The plan that Smith hatched was half-baked, to say the least, "replete with grandiosity, self-righteousness, and confidence that he knew more than everyone around him." It was doomed from the start: Smith elected to rob the bank where he was a customer, one which also happened to be several miles away from the nearest freeway. The two men convinced Harven's brother, Russell, to join the heist, along with two brothers named Billy and Manny Delgado. The two men behind the Norco bank robbery believed that America was on the verge of a catastrophe of biblical proportions, one in which only the well armed and well prepared would survive." As Houlahan writes, "They were not drug addicts desperate for their next fix, a ring of thieves looking to pull a string of heists. The perpetrators, led by two park maintenance workers and small-time pot dealers named George Smith and Christopher Harven, had uncommon motivations for the crime. The Norco robbery was an odd one from its very beginning. The resulting shootout, escape and manhunt form the basis of Peter Houlahan's gripping debut book, Norco '80, a nonfiction account of one of the most violent bank robberies in U.S. A group of five robbers hit a branch of the Security Pacific Bank but failed to flee the scene before police showed up. Law enforcement officers in the region had abundant experience in responding to these crimes, but nothing prepared them for what happened in Norco, a small town in Riverside County, on May 9, 1980. The area's abundance of freeways made it easy for robbers to quickly put distance between themselves and the banks they targeted, escaping into other jurisdictions before the police even knew what was happening. How?įor several decades in the 20th century, the Los Angeles metropolitan area was known as the bank robbery capital of the world. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Norco '80 Subtitle The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History Author Peter Houlahan
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