Bank Heists Drop in ’97 and 80% End With Arrests

It doesn’t matter that the number of bank robberies dropped by half. Or that the FBI has solved 80% of them.

The year 1997 brought one of the most violent bank heists in Ventura County history: the execution-style shooting of Monica Lynne Leech in Thousand Oaks.

And FBI agents are still searching for the men responsible for shooting the bank teller during a takeover-style robbery in late April. It was the first time anyone had been killed in a bank robbery in this county in at least the past 20 years, FBI officials said.

“We are definitely making progress on the case, but I’m not at liberty to say more,” said FBI Agent Larry Dick.

Leech, a 39-year-old mother of two, was shot in the back of the head for unexplained reasons after being handcuffed and ordered to kneel with several other employees in the rear of the bank.

The two men, who were wearing masks, gloves and hard hats, were last seen fleeing from the Thousand Oaks bank in a white sport utility vehicle.

The April 28 incident was one of 25 bank robberies in Ventura County so far this year.

There were two other potentially dangerous takeover-style bank robberies in the county like the one that claimed Leech’s life, but no one was injured in either of those robberies, officials said.

In February, armed men wearing dark clothing and ski masks stormed the Wescom Federal Credit Union in Thousand Oaks, rounded up the tellers and ordered them to empty their cash drawers. The other robbery occurred in October at California Federal Bank in Oxnard.

This year, the county had far fewer bank robberies than in any year since 1994--when there also were 25 robberies--and about half the normal rate during the past 10 years. The all-time high in the past decade was 97 bank robberies in 1992.

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Part of the reason for the smaller number of robberies this year is that far fewer serial bank robbers are thought to have been operating locally.

“In an average year we might have two, three or four guys robbing five or six banks each,” Dick said.

This month, a federal warrant has been issued for 34-year-old Ernest Ricardez, who is believed to be responsible for three bank robberies since Nov. 17 including a Wells Fargo on South Mills Road in Ventura on Monday, he said.

The FBI recently has had great success in solving bank robberies in the county.

To date, 48 of the 52 bank robberies committed in 1996 were solved, Dick said. And so far this year, agents have solved 80% of this year’s bank robberies, he said.

“If you are going to rob a bank in Ventura County this shows that the odds you will be caught are pretty good,” Dick said.

This year, seven men were prosecuted in federal court for bank heists in Ventura County.

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Among them were Thomas E. Palmer, of Los Angeles, who was convicted of four Ventura County bank robberies and three bank robberies in Los Angeles County. Oxnard resident Aaron Adam Trujillo, was convicted of robbing three banks in Ventura County, and Guy Eugene Daniel, of Ventura, is also believed to have committed three robberies here. But Daniel died of cancer while in custody and was never prosecuted for the crimes, officials said.

Thieves followed no particular pattern in which banks they robbed or when in the year they hit them. The city of Ventura again topped the list with the most bank robberies in the county with eight, while Oxnard and Thousand Oaks tied for second with five bank robberies each.

The only discernible similarity was that most robbers keep bankers’ hours--preferring to finish their business before 3 p.m. This year, Monday seemed to be the preferred day for staging a bank heist, but in 1996 Tuesday was the favorite day of the week.

Local robbers continue to use traditional demand notes to instruct tellers to turn over the cash. A few have broken with tradition though, with one man using a fake bomb as a ploy, and another man who used a bicycle for a getaway after robbing a bank.

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Authorities say that man, Gordon D. Gleason, 41, was nabbed after a dye pack--a harmless device programmed to explode a certain distance from the bank--burst as he was pedaling away. Authorities also recovered the money, a wig, beard, and a bicycle about a block from the bank.

Although there have been three robberies in the past two weeks, the FBI says it is a myth that the frequency of bank robberies goes up around the holidays.

And they have yet to arrest anyone who is knocking over banks to buy Christmas presents, officials said.

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Bank Robberies

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Total Year Total Solved 1997* 25 20 1996 52 48 1995 50 41 1994 25 15 1993 48 41 1992 97 85 1991 52 41 1990 43 35 1989 76 57 1988 31 27 1987 60 52 1986 71 60

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* FBI Officials said they expect to solve a few cases from 1997 in the new year.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation