Free Republic

Gregory Powell, who was convicted of killing a Los Angeles police officer during an infamous kidnapping that inspired the true crime book and movie "The Onion Field," has died in prison at age 79, authorities said Monday. Powell died late Sunday in a hospice at the California Medical Facility, a men's prison in the Northern California city of Vacaville, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Powell spent nearly 50 years behind bars and was denied release several times, including last year when he told a parole board he was dying and wanted to spend his last days...

LOS ANGELES -- A convicted killer was denied parole Wednesday 47 years after he and a partner kidnapped two Los Angeles police officers and shot one to death in a case made famous by the book and movie "The Onion Field." A California Board of Prison Terms panel found the 76-year-old Gregory Powell unsuitable for parole after a hearing at the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo. It was his 11th parole hearing.... The crime was chronicled in Joseph Wambaugh's best-selling book, "The Onion Field." De la Garza recounted that Powell and co-defendant, Jimmy Lee Smith, kidnapped Officer Ian...

LOS ANGELES (Jan. 27) -- On the evening of March 9, 1963, two plainclothes L.A. police officers spotted a car making an illegal U-turn on a Hollywood street and decided to pull the driver over. It proved to be a fateful decision. The driver was Gregory Powell. He and his partner, both armed robbers, got the drop on the cops, took their guns and drove them out into the Central Valley, where Powell -- mistakenly believing the kidnapping was a capital offense -- shot Officer Ian Campbell dead in the middle of a desolate onion field. The other officer, Karl...

Jimmy Lee Smith, the notorious, lifelong criminal whose role in the 1963 kidnapping and killing of a police officer inspired Joseph Wambaugh's true-life crime novel "The Onion Field," has died in jail at age 76, a state prisons official said Saturday. Smith died Friday at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, where he was being held for failing to report to a parole officer, said Bill Sessa, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman. The cause of death was under investigation, according to the county coroner's office, although foul play was not suspected. Smith was once sentenced to death...

One of two men convicted of the "Onion Field" kidnap.m.urder of a police officer in 1963 has violated parole and is being sought by authorities. Jimmy Lee Smith, 76, has been at large since Dec. 22, said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Jonathan Parsley. Although Parsley couldn't specify what parole condition was violated, but Smith went back to prison in June 2005 after admitting that he had violated parole by possessing heroin. Smith and Gregory Powell were convicted of abducting two Los Angeles policemen from a Hollywood street on March 6, 1963. The officers were driven 75 miles...