Kidnap Rescue Ends a Lifetime of Crime

Two teenage girls kidnapped by a career criminal and rescued in a dramatic shootout Thursday fought with their attacker, and succeeded at one point in pushing him out of the car as he briefly nodded off, according to one of the girls and Kern County sheriff’s deputies who rescued them.

Although the girls were able to take away their captor’s eyeglasses and dump him out of the car, he fell out with his gun and threatened to shoot them through the window unless they opened the door. As a result, deputies said, the kidnapper, Roy Dean Ratliff, was back inside the vehicle when the Sheriff’s Department caught up with him a few minutes later.

The shootout that followed left Ratliff dead, ending the troubled life of a repeat offender whose criminal history dates back to before he was 10 years old, according to records and officials in California, Nevada and Nebraska. He was killed after holding the two girls for about 12 hours and raping them, said Kern County Sheriff-Coroner Carl Sparks.

One of the victims, speaking publicly for the first time, told KABC-TV Channel 7 that she and the other kidnapping victim pleaded with Ratliff to spare them: “What did we do to you that was so bad for you to take us and bring us here? ... Don’t you understand that we have family that loves us?”

In other interviews Friday, authorities and others offered new details about the event’s closing minutes, when Kern County sheriff’s deputies closed in and eventually ended the abduction.

Aided by a new statewide system for sending out an alert in abduction cases, Californians had their eyes peeled for the car and its occupants on Thursday morning. But while thousands heard of the abduction, it was Kern County Animal Control Officer Bonnie Hernandez who was credited Friday with the key break in the search.

About 11:45 a.m., Hernandez said she was driving on California 178, listening to the police scanner, when she spotted the taillights of the white 1980 Ford Bronco about three-quarters of a mile away.

Twenty minutes later, she said she returned to Ridgecrest, a few miles away, and told deputies about the vehicle she had seen.

In response, two deputies drove onto the White Blanket Indian Allotment and closed in on the suspect, cutting off his only escape route, authorities said.

“He had nowhere to go,” sheriff’s Cmdr. Hal Chealander said.

When Ratliff saw deputies, he drove down an embankment into a dry river bed, Chealander said. His vehicle got stuck atop a rock, with all four wheels spinning in the air. The deputies surrounded Ratliff’s vehicle, firing a total of 17 shots after Ratliff pointed a weapon at one of them.

In her televised interview, the girl said Ratliff fired the first shot at deputies, but the Kern County Sheriff’s Department would not confirm that, saying that the incident was still under investigation.

Authorities who finally caught up with him after a statewide manhunt speculated Friday that Ratliff chose to fight it out with sheriff’s deputies rather than risk a return to prison, where he had spent almost 12 of the last 13 years and likely would have remained for the rest of his life.

The 37-year-old career criminal was wanted in Kern County for allegedly raping a teenage family member in September. State corrections officials also declared him a fugitive for failing to contact his parole officer in the months after his July 29, 2001, release from state prison for drug possession.

Finding Trouble Early

Ratliff, who grew up in Scottsbluff, Neb., had an extensive criminal record, beginning at age 7, local authorities said. He moved to the Los Angeles area in 1989, where he was promptly arrested on a burglary charge, criminal records show.

As a juvenile, he was picked up for truancy, being a runaway, breaking into buildings and theft. He lived for some time in a foster home, and he was sent to a group home for boys before he turned 13, Nebraska authorities said. Between the ages of 12 and 24, Ratliff was jailed at least 16 times.

“I remember him,” Scotts Bluff County Sheriff Jim Lawson said. “He’s what we call a regular customer.”

At 19, Ratliff was convicted of underage possession of alcohol, misdemeanor theft and drunk driving, said Doug Warner, a prosecutor in the Scotts Bluff County attorney’s office in Nebraska.

Two years later, Ratliff was convicted of felony burglary and sentenced to 18 months in state prison, Warner said.

Between June 1987 and September 1988, he was convicted three times for driving with a suspended license, he said.

He also was convicted of shoplifting and passing a bad check in Nebraska in 1989.

That same year, after moving to California, Ratliff was sentenced to two years in state prison for burglary, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. Two years later, he again pleaded guilty to burglary and was sentenced to 88 months in prison, she said. Both cases were investigated by Long Beach police.

Ratliff was released from prison in January 1996 and returned in February 1997 after being convicted of possession of methamphetamine in Kern County, state corrections records show.

Life in Prison Loomed

Ratliff’s extensive record would have ensured that, if caught again, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison, officials said, adding that they believe he was determined to avoid that.

“He recognized the helicopters and said, ‘I have to get rid of these girls,’ ” Sparks said Friday. “He was a two-striker. He was going to prison for the rest of his life. He had nothing to lose.”

Instead, he died in a hail of gunfire.

Rescued from whatever fate Ratliff intended for them, the girls returned home to the Antelope Valley on Thursday night, greeted by friends and family, some bearing flowers.

“She’s getting a lot of support from her friends and family but she’s still very upset,” the mother of one girl said. “It’s really hard right now.”

Even after the ordeal of the last two days, she added, the girl and her family were overcome with relief to have her safe.

“Home never seemed so good,” she said.

“I could have been like Samantha Runnion’s mother. I could have been burying [her].”

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Times staff writers Caitlin Liu, Sufiya Abdur-Rahman and Gariot Louima contributed to this report.