'Onion Field' killer up for parole today; law enforcement wants him to remain in prison

A state parole board today will decide whether to recommend releasing the gunman in the infamous "Onion Field" police killing.

Law enforcement officials and organizations -- including the LAPD police union and Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley -- have come out against parole for Gregory Powell.

Powell was convicted of the March 1963 kidnapping and execution of LAPD Officer Ian Campbell. The case was chronicled in Joseph Wambaugh’s bestselling book “The Onion Field.”

Powell, 75, received the death penalty for the crime. However, the sentence was later commuted to life in prison with the possibility parole when California briefly outlawed capital punishment.

In a letter to state corrections officials, L.A. police union President Paul Weber urged the board to deny parole, calling Powell a "vicious murderer who has not yet paid his debt to society."

Weber insists that Powell should be forced to serve the maximum sentence and recounts details of the crime in his letter.

Campbell and his partner, Karl Hettinger, had stopped a car carrying Powell and accomplice Jimmy Lee Smith as they searched for a liquor store to rob. During the stop, Powell pulled a gun, stuck it in Campbell’s back, disarmed the officer and forced Hettinger to give up his weapon too. Then they drove north.

“Near Bakersfield, Powell spotted a gravel road and ordered Campbell to pull off the freeway," Weber wrote. “After crossing a series of dirt roads, Officers Campbell and Hettinger were ordered out of the car into a vast field, where they stood still with their arms in the air. Then Powell asked Campbell, ‘Have you ever heard of the Little Lindbergh Law?’ and shot him.”

Hettinger began running through the field and escaped as Powell fired at him. As luck would have it, a cloud blotted out the moon, allowing the fleeing officer to take cover in bushes before he ran four miles to a farmhouse and summoned help.

Powell was captured a short time later driving back to Los Angeles. Smith was arrested the next day in a Bakersfield rooming house. He died in 2007.

Powell's question about the Little Lindbergh Law revealed the basis for the killing. Powell believed, mistakenly, that the law made it a capital offense to kidnap the officers.

-- Andrew Blankstein

RELATED:

Joseph Wambaugh on the 'Onion Field'

Comments

[RKC]

I cannot imagine any justifiable reason to release this killer.

[cavSCOUT69]

DO NOT PAROLE this ANIMAL!!!

[IrishRed]

There are some crimes than can never be fully repaid to society. Let him die in prison.

[Ed]

Parole him to an onion field and execute him.

[NSchwartz]

Gregory Powell received the death penalty as his sentence for committing this crime in 1963. Later the death penalty was outlawed in CA. It does not seem fair that he should be let out. Truthfully I think he should be lucky to even be alive. That said I suppose rehabilitation is possible for some. What sort of prisoner has he been all these yrs?

[SB]

This piece of garbage has outlived both ofl his victims- that is a crime in itself. If I had my way they would jack the prison up and slide him under it, and then let it fall on top of him.

[George Powell]

I feel everyone deserves a second chance. He has paid his debt to us. Release him now.