Wanted: Gentleman Bank Robber
The True Story of Leslie Ibsen Rogge, One of the FBI’s Most Elusive Criminals
Nish Publishing
880 NE 25th Avenue
Suite 2-102
Hillsboro, Oregon 97124
www.lesrogge.com;
info@lesrogge.com
Copyright © 2010 by Dane Batty. All rights reserved
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Cover by Lesley Rogge
Interior design by Robin Simonds, Beagle Bay, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-615-3685-7-3
Dedication
Dane Batty
This book is dedicated to my mother, whose idea it was to create a memoir of my uncle’s stories and share them with the world. There is nobody that cares more than Mum, an angel from above, and whose constant support and needed help was inspiration enough.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to many different people along the way who helped me create and make this book a reality. I say thank you to Les first who put his trust in me to openly tell his story to the world. Thank you to Judy, for supporting the entire process even though there were reservations and for taking me in like only an auntie would. Thank you to Mum Jeannie, who made this all possible and whose idea this was. Thank you to Papa Joe, who helped me get set up in the beginning. Thank you to my loving wife, Shelley, who put up with all the time away from the family and all the money spent and her confidence in the project. Thank you Holly for reading my manuscript when nobody else would! Thanks to Lesley Rogge for the fine cover that has her name on it. Thanks to Axon Myelin, who showed me the way. Thank you to Debbie Webb for the early editing help. Thanks to Frank Sauce for all the writing business advice. Thanks to D. Ray Barker for his fine perspective and openness and priceless legal research. Thanks to Troy and Tracy for their cooperation. Thanks to the DuBoff Law Group for their legal advice. Thank you to Andy Schultz for doing some of my homework. Thank you to Beagle Bay for the fine edit. Thanks to the countless court clerks, stenographers and archive specialists who shared information as if I were family. Thanks to “America’s Most Wanted” for nothing. And thanks to Kinkos for letting me spend hours producing rough drafts for way too much money.
Introduction
This is the true story of Leslie Ibsen Rogge, who robbed nearly thirty banks over the span of twenty years. Les escaped from custody three times, with one jail escape that made him so famous it landed him at number seven on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List. He eluded the FBI and U.S. Marshall’s office for ten years before surrendering and becoming the first ever Top Ten FBI-wanted fugitive in history to surrender due to the World Wide Web.
While on the run, Les traveled all over the U.S., from Alaska to New Mexico, through the Midwest and East Coast, and down to Key West. He also managed to fit in tours of the Caribbean, Mexico and finally, Guatemala.
Les’s bank robbery skills didn’t start out as sophisticated as they ended. He developed them as he went along, rejecting the “how to” information he picked up in prison, and finally coming up with an “M.O.” that earned him the nickname The Gentleman Bandit. Les mostly worked alone and used a professional appearance, often wearing a nice suit and carrying a briefcase to allay his prey’s suspicions. He gave the impression he was a millionaire with money to transfer from another bank. By making appointments with bank managers and timing his robberies to coincide with lunch hours or just prior to closing time, Les was able to succeed in every bank he robbed. His calm and polite manner avoided panic and the need for gunplay.
Les used smarts, tactics, persuasion and moments of brilliance to rob banks. His best skill was being able to scope out the banks that had the right “robbing attributes” that he was looking for. Early on, he discovered that male bank employees would try to be heroic, so he looked for all-female staffs. He would thoroughly calculate and plan very creative getaways using stolen and planted vehicles. Many times he used boats, and once, even a stolen plane. He used the best electronics of the day, such as police scanners and police radios. Often he carried electronic components with prominently blinking LEDs to know if the bank staff had tripped the alarms—or at least he tricked them into thinking his devices detected alarms. All of his acquired skills were self-taught using his own ingenuity, patience and practice. He even taught himself how to fly an airplane, and became a skilled sailor.
I calculate that Les stole over $2 million dollars over his twenty year bank robbing career. He pulled off incredible bank robberies where he came away with huge sums of money, and others that failed completely. Both kinds of “jobs” are here in this story, and some are incredibly funny. He didn’t take himself very seriously, and he never let ego get in his way. Les is not a violent man; in fact he was fairly scared of danger, so he usually left when the situation turned dangerous.
After his amazing jail escape, Les eluded authorities for over ten years before his surrender. There were U.S. Marshals and FBI agents dedicated to his capture that followed him wherever he went, even outside American borders. They spread untruths to entire communities. Using the TV show “America’s Most Wanted,” they devoted many episodes to cast the widest dragnet possible in hopes of making a capture. The FBI raided the homes of relatives and friends in towns wherever he went. Many people were interrogated simply because they had talked to Les, and amazingly most of them forgave Les for the treatment they got by the authorities simply because he was such a good friend. Most of these people, once they knew what Les did for a living, didn’t turn him in or even testify against him, and their lives were worse afterward for it.
My Involvement
Les is my uncle—he is my mother’s brother. After he was imprisoned in 1996, he would send short stories about his life of crime to my mother (Mum) from time to time, and she would let me read and enjoy them. Those tales were funny, adventurous, exciting. . . and best of all, true. Mum cherished the letters and her relationship with Les and never failed to love him with all of her heart.
When I would share these letters with my friends, everyone was astounded. I knew that there was a book there from the beginning.
I wanted to document those letters, put them in writing and make them available for future generations. Mum kept the hand- and sometimes typewritten-letters in a plastic bin. I just knew that over the years they were going to get ruined and lost to the world. So, in 2000, I gathered the stories and put them in the computer. I ended up with an incomplete mishmash that was completely without any timeline. I sent these stories to Les in hopes that he would arrange the order for me, and instead he started over and helped me write his story. The new story was chronologically correct, but it lacked the details of the individual tales, so I used the original, detailed stories to supplement the larger, less developed and newer version.
With the help of interviews with people Les was close with, and researching the robberies through court documents, testimonials, newspaper articles and television shows, the result is a detailed, chronologically correct life story that focuses on the highlights of Les’s life of crime and adventures. The text you’ll find in italics are my comments or narrative fill-ins.
I tried to contact the authorities for information for this book, but the U.S. Marshal’s agency didn’t have any record of the people who visited the families during Les’s reign whose business cards I had obtained. After the escape, every family member got visited by the FBI on the anniversary of Les’s escape every year, and you could count on it. Les’s crimes, at the time this book was written, were all over twenty years old. The agents have a mandatory retirement of twenty or so years. So even if Les were their first case, they still would have been retired by the time I came looking for them. The Marshall’s human resource agency wouldn’t forward a message or attempt to find people for me for obvious reasons.
The local FBI was uncooperative in helping me research information. The most cooperative people were the clerks or the stenographers that sold me transcripts from Les’s court cases they had kept in their archives. Although they didn’t turn out to be good sources of information for the book, they were interesting. I’m sure it would help to be a lawyer when reviewing these, but I do owe a big thank you to the lovely ladies all over the country who helped me graciously, (Les had a bunch of trials) and charged me little, to gather the information that I needed.
This started out as a project of documenting the individual stories for my Mum but has turned out to be one of the most gratifying goals I have ever accomplished. With having a full-time job, a full-time family with children, and keeping my life in a normal mode, I am very happy that I have completed this bigger-than-life goal. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I have.
Please note I have changed some names to protect the innocent and hide the guilty.
The Double
My partner, Bo, and I were pretty successful. So much so that we bought a condo in the Houston area, furnished it and had a car in the garage for an emergency getaway. We sat around night after night getting stoned and trying to come up with original ideas to make money. Since Bo was broke, we decided that we would do two banks, one after the other, and use the distraction of the first to reduce the police presence at the second. We also wanted a natural barrier between the banks, some type of separation that would slow down the response from the first bank to the second. The simplest would be mountains or a river, something natural. It was in the fall, so we wanted to stay in the South and didn’t want to go more than a day and a night away. We planned on taking my motor home and leaving my wife, Linda, and the car. We would be gone a week, max. Linda had no idea.
After scattering maps all over the floor, we came up with two possibilities. The first was East and West Memphis with the Mississippi River in between the two. The second was Baton Rouge with the same barrier. We ruled Memphis number two and turned our attention to Baton Rouge. The big city was on the east of the river, and little Baton Rouge on the west side was on the way home back to Houston. Things were coming together, and we took off going east on I-10.
We found a trailer court on Baton Rouge’s east side that was real low-key. Very easily, we acquired all the frequencies for the scanner. In town, we found very detailed maps of the entire community and fire department maps showing the grids that sometimes made a big difference as to how the police react to major crimes.
It was time to go to work and find every bank in the area and put them on our maps including cop shops, sub-stations, highway patrol and county sheriff stations. The biggest part of the city, about 400 thousand people, was separated by the river from the 20 thousand on the west, so it seemed logical that we would hit one on the east, come west and hit number two, then leave on the freeway west. Baton Rouge-proper was a big challenge. It is a southern town, with mostly blacks, with a medium to high crime rate—that meant a lot of police. Our frequency director books showed how many cop cars and radios, how many hand-helds (street cops) and how many repeaters, and the same research went into the highway trooper and parish cops. Most of the time, we listened to the scanners main net for crimes and how they were handled. Although by law all the radio transmitting in the U.S. must have a license from the FCC, the cops would use a few other frequencies for their top crimes that they for sure didn’t want people to listen to. If a crime happened, the dispatcher might say, “All detectives to Tac Number One.” People don’t know about the frequency, so they didn’t get to listen. When this happened, I would turn my scanner to scan and try to find the frequency they were on. After a few nights and a weekend, I could begin to figure out their methods of operation, including where their “eyes in the skies” were and their hours as well. It was information that could make or break a good robbery.
During the next few days, we decided on a bank. We checked, and rechecked, and checked again the car transfer point and getaway. We used right turns only, because a left turn could turn into two-to-three minutes of waiting for traffic. We also developed a place where two people could get out of one car and into another without any witnesses. It would have looked very suspicious if we were seen. In practice, sometimes we would just pull up and one person would get out and follow the other for a couple blocks, then the driver would stop and get out. On all our jobs, it was something we worked out. On this job, we had to figure out if we were going to keep the first car or take time to switch before crossing the bridge to the second bank.
We went through the want ads to find a reliable junker for the first car, and maybe a second. We couldn’t make up our minds if we needed one or two cars, so we decided to go with two to be safe: a white Chevy and a black Volvo. Both cars looked liked shit, but they fit our criteria of quick-starting, had OK tires and up-to-date tags and inspection stickers.
Finally, we decided on our first bank, which was staffed by women. It was about two-and-a-half miles from the big bridge. It was sort of on the edge of a residential area. There was an easy exit to the main street and an adjacent residential street where we could change cars or follow the street all the way back to the bridge on-ramp by staying off the main avenue. For some reason, cops always want to go to the bank after it’s been robbed. They know you won’t be there, but they still go. It was important that these on-the-scene law-types were misled from the start. We always made it a point to give a witness a good look at the getaway car, since that information would be relayed to the cops—say a white Chevy with tags number so-and-so—but that car would never be on the road for more than a couple minutes and never on a main street. If we did it right, the car would be left somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for a while and that would give us plenty of safe time to leave the area.
The second bank was quite small, with three women and one drive-up window. We liked drive-up windows, since they would have more money on certain days like the first and the fifteenth for local paydays. That bank had a great getaway. Three blocks after leaving, we would head for the back roads that could get us to a west-bound freeway rest area—a slick getaway. It all looked good, except we didn’t want to leave the Volvo at the rest area. If it was found too fast, it would show another car transfer going west. We didn’t want to drive the Volvo down the freeway behind the motor home, or to someplace else to ditch it. We decided to leave the car at a 7-Eleven about eight blocks from the trailer park, which was far enough to distance the Volvo from the park. We would walk to the motor home with backpacks.
Next, we had to decide when we wanted to do the job. The first bank would be the big money bank, since it was located right at the end of a small mall, so it would have the night deposits. That meant the best time was Monday morning before the armored truck did its pick-up. Bank Two was just a potluck; we really didn’t know what to expect. It was small enough that we could take our time and clean out the vault, and we thought we might just get lucky and find some gold coins or something valuable. So we decided that Monday at approximately 9:45 a.m. was our target. The bank opened at nine, so the rush would probably be over. We had to get there before the armored car pick-up came. If we timed it right, the money would be in the bags just waiting for us, and we would use the remainder of the time to pick up the rest in the vault.
The rest of the week, we worked to finish all the details. We wanted traveler’s checks—American Express was the best. We didn’t want to try to get those at Bank One because it would take too much time and more bags. We planned on taking some blank cashier’s checks if they were easy, but we mainly planned on going for all the twenties, fifties and hundreds. If there were customers in the lobby we planned on just skipping the tellers, but if the lobby was relatively empty, Bo would pick up their money while I dealt with the manager and the vault clerk.
At night, we just sat and watched television, smoking a pipe or two.
On Saturday, we went to a flea market we’d heard about. We weren’t really shopping for anything, just looking around. I heard Bo yell from across a table to come check something out. He thought we could use a flare kit from a yacht that included a flare pistol and a smoke bomb. It said on the package that it produced dense smoke—dense smoke? Bo thought it was perfect for a diversion! It said it was a yellow and orange smoke and burned for 150 seconds, so we decided to buy it and check it out. There were three smoke canisters, a flare pistol, six flares and dye packs. The guy wanted a hundred bucks for the kit. We thought that was expensive, so we passed.
Later, while we were eating and having a beer, we talked about that flare kit. The more we talked, the more we liked the idea of a diversion with non-toxic smoke, so we decided to go back and dicker with this guy. I was worried that if we did that, he would remember us. So once we got back there, I spotted a kid about fifteen or sixteen wandering around and looking sort of out of place, but not a thief. I yelled at him, and he came over. I told him he could earn ten bucks if he ran an errand, and he said sure. I told him what I wanted and for him to take this $100 and buy it. I told him that he was to give him $90 for it, and he would get to keep the change, or get it for $80 and keep twenty, I didn’t care. I also told him if he ran off with my $100 I would find him. He came back in about ten minutes with the kit. He said he’d paid $90, and we were cool with it. The kid was happy too.
On the way back to the trailer park, we decided to see if we could put the flare in the air handler at the mall by the bank with a timer to go off as we left Bank One. It for sure would keep the cops occupied for an hour or so as we did Bank Two, even though it was across the river. Who knew what kind of response would take place, if any? But it would guarantee our exit to the river bridge. But how were we going to make it pop on a certain time? We figured a battery-powered alarm clock and an old fashioned flash bulb—the kind with a lot of fine wire inside that flared bright when electricity was applied. So we then had to find some of those old types of flash bulbs, and we instantly thought of K-Mart! We got everything we needed back to the motor home, and the room looked like a light bulb-making plant. We had two alarm clocks, wires, tape, two smoke canisters and batteries. But the problem was the clock couldn’t be set for longer than twelve hours, which meant we had to plant it at nine the night before. We went ahead and made up our smoke bombs: we cracked the glass on the bulb and inserted it into the smoke powder and sealed everything up real tight. We took one way down a country road to try it out, but it was late at night and very dark. It still made a ton of smoke and worked good, so now we had to figure out how to get the gizmo in front of the air handler for the air conditioning, which was on the roof. Bo and I drove over late on Saturday night, and there was a ladder to the roof that we could get to if we parked the car next to the building and got on the car roof. Bo volunteered and took one of our hand-held radios and went up to check it out. Back down he came—piece of cake. The plan was to set it on the roof, right in front of the air pick-up, and it had to work. Even if it just went up in the air we would get some response.
On Sunday, we positioned the Volvo to run through the getaway route, but it was not a real test of the traffic, since it was the weekend. It was better than no test, though. We couldn’t take the white Chevy to the trailer park, so we picked an apartment complex to store it in. I called Houston and talked to Linda. Then we ran the getaway twice more, but didn’t foresee any problems. The Volvo was still OK, and we made certain that it would start. Sunday night around midnight we circled the mall and tried to find the security people, but evidently they were inside. Bo hopped up on the hood as we pulled around the back of the store to the ladder, and up he went. Two minutes later he was back, and we were on. At the last minute, we decided we’d had the white Chevy at the trailer park for too long, so we traded it for the Volvo just to be sure. We thought if they did link the Chevy to the bank we would be OK.
By Monday, we had gone through the steps at least ten times and felt we were all set—no worries. We headed off to Bank One fairly confident. Bo parked the Volvo almost right in front of the bank’s no parking area, and I went inside. I knew the name of the manager through our homework, and asked for the woman by name. The manager came over and asked if she could help me. I told her I was moving here from Charleston and needed a new bank and had some questions about them.
“Please come in!” she said and took me back to her cubicle. I took a seat with my back to the lobby. As she sat down, I handed her an envelope from my suit inside pocket. She took the envelope and opened it. As she did, I started to arrange my equipment on her desk starting with the two-way radio. Then as she looked up from the note with questions on her face, I pulled the scanner out of my other pocket and set it on the desk with a twist of the knob to show her it was on.
I gave her my “Don’t turn this into a homicide” speech; that I wasn’t alone and was monitoring her alarm system and the police, and should a call come through I would shoot her.
I told her to call her vault clerk over. As she was getting the vault clerk’s attention, I picked up the hand-held and called Bo and told him to come in. Then I put it back down on the desk. I took a folded nylon bag out of my attaché case.
When the clerk came over, I told the manager to let her read the note, too. I then told the vault clerk to sit down in the other chair. She looked at me hard, so I opened my coat revealing my shoulder holster and the butt of the gun, but I didn’t make any effort to take it out or touch it at all.
“Are you going to cooperate?” I asked her.
Of course, she said yes. I repeated that I was monitoring the alarm system and was not alone.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
I told her I was going to sit there with her boss and wait while she filled the bags with all the twenties, fifties and hundreds from the vault. “Don’t short me, since I know approximately how much is available. And I want the bank bags you’ve got ready for the armored car given to the fellow at the counter right now!”
She got right up, went inside the vault and came out with two bulking bags and set them on the counter. Bo grabbed them and headed for the car. The next three to four minutes dragged by with the manager sitting there staring at me as I watched the bank go about its business. I couldn’t tell if anyone was aware of anything.
Finally, the clerk returned and handed me the bag. Then she just stood there.
I told her: “Go to the tellers and have them put all of their twenties, fifties and hundreds on the counter. If one dye pack is handed to my partner, I’ll shoot your boss.”
There were three tellers, and as Bo was picking up the money very calmly, a couple came in and sort of looked at him and went to a teller. He had just left that window, but the clerk showed no emotion. Bo finished up, and we both met at the door almost at the same time. I had picked up the radio, scanner, attaché case and the bag of money, I was loaded. I couldn’t have got at my gun if I wanted to!
We went out and Bo got in the driver’s seat. The Chevy fired right up. We calmly pulled away with no one running out to look at us or anything threatening. We left a trail straight to the main drag, then two rights back behind the mall to our residential road to the bridge.
Bo tapped his ear piece as I played with the scanner bands. “We got smoke,” he said. “The smoke bomb went off on schedule.”
We picked up the Volvo and threw in my two bags, attaché case and Bo’s two bags. Two minutes later, we were on the bridge. After two exits, we turned off and pulled into a furniture store parking lot and put the bags in the trunk and committed ourselves to Bank Two, which was six blocks away. All was quiet on the scanner on that side of the river. Not much was on the east side news—except a bank robbery and smoke at the mall! They said two men in suits, armed, left in a white sedan—but they didn’t have the tags. That was great.
We thought we would wait and more action would cover us, but after fifteen minutes Bo said, “Let’s do it!” Then my adrenaline really went up.
We pulled into the bank lot, and there was only one car, plus the cashiers’ cars on the side. I parked almost in front, out of the line-of-sight, but as close to the door as possible. I got out with the attaché case, went in and walked straight over to the counter where I waited. There was only one customer at a teller, and I had to wait—funny! No wonder people hate banks. I waited until someone looked up and saw me, but the lady who asked if she could help me wasn’t the manager.
I ran the line about being a new customer, but she said she could handle it. So I said, “I’m looking for a personal-type bank and I’d like to sit down with a manager.”
What could she say but, “One moment.”
She went over to the manager’s desk. Instead of motioning me over to her desk, the manager got up and came over to the counter.
This is not going right. I stood firm and asked, “Can we sit down and go over my requirements for a new bank?”
“OK, sure, come in,” she said.
At the end of the counter was a little swing door with a clever little finger lock combination to open from the inside, but she opened it and signaled me past. I couldn’t see how she opened it, but I decided to worry about that later. We sat down and she introduced herself. I just pulled out the same robbery letter that I had just used across the river and handed it to her.
She read it and asked, “Are you serious?”
“Yes, ma’am. Are you going to cooperate or am I going to have to shoot you?” I replied.
“Oh, of course I’ll cooperate.”
“Please call your vault clerk over.”
“We don’t have a vault clerk. I have the responsibility for that,” she said.
I told her, “Hold on a second.” I made her wait until Bo came in. I turned on the scanner and told her it was monitoring her alarm system. Bo’s timing was perfect, so the manager and I got up. At that time there was nobody in the place but us.
The manager told the other girls, “These men are robbing us. Please cooperate with them.”
Bo further told the cashiers what to do and what would happen if he found a money pack of bait or a dye pack in the money they gave him.
The manager and I went to the vault. She opened the large stainless steel door of the safe. I opened my case and handed her a nylon bag. She filled it, and I asked her, “Is this all?”
She said, “The rest is at the teller’s cages.” Which meant that Bo had already gotten that cash.
“OK, I said, let’s go.” As we passed her desk, I picked up the scanner. It was silent.
I hopped over the gate and I was out! I said, “Thank you for your cooperation and don’t come outside!” And we ran out.
We’d left the key in the trunk lock to save time. Bo threw his bag in the trunk. I kept my bag and case with me, hopped in the driver’s seat and started out. The car was moving when Bo hopped in.
Our exit was made to look like we were heading for the freeway, but of course we turned the other way in two blocks and headed down our getaway to the back of the trailer park. We always carried a box of plastic garbage bags in case we got lucky, and our bags were not adequate. It was the kind of job we hoped for—the mother lode! In fact, we had too many bags to carry in one trip!
We parked in our chosen spot, and it was totally cool. There wasn’t anybody around in any direction. I kept a box knife in my case, and I sure was happy because the bank bags had a lock on them. We needed to dump them into a plastic garbage bag to be able to make just one trip. There wasn’t all that much money, but it was just too many bags to carry. And it would look mighty weird to be seen carrying four bank bags, two smaller bags and my case. So we cut the bags and dumped them all into two plastic garbage bags, and it made a much better load. We had worn ladies nylon gloves, like panty hose, that came in all shades. I don’t know what they were for, perhaps glove liners, but they were great. They left no prints in the cars.
I left the keys in the Volvo and hefted a bag over my shoulder that also had my suit coat and shoulder holster in it.
Before we left the car, we took a moment to think back about if we forgot anything. Bo asked, “Do we have everything?”
Everything seemed fine. “OK, let’s go!” I said. With my tie-less white shirt and sleeves rolled up I didn’t look too bad. It seemed like a long walk to the back of the trailer park, but it really wasn’t. It was just the adrenaline pumping. We were on the home stretch! If a cop drove by, he would have surely given us a look, but none did. Ten minutes later, we entered the back of the park and crossed to the motor home. As far as we could tell, nobody noticed.
It was weird, but right then I started shaking so bad I had trouble with the key. Once inside, we high-fived, mixed a strong shot and downed a beer. Bo turned on the scanner, and they were just then talking about us. They had a great description of the Volvo and the tag numbers. I hoped some high school kid would steal the car before it was found. Bo wanted to stay, count the money and get high, but I vetoed that.
I told him, “You can count the money on the freeway. We are out of here!”
I unhooked the power cord, water and sewer hose and pulled around to the office to check out. We owed nothing extra. I went over to the phones and called Linda to tell her we were on the freeway, coming home. Back in the office, I bought a twelve-pack of beer and a bag of ice for our little cooler. Then we hit the road. I set the cruise control for two miles an hour over the posted speed limit and stayed in the right lane. We had 340 miles and six hours to go. I hit the stereo to hear, “On the Road Again”!
Bo had a ball counting the money and finding little surprises: a few gold coins, some two dollar bills, a big handful of cashier’s checks that were blank and traveler’s checks. Not a bad two weeks! It was a bit hard on the nerves, but considering we made about $40 thousand in a week each, it was worth it!
Trouble from Birth
Leslie Ibsen was born on March 8th, 1940, in Seattle, Washington to Harald and Dorothy Rogge. He was the first of three children with a younger sister, Jeannie (my mom, or Mum), and much younger brother, Rob. Les was named by his mother after his grandfather. The family lived in a town called Hoquiam until he was thirteen. He lived in Seattle until about fifteen, and then Edmonds, Washington, a middle class post-WWII neighborhood near the Puget Sound. Harald was a civil engineer and a salesman. Les’s mother, Dorothy, was a beautician. Life was upper-middle class and normal.
In life, I’m not sure why some people turn left and some people turn right, but Les turned his own direction at a very early age. Early family stories have Les shooting out the streetlights in his Hoquiam neighborhood before his teen years, and stealing his first car at the ripe old age of thirteen. Granted it was his father’s car, and he stole it from his own garage for a daytime joyride. Jeannie remembers Les screaming down the family driveway in his father’s car at the end of his daytime joyride followed by police cars. Les ran into the house, past Dad who stood guard and protected his son from the police by blocking the entrance.
Harald was an alcoholic. It was a huge problem for the family after Dorothy passed away in 1968 at fifty-four from complications from cancer. He died of alcohol-related symptoms in 1969 at the age of fifty-nine. My father and mother took in Rob when he was thirteen after their deaths, since Les was away, and basically raised Rob through school and beyond.
With the help of a cousin I’d never met, who lived in Seattle at the same time as my family, I found out that my people came from Bergen, Norway, by means of Detroit, Michigan, in about 1890 or so. All but a few of my family members were either shipbuilders or engineers of some sort, which doesn’t answer why I am so mechanically inclined, but it does raise other questions like: are these things in our genes? I have always loved boats and machinery. I am constantly fascinated by how things work and have been my entire life.
Around 1953 or 1954, I can’t remember exactly, I was home alone with my mom. I would have been about thirteen or fourteen at the time. We were living on 61st Street in Seattle, and a longtime friend of my mom’s stopped by to show her the new car that her husband had just bought for her. It was a brand new 1953 Cadillac Eldorado—the first year for that model—and it was gorgeous! It was maroon red with white leather interior, power windows that were new at that time, and it rode like you were sitting on a big marshmallow. Cadillac was the premier car at the time.
After her friend left, I told Mom, “You should buy a Cadillac like that!”
She said, “There’s no way we can afford a car like that.”
I was so impressed with the car that I told her, “Someday I’ll rob a bank to buy you one.”
She laughed at me and said, “OK, but make sure it’s a red one!”
I didn’t exactly keep my promise, but I did rob a bank and buy one for me! They were my favorite!
My attention after that turned to all things cars. While my dad was in his favorite club having a couple of drinks with his friends, he gave me the option of waiting in the lobby or in the car—but he didn’t trust me with his keys. There really wasn’t any reason for me to have the keys since the radio stations were boring for kids in those days. Most autos around that time had an ignition switch and a starter button. To get the button to work, you had to have the key turned on. That presented a problem that I just had to solve—because I wanted to start that car!
After studying the back of the key switch—which meant looking up behind the dash of Dad’s Ford Mercury—I found the answer to my problem. I decided that all the switch did was connect the wires together when turned on—no big mystery. I could connect the wires from the back of the switch, and then the start button would work. I connected the wires together and the starter howled! Then I found the one fat wire that did this and it all became clear. After a few trials, I discovered that if the key was turned to the left, the radio would work, but the start button would not. I needed a gizmo with alligator clips to attach to the wires on the back of the key switch and one wire that clipped to the fat wire that had to work for a moment. At home, I found that a doorbell button would work for that.
In my bedroom with the stuff that I had found in my dad’s workshop, I created a gizmo with four alligator clips with a button attached. With this attached to the back of any switch, I could start a car in seconds after ducking under the dash for a moment. Success! That led to the next stage—start the car and drive!
Hotel Edmundson was on the corner of 45th and one block off of University in the U district of Seattle where I transferred buses to go home from school. In the basement of this hotel was a garage full of cars with nobody around—and all unlocked, as cars tended to be in those days. They didn’t have keys in the ignition, so that was where my gizmo was field-tested. It was a very gratifying experience to be able to defeat Detroit’s effort at car security, and I got to drive any car at Hotel Edmundson that I wanted.
Being a kid, I didn’t think too far in advance. I should have known that a sudden abundance of abandoned Ford and Mercury cars around my neighborhood would soon bring the police knocking on our door. Someone had noticed me leaving one of the cars and walking home. That experience, of course, only showed me that there were broader horizons to explore. How about driving a nice car all night or for an entire weekend? Thus a career was born.
Somehow, after all that, I managed to talk myself into a driver’s license of my own. I believe the deal was at fifteen I could drive in the daytime if I was a farm boy (which I was not). I managed to persuade my sweet old mom into signing me up for one under those conditions. I bought my first car for twenty dollars—an old Chevy Sedan with a driveshaft problem; it wouldn’t drive. We lived in a nice but tiny house with no room to park a disabled car. But across the street, our neighbor had some room. I talked him into letting me park my Chevy in his yard while it was under repair. My dad said I wouldn’t ever be able to fix it in a driveway—which was the only reason I was allowed to buy it in the first place. He thought I would never get it running. The enclosed front universal joint was broken, and that necessitated removing the entire drive train. That was not a driveway job! I was determined to get that thing running so I could drive it.
Taking the entire car apart was beyond me, but then I found out the library was good for something other than homework. I found a picture of my problem in a repair manual, and that wonderful book showed me all sorts of stuff that I was wondering about and stuff my dad was tired of telling me about. One Saturday, while my neighbors and my folks were partying, my Chevy and I took our first drive. My own car—it was bliss. Of course, when my folks found out that I got it running they grounded me, but it was short-lived. Insurance was a priority for Dad, so he covered his ass by adding the Chevy to his business. Soon though, the Chevy wasn’t good enough, as some of my friends didn’t want to be seen in it—not to mention the girls’ reactions. So my next goal was a better car.
One of my Dad’s salesmen quit or got fired, but his company car was parked at our house. It was obvious to me that the car needed a caretaker. It was a ’55 Ford—less than a year old—a two-door, blue-on-blue, straight-stick with a radio. Even though it was a square car, it was very nice. Dad let me drive it on dates, and I talked Mom into letting me drive it more. That turned into almost every day after school. “Be home before Dad,” she would tell me. At that time, Dad was doing big things, and he wasn’t home much. Mom had my little sister to care for, and my brother just showed up, so I was sort of the man around the house.
I managed to acquire about forty speeding tickets in one summer during my early high school days. I was called into court to face the judge. I couldn’t pay the fines, and knew I faced jail time if I didn’t think of something—fast. So I just started talking to the judge. I’m not sure what happened, but I just kept talking and talking. Next thing you know, the judge said he felt sorry for me, and set me free!
I got thrown out of Roosevelt High School. The school principal was a crusty old guy who didn’t put up with anything. That meant I had to go to Ballard High School, which was way across town. I was mostly driving to school at this time, and only home to beg for gas money. Then everything changed. Dad sold the car, and we moved to Edmonds, north of the city, to a nice big brick house with a bedroom for each of us, and a big driveway with a two-car garage and lots of trees. It was very nice. Mom’s Dad and Mom had passed away, and she inherited her own car that was a nice Dodge. Dad started his succession of Chryslers where he got a fancy new one each year; money wasn’t a problem then. I got a job at the corner gas station pumping gas, and my mom cosigned a note so I could buy my own car—a 1950 Ford Coupe.
At the gas station, I was working nights mostly on my own car. I put every new part on it that I could swipe. It was my senior year of high school when my girlfriend Lois and I decided to run away. I swiped all the credit cards I could find in my dad’s desk in the basement—he had to have them all since they were a new thing. So Lois and I took off for ten weeks using dad’s credit cards; we drove the Ford everywhere. We never needed cash because at gas stations I would say, “Put a case of oil on the card.” Instead of giving me the oil, I’d ask for cash instead. This worked out lovely.
Of course, we had nowhere to go, and after calling home, we returned. Lois’s mom wanted me thrown in jail for violating her daughter. I ended up going to juvenile court. The judge told me, “The girl’s mom wants you out of the picture, so I’ll give you four choices—now pick a service. It’s time you grew up.”
I picked the Navy for the boats, and away I went to boot camp in 1957.
After finishing boot camp I was assigned to radar school in San Francisco and then a destroyer out in San Diego which was real close to Mexico! After a couple of years of cruising around the South Pacific, I was transferred to Long Beach, California, and another destroyer. I was a Quartermaster and not liking the dark radar room. I wanted to be on the bridge where the action was. So that didn’t work out for me very well.
I had my first set of phony I.D. and started tending bar at night. I was driving a car that I had tested—with every intention of buying—but I just kept it. Although I got caught and had to serve a few months in jail for the car theft before returning to the Navy, it wasn’t until I went AWOL for the second time that I was discharged from the Navy under Less than Honorable Conditions.
My Navy days came to an end in 1961, just like my time at my four different high schools, but I had learned some good useful skills for my career ahead as well as completing my GED.
After his Navy days, Les was to spend some minor time in a jail for cashing some non-sufficient checks and a petty theft charge while he was in Long Beach, California. When he was being arraigned, he talked the judge out of being arrested on the spot and into letting him drive himself to the jail facility. He was going to serve sixty days and three years probation, but since the charges were misdemeanors they didn’t come looking for him when he simply didn’t report for jail.
Les got married in 1962, and he and Joan had a good relationship. She really loved Les—as did everyone. She was wild, too, so their lifestyle was very fun-loving. When Les’s children Troy and Tracy were young, Les’s mom would babysit until she became ill with cancer. They were close to the family and used to go out with his sister, Jeannie (Mum), and her husband Joe. Joan was close with Jeannie during the first few years—they were only eighteen months apart and enjoyed each other. As Les’s adventures grew, he was too wild to be a good father, and she could not put up with the irresponsibility any longer.
In 1966, I managed a 76 Union gas station at the bottom of Queen Ann Hill in Seattle, with a large parking area. People often came to me, asking me to help them get a car for a good price, so I did that from time to time.
A customer of mine called. “I’ve got to have one of the new Eldorados in triple black—damn the cost!”
The ’67 Cadillac Eldorados were out and extremely hot. Every big roller wanted one, but back then Cadillac allotted cars to dealers. You could never get all the cars you wanted, and with the Eldos it was worse—I think my friend the Cadillac dealer was allotted about fifteen for the year. New, they sold loaded for about $8 to 9 thousand. What the guy wanted was another order of expensive: “triple black” meant black trim, black leather and a black padded top. Well shit, we were talking about $10 thousand! That was some money in those days (my rent was about $150). So I decided to try and get one.
I called my friend Wild Bill who was living in Long Beach, California. We used to own a dragster together when I lived down there. Wild Bill was also in the car business, and I told him I’d pay him a grand if he could find a triple black Eldo for me in his area. He told me, “For a grand, I’ll send my lot boy out to steal one tonight!”
I really didn’t believe him, and we had a good laugh.
Two days, later he called to tell me, “I got your Eldo. What do you want me to do with it!?”
I said, “Oh shit, really? Let me call you back.”
I called the customer: “I found a triple black Eldorado, but it’s going to cost $2 thousand over window sticker, in cash.” There was no way I could finance a bootlegged new car.
He told me, “I’ve been calling all over the country and haven’t found one for sale. I can’t believe you found one!”
“The car’s in Detroit. It may have a few miles on it, but don’t worry about it. I’ll have it driven out here.”
So he jumped on it. I asked him to come by the lot and give me a good deposit and sign the papers.
When he came in, I had him sign an application for a title form. I used the same procedure I’d developed when a friend who left his Ford with me died. I sold it to someone and just wrote it up as a new car sale, ignoring the previous registration.
I wired Wild Bill $1,000. He said he liked the car so much he and his old lady were going to drive it up personally. I sent him the good plates and paperwork to avoid any problems with the cops if the car happened to be stopped.
When Wild Bill arrived, we had a hell of a party. I had the car detailed, waxed and delivered the next day. All went well, and Bill and his lady went to the airport to go home.
The next week, my phone was ringing off the hook—the triple black guy had told all his friends, and I had to do some thinking.
I went to my boss, who owned Cadillac Square, and told him, “I have a line on a couple Eldos to bootleg. How mad are you going to be if I make some sales?”
He said, “More power to you. I can’t get any more anyway.” He really didn’t mind, but of course he didn’t know they were stolen either.
By then, the triple black guy had gotten his paperwork from the state and all was well. The only problem with the whole thing was the numbers on the first couple of cars were just made-up typos on the VIN numbers on the title applications, but that couldn’t continue. We had to come up with the numbers because someone was sooner or later going to have some warranty work done. In those days, you had a card with a metal stamp that you used for your warranty claims. The dealer would do the work, then put this card in a machine that would stamp all the info out so he could get paid from Cadillac. The Eldorados always had warranty work—the workmanship was terrible.
We started buying a lot of two- to three-year-old Cadillacs from Detroit new Caddy dealers and had them shipped to Seattle. We sandblasted underneath the chassis, gave them an undercoat and polish, then detailed them to look like new. We bought ten to fifteen cars a month from this one dealer, and they always treated us right. We gave the used car manager fifty dollars a week under the table for selling us the pick of the lot. I managed to talk my boss into letting me go back to talk to this guy since we’d only talked on the phone and nobody had ever met him. I went back to try to find some limos, Eldos and older convertibles and so forth. Well, that was for the company. What I really wanted was numbers to put on the cars I was selling. Jackpot!
Detroit was like the movies; it’s all who you knew and how much money you had. This guy told me he could get warranty cards from the factory for cars that’d never been sold—damaged, wrecked, used for tests etc., no problem—for $100 each. I told him I wanted all he could get!
I took this information to my lawyer, who happened to be the ex-federal district attorney, and I told him the whole story. He was amazed and couldn’t see what could go wrong. Now we were really rolling! I had cars coming in from California and Nevada weekly, and I was making $30 to 35 thousand a week. Of course, I was a big shot then!
I had a fight with Joan and ended up moving out. To “celebrate,” I bought a Porsche, a Cessna, a drag boat, some motorcycles and threw some money down on a penthouse.
I had two great years of that before the hammer came down. I was charged with transporting stolen vehicles. Everyone was stunned. They just thought I was a good car salesman!
Les was sent to jail just after his mom died in 1968. The authorities let him come to his dad’s funeral in September of 1969. After I was born, my parents took me to visit him at McNeil Island.
The Start of a Career
After Joan left him for his wrong-doings—taking the children with her—Les moved away from the Seattle-area and settled down in eastern Washington. There he met Linda, and they soon got married. They lived out in the country on a nice-sized piece of property that Les purchased to build a house and start a new life.
This time, life was going to be normal.
This time.
About two years after I got out of jail, around 1975, I was living in eastern Washington and building a house with my second wife, Linda. A friend from prison, named Fat Joe, showed up with a new rental car and lots of pocket money. We drank beer and told stories for about a week. He told me he’d just robbed a bank somewhere in Seattle and wanted me to go with him to do another. Of course, I said that there was no way I was going to do something that stupid. He kept hammering away at me over the bees.
The fact was, I needed the money to finish the house. Linda was working, but the house was costing way more than we thought it would. There was no well dug on the property. We hadn’t even thought of that when we bought it. That was going to cost about five thousand dollars. The pump was going to cost another four thousand dollars, and then we needed a pump house, wiring, etc. Linda and I had been hauling water every day for the past year into the house, and it was getting damn old.
Joe finally broke me down to the point that I would go look at this bank he had picked out in Olympia. So we drove over through Seattle in his rental car to take a look.
After we checked out the bank, I realized I didn’t like it, but the getaway was what sold me on the idea. All I had to do was stand by the door with a ski mask and he would do everything else. The plan was to rob the bank that was in a mall, and we would never leave the area. We would simply drive around back, go through a fence, down a gully and up a little hill to another part of town with the rental car parked right there.