The 1977 Arizona armored car robbery was an armed robbery of an armored car that took place along Interstate 17 in which the two guards of the car were murdered. The robbery was committed by brothers Michael Kent Poland and Patrick Gene Poland. Both brothers were eventually executed for their parts in the crime, becoming one of two sets of brothers executed in Arizona, the others being the LaGrands.
The story was featured in episode 6, season 4 of The FBI Files on December 4, 2001.
Description of crime On May 24, 1977, guards Russel Dempsey and Cecil Newkirk were on duty for Purolator Courier. They were driving along I-17 when a vehicle they thought was a police car pulled them over. After pulling over, the men, whom they believed to be police officers, ordered them to open the truck, after which the Poland brothers took over. The drivers of the security van were bundled into bags and dumped into Lake Mead. The brothers had claimed that one guard had died of a heart attack, so they had to kill the other. They had stolen $228,000 during the robbery.
Investigation The investigation first focused on the two missing couriers. Both were ruled out as suspects when their wives reported that they had no financial problems, and their employer reported that each courier had faithfully worked for the company for over 20 years.
The van was eventually found in the remote desert near the town of Bumble Bee. Though the couriers were not there, blood was found in the back of the van, along with several thousand dollars in coins. The truck's doors were locked until a spare set of keys was brought to unlock them. Upon examination, it was discovered that the vehicle's radio was found to be left on, but the base received no distress calls. Also the van's siren had not been tripped, and an unfired shotgun was found in the back. US$293,000 worth of paper currency was missing.
After the discovery, the FBI had local news agencies make the news public. Several motorists called in, reporting that they saw the van stopped on the northbound side of Interstate 17 on the morning of May 24, the exact date when the guards were reported missing. One motorist said he saw a pair of Arizona Department of Public Safety officers walking towards the van, and other witnesses had similar stories, but in their accounts, the make and model of the officers' car varied, while others claimed to have seen the police cruiser stopped in front of the armored van.
After checking with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, they learned that none of their officers remembered stopping an armored van on Interstate 17 on May 24, so it was believed that the person seen by the witnesses was masquerading as a police officer. Several motorists underwent hypnosis to provide details of that officer to a sketch artist but there were different results.
Mojave County Sheriff's Deputy Dale Lent and FBI agents processed the spot where the armored car was believed to have been stopped. Digs and gouges in the dirt indicated that there had been a struggle near the rear of the van. In addition, tire tracks from a second vehicle were found, consistent with the tire tracks found in the remote area near where the armored van had been abandoned; however, those same tracks were also found in front of the spot where the van had been pulled over.
On June 16, 1977, 300 miles northwest of where the armored van had been abandoned, a body in a black canvas bag was discovered in Debbie's Cove in Lake Mead by a pair of anglers. The men contacted the National Park Service, who sped to the scene along with investigators and local officers. After recovering the body, a wallet was found in the back pocket, and the victim was identified as Cecil Newkirk, one of the two missing courier guards. Continuing the search found no sign of the second courier. The guard's personal effects were removed, including his self-winding watch, which stopped working at 10:37 p.m on May 26. A subsequent autopsy indicated that the guard found had been severely beaten and had two large welts consistent with those inflicted by a high voltage taser gun. The location of the body indicated a boat was used, so agents collected boat rental receipts to check for names.
During the next few weeks, FBI agents canvassed area service stations until one station owner reported his suspicions. The day after the robbery, he had towed the pickup truck of two men who claimed to be fishing and had inadvertently backed into Lake Mead at a boat ramp named Bonelli Landing. Though there did not seem to be any fishing equipment in the back, there were drag marks in the vehicle's bed. The receipt for the towing had the signature of Michael Poland.
An exhaustive search of boat rental receipts turned up one with the name Michael Poland for a boat rental to Bonelli Landing, where the pickup had been towed. Agents returned to Lake Mead, and after searching between Bonelli Landing and the boat rental shop across the shore, Russel Dempsey's body was recovered along with a garrote made out of two pieces of wood and rope and a second black canvas bag nearby, containing a blanket and tarp.
An autopsy revealed that he had suffered a heart attack and had been strangled. A hair sample from the garrote confirmed it was used to strangle him. An intensified search yielded a 3rd canvas bag similar to the first few bags used to cover the courier guards' corpses, which contained two corroded revolvers, concrete dust caked in the weave of the bag, and, more crucially, a license plate similar to the ones used on Arizona Department of Public Safety cruisers. The service station owner identified Michael Poland in a picture lineup.
Investigators eventually located Michael Poland, and they observed that he did not appear gainfully employed, but he had recently purchased a new motorcycle. Investigators identified a man who frequently visited as Michael's younger brother, Patrick. He had just bought a new car. Michael's teenaged son told them his father had recently bought two new motorcycles and a lot more. Further investigation revealed that both brothers were in financial trouble, but after the robbery, their debts had been paid completely, and they had purchased new vehicles, spending money beyond their legal means.
The Poland brothers' father said both brothers had borrowed his truck and a tarp on the day of the robbery and that the brothers gave him a new tarp saying the old one got ruined when they returned the truck. The father also had mixed concrete in the bed several weeks before the heist. Examinations revealed the same batch of concrete that left the dust stuck in the canvas bag recovered at Lake Mead. However, the station owner could not positively identify Patrick Poland, but he did confirm that their father's pickup truck was the one he towed from Bonelli Landing.
On July 27, 1977, agents arrived at Michael Poland's house with a search warrant, but he claimed that he was in Las Vegas buying jewels on the day of the heist. Several gems and $12,000 in cash were found, and Michael claimed they were for his jewel business. Two handcuff cases, a law enforcement belt, and a siren were also found. Several receipts were confiscated, including a receipt for two taser guns sold one month before the robbery and law enforcement gear.
However, when Patrick Poland was asked about the robbery, he said they were at Lake Mead fishing but had difficulties answering other questions. His brother Michael later called him to tell him not to talk to investigators. A search of Patrick's house yielded a stash of weapons, $16,000 in cash, another siren, and a belt with a space for a badge. After much investigation, it was revealed that neither of the cars the brothers owned before the robbery left the tire tracks found near the crime scene. The clerk of the gun store, which sold the tasers to Mark Harris, could only remember Mark Harris as a white male in his 20s.
Ten months of surveillance on the brothers revealed the brothers closing a deal on a gaming arcade, but there was insufficient evidence for an arrest warrant, so agents focused on determining where the black canvas bags came from. That paid off when one store owner recognized the bags as coming from his company and the special cord from a company in Georgia. The owner gave receipts he had left from years of business, and after much searching, a receipt for three custom-sized black canvas bags was found to have been sold to Mark Harris, similar to the taser receipt found during a search of Michael Poland's home months earlier which convinced agents that Mark Harris was an alias for Michael Poland.
Arrests
On May 18, 1978, after nearly a year of investigation, a Federal Grand Jury returned an indictment against the Poland brothers for robbery, kidnapping and murder. However, FBI agents suspected that both brothers would not surrender quietly, so they decided to arrest them away from their homes, fearing a shootout. Michael Poland went to a real-estate office while Patrick went to the game arcade. When Patrick Poland reached the arcade, the FBI arrest team tried to capture him before he entered. However, he surrendered without a fight, and they later found a stash of weapons in his car, including a .44 Magnum gun.
Eventually, despite the risks, the second arrest team entered the real estate office and arrested Michael Poland uneventfully. However, he refused to answer questions and insisted his brother do the same. No fingerprints linked them to the murdered guards or the armored car.
Trials and convictions State and federal prosecutors split the charges, and the Poland brothers went on trial for robbery and kidnapping in federal court on February 15, 1979, were found guilty on those charges based on the circumstantial evidence alone, and were sentenced to 100 years in prison. In November 1979, an Arizona state jury returned the guilty verdict for murder, which meant the death penalty for both of them, but they appealed their convictions. The Arizona Supreme Court found that the testimony of a hypnotized witness and the taser gun evidence should not have been used. They also found out that the jury had inappropriately discussed the federal trial, which meant their murder convictions were overturned, and parole laws at the time meant they would be eligible for parole in less than seven years.
In 1982, an Arizona prosecutor declined a retrial for the brothers due to cost and evidence already excluded by the Arizona Supreme Court. U.S. Attorney A. Melvin McDonald, outraged that the Poland brothers would possibly get away with murder, was deputized as an Arizona State Prosecutor. Despite evidence difficulties, prosecutors decided to try to determine the time the victims had been deposited in Lake Mead and prove that it was the same time the Polands were at the lake. After much pondering, a crucial piece of evidence was found in the form of Cecil Newkirk's self-winding watch, which stopped working at 10:37 p.m. on May 26, 1977. That particular watch would stop working if it were not moved for 12 hours, which meant it stopped working 12 hours after the deceased guard's arm came to rest at the bottom of Lake Mead. But to prove it, they had watch experts from Switzerland examine it to determine that the watch did not stop due to water damage. Forensics experts used this evidence to estimate when the bodies had been dumped into the water. Their estimation matched the time the FBI had established that the Polands were at the lake, getting their pickup towed from Bonelli Landing. The prosecutor explained that the Polands had been there to dump the bodies, which convinced the jury to return the guilty verdicts for the murder of Russel Dempsey and Cecil Newkirk on November 18, 1982. The defendants appealed again, but this time, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the death sentences for the Polands.