The End of the Dream (30 page)

They might have added that Hollywood was smart as hell, as cunning as a fox, and slippery as an eel. He seemed to rob banks not only when he needed money, but when he needed an adrenaline rush. He also appeared to know what might happen before it actually did and prepared himself for any eventuality. Shawn Johnson thought of a father-son team who had run rampant through banks back in Wisconsin. They had been the same way, there wasn’t a trick in the book of bank security that they hadn’t anticipated, and they’d been almost impossible to catch.

Hollywood was another take-over robber made of the same cloth. He wasn’t going to be easy, he clearly enjoyed the game too much. Shawn had sat behind the wheel of the cars they had recovered and tried to think like the man who had sat there before him. Surely, someone who had been revved up by the excitement and fear that had to come with the act of robbing a bank at gunpoint must have left some essence of himself behind.

But he came up with nothing beyond his own sense of frustration.

The task force members took a map of Seattle and put flags in the spots where the target banks were. The flags clustered in the northeast sector, but then there were a few scattered miles away.

However, there were none at all in the south end of Seattle. Did he hit the north end because his friends, business connections, and home base were all south? Mike Magan wanted to catch Hollywood so much he found himself thinking about him day and night. He wanted the satisfaction of putting handcuffs on him and leading him out of a bank some bank, somewhere. Mike’s concern was that Hollywood would escalate the violence that had to be just beneath the surface of his take-charge attitude. He had always shown a powerful handgun to his victims, and now he’d added a Taser. Witnesses of the later robberies had described Hollywood as impatient and easily annoyed.

Worse, he had actually racked the cartridge into firing position. All it would take was a change of position of his trigger finger and someone could die. “What he was capable of doing, “ Magan said, “was far more important to me than who he was. I didn’t want to see anyone die.” Shawn Johnson certainly wanted to catch Hollywood too but his obsession was on finding out why Hollywood robbed banks. From what Shawn could tell, he didn’t fit the profile of most bank robbers who robbed to get money to buy heroin or cocaine. From experience, Shawn knew that most bank robbers spent only about thirty seconds to a minute inside the bank but Hollywood was almost leisurely in comparison, he was usually inside for three, four even five minutes. He had to have somebody outside who could alert him when a silent alarm went off.

Shawn wanted to know what drove the man, what Hollywood’s learning curve had been. He was no garden variety bank robber. Shawn longed for the day he could sit across an interview table from Hollywood, unmasked, and ask the questions that burned in his mind. When he was assigned to the task force, Shawn Johnson had posted a print that symbolized a Kwakiutl Indian legend over his desk. It was called “The Owl and the Wolf”, The two most revered hunting creatures among Northwest Coast Native Americans are the Wolf and the Killer Whale, neither of which were hunted for food. A person who acquired Spirit Power from the Wolf would become a very adept hunter. Native Americans tell of several incidents where wolves were seen herding game towards a hunter with exceptionally strong spirit alliance to Wolf. Owl is a supernatural being of the forest able to sense the proximity of game and watch over a hunt to insure its success. Shawn knew intuitively that it was going to take almost “a spirit alliance to Wolf” to beat Hollywood at his own game.
 
3On the evening of January 25, 1996, Mark Biggins, using an alias to buy his ticket, boarded a Greyhound bus headed for Eugene, Oregon. He would stay there overnight and catch a train for California the next day.
 
Although he didn’t know it, he was a patsy, he’d believed Scott when he said the take from the Wedgwood Interstate Bank was around $68,000. Mark had no idea it was more than twice that much. Scott gave him some of “his share, “ and promised him more after the money was laundered in Las Vegas. Once again, Mark had proved to be a less than adept accomplice.
 
During the robbery on January 25, Scott had yelled at him because he wasn’t standing near the doors as instructed. Of them all, Scott was the only one who seemed to come alive during the actual bank invasions, Steve had a modicum of safety because his only connection to what was going on inside was the radio, but Mark had been immobilized with fear just as he had been the first time. Steve didn’t know the true amount of the take either. He thought it was about $120,000. Scott gave him his “ten percent” $12,000. Although Steve still trusted Scott, he was annoyed that he had brought Mark Biggins back into the picture. Steve liked Mark well enough but he didn’t trust Traci Marsh. He knew Mark would tell Traci everything about what had happened in Seattle, and that could be dangerous to them. The fewer people who knew, the better. And Steve feared that telling Traci was akin to telling a dozen people.
 
After the First Interstate robbery, Steve drove to Portland, returned the rental Mazda van, and caught a plane for Las Vegas. Scott and Sabrina had already flown out of Se’tac International Airport. By nightfall, Scott and his two accomplices had all left the state of Washington.

Steve met up with Scott and Sabrina at the Sands Hotel. Steve and Scott talked about when they should schedule the next bank robbery.

Scott wanted to do it in May, and he wanted to hit another First Interstate. There seemed to be no breathing space. With one down, another popped up. Now, all three of their lives scott’s, Mark’s, Steve’s revolved around the next project, the next bank robbery. In between, they had enough money to live exactly as they liked but none of them had any real freedom any longer. For the moment, though, the three partners scattered. Steve went back to his house in New Orleans, and his mother came to spend Mardi Gras with him in February. Mark went back to Oxnard, Traci, and Lori. And Scott and Sabrina went again to the Seychelles Islands. The Puget Sound Violent Crimes Task Force took no vacations. Whether looking for a bank robber or a serial killer, there are basically only two approaches for detectives to take, reactive and proactive. So far, the task force had reacted, responding to the Hollywood bank robberies and gathering every morsel of information they could. But after fifteen robberies, evidence and information gathering techniques had produced so little. They had the bank cameras’ pictures of Hollywood but even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him from those. They had no fingerprints, he always wore gloves. They had no car identifications since he clearly used drop cars. Mike Magan was a proactive detective. His natural energy didn’t allow him to sit and wait for the next time Hollywood hit. The January 1999 robbery had shown him that Hollywood’s aggressiveness had been upped several notches, there were two men now and two more guns.

His hunger for cash was becoming insatiable, too. One of the other special agents on the task force, Don Glasser, a onetime standout football player from Utah and an ex-Navy Seal, had watched the escalation of Hollywood’s activities carefully, and he too was worried.

Glasser had served on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and on the security staff for the FBI’s Director, and he sensed an impending disaster.

Glasser told Mike Magan, “This could be a Miami in the making, “ referring to a deadly shoot-out on April 11, 1986, in Florida where two FBI agents ben Grogan and Jerry Dovehad been killed, and five others badly injured because they had underestimated the dangerousness of two particularly brutal bank robbers, Michael Platt and William Matix. The four-minute encounter has been called “the deadliest firefight in the history of the FBI.” Platt and Matix would no longer rob banks, they died in the gun battle too. Don Glasser warned Mike, “You need to be careful. This guy is deadly.” Even though he had never actually fired the Glock handgun he used to threaten bank personnel, no member of the task force discounted Hollywood’s potential for opening fire on anyone who came after him.

Nor did Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, who told reporters, “God help anyone who points at one of my officers.” Magan went to Bob Gebo, a longtime Seattle homicide detective who is particularly skilled in profiling unknown felons. Magan grinned, “All it cost me was a cup of coffee and I got some of the best advice I could hope for.” Magan pored over every report and follow-up that he could find about Hollywood, and he asked Gebo what it all meant.

As he listened, he nodded his head. Gebo was verifying everything that Mike believed to be true about the elusive bank robber, “He’s white, “ Bob Gebo theorized. “He’s about forty.

He’s well disciplinedhe’s a man who invests in himself his physical condition, how his actions will affect him. His cars are so clean that they’ve probably been through the car wash thirty times, and he’s willing to abandon’them if he has to. You say he’s left a couple of them behind, already? “ Magan nodded, and the Seattle Police profiling expert continued. “He’s been doing surveillance on the banks, he knows where the vaults are, he knows employees’ names, the key personnel, and about the alarms.

“ Bob Gebo continued. “He takes complete command. He starts out with a firm voice, but he escalates his demands if anyone balks or delay sand then he intimidates them.”

“Bob, “ Magan said, with some hesitation. “I think hemaybeacop.” Gebo didn’t blink.

“What makes you think so? “

“The way he positions his trigger fingerhe indexes it on the barrel the way we’re trained. He knows when the shifts change, and he hits around then when cops are at Roll Call. He knows that Union and Charlie sectors are the busiest we have, and he hits there. He knows how to set his lookout’s scanners to police frequency.” Magan paused. “He’s a cop or a true professional.

“

“So what you’re saying is that, if you corner this guy, he just puts on a cop coat and blends in? “

“He could, “ Mike nodded. “I think he has a van stashed someplace. I showed the bank pictures to my mothershe teaches dramaand she says he’d need time to put on that carefully sculpted makeup that he uses probably forty-five minutes to an hour at least. Some of the tellers said it looked real enough to be a bad plastic surgeon’s job. But my mom said that he could remove it all quickly with the right solvent. He could do that in a van.” Picturing Hollywood as a cop was an awful supposition.
 
If Hollywood was one of them, then they were going to have to keep their strategy within a relatively small group so that they wouldn’t alert him to their plans. “You’re not just looking for one guy, “ Gebo said.

“You have to realize that you’re looking for at least three maybe four.

And they’re going to be armed with heavy artillery. They’re going to have an advantage over you. What are you prepared to do?

“

“I guess I need to have the SWAT team, “ Magan said. “I’d bring them on board immediately.” When Scott returned to Washington State, he was gearing up to strike again. Steve had been summoned from New Orleans and Mark was on his way up from Oxnard, California. Although Mark spent a few days in Olympia, Scott sent him home, he and Steve had decided on a bank that didn’t need crowd control, the First Interstate on East Madison.

Scott and Steve used the same fool-proof MO they had successfully employed so many times before. The decoy station wagon was in place, and Steve circled the bank with his scanner on while Scott went in. As he watched and waited, his radio crackled with the news of a major fire with dozens of police units responding. How fortunate for Scott. He couldn’t have known about the fire that would draw police patrols away from the bank just as he robbed it.

It was almost as if some arcane force was giving him a hand.

Hollywood waltzed out of the bank with his duffel bag full of $114,978.
 
He had been pleasant enough as he said to people who stood anxiously in the center of the bank, “Stay there in the middle.

Don’t push any alarms. Don’t watch me leave, and I won’t be back to bother you. If you do, I will have to come back and hurt you.

“ Bother was an ambiguous word, that usually sounded fairly innocuous but coming from a bank robber with a gun in his hand, it was enough to keep everyone rooted to the spot. Steve and Scott were on the freeway headed south within fifteen minutes. What Steve didn’t know was that Scott had actually driven back through the area of the bank he’d just robbed. He was in a different vehicle, of course, his own Astrovan, and he had his makeup off.

But something in him craved that dangerous gesture of defiance. It had been such a rush to drive by police cars and think, Watch me, you dumb cops. I’m right here and you don’t even recognize me.

Trained detectives would have recognized Hollywood’s need to raise the stakes in the game, they had seen serial killers take similar chances.

Ted Bundy had taken two victims on one July day at a park where the Seattle police were having their annual picnic. When the excitement factor dipped, criminals addicted to a certain high deliberately dared police to catch them. And, if they got away with it, it was only a matter of time before they upped the ante again. On May 23, Shawn Johnson distributed a press release that might have pleased Scott Scurlock. It read: This robber has been nicknamed “Hollywood” because of the heavy costume makeup he wears to disguise his face. “Hollywood” has become the Seattle area’s most sought-after bank robber, having now robbed 14 banks in the last four years. A $50,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the robber..

.. Mike Magan was successfully clearing more than eighty percent of the three dozen cases that had been assigned to him since he’d joined the task force, but it was Hollywood he was fixated on.

Mike wasn’t even officially assigned to Hollywood’s case, but he didn’t care, he had made up his mind to catch him. In February 1996, FBSUPERVISORY Special Agent Ellen Glasser had replaced Mike Byrne as the head of the Puget Sound Violent Crimes Task Force. Ellen was Don Glasser’s wife and half of an FBI special agent couple. Ellen Glasser was a petite woman and a mother of four the very antithesis of the image most laymen have of an FBI agent. She was exceptionally good at her job, and had a great deal of field experience and a perceptive eye.