Peter Houlahan

The 1980 bank robbery in Norco, California is important because it led to improvements in both the armament and communications of US law enforcement. The cops were hopelessly outgunned; they had .38 Special revolvers, 12-gauge shotguns, and a M16 with a defective magazine catch (borrowed from the evidence locker). The bank robbers had 5.56mm and 7.62mm rifles. The cops from different agencies were unable to communicate directly with each other, because of different radio systems.
This book should be read by anyone who thinks they can plan a bank raid after watching a few heist movies. The perpetrators had the basic idea of how to mount a successful robbery, but screwed up the planning badly. That, and the usual friction of combat, led to an abject failure. For a take of twenty grand, two perpetrators died and the remaining three have been in prison for over forty years.
But this wasn’t the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. After bungling the robbery, they conducted a running gun battle for many miles and hours. Initially, they planned to use a soft-skinned van as a getaway vehicle. Incredibly they carjacked the van just before the robbery, and brought the driver along as a hostage. If you don’t have the skill to steal and modify vehicles, you shouldn’t rob banks. At the scene, the police shot up the van, killing the perp who was driving.
Through either luck or skill, they immediately hijacked a commercial truck that offered protection from the low caliber rounds that the police were using, while giving them an elevated shooting platform. While not particularly fast, the truck was powerful. The police were not able to disable or trap it.
After bungling the robbery, these men showed remarkable fortitude, courage, and skill in the ensuing gun battles. They killed one officer, wounded eight, and disabled more than thirty police vehicles, including a helicopter. If these men were under my command, I would have put them in for medals: a Silver Star for George Smith and Bronze Stars for the other three on the truck.
With such an action-packed story, this could have been an engrossing read. Unfortunately Houlahan is a pedestrian writer. Coupled with repeated and inconsistent factual errors about firearms and helicopters, this is annoying. He constantly confuses H&K G3 rifles with AR-15s. This stupidity continues to the cover art. One figure is armed with a Garand, and the other with an AK. None of the robbers or LEOs used either weapon.
He also mixes up Hughes 500 and Bell Huey helicopters. This is the sort of nonsense you expect from crime fiction writers, but the facts about weapons and vehicles are relevant to this story. Writers can’t know everything, but their editors should. So, if you don’t know guns and choppers yourself, don’t take Houlahan as gospel.… (mehr)

I recently expressed the opinion that most true crime books can be divided into 2 categories, either a straightforward retelling, generally with additional detail, of a contemporary criminal event, or books that delve more deeply into the particulars of a time, place or subject, where that background is necessary to understand the crime under examination.

This analysis of a bank robbery gone horribly wrong could be placed in the first category, since it is definitely a retelling of a specific event, with a boatload of detail. I'd suggest, however, that the historical moment, 1980, and the location, Southern California, were key elements in how this violent story played out.

The brief summary: five guys, down on their luck and obsessed with apocalyptic religious fervor, decide to rob a bank in the small city of Norco, California. Their objective was to obtain the funds they need to purchase a remote property on which they could build an armed hideout where they could live during the cataclysm they anticipated. Several of them were veterans whose personalities were affected by the experience of being in the military during the Vietnam war era. A couple were not physically well and easily led by one who was especially disturbed and manipulative.

They acquired an extensive armory of automatic weapons, to which they added home-made explosives, and proceeded with their plan even when the wheels started falling off early on the day designated for the heist. Things went from bad to worse, with the botched robbery followed by a bizarre car chase that ended with their arrest in the San Gabriel mountains. They were pursued by police from several jurisdictions, all of them significantly less well armed than the group of five.

So what made this event so connected to the time and place, as reflected in this book?

*Southern California was knee deep in extremist religious groups in the late 70's, such that this group did not stand out as unique, did not call attention to themselves.
*1980 was only five years after the end of the Vietnam war and many returning servicemen carried scars visible and otherwise.
*The state did not have especially strict gun control laws, and nothing stood in the way of the group purchasing their arsenal, again not calling attention to themselves.
*By contrast, it was not normal in 1980 for state or local law enforcement officers to be armed with assault weapons. These circumstances set up the lengthy car chase and the ultimate outcome of the robbery.

In fact, the discrepancy in weaponry in Norco led directly to changes in police departments across the nation. it was clear that the time had arrived when criminals could be, and were happy to be, in a position to outgun law enforcement.

The aftermath of the event also unfolded in ways that reflected time and place. The California judiciary tended to be liberal, although capital punishment was available as a sentence. Both of these elements had an affect on the trial. (The lengthy trial had far too many extraordinary elements to recount here.)

The most pronounced after effect of the event, in my opinion (formed solely by reading this book, I will confess), was the way in which the post traumatic stress suffered by so many of the law enforcement officers wasn't immediately recognized or addressed. PTSD was only added to the Diagnostic and Manual of Psychiatric Disorders in that year, so that's understandable, if unfortunate.

So, enough philosophizing. The book held my interest all the way through. My one problem with it was something over which the author had no control: too many similar names, especially for a listener. It took me an entire chapter to figure out that there was a Manny Delgado and an Andy Delgado, one on each side. BTW, the narrator, Joe Bennett, is a good match for the material.

Not quite as good as the true crime books I've rated most highly, but a very solid 4.… (mehr)