A Rookie Cop vs. The West Coast Mafia. Tanya Chalupa
Stewart stumbled sleepily out of bed. She opened the door expecting to see Katie Henzie, but instead came face to face with fearsome-looking gunmen. Gripped by terror, she shrieked. Her high-pitched scream woke up her husband, who jumped out of bed to reach for a pistol he kept in the drawer of a nightstand. But before he had a chance to pull out the gun, a powerful punch knocked him to the floor. There he lay, in pain, staring into “the biggest muzzle of a steel blue pistol.”
Two of the gunmen raised Carl Stewart forcefully up on his feet and jerked his hands behind his back. They were about to tie him up when Sue pleaded, “Don’t hurt him. He just got out of the hospital with a bad arm.”
The gunmen paused and locked gazes. Then, without a word, they moved Carl Stewart’s arms to the front of his body and tied up his hands.
One of the masked gunmen spotted a set of keys and a small pile of money on top of the Stewarts’ dresser. The Stewarts looked sorrowfully at each other, expecting to see the last of their funds disappear.
“Don’t worry, we don’t take hard-earned money from working folks like you,” the gunman said as he snatched just the ring of keys. The group headed down the hall and stopped in front of the door by the main office. The gunman handed Sue the set of keys he’d seized earlier from atop the dresser and told her to unlock it. With trembling hands, she managed to find the key and opened the door, thereby saving the thieves time searching for the correct key. The gunman then walked her and the other two hostages to the Henzies’ bedroom to join the tied up Carl Henzie.
Inside the Henzies’ bedroom, one of the gunmen held the four at gunpoint, while another talked on the walkie-talkie. It seemed to the Henzies and the Stewarts that the person he was talking to was outside near the parking lot, serving as a lookout.
Then Ettleman’s other gunman entered the bedroom. He helped take one of the twin bed mattresses in the room and throw it on the floor, while another man pointed his rifle at the ski resort employees. Next, Sue and her husband were tied up and ordered to lie down on the mattress on the floor.
In the midst of this, Katie asked for a glass of water. One of the gunmen quickly disappeared, soon returning and handing her a glass of water to drink. When she finished, she was bound up and, along with her husband, instructed to lie down on top of the twin bed with the mattress still on it. Both she and her husband were covered up to be protected from the raging cold air streaming in through the shattered window. The masked intruders also turned up the thermostat in the room and threw a cover over the Stewarts before moving on to their main objective.
The Dodge Ridge Ski Resort had three safes in the main lodge. The gunmen jimmied open a small safe and used an acetylene torch to cut through a second one. They still had one safe to go, but time was running out. The third safe, which weighed several hundred pounds, was embedded in the floor of an unfinished bathroom. They hauled it out and moved it into the stolen van.
A few times during the night, one of the gunmen came in to check on the couples. On one occasion, because the Henzies and the Stewarts were speaking so loudly amongst themselves, he ordered them to “shut up” and “lay still.”7
Finally, when the masked men’s mission was completed, they prepared to make their escape. The employees were told that one of the gunmen was remaining behind to watch over them while the others took off.
“But we can’t promise that he’ll be as nice to you,” one of the safecrackers warned them.
The Henzies and Stewarts were uncertain about the exact number of gunmen. They were also under the impression that whoever it was who remained behind to watch them left about thirty minutes after the main group took off. It was then that the four victims struggled to free themselves.
The women were first to release themselves, because they were not secured as tightly. They then helped undo their husbands’ hands. Next, they woke up an employee sleeping in a nearby cabin on the property and sent him to get help. He walked six miles to Pinecrest to get to a phone and notify the authorities.8
Dodge Ridge, one of the most successful and popular ski resorts in the state of California, lost $109,000 in the burglary by Ettleman and his crew. In those days, that amount was enough to buy a couple of custom-designed homes for cash in Sacramento. The media, however, reported that $40,000 to $60,000 was stolen. They also omitted the fact that the theft included over $150,000 in jewelry and $350,000 in negotiable bonds. Each safecracker received $70,000 as his share from the heist.9
A website, measuringworth.com, which calculates the purchasing power of currencies, estimates that by today’s standards, the relative value of the thieves’ $70,000 share was well over $400,000 and the total amount in cash, jewelry and bonds stolen from Dodge Ridge Ski Resort equaled over $3,500,000.
Ettleman and his gang did not steal from a faceless corporation. Dodge Ridge Ski Resort was a family-owned business. It was developed by Earl Purdy, who in 1947, while drinking a cup of coffee in a grocery store in Long Barn, California, learned from neighbors that the US Forest Service was soliciting bids to develop a ski area in nearby Dodge Ridge. At the time, Purdy was running a successful general store and gas station between the towns of Ripon and Manteca, called Simm’s Station. But the long commute was getting to him and he was looking for a business venture that would be closer to his home and family. He did not know much about skiing, which he took up in his forties when his own children started taking lessons. But he was a vastly experienced individual with many facets and was not afraid to take on new challenges and risks. He’d previously been a teacher, a truck driver, a highway patrolman and a professional violinist. He also had a degree in architecture from the College of Pacifica. The son of a forest ranger, he was familiar with the region, having hiked the Dodge Ridge area as a youth.10
Purdy decided to enter the ski area competition, which entailed a one-hundred-dollar fee. Three months later he was shocked to learn that the Forest Service chose him over the other bidders because of his business history. Before utilizing the special use permit from the Forest Service, Purdy toured western ski resorts for three months to help him determine if Dodge Ridge could be economically viable. He traveled as far as Sun Valley in Idaho, and he also visited Mammoth and Squaw Valley, places that were closer to his home. Finally, he picked the spot where he thought the ski area should be built and pulled out a matchbook on which he sketched the layout of the resort. It turned out to accurately reflect what the completed project would look like.
Dodge Ridge opened in the fall of 1950 with Purdy’s initial investment of $250,000, a great sum in those days. His dream to build a family-oriented winter sports mecca with a state-of-the-art chairlift finally came true. Most importantly, it enabled him to be closer to his own family.
Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Department deputies launched an intensive manhunt as soon as they were summoned at 4:17 that morning. Neighboring police departments set up roadblocks. Agents from the FBI and the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Investigation and Identification (CI&I) responded rapidly when they received the news of the safe burglary, flying in by helicopter. In no time, the roads around Dodge Ridge and the neighboring hamlets were inundated with police cars. Helicopters could be heard circling the area on and off throughout most of the day.
The deputies also conducted a house-to-house search of five hundred cabins, looking for the armed bandits. They figured that the thieves might still be in the area, since the roads east of the resort were blocked by snow.11 But if anyone was blocked, it was law enforcement. Five inches of fresh snow fell in the early hours of the morning, covering the masked gunmen’s trail and hampering police efforts.
A ski mask, gloves and a pair of white overalls discarded by one of the bandits from a vehicle moving westbound were found along Highway 108. The stolen van used to haul the safe was also found, abandoned and empty, at a gas station in Strawberry, less than six miles from the resort. An eyewitness saw four men dash out of the van in the very early hours of the morning. The witness said the men split up into pairs and each pair drove away in a different car.
With all the scattered clues, law enforcement still had no evidence to tie any suspects to the crime. This was an era before the discovery of DNA and other