Armored Car Guard Confesses to Slaying, Police Say

He called himself “a bum” on national TV and lost a job after admitting to breaking into vending machines with a tire iron.

Now the man accused of killing his partner and robbing $300,000 from the armored car he was hired to guard is being held without bail in Utah after confessing, officials say.

By the time they caught up with him Thursday, officers say, Thomas Wheelock seemed resigned to capture, calmly surrendering during a traffic stop on Interstate 15 near Centerville, Utah, after leading authorities on an intense two-day manhunt.

“Here’s a guy, he’s young and scared. Whatever plan he might have had may have changed because of all the information that was out there,” Oakland Police Capt. Pete Dunbar said Friday.

Wheelock, 20, confessed on videotape to the Utah Highway Patrol officer who pulled him over on Thanksgiving and later to two Oakland detectives who questioned him, Dunbar said.

The detectives seized two handguns, his guard uniform shirt and about $30,000 in cash before returning to California on Friday, Utah officials said.

A District Court judge in Utah ordered Wheelock held without bail over the weekend while prosecutors in California evaluate the case.

In court Friday, a shackled Wheelock--his head shaved in an apparent attempt to change his looks and with a day’s growth of beard--spoke only to confirm his name and address.

Wheelock is expected to be arraigned on felony charges of murder, robbery and being a fugitive from justice, officials said.

The security guard from San Ramon, Calif., had used his own name at a motel and car dealership and bought a 1985 Ford Bronco with no back license plate, which eventually led to the traffic stop in Utah, police said.

Dunbar said Wheelock stuffed more than $270,000 under the mattress of a Sacramento motel--then abandoned it after being spooked by a police officer who was filling his patrol car at a nearby gas station Tuesday morning, Dunbar said.

The saga began in Oakland on Monday night, when Wheelock and his 30-year-old partner, Rodrigo Cortez, made a stop at a Brink’s warehouse, Dunbar said.

Police say they suspect that Wheelock shot Cortez several times and then drove the armored car to San Ramon on the east side of San Francisco Bay, leaving Cortez’s body inside. Wheelock then went to Sacramento, possibly driven by 20-year-old Peter York, a friend who is now facing charges as an accomplice, police said.

In an odd twist, Wheelock appeared on the syndicated “Judge Judy” television show Wednesday in a dispute over a car with his former fiancee. On the show, he told the judge he was “a bum,” sometimes staying with friends or family and not paying child support for his 2-year-old son.

Wheelock worked at Armored Transport for less than two months and was on probation for a 1995 misdemeanor robbery--the vending machine thefts, according to the FBI.

He was being held in the Davis County Jail in Farmington, Utah, and is scheduled to appear in court Monday when the lengthy process of bringing him back to California will probably begin, Dunbar said.