teller Took Job for Some Security

In one of life’s bitter ironies, Monica Lynne Leech accepted a teller’s job barely two months ago at Western Financial Bank seeking security--both job security and personal security.

Shuttled from bank to bank, branch to branch, and weary of violence in the Oxnard area, Leech migrated to one of the nation’s safest cities when her First Interstate branch changed ownership early this year.

By Feb. 20, the mother of two from Camarillo was helping customers in the Western Financial Bank on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

There, the 39-year-old teller was killed execution-style Monday during a 10:20 a.m. takeover holdup in which two gunmen stormed the sleepy branch. While Leech knelt, handcuffed, on the bank floor, one of the men raised a handgun to the back of her head and fired.

Pleading Tuesday for the robbers to turn themselves in, Leech’s mother, Elaine Cavaletto, sobbed bitterly.

“I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring,” she said. “I don’t know what next week’s going to bring. I don’t know how I’m going to react when I see the tellers on the line.”

Authorities said Tuesday they hoped a reward fund that could exceed $100,000 would help smoke out the two robbers, who disappeared despite an all-out police search Monday.

“Someone out there knows these men or has seen these men,” said Bob Brooks, a chief deputy with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. “That could be the information we need to break this case.”

Despite blanketing the city with more than 40 investigators and deputies, department officials have been unable to say what happened to the men, who were last seen speeding northbound on California 23 past Avenida de Los Arboles.

Deputies conducted a street-by-street search of the city Monday, and canvassed businesses in the area of the robbery on Tuesday looking for anyone who might have seen the car or the robbers, described as a white male about 5-foot-11 and a black man or a dark-skinned man about the same height.

Although composite sketches of the suspects have been drawn, the sketches do not closely resemble each other. “We have four different witnesses and four different sketches,” one investigator said in frustration.

“We’re going to break this case through a snitch,” said another investigator.

To encourage that, the Western League of Savings Institutions is considering offering a reward possibly in excess of $100,000 for information leading to an arrest. The league--an association of about 70 savings and loans in California--offered a similar reward when a Pomona bank teller was killed in 1995 and helped solve the crime, authorities said. Leech had spent 15 years in banking, bouncing through mergers and divestments from banks in Port Hueneme and Oxnard for 15 years.

The instability of the business drove Leech crazy, but at the small and cozy Western Financial, “she finally found some peace in banking,” said Cavaletto, who also works in the industry.

When the job opened in Thousand Oaks, friends and family urged Leech to forsake the danger of Oxnard for the serenity of the Conejo Valley.

Floyd Leech, Monica’s second husband, took pains to make the longer commute secure for her, recalled Floyd’s friend and boss.

“He bought a new [black Ford Contour] for her to get safely up and down the [Conejo] Grade every day,” said Jim Piraino, owner of Camarillo Car Care, where Floyd has worked for eight years as the service manager. “And then he bought her a cell phone for additional safety.”

At the bank where the mahogany-haired Leech was killed, the lights were off Tuesday. The large plate-glass windows out front bore two new signs: “No solicitors” and “temporarily closed.” Inside, a calendar was frozen in time, reading April 28, the day of the tragedy.

On the sidewalk outside the redwood-and-brick building, residents offered bouquet after bouquet of flowers--chrysanthemums and gerbera daisies, home-grown roses with stems wrapped in aluminum foil and store-bought arrangements with baby’s breath peeking out of green tissue paper.

Some cards read “Monica” in script. Others were addressed to Western Financial Bank.

Fighting tears, resident Colleen O’Beirne and a friend lit yellow candles at the bank in Leech’s honor. “It’s a senseless act,” she said, holding her 9-month-old child close. “These people stole graduations and birthdays and everything from her children. There’s no place safe anymore.”

The bank is scheduled to reopen Thursday at 9 a.m. A security director at the bank said an armed security guard will stand sentry at the branch for an undetermined length of time.

“We closed the office in deference to the staff and their mental state, to allow for healing,” said Mike Johnson, Western Financial’s executive vice president in charge of administration. “Our security department is reviewing the situation.”