Two men aroused the suspicion of L.A.P.D. Officers Ian James Campbell and Karl Hettinger on a spring night in Hollywood, 1963. Nearly 50 years later, the sad case of a murdered police officer and his traumatized partner can finally be closed. Gregory Ulas Powell, 79, known as the "Onion Field Killer," died in a California prison medical facility on August 12, 2012. Powell was the last person living from that infamous night.
Their suspicion was correct. Powell and his partner in crime, Jimmy Lee Smith, were casing businesses, looking for a place to rob. They duo were described as intelligent, petty criminals. That all ended on March 9, 1963, when the two plain clothes vice officers pulled over a car driven by Powell at the intersection of Gower Street and Carlos Avenue in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
Powell ambushed Officer Campbell, disarming him and put a gun to his back. Powell then demanded that Officer Hettinger surrender his gun. Hettinger, knowing his training taught him to never surrender his firearm, was faced with the hardest decision of his life. Thinking it was the only chance to save his partner, Hettinger surrendered his gun and was forced into Powell's car, along with Campbell. They then drove both men to an onion field near Bakersfield, California.
Powell, fearing he had already committed a capital offense by kidnapping the officers, assassinated Officer Campbell with one shot to the face. Hettinger was able to escape and ran to a farm house that was about four miles away. Both Powell and Smith were captured and convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Their sentences were later commuted to life in prison after the death penalty was abolished in California. Smith, who was considered an accomplice and neither the trigger man or the mastermind, was paroled in 1982. He found himself back in prison several times and dies in a correctional facility in 2007. He was 76 years old.
Powell applied for parole 11 times, being denied each time. The police union and Campbell's daughter argued that Powell had not yet paid his debt to society. Powell was moved to a prison hospice facility after being diagnosed with prostate cancer last year.
Hettinger returned to the force, but never fully recovered from the incident. The trauma of seeing his partner killed and being alienated by his fellow officers, he developed what would now be diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He lost his job after being accused of shoplifting. He died of liver disease in 1994 at the age of 59.
The tragic incident achieved widespread attention in 1973 when Joseph Wambaugh wrote the non-fiction thriller, aptly called, "The Onion Field." Wambaugh, then a Detective Sergeant for the LAPD had written numerous police novels, mostly based on the LAPD. His other works include The New Centurion, The Choir Boys, and The Glitter Dome. Wambaughs first novel, The New Centurions, marked the first time that psychological stress of police officers was brought to widespread attention. In that novel, rookie officer Roy Fehler is critically wounded after disrupting a burglary. After recovering from the shooting, his wife leaves him and he develops a drinking problem.
In the Onion Field case, Hettinger was not only traumatized by the murder of his partner, but also by the treatment he received by his fellow officers. He was asked to tell his story to police academy recruits as an example of what not to do.
The Onion Field was adapted into a movie with Ted Danson playing the part of Ian Campbell, the officer shot in the onion field. It also starred a young James Woods as Gregory Powell.
Ian Campbell was honored by the City of Los Angeles with a section of Highway 101 being renamed after him, along with a public square.
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