Ex-Con back in custody
Arrested in Berkeley with $1,000 in
his pockets
San Francisco Examiner - Jan. 17, 1981,
front page
By Dennis J. Opatrny
Phillip A. Thompson, the ex-convict
accused of several felonies and released without bail, was arrested
in Berkeley last night with $1,000 in his pockets.
After the release order was revoked,
Thompson's attorney, Martin Lurie, had said he expected his client
to surrender to authorities.
But when police traced him last night
to a Berkeley motel, they said Thompson had $1,000 in cash, another
$1,000 check, and appeared to be on the verge of fleeing.
He was arrested and transported here,
where he was logged into the county jail at the Hall of Justice
at 2 a.m.
Municipal Judge Louis Garcia's release
order had ruffled the feathers of police and prosecutors.
Last night Garcia, who said he was irked
at the criticism but would take responsibility, revoked his earlier
order granting Thompson, 35, release from jail on his own recognizance,
a legal way of saying his word was sufficient bail.
The judge's revocation of his order came
after criticism by Deputy Police Chief George Eimil and District
Attorney Arlo Smith.
Law enforcement officials said they considered
Thompson a poor risk to be granted freedom simply by promising
to return to court to face the charges on Jan. 21.
Ex-con back in custody after uproar over bail
Thompson was arrested Wednesday and
charged with multiple felony counts of grand theft, possession
of stolen property, illegal weapons possession and narcotics
violations.
Wednesday's arrest at the Hunters Point
warehouse came after police had set up surveillance there. He
was spotted carrying a gun into the warehouse. Police got a search
warrant, raided the warehouse and took him into custody.
Before that, however, they had followed
him to a house in Kensington, adjacent to Berkeley. Police said
they learned Thompson had been living there about a month.
Last night, acting on a search warrant,
police went to the Kensington house, found items linked to two
United Parcel Service hijackings last month, and also were able
to trace Thompson to the Flamingo Motel at 1761 University Ave.
in Berkeley.
He was released last August from state
prison after serving time for escape, receiving stolen property
and weapons violations.
When police raided the warehouse where
Thompson was arrested, they had also hoped to find a lead to
the whereabouts of Valerie McDonald, a 26-year-old artist and
aspiring actress who disappeared last November after reportedly
being offered a movie role.
McDonald, at the time of her disappearance,
lived at the Tower Apartments on Upper Grant Avenue, where Thompson
became the manager after his release from state prison.
It was there, police said, that Thompson
became associated with two ex-convicts he had known in prison,
John Gordon Abbott, 26, and Michael J. Hennessey, 23.
McDonald told friends she was offered
a part in a movie by Hennessey, but after she went to the closed
set for the filming, she was never seen again.
Hennessey later was shot to death by
Royal Canadian Mounted Police after he grabbed a gun which had
fallen out Abbott's pocket. Abbott was arrested by Mounties in
connection with the shootout. Among the men's possessions were
identification papers belonging to McDonald. It is not clear
why the men fled to Canada.
But it was the connection between the
ex-convicts and McDonald that piqued the curiosity of San Francisco
police, whose Missing Persons Detail is baffled by her disappearance.
Eimil, the department's chief of inspectors,
was critical of Garcia for letting Thompson go without posting
bail because he feared Thompson might not return to face the
charges and any questioning about McDonald.
District Attorney Smith was angered when
Garcia signed the order releasing Thompson without notifying
his office. The order was signed in the judge's chamber.
The only other persons present during
the OR issuance were Lurie, Thompson's attorney, and Josephine
Rivera, an employee of the Northern California Service League.
The NCSL is an adjunct of the Public Defender's office and aids
poor defendants who require special services, such as clothes,
to appear in court.
Rivera reportedly vouched for Thompson
as an honorable member of the community who would return to face
the charges against him, but failed to include the ex-inmate's
rap sheet of arrests and convictions. She declined an interview
when telephoned.
Garcia, meanwhile, said if he had had
the full background on Thompson, he would not have released the
man simply on his promise to return.
"I may have made a mistake,"
Garcia said, "but if it was a mistake, it was in not knowing
all the facts. I'll take the blame for it because I didn't ask
for the facts."
The judge said he was particularly irked
at the sniping by Smith and police, particularly that of Smith.
"I'm a little POed that Arlo Smith
said it was inappropriate," Garcia said. "If were to
start criticizing, well..."
Smith, however, denied he called the
order "inappropriate." He said he was miffed because
his office was not told of the bail hearing in the judge's chambers.
Thompson, however, phoned the public
defender's officer yesterday to say he would return for his arraignment
Jan. 21.
"He'll make every court appearance,"
Lurie said of Thompson.
Police, meanwhile, continued to examine
the evidence seized at the Hunters Point warehouse where Thompson
was arrested, which included a pound of potassium cyanide and
license plates made at Folsom Prison.
Officers also found a cache of welfare
and U.S. Treasury checks taken in the robbery of a mail truck
in Santa Rosa on Nov. 1.
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