Authorities Seek Relatives of Man Killed in Siege

Authorities from four law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, have yet to locate anyone who will claim the body of a 50-year-old electrician who on Sunday held 50 police officers at bay at an Anaheim motel room, then died when one of his own bombs exploded in his hands.

Investigators are puzzled by the dead man’s seeming anonymity. They know his name, his Social Security number and where he was born. They know the identities of his parents and their former addresses. For once, they know more than usual about an unclaimed body in the morgue. And yet he remains a mystery.

“You get to the point where you have to stop looking and just hope someone comes forward,” Orange County Deputy Coroner Joel Luckey said, adding that the suspect’s body will be held at the morgue indefinitely. Teletypes with his name and description have been sent to police nationwide, he said.

Investigators from Anaheim, New Mexico, the FBI and the ATF have combed through Anthony “Tony” Allen’s mail and the boxes of documents he kept at his 430-square-foot house here, finding more than enough evidence of his longtime infatuation with the paramilitary but nothing to direct them to family members or loved ones. Allen’s house was packed with scraps of paper that he had scribbled on: names of people, disconnected telephone numbers, electrical drawings, random dates and times and thoughts.

“It’s like a random thought would pop into his head and he’d write it down on whatever he could find,” Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Sgt. Glenn Maxwell said. “It makes absolutely no sense to us at all. It’s gibberish.”

Allen meticulously kept a notebook filled with stock quotes, journals he had with him at the Anaheim motel. On the back of a grocery store receipt found on his kitchen table, Allen had jotted down a strange to-do list: “Order scopes. Pack socks. Buy toothbrush! Get pistol.”

Besides a monthly workers’ compensation check for a shoulder injury Allen suffered while working at a construction site, police have been unable to find any source of income for the Michigan native. He did have several bank accounts and life insurance policies in his name, and he had donated money to various charities over the years. But police said he did not list a beneficiary other than the Shriner’s Hospital in Tampa, Fla.

“He wasn’t loaded or anything, but he was pretty good with the money he did have,” Maxwell said.

Allen was a regular customer at the Army-Navy Surplus Store here, where he window-shopped for days, sometimes weeks, before making a purchase, a store clerk said. When he did finally buy something, Allen often brought it back, citing “substandard workmanship” as the reason on the return slip.

“He was very particular, and he got very annoyed when things seemed defective to him or didn’t work just so,” the clerk said.

Allen also bought camouflage jackets and pants, and especially enjoyed holding the guns that manager Bill Lawson would remove from the glass case. But Lawson said there was “nothing strange” about his former customer.

“He had a rough life, for Christ’s sake,” Lawson said. “He got laid off from every job he ever had. He had no friends, he served in ‘Nam and he liked big guns. So the hell what?”

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Military records, however, show that Allen never left the United States during his three-year stint in the Army, from 1966-69, although he apparently told people he had served in Vietnam and in an elite Army unit. In fact, Allen was stationed at Ft. Ord, Calif., and Ft. Lewis, Wash., as an armored vehicle driver and ammunition handler. He was awarded two service ribbons: the widely distributed National Defense Service Medal and a Good Conduct Medal.

Ron Oglesby, president of New Mexico’s chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, said Allen probably was a “wannabe vet”--an ex-serviceman who believes having a history of active combat will earn him respect.

“We see a lot of them,” Oglesby said. “They are loners, most of them. They don’t trust anybody, and when they do talk about themselves they glorify their records.”

Anaheim police are still trying to figure out what motivated Allen to load up his truck with weapons three months ago and drive from Albuquerque to 11 cities before settling in Orange County on Nov. 23. Before he died, Allen mailed a $200 rent check for December to his landlord, a clear indication that he intended to return to New Mexico, police said.

Detectives hope to interview Circle K clerk Jonathan Ed Sumey, who argued with Allen hours before Sunday’s standoff in Anaheim began.

The dispute enraged Allen enough that he returned to the store and opened fire on the 35-year-old worker just as his shift ended. Police said Allen continued to shoot at Sumey after he dropped to the ground and begged the gunman to stop. Police said Sumey was wounded in the head by a bullet fragment.

Sumey was upgraded to fair condition Friday, officials said.

“He’s the only one who can tell us what was going through Mr. Allen’s head before this all started,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Kahle Switzer said. “We really hope he’ll be able to fill in some of these blanks.”

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer H.G. Reza.