The clock ticked relentlessly.
As the night-time hours blanketed the Southland the previous haste to identify and contain other potential suspects had now abated.
It was to be replaced with a different form of urgency.
Who were these men?
Why had they undertaken such a reckless course of action?
Had they been responsible for other crimes?
In various areas of the city certain people were pretty sure they had seen these two before.
Very quickly the two May 1996 jobs of Winnetka and Van Nuys were attributed to the two bodies that had lain in the streets of North Hollywood; and eleven miles away certain entities within Glendale Police Department were absolutely sure that the two men who had gained worldwide notoriety earlier the previous morning were the same men they had sat in their interview rooms nearly three and a half years ago. Glendale again forwarded their suspicions to both the FBI and LAPD RHD (Robbery Homicide Division).
It is curious to note that we have found no official communiqué naming Phillips and Matasareanu as the perpetrators; the media seem to be the first people to use their names, and the LAPD followed suit some time later. The truth of it was that they were identified very quickly, from AFIS fingerprint matches taken at the scenes where both bodies lay.
After the bodies were removed under SWAT escort to the Coroner's office at North Mission Road, detectives would attempt to contact both men's families, with varying degrees of success.
Multiple credit agencies were polled, drivers licences, SSN's, every conceivable method of tracing a person's official footprint was explored.
Both men were living in rental properties under fictitious names, Matasareanu's properties fell like dominoes, each coming to light in short order, quite how is open to debate but we believe that the LAPD/FBI were assisted by someone close to the family.
In Phillips case his residence would not be identified until some weeks later when his wife, Jeanette Federico, finally surrendered herself in Colorado.
Matasareanu's credit checks kicked back his mother's house as a last known residence (although he had resided at three other properties at least since moving out).
The detectives who went to deliver the next of kin notification were met by his mother, whose anguished screams could be heard outside in the road when she was informed of her son's death. Matasareanu's body would be formally identified by a family friend, not his wife, not his mother, a family friend.
Larry Phillips was a slightly different matter; two addresses popped up immediately.
West Harriet St and West Loma Alta Drive also in Altadena.
West Harriet was the address he had shared with his mother in the early late 1980s to early 1990s, it was now devoid of all connection to the Phillips family.
The West Loma address is an somewhat of an enigma, it is known that this rental property had seen use both by Phillips and his half brother Denis Franks in the early 1990s, Matasareanu had certainly visited this property also.
Stories that have been told to us from within the extended Phillips family speak of this property being a communal hang out, and certainly one of a number of mailing addresses for Phillips Jr as this is where the driving licence that held his correct name was registered.
One such tale recounted but unsubstantiated (and never likely to be substantiated either) speaks of Larry and Denis shooting each other whilst wearing body armour, a continuation of their childhood 'tests of manhood' that had been inflicted upon them by their grandfather and uncles. When invited to join in the 'game', Matasareanu apparently hurried left the property with the laughter of the brothers chasing him to the gate.
This is where the trail for us goes cold on this property, we can find no reference to any law enforcement visit, any search warrant. We are sure it must have been investigated but any official register of such an investigation is beyond our view at this time.
With what appears to be two strike outs on locating anyone or any property closely connected to Phillips detectives cast their net wider, and found two leads. Phillips father in Denver, and Denis Franks, Larry's half brother. Certain sources place Franks as living in Canada from the mid 1990's but in an interview conducted with Mr Franks in early 2020 he told us of visiting his brother's body at the coroner's office and then of having lengthy discussions with both RHD and FBI detectives. He was very evasive about his whereabouts and movements between the countries and we could not tie him down to exactly where he was when he received the next of kin notification. We believe Los Angeles.
As Los Angeles read the column inches over their morning coffee, Dr Susan L. Selser and five RHD detectives stood in an examination room at North Mission Road, the home of the Coroner's office.
At 9am the fully clothed body of Larry Eugene Phillips Jr was removed from the five hundred berth cold storage area and bought into the examination room.
Phillips was a mess, his face swollen and contorted from being laid on his left side on the Archwood dirt median for twelve hours, fluids had pooled in the lowest points of his body and left his blood soaked face frozen in a grimace, his mouth half open baring blood stained teeth. The large stellate wound under his chin from the suicide shot plainly visible to the room's occupants.
Laid out on his back with his head turned to the left, his Galco shoulder holster was removed; followed by his ammunition carrying vest revealing the blood and sweat soaked grey Honors T-shirt that covered his body armor. The centre of the chest of his T-shirt bore a ragged hole, a reminder to anyone who looked of just how close Officer Richard Zielinksi's shot could have come to ending Friday's chaos. Unfortunately for most involved the steel trauma plate behind that hole had done its job correctly.
According to the Coroner's report Phillips had nineteen firearms related wounds, inflicted by eleven separate gunshot strikes.
Three of these were classified as fatal (the submental suicide shot and the subclavian arterial wound) or 'potentially fatal' (C-8 spinal nerve).
Six projectiles comprising of two .32 caliber copper jacketed 00 buckshot pellets, two unexpanded copper jacketed hollowpoints, one partially expanded copper jacketed hollowpoint, one expanded copper jacketed hollowpoint, were recovered from Phillips during autopsy, three from his body mass and one from his clothing and one from the autopsy table which is believed fallen from his clothing.
One entry of the wound count potentially came post mortem when Phillips was downed on Archwood and still under a hail of police gunfire (the right tricep wound). Taking this into account we are left with the fact that Phillips was walking to his death at 09:56am carrying eight separate bullet strikes that had caused at least fifteen wounds (although only eleven wounds are recorded on the autopsy these do not account for entry/exit, entry/exit/re-entry style of wounds of which there were several).
Phillips is recorded as standing at 71 inches tall (5ft 11 inches), weighing 193lbs and appearing in good health with no underlying medical issues.
A penultimate entry regarding the autopsy that should be here is that of his toxicology screen, what exactly had he ingested? I have decided to remove it from this portion of the text and it can be found on the Myths page as it becomes a rather in depth study of Phenobarbital which we don't have the space for here.
The final entry regarding Phillips autopsy is one I have wrestled with for a long time, a matter of writing it firmly enough to show what we can see and have been told, yet delicately enough to not appear accusatory. Let me explain.
Ten years apart, two people completely unconnected with each other who have never spoken to each other and were almost certainly never aware of each other's existence told us the exact same piece of information. The way it was told was critical too; it wasn't forced upon us to be part of the narrative but given in a casual, offhand way by both parties.
That piece of information? That Larry Phillips Jr had sustained a gunshot wound to his forehead.
One party was a serving police officer at the scene of Phillips body; the other was a family member who visited Phillips body at North Mission Road.
There exists on the internet a couple of pictures of Phillips body that show in enough detail what appears to be a wound low centre of Phillips forehead, just to the right of his left eyebrow.
It would not be surprising that a round had found him when he hit that dirt median, video footage shows rounds striking around his body for upwards of an additional four seconds once he went down, so why is this relevant I hear you asking?
It would appear that the Coroner's office somehow missed, or perhaps under instruction chose not to include this quite obvious wound.
Imaged below are the collated headers of all Phillips wounds, taken from the coroner's report.
Not a single mention of a forehead wound. Somehow, it appears that it just got missed.
At 10:30am Emil Matasareanu's body was also wheeled out from cold storage. His body on the gurney cut a very different figure from that of his cohort. Despite having sustained some extraordinarily serious wounds during his final confrontation with the three SWAT officers his body appeared to be that of one in repose, except for the blood masking the right hand side of his face he genuinely looked like a person sleeping. (Yes, we have photographs from the autopsy undressing room, and no, we will not let them become public. Please do not message us and ask for them as refusal often offends).
There was little external evidence of the horrendous trauma that had been inflicted upon Matasareanu's body. That would change dramatically as the autopsy progressed.
His left ankle had been broken by gunfire, as had his left knee, and like Phillips he had a large chunk of flesh (measured at some six inches long) chewed out of his wrist/forearm by gunfire, blinded in the right eye, with multiple gunshot wounds to his buttocks, hips and thighs it would be totalled that he was carrying twenty nine different wounds.
This final number shall also be addressed in the Myths page, for the media and the public jumped on this number and it has been incorrectly written into lore that he had been shot twenty nine times, and this just isn't the case. If you wish to read more on this particular myth being dispelled then head over to that page.
Matasareanu's autopsy would be conducted over both days of that weekend. Sunday's session would only be attended by two RHD detectives, and only one of those had been present on the Saturday session.
Outside of the hive of activity that was the investigation into these two men, back in the public realm the previous day's chaos was on everybody's lips.
A quote I once read about this event comes back to me now and if I recall it correctly it went something like this: 'The neighbourhood suffered two assaults, the first by the two masked men and the second a day later by the looky-loos and the press'.
Saturday 1st March 1997 would be nicknamed 'The day of the locust'.
Those folk who wanted to come see the place where this event had happened, to poke their fingers in the bullet holes, hunt for stray casings and touch the places where these men had fallen. It was not a million miles removed from people dipping handkerchiefs in the blood of John Dillinger when he was finally assassinated by Federal Agents outside the Biograph theatre.
Respect for privacy and personal property certainly went downhill in North Hollywood that day.
I have heard from sources whom shall remain nameless that the day took on a dark carnival atmosphere.
The media had a field day, so many people to interview, so many stories to tell, who was where, who did what, and who felt what. It was the people angle that would complete and sell many inches of newspaper. Yet within that reporting, and a lot of it was exceptional work, certain viewpoints and false information was allowed to exist. Because it remained unchecked and unchallenged it STILL endures to this day.
The most obvious example is the 'armor piercing ammunition' myth which originated from Sgt. Dean Haynes, and was perpetuated by the media. An in-depth discussion on this issue, which needs to be finally understood and eradicated from this event can be found on our 'Myths' page here.
At 2pm, Chief Willie Williams gave a press conference in the North lot of the Bank of America, his backdrop would be the hastily repaired wall and the remaining bullet ridden vehicles.
Saturday gave way into Sunday and the newspaper columns were understandably still full of this story, as people unfolded the Times and the Daily news over their breakfast they would be greeted with vivid photographs taken by Gene Blevins, Mike Meadows, Carolyn Cole and various other photographers. The text would be a constant rehashing of what had happened on Friday interspersed with known facts and any nuggets of developing information. A question developed amongst the media information of how to better protect law enforcement; the scale of Friday's event was without precedent. There had been many high profile shootouts with police in California over the years yet rarely had there been one where responding officers had been so utterly at the mercy of the assailants.
Whilst the media were asking such a public question it must be understood that out of the public eye the question also continued to be raised. Campaigns to allow officers to '''up-gun' themselves had lain dormant for many months due to them being a political 'hot potato'. Finally the answer to those campaigns would be forthcoming.
The media continued in their hunt for information.
In short order the L.A Times and the L.A Daily News conducted interviews with Detective John Krulac (the officer that came under withering fire in the Hughes parking lot with Officer James Zboravan and ended up in the dentist's stairwell).
Walter Milosevic (the gentleman who was removed from his home when LAPD believed from a tip that there was a third gunman hiding in Milosevic's outbuilding). Walter was not a happy man, there had been substantial damage to his property (which exists to this day, the hole that the V100 bulldozed through his rear wall has been left and turned into a vehicle entry), he was waiting to hear back from the city and was upset that nobody so far had been in contact.
Noubar Torossian, the gentleman whose need for a cigarette was cut short when Matasareanu decided to carjack Bill Marr outside his house got his opportunity to speak to the L.A Daily News.
It should also be noted that the bullet holes in his house were not caused by Matasareanu for he never fired in the direction of this house (SE from the direction the Celebrity's hood). These are errant police rounds from during the SWAT engagement with Matasareanu.
Detective Tracey Angeles spent some time with the L.A Daily News recounting her minutes of sheer horror in the Hughes parking lot and attempting to get aid to the injured Officer Stuart Guy.
Tracy Fisher returned to the scene, recalling her own terror of being stuck behind the disintegrating black and white with Barry Golding and the wounded Mike Horen. She would later pose next to the bullet ridden passenger door of Sgt Haynes' cruiser. The story of her Labrador, D.O.G, who was wounded in the muzzle during the heated gun battle was also published.
Whilst the L.A Times interviewed Fisher, they also released the information that the two gunmen were in fact the same two men arrested in Glendale in October of 1993 with a trunk full of weapons.
As previously mentioned it soon became apparent that the two 1996 takeovers in the southern end of the San Fernando Valley had been the work of these two, CCTV and modus operandi was a faultless match.
What else?
The Herman Cook murder back in 1995, also at the Winnetka branch was a folder that was pulled and tentatively attributed to them, and whilst never publically laid at their feet the intimation was made that they were being looked at for that crime.
The utterly bizarre attempted takeover of the armoured car on Fallbrook Avenue in 1996 was another 'maybe' file.
Reaching further back to 1993 RHD found a takeover conducted by three men of an armoured car in Littleton, Colorado; an area very close to Phillips 'home turf' and the town that would become tragically famous only two short years later for the massacre at Columbine High School. The M.O seemed to match, and so this became another 'maybe'.
Yet despite the files stacking up of possible crimes there was thing that nobody could find, was where Phillips had lived. That would not be known until over six weeks later when his wife surrendered herself after driving from the family home to a friend's in Thornton, Colorado, she would lead detectives to the house her and Larry had shared, until that time the police had no leads.
Phillips had taken on a lifestyle of quiet paranoia, living under aliases, multiple identities, driver's licences, at least five SSN's, and in the infancy of cellular telephones it was believed that he had stuck to the old and tested pager for remote contact method, although that may not have been the whole truth as we shall later discover.
In fact at the time of the North Hollywood debacle he had been living fifty miles south of the crime scene in Orange County. He had moved into a rental property on E.Drake Avenue in Anaheim Hills, a spacious property situated on the northern side of the road, four houses into a long cul-de-sac.
On initial inspection the property's location seems nothing special, but a closer look sees that it is sited on a road with only one access point, and the house has a commanding view of the road that anybody approaching 'his' street would have to take to get near the house.
It is to this house we shall return momentarily.
Jeanette Federico, Larry's widow, had seen the shootout on the news.
After dropping her daughter off at school she had returned home and started cleaning the house. The shootout featured on most LA television channels and Jeanette speaks of watching the shootout unfold and a shocked realization of exactly who was under those black knit ski masks.
She would stay in the house for roughly another two weeks, when Larry never came home that Friday her intuition was proven correct, and when his name and Glendale arrest photo was finally broadcast across the airwaves the reality was hammered home.
Jeanette's story has never yet been fully told, but it has been explored by a collaborative project we are associated with and as such we are at liberty to disclose a little more than has ever been previously told.
During the weekend of 1st/2nd March 1997, Cristina Matasareanu visited the house at Drake Ave; she wanted to speak with Jeanette, to find out what she should do.
Jeanette speaks of Cristina in a distant fashion, of not knowing the answers of what they should do and of eventually telling Cristina 'They cant find us together, you gotta figure out what you gonna do'.
With that both women parted ways, and to this day appear to have never crossed paths again.
Over $1.5million was still missing, both women knew they would have to face the authorities soon enough, to disclose what they each knew of their husband's activities and what they knew of the missing volume of Bank of America's cash. Both women appear to have had motives to delay such a meeting, but we shall explore that more as the aftermath progresses.
Jeanette would wait a little longer, her situation was a little more complex, but Monday March 3rd was the last day she paid rent on the Anaheim property.
Many miles away across the vast landscape of LA Emil's mother, Valerie Nicolescu, gave a rare public interview and gave a curious quote stating 'my son was in with a bad crowd'.
Glendale police department stated publically that after the two 1996 jobs that they had given their file on Phillips and Matasareanu to the FBI, the FBI gave no return quote to confirm or deny this. It appears that Glendale were shouting these guys names loud and clear to anyone who would listen, but both RHD and FBI gave the intelligence little to no concern. Hard to fathom if it is true.
LAPD Commander, Tim McBride released a quote stating that Phillips and Matasareanu's potential ties to paramilitary groups was being investigated, a route that the FBI would also later explore, both explorations garnered zero results.
Emil Matasareanu's DUNS report about his business was returned, and it gave investigators a subtle glimpse into the kind of man they were investigating.
When Emil had left DeVry University in 1987 with his electrical engineering degree in hand he had gone straight to building a business. In the projected earnings for the business he estimated between $125,000 and $250,000.
There was nothing unusual in that; however in his 1992 filing he reported an estimated $1-2 million; again nothing wrong with that. On paper he appeared to have an upwardly mobile business, allegedly with seven employees and retaining government contracts according to the paperwork Matasareanu filled out.
The truth appears to have been vastly different; the business was all but abandoned, residing in an unfinished basement at the East Orange Grove Boulevard address and consisting of nothing more than a few boxes of long forgotten parts and with, as far as we can make out, no 'employees' bar himself, and as a cherry to top the cake...
One must ask the question, why such an increase on the projected earnings? The business had never taken off in any form, stories of Matasareanu schlepping his accounting software for budget prices whilst dressed in flip flops and baggy sweat pants have been given to us first hand. Not the image nor the actions of a serious business owner. So why the hike in the projected earnings, again we return to that question.
Were they washing stolen money through the business? It has never been proven but could seem to be a possibility; however the first robbery tentatively attributed to this pair was not until July 1993 so a further question must be asked: Were they active much earlier than ever believed? Or were they just setting the stage for what they would be getting into?
The FBILA Bank Squad received information that Matasareanu had been a patron at a Northridge gun store, where he was well known for purchasing 7.62x39mm ammunition.
Walter Kennedy, Matasareanu's previous neighbour on Sinaloa Ave was interviewed by USA Today recounting the story of Matasareanu's graduation and how nobody had showed up.
Branch 384, the target of such a violent assault only three days previous re-opened to the public. Tradesmen had worked all over the weekend patching the holes and damage, come Monday morning the only change to be noticed, apart from the cameras of the media, was the eight security personnel as opposed to the usual two. Various subtleties were evident to the keen eye though; bushes around the bank appear to have mysteriously been cut back and removed. Reason unknown.
The LAPD make official request to upgrade the sidearms of patrol officers from 9mm to .45 cal. The request riding hot on the events of the previous Friday where multiple officers had stated they had seen their 9mm rounds rebuffed by Phillips body armour was passed with minimal complaint.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms confirm that the serial number trace on all the NHWD crime weapons had been completed but they refused to release any information.
The LA Times interview Gurbax Pannu, one of the BoA customers caught in the middle of the robbery.
The Times also publishes the first tenuous questions asking if Phillips and Matasareanu were the culprits involved in Herman Cook's murder in June 1995. The L.A Daily News would ask this same question some 24 hours later.
Larry Phillips half brother, Denis Franks, is interviewed by the Daily News.
Franks would say that he had not seen his brother in years, and that Phillips had assumed his identity without consent. Franks spoke to us in an interview recorded in 2020 regarding his and Larry's upbringing, about Larry's disdain for his father, and various escapades the two of them had during their formative years. He gave a very pointed intimation that the two of them shared crooked identities, even each other's at times and as such law enforcement had no idea of who was who when it came to this pair.
You have to admit that Larry and Denis share some similar physical traits.
These enlightening interviews, some four hours worth, will hopefully be published on the site one day, once Mr Franks has bought his own media project to fruition.
Dora Lubjensky, the Archwood St resident whose house Bill Marr fled to when Matasareanu hijacked his truck is also interviewed, by the Times, and again she would raise the question about why Matasareanu had not received timely medical attention. This time her voice had a public platform.
Mid-morning and LAPD executed a search warrant on the Matasareanu's business address. 304 East Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena.
In it they found both more and less than they ever expected.
The feeling was that they would find a cache of weapons and stacks of banknotes from the robbery.
The reality is that they found a dusty basement, staffed by some old weight training equipment and two computers. Remnants of Emil's previous past-times. No weapons, no bag full of banknotes, nothing.
The upper portion of the house had been converted into an unlicensed board and care facility, kind of, what the LAPD found was one very dirty and dishevelled Georgia Mayo, 44.
Mayo who had been moved to the property at the beginning of February, had allegedly been left alone, locked in a single dark room within the property for at least the previous week during which time she had had no access to her medicines or food. A Pasadena police department report said Mayo's room had a nauseating odour of faeces and urine, with only a bucket being present to serve ablutionary needs.
Mayo was removed to Huntington Memorial Hospital for evaluation, and Pasadena police conducted only a brief interview with Nicolescu, choosing to label her only as a 'possible suspect' in an illegal board and care establishment. This was apparently done out of deference for her son being killed only five days previous.
A search of Nicolescu's Sinaloa Ave property, Valerie's Villa, was conducted and only a small box was removed by police, which they declined to comment about what it contained. It would later be learned that $10,000 in cash had been confiscated from the house, whether the box and the cash were linked is unknown. A joint bank account held by both Valerie and Emil containing $13,000 would also be confiscated. It was also noted that an old muscle car bearing the licence plate 1EMIL1 was parked at the rear of the property and covered with a tarpaulin. The vehicle appears to have been partly modified for drag strip racing. Interestingly this vehicle was never seized under Federal Asset Forfeiture.
Then in what can only be described in one of the most stunning pieces police ingenuity ever recorded they managed to get on to Emil's final property.
A property he had rented under an assumed name since December 1996.
A property allegedly unknown to his mother who had said she had not spoken to her son in a couple of years, yet it is widely known she had a conversation with him in December 1996.
A property allegedly unknown to his wife who apparently had separated from Emil in the previous July.
Quite how they magically came up with this address is beyond our capability to dig out, and remains somewhat suspicious to us to this day.
Midway between Pasadena and Phillips rental home in Anaheim Hills, Matasareanu had rented a 2,700 sq ft home on Pepperdale Drive in Rowland Heights perched on the side of the San Puente hills. The house was, at the time, the largest on the street and it was to be Emil's final home.
The first search of this property would reveal 500 rounds of ammunition of an undisclosed calibre, a revolver, stun guns and blank identification documents.
Wednesday dawned and the investigation continued apace, gathering new information on both men. The most critical part to the LAPD and FBI remained unseen though, the whereabouts of Phillips home and his spouse, Jeanette Federico.
A name sprang up in the investigation, one Phillips Jr had used, Larry Santos, and it was not a random name. It was in fact the name of Sharon Santos' brother, an old friend of Larry's and the person who had introduced Larry and Sharon at an ice rink in Denver back in the day.
Investigative teams got the wrong end of the stick and would pursue and investigate one Larry Santos from Decatur, Georgia who was a musician and had absolutely zero connection to the now infamous bank robber. Whether the correct Larry Santos was ever identified by authorities is unknown, although he too is believed to have no connection to Phillips & Matasareanu's criminal activities.
As the day wore on various entities gave interviews to the media, amongst them was Sgt Haynes whose black and white had been the first target for Phillips, and Judy Cook; the widow of Herman Cook who was executed by an unknown gunman back in 1995. Cook seemed to be prepared, even eager it seemed to accept that Phillips and Matasareanu's deaths would at last close the file on her husband's murder that had remained unsloved for the previous two years.
Yet the day was not all media based, three critical events happened on this day.
First came the news that Los Angeles Sheriff's Department had authorized the immediate deployment of AR15 rifles to all field supervisors.
Second, both LAPD and LAFD commissions confirm that an investigation into why Matasareanu did not receive timely aid had been opened on the behest of the LAPD Command.
Third, late in the day came another breakthrough. LAPD had found the 'safe house'. Tucked away on Ludlow Street in the far north of the San Fernando Valley in Granada Hills on a quiet street sat an unassuming house, rented by Matasareanu under the name of Michael Dilbek in April 1996.
Matasareanu and his family had quietly occupied this house with Emil moving out to the Pepperdale Drive house in December 1996.
Neighbours would later remember them as a quiet family who were always up and out of the house early and who seemed to have a vast fleet of vehicles.
The discovery of this address must have come late in the day, as the search warrant for it was slated to be executed the following day.
Today would be a day of searches, secondary searches and seized vehicles.
Ludlow St fell to investigating officers; the house was quiet and deserted. Nothing appeared to have moved in it for nearly a week.
Officers found two bedrooms, one apparently belonging to each man. Clothes, a dresser, a number of unassembled weapon parts (believed to be the AR-15 upper receivers later displayed), and in the garage, a dark blue 1995 Buick Century.
Forty nine miles to the southeast back at the Pepperdale Drive address a second search was conducted and this time bore more troubling fruit.
At 11:30am the neighbourhood was evacuated after officers discovered what appeared to be bomb making equipment in a bag and in the trunk of a vehicle in the garage underneath what appeared to be the bedrooms Emil had decorated for his children (not many adults I know have Winnie the Pooh curtains) was found a 'putty-like substance'. No further information was ever released as to what this may have been, although this was not the last time this substance would be found as we will soon see.
From this same property was also recovered an AR15, an AKM, a pistol grip shotgun, two 'bulletproof' vests and a selection of 'paramilitary literature', which is believed to have been publications from Paladin Press.
The final item recovered, not by police but by repossession agents was a black Lincoln Town Car similar to that used by Phillips in his November 1996 excursion to Denver to visit his father.
Friday saw Phillips Sr interviewed in Denver. Sr would give the detectives a few leads to go on but ultimately he gave up nothing extraordinarily revealing about his son.
He spoke of Jr's visit late the previous year, arriving in a black Town Car and taking him and his two daughters out to a local steak house for dinner. Dressed in new Nikes and with the ever present Rolex on his wrist and a wallet full of cash. He appeared affluent and content. A darker tone to the conversation ensued though. He had told his father he was moving back to Denver, probably in the coming April, when his father gave him the wise mans nod and told him to be careful Jr responded "I might be dead by then."
Phillips Sr told the detectives that Jr had handed him a pre-paid pager, and had also given him his own pager number so that they may remain in contact. He also gave his father $500 in cash, and would later mail him an additional $400.
When the number on the pager was traced it was found that it had been purchased from Quality Auto Sound in Lakewood, no further leads were forthcoming apart from a curious piece that back in September 1996 Jr had conducted an IRSI search for two persons, paid up front and had returned two days later to collect the results. Postulation on whom he may have been searching for could go on forever, we happen to believe although it is not provable that it was for his half brother Denis Franks and Sharon Santos, the mother of his two sons.
Back in Los Angeles Detective Mitch Robbins was interviewed regarding how exactly his licence plate came to be affixed to the back of the bandit Chevrolet a week earlier. It had been stolen from a vehicle on his drive around New Years and not been seen again until the morning of the robbery. That licence plate, complete with an added bullet hole was returned to him and now hangs in Mr Robbins house.
A week had passed since the robbery and abortive escape attempt. Investigative teams were now starting to peel back the lid on both men's lives, but more so on Matasareanu than Phillips. Phillips address and Federico were still a thing of mystery to LAPD and FBI.